0000000000069828
AUTHOR
Anni Hämäläinen
Fighting performance as a predictor of mating success in male black grouse
As a consequence of certain conflicting evolutionary interests of males and females, the sexes have taken on different reproductive roles. In many species, where females invest more in the production of offspring, males compete for the opportunities to reproduce and females attempt to choose the highest quality males to sire their offspring. Males of different species signal their quality in a variety of ways, including physical cues such as color signals or exaggerated secondary sexual characters, behavioral signals and acquisition of a dominance status through aggression towards other males. In the lekking black grouse only a few males manage to copulate and active fighting is required fo…
Artificial selection for predatory behavior results in dietary niche differentiation in an omnivorous mammal
AbstractThe diet of an individual is a result of the availability of dietary items and the individual’s foraging skills and preferences. Behavioral differences may thus influence diet variation, but the evolvability of diet choice through behavioral evolution has not been studied. We used experimental evolution combined with a field enclosure experiment to test whether behavioral selection leads to dietary divergence. We analysed the individual dietary niche via stable isotope ratios of nitrogen (δ15N) and carbon (δ13C) in the hair of an omnivorous mammal, bank vole, from 4 lines selected for predatory behavior and 4 unselected control lines. Predatory voles had higher hair δ15N values than…
Comparable response of wild rodent gut microbiome to anthropogenic habitat contamination
Abstract Species identity is thought to dominate over environment in shaping wild rodent gut microbiota, but it remains unknown whether the responses of host gut microbiota to shared anthropogenic habitat impacts are species-specific or if the general gut microbiota response is similar across host species. Here, we compare the influence of exposure to radionuclide contamination on the gut microbiota of four wild mouse species: Apodemus flavicollis, A. sylvaticus, A. speciosus and A. argenteus. Building on the evidence that radiation impacts bank vole (Myodes glareolus) gut microbiota, we hypothesized that radiation exposure has a general impact on rodent gut microbiota. Because we sampled (…
Environmental effects on the covariation among pace-of-life traits
Pace‐of‐life syndromes (POLSs) are suites of life‐history, physiological and behavioural traits that arise due to trade‐offs between allocation to current and future reproduction. Traits generally show covariation that can arise from genetic and environmental influences on phenotypes and constrain the independent evolution of traits, resulting in fitness consequences and impacts on population dynamics. The notion that correlations among traits may vary among populations along environmental gradients suggests an important role for the environment in shaping and maintaining POLSs. However, no synthesis has been attempted of the myriad ways in which environmental factors should influence POLSs…
Artificial selection for predatory behaviour results in dietary niche differentiation in an omnivorous mammal
The diet of an individual is a result of the availability of dietary items and the individual's foraging skills and preferences. Behavioural differences may thus influence diet variation, but the evolvability of diet choice through behavioural evolution has not been studied. We used experimental evolution combined with a field enclosure experiment to test whether behavioural selection leads to dietary divergence. We analysed the individual dietary niche via stable isotope ratios of nitrogen ( δ 15 N) and carbon ( δ 13 C) in the hair of an omnivorous mammal, the bank vole, from four lines selected for predatory behaviour and four unselected control lines. Predatory voles had higher hair δ 1…