Filtering by Subject: Evolution
Published: 2023-02-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Systems Biology
The growth of microbial populations in nature is dynamic, as the cellular physiology and environment of these populations change. Understanding the growth dynamics of these populations has wide-ranging consequences for their ecology and evolution; it may also be critical for clinical and environmental applications in which we need to promote or inhibit microbial growth. Here we review the [...]
Published: 2023-02-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology
Most of what is known about extra-pair paternity in hole-nesting birds derives from studies using artificial nesting sites, such as nestboxes. However, it has rarely been investigated whether inference drawn from breeding events taking place in nestboxes matches what would be observed under natural conditions, i.e. in natural cavities. We here report on a variation in promiscuity in blue tits and [...]
Published: 2023-02-16
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
A common bias in cultural transmission is success bias, where more successful individuals are more likely to be copied. Because success may be difficult to estimate, individuals may indirectly estimate success by using prestige as a proxy for success. Here, we model prestige bias as a combination of indirect success bias and influence bias, the latter meaning that the choice of a role-model [...]
Published: 2023-02-13
Subjects: Evolution
Telomeres are a popular biomarker of senescence, as telomere dynamics are linked with survival and lifespan. However, the evolutionary potential of telomere dynamics, and the selection pattern that gives rise to senescence, are not well known. To better understand this, it is necessary to quantify genetic variation in telomere length, and how such variation changes with age. Here, we analysed a [...]
Published: 2023-02-10
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Winter presents an immense challenge for survival, yet temperate ectotherms have remarkable adaptations to physiologically compensate for these challenges. Such mechanisms are especially relevant under recent climate change where responses to warmer winters might negatively affect populations. While there is growing evidence of thermal physiological adaptations and population divergence in [...]
Published: 2023-02-03
Subjects: Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The structure and function of biochemical and developmental pathways determine the range of accessible phenotypes, which are the substrate for evolutionary change. Accordingly, we expect that observed phenotypic variation across species is strongly influenced by pathway structure, with different phenotypes arising due to changes in activity along pathway branches. Here we use flower color as a [...]
Published: 2023-01-18
Subjects: Evolution, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
On a global scale, organisms face significant challenges due to climate change and anthropogenic disturbance. In many ectotherms, developmental and physiological processes are sensitive to changes in temperature and resources. Developmental plasticity in thermal physiology may provide adaptive advantages to environmental extremes if early environmental conditions are predictable of late-life [...]
Published: 2022-12-15
Subjects: Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Pathogenic Microbiology, Population Biology
Exchange of genetic material through sexual reproduction or horizontal gene transfer is ubiquitous in nature. Among the few outliers that rarely recombine and mainly evolve by *de novo* mutation are a group of deadly bacterial pathogens, including the causative agents of leprosy, plague, typhoid, and tuberculosis. The interplay of evolutionary processes is poorly understood in these organisms. [...]
Published: 2022-12-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Genomics, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
In the last decade and a half, advances in genetic sequencing technologies have revolutionized systematics, transforming the field as studying morphological characters; a few genetic markers have given way to genomic data sets in the phylogenomic era. A plethora of molecular phylogenetic studies on many taxonomic groups have come about, converging on, or refuting prevailing morphology or [...]
Published: 2022-12-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution
A preference for mating with conspecifics over heterospecifics is fundamental to the maintenance of species diversity in sexually reproducing organisms. This type of assortative mating is often stronger between closely related sympatric species as compared to allopatric species, resulting from processes such as reinforcement or differential fusion. In animals, this pattern has been demonstrated [...]
Published: 2022-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
Alternative reading frames of protein coding genes are a major contributor to the evolution of novel protein products. Recent studies demonstrating this include examples across the three domains of cellular life and in viruses. Alternative frame sequences both increase the number of trials available for the evolutionary invention of new genes and have unusual properties which may facilitate gene [...]
Published: 2022-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
We use genomic information to tell us stories of evolutionary origins. But what does it mean when different genomes report wildly different accounts of lineage history? This “discordance” can be a consequence of a fascinating suite of natural history and evolutionary phenomena, from the different inheritance mechanisms of nuclear vs. cytoplasmic genomes to hybridization and introgression to [...]
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The idea that adaptive change is subject to biases in variation by a "first come, first served" dynamic is not part of classic evolutionary reasoning. Yet, predictable effects of biases in the introduction of variation have been reported in models of population genetics, in laboratory evolution, and in retrospective analyses of natural adaptation. This effect of "arrival bias" has potentially [...]
Published: 2022-11-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Biogeographic disjunction patterns, where multiple taxonomic groups are shared between isolated geographic areas, represent excellent systems for investigating the historical assembly of modern biotas as well as fundamental biological processes such as speciation, diversification, niche evolution, and evolutionary responses to climate change. Studies on plant genera disjunct across the Northern [...]
Published: 2022-11-02
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
There is remarkable variation in the rate at which genetic incompatibilities in molecular interactions accumulate. In some cases, minor changes – even single nucleotide substitutions – create major epistatic incompatibilities when hybridization forces new variants to function in a novel genetic background from an isolated population. In other cases, genes or even entire functional pathways can be [...]