Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
Published: 2022-01-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Animals on islands typically depart from their mainland relatives in assorted aspects of their biology. Because they seem to occur in concert, and to some extent evolve convergently in disparate taxa, these changes are referred to as the “island syndrome”. While morphological, physiological, and life history components of the island syndrome have received considerable attention, much less is [...]
Intraspecific diversity of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) populations in eastern Canada
Published: 2022-01-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a small, mesopredatory fish that is widespread in coastal regions of the northern hemisphere. Although this species does not directly support a commercial or recreational fishery, threespine stickleback often serve as important prey for larger fish that do support important fisheries, as well as many bird species. Although studied extensively [...]
Latitudinal but not elevational variation in blood glucose level is linked to life history across passerine birds
Published: 2022-01-14
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences, Physiology, Zoology
Macrophysiological research is vital to our understanding of mechanisms underpinning global life history variation and adaptation under diverse environments. Birds represent an important model taxon in this regard, yet our knowledge is limited to only a few physiological traits, mostly studied in temperate and Neotropical species. Here, we examined latitudinal and elevational variation in an [...]
Form, Function, Agency: Sources of Natural Purpose in Animal Evolution
Published: 2022-01-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The origination and evolution of multicellular form and function is generally thought to be based on gene-based variation, with natural selection changing the populational composition in the respective variants over time. The criterion for evolutionary success is differential fitness, the relative capacity to leave progeny in the next generation. Theoretical considerations show that this model [...]
Ecogeography of group size suggests differences in drivers of sociality among cooperatively breeding fairywrens
Published: 2022-01-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Cooperatively breeding species exhibit a range of social behaviors associated with different costs and benefits to group-living, often in association with different environmental conditions. For example, species in which collective-care of offspring reduces the cost of reproduction are more common in harsh environments (true cooperative breeding), while species that collectively defend resources [...]
Detecting Signatures Of Selection In Regulatory Variation
Published: 2021-12-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
A substantial amount of phenotypic diversity results from changes in gene regulation. Understanding how regulatory diversity evolves is therefore a key priority in identifying mechanisms of adaptive change. However, in contrast to powerful models of sequence evolution, we lack a consensus model of regulatory evolution. Furthermore, recent work has shown that many of the comparative approaches [...]
The evolutionary impacts of synonymous mutations
Published: 2021-12-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics
During the 50 years since the genetic code was cracked, our understanding of the evolutionary consequences of synonymous mutations has undergone a dramatic shift. Synonymous codon changes were initially considered selectively neutral, and as such, exemplars of evolution via genetic drift. However, the pervasive and non-negligible fitness impacts of synonymous mutations are now clear across [...]
Ecology and the Evolution of Sex Chromosomes
Published: 2021-12-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
This article reviews and discusses ecological factors that affect sex chromosome evolution. Sex chromosomes are common features of animal genomes, and are often the location where master sex determination genes are found. Many important aspects of sex chromosome evolution are thought to be driven by sex-specific selection pressures, such as sexual antagonism and sexual selection. Sex-specific [...]
Not so ancient: Misclassification of alpine plants biases the dating of the evolution of alpine biota in the Himalaya-Tibet Orogen
Published: 2021-12-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Ding et al. (Science 2020) proposed that the extant lineages of the alpine flora of the Tibet Himalaya Hengduan region emerged by the early Oligocene. We argue that these results are based on misclassifying high montane taxa as alpine and that their data support alpine habitats only at about 7.5 mio years before present.
Genome sequence for the blue-flowered Andean shrub Iochroma cyaneum reveals extensive discordance across the berry clade of Solanaceae
Published: 2021-12-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
The tomato family, Solanaceae, is a model clade for a wide range of applied and basic research questions. Currently, reference-quality genomes are available for over 30 species from seven genera, and these include numerous crops as well as wild species (e.g., Jaltomata sinuosa and Nicotiana attenuata). Here we present the genome of the showy-flowered Andean shrub Iochroma cyaneum, a woody lineage [...]
Selfish, promiscuous, and sometimes useful: how mobile genetic elements drive horizontal gene transfer in microbial populations
Published: 2021-12-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Microbiology
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) drives microbial adaptation but is often under the control of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) whose interests are not necessarily aligned with those of their hosts. In general, transfer is costly to the donor cell while potentially beneficial to the recipients. The diversity and plasticity of cell-MGEs interactions, and those among MGEs, results in complex [...]
A review of chemical defense in harlequin toads (Bufonidae; Atelopus)
Published: 2021-11-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
Toads of the genus Atelopus are chemically defended by a unique combination of endogenously synthesized cardiotoxins (bufadienolides) and neurotoxins which may be sequestered (guanidinium alkaloids). Investigation into Atelopus small-molecule chemical defenses has been primarily concerned with identifying and characterizing various forms of these toxins while largely overlooking their ecological [...]
Temporal patterns in prey size between sexes in a raptor with extreme size dimorphism: testing the intersexual competition hypothesis using web-sourced photographs
Published: 2021-11-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology
In most vertebrates, males are larger than females. For raptors, sexual size dimorphism is reversed, with females being larger. Reversed sexual dimorphism (RSD) in raptors is strongly linked to diet, with species feeding on the most agile prey, for example bird-eating raptors, showing the greatest size differences between the sexes. Hypotheses for reversed sexual dimorphism (RSD) include the [...]
Impact of heat stress on the fitness outcomes of symbiotic infection in aphids: a meta-analysis
Published: 2021-11-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Microbiology
Beneficial microorganisms shape the evolutionary trajectories of their hosts, facilitating or constraining the colonization of new ecological niches. One convincing example entails the responses of insect-microbe associations to rising temperatures. Indeed, the insect resilience to stressful high temperatures depends on the genetic identity of the obligate symbiont and the presence of heat [...]
Potential survival of some, but not all, diversification methods
Published: 2021-11-07
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Models have long been used for understanding changing diversification patterns over time. The rediscovery that models with very different rates through time can fit a phylogeny equally well has led to great concern about the use of these models. We share and add to these concerns: even with time heterogeneous models without these issues, the distribution of the data means that estimates will be [...]