Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
Relationships between mycorrhizal type and leaf flammability in the Australian flora
Published: 2019-07-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Sciences
Mycorrhizal fungi have been linked to fire processes in natural ecosystems via their effects on litter decomposability but, to our knowledge, relationships between mycorrhizal fungi and leaf traits directly associated with aspects of flammability have not been studied. Here, we assessed the relationships among leaf traits and host mycorrhizal type for 77 species of Australian trees and shrubs to [...]
Male age and its association with reproductive traits in captive and wild house sparrows
Published: 2019-06-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Evolutionary theory predicts that females seek extra-pair fertilisations from high-quality males. In socially monogamous bird species, it is often old males that are most successful in extra-pair fertilisations. Adaptive models of female extra-pair mate choice suggest that old males may produce offspring of higher genetic quality than young males because they have proven their survivability. [...]
The ‘Holy Grail’ in Phylogenetic Reconstruction: Seeing the Forest for the Trees?
Published: 2019-06-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Systematic/macroevolutionary biology has dedicated much of the past 50 years of its energy and resources in an effort to resolve definitively the one true ‘tree of life’ and to explain materially its cause. But, no matter the quantity/quality of data, experimentation, and analysis, the effort is hampered by persistent and ever-accumulating contradictory observations. This may be an indication [...]
Does internal egg carrying impair foraging ability as much as external egg carrying in a neotropical spider?
Published: 2019-06-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Females not only produce costly gametes, but also store the eggs until oviposition, a period called pregnancy. The volume that eggs occupy in the female abdomen may decrease female foraging ability by making females slow. Although females of all species are subjected to these potential costs, it remains an unexplored matter in invertebrates. Females of the spider Paratrechalea ornata carry their [...]
Transgenerational plasticity and bet-hedging: a framework for reaction norm evolution
Published: 2019-06-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Decision-making under uncertain conditions favors bet-hedging (avoidance of fitness variance), whereas predictable environments favor phenotypic plasticity. However, entirely predictable or entirely unpredictable conditions are rarely found in nature. Intermediate strategies are required when the time lag between information sensing and phenotype induction is large (e.g. transgenerational [...]
Understanding the Evolution of Ecological Sex Differences: Integrating Character Displacement and the Darwin-Bateman Paradigm
Published: 2019-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Sex differences in selection arise for two possible reasons: 1) differences originating from anisogamy – the Darwin-Bateman paradigm – and 2) competition-driven ecological character displacement (ECD), agnostic of anisogamy. Despite mounting evidence of ECD and increasing focus on the ecological causes and consequences of sexual dimorphism, progress in understanding the evolution of ecological [...]
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods: Learning From Trees
Published: 2019-05-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
A review of the field of phylogenetic comparative methods.
The role of selection and evolution in changing parturition date in a red deer population
Published: 2019-05-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Changing environmental conditions cause changes in the distributions of phenotypic traits in natural populations. However, determining the mechanisms responsible for these changes and, in particular, the relative contributions of phenotypic plasticity vs evolutionary responses, is difficult. To date, to our knowledge no study has reported evidence that evolutionary change underlies the most [...]
Sexual Selection in Bacteria?
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Bacteriology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology
A main mechanism of lateral gene transfer in bacteria is transformation, where cells take up free DNA from the environment which subsequently can be recombined into the genome. Bacteria are also known to actively release DNA into the environment through secretion or lysis, which could aid uptake via transformation. Various evolutionary benefits of DNA uptake and DNA release have been proposed but [...]
Heritability and maternal effects on social attention during an attention bias task in a non-human primate, Macaca mulatta
Published: 2019-05-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social attention is fundamental to a wide range of behaviours in non-human primates. However, we know very little about the heritability of social attention in non-human primates, and the heritability of attention to social threat has not been assessed. Here, we provide data to begin to fill this gap in knowledge. We tested 67 female rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta, on an attention bias [...]
Steroid Receptors and Vertebrate Evolution
Published: 2019-03-29
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Considering that life on earth evolved about 3.7 billion years ago, vertebrates are young, appearing in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion about 542 to 515 million years ago. Results from sequence analyses of genomes from bacteria, yeast, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates indicate that receptors for adrenal steroids (aldosterone, cortisol), and sex steroids (estrogen, [...]
Transcriptional Activation of Elephant Shark Mineralocorticoid Receptor by Corticosteroids, Progesterone and Spironolactone
Published: 2019-02-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences
We report the analysis of activation by corticosteroids and progesterone of full-length mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) from elephant shark, a cartilaginous fish belonging to the oldest group of jawed vertebrates. Based on their measured activities, aldosterone, cortisol, 11-deoxycorticosterone, corticosterone, 11-deoxcortisol, progesterone and 19-norprogesterone are potential physiological [...]
Social genetic effects (IGE) and genetic intra- and intersexual genetic correlation contribute to the total heritable variance in parental care
Published: 2019-02-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The social environment can influence phenotypes through indirect genetic effects (IGEs), whereby genetic variance among interacting individuals explains some of the phenotypic variance. Empirical studies of wild populations often ignore IGEs especially among unrelated individuals, probably due to data limitations. This is problematic because IGEs can crucially affect estimates of heritable [...]
A comparative study of differential selection pressure over the nesting cycle in birds
Published: 2019-01-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Reproductive allocation varies greatly across species and is determined by their life-history and ecology. This variation is usually assessed as the number of eggs or propagules (hereafter: fecundity). However, in species with parental care, individuals face trade-offs that affect the allocation of resources among the stages of reproduction as well as to reproduction as a whole. Thus, it is [...]
Experimentally increased costs of parental care are shunted to offspring in species with extended care
Published: 2019-01-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Biparental care systems are a valuable model to examine conflict, cooperation, and coordination between unrelated individuals, as the product of the interactions between the parents influences the fitness of both individuals. A common experimental technique for testing coordinated responses to changes in the costs of parental care is to temporarily handicap one parent, inducing a higher cost of [...]