Search results for "1181 Ecology"
showing 10 items of 185 documents
Maternal effects in vulnerability to eye-parasites and correlations between behavior and parasitism in juvenile Arctic charr
2017
Hatchery-reared fish show high mortalities after release to the wild environment. Explanations for this include potentially predetermined genetics, behavioral, and physiological acclimation to fish farm environments, and increased vulnerability to predation and parasitism in the wild. We studied vulnerability to Diplostomum spp. parasites (load of eye flukes in the lenses), immune defense (relative spleen size) and antipredator behaviors (approaches toward predator odor, freezing, and swimming activity) in hatchery-reared juvenile Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) using a nested mating design. Fish were exposed to eye-fluke larvae via the incoming water at the hatchery. Fish size was positi…
Connecting the data landscape of long-term ecological studies: the SPI-Birds data hub
2021
The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long-term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and eco-logical processes in the wild. Furthermore, their number and global distribution provides a unique opportunity to assess the generality of patterns and to address broad-scale global issues (e.g. climate change).
Rapid evolutionary adaptation to elevated salt concentrations in pathogenic freshwater bacteria Serratia marcescens.
2014
Rapid evolutionary adaptions to new and previously detrimental environmental conditions can increase the risk of invasion by novel pathogens. We tested this hypothesis with a 133-day-long evolutionary experiment studying the evolution of the pathogenic Serratia marcescens bacterium at salinity niche boundary and in fluctuating conditions. We found that S. marcescens evolved at harsh (80 g/L) and extreme (100 g/L) salt conditions had clearly improved salt tolerance than those evolved in the other three treatments (ancestral conditions, nonsaline conditions, and fluctuating salt conditions). Evolutionary theories suggest that fastest evolutionary changes could be observed in intermediate sele…
Evolved high aerobic capacity has context-specific effects on gut microbiota
2022
Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 Hanhimäki, Watts, Koskela, Koteja, Mappes and Hämäläinen. Gut microbiota is expected to coevolve with the host's physiology and may play a role in adjusting the host's energy metabolism to suit the host's environment. To evaluate the effects of both evolved host metabolism and the environmental context in shaping the gut microbiota, we used a unique combination of (1) experimental evolution to create selection lines for a fast metabolism and (2) a laboratory-to-field translocation study. Mature bank voles Myodes glareolus from lines selected for high aerobic capacity (A lines) and from unselected control (C lines) were released into large (0.2 ha) outdo…
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales
2023
Patterns and processes shaping ecosystems vary across spatiotemporal scales. As plant functional traits reflect ecosystem properties, investigating their relationships with environment provides an important tool to understand and predict ecosystem structure and functioning. This is particularly important in the tundra where a changing climate may trigger severe alterations in plant communities as both summer and winter conditions are changing. Here, we investigate the relationships between key environmental drivers including summer temperature, snow persistence, topographic position and soil pH, and species height, specific leaf area (SLA) and seed mass as plant traits. The study is carried…
Adaptive radiation along a thermal gradient: preliminary results of habitat use and respiration rate divergence among whitefish morphs.
2014
Adaptive radiation is considered an important mechanism for the development of new species, but very little is known about the role of thermal adaptation during this process. Such adaptation should be especially important in poikilothermic animals that are often subjected to pronounced seasonal temperature variation that directly affects metabolic function. We conducted a preliminary study of individual lifetime thermal habitat use and respiration rates of four whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus (L.)) morphs (two pelagic, one littoral and one profundal) using stable carbon and oxygen isotope values of otolith carbonate. These morphs, two of which utilized pelagic habitats, one littoral and one …
Adaptation to fluctuations in temperature by nine species of bacteria
2018
Rapid environmental fluctuations are ubiquitous in the wild, yet majority of experimental studies mostly consider effects of slow fluctuations on organism. To test the evolutionary consequences of fast fluctuations, we conducted nine independent experimental evolution experiments with bacteria. Experimental conditions were same for all species, and we allowed them to evolve either in fluctuating temperature alternating rapidly between 20°C and 40°C or at constant 30°C temperature. After experimental evolution, we tested the performance of the clones in both rapid fluctuation and in constant environments (20°C, 30°C and 40°C). Results from experiments on these nine species were combined meta…
Harnessing the biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland
2015
A large proportion of European biodiversity today depends on habitat provided by low‐intensity farming practices, yet this resource is declining as European agriculture intensifies. Within the European Union, particularly the central and eastern new member states have retained relatively large areas of species‐rich farmland, but despite increased investment in nature conservation here in recent years, farmland biodiversity trends appear to be worsening. Although the high biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland has long been reported, the amount of research in the international literature focused on farmland biodiversity in this region remains comparatively ti…
Effects of density, species interactions, and environmental stochasticity on the dynamics of British bird communities
2022
Our knowledge of the factors affecting species abundances is mainly based on time-series analyses of a few well-studied species at single or few localities, but we know little about whether results from such analyses can be extrapolated to the community level. We apply a joint species distribution model to long-term time-series data on British bird communities to examine the relative contribution of intra- and interspecific density dependence at different spatial scales, as well as the influence of environmental stochasticity, to spatiotemporal interspecific variation in abundance. Intraspecific density dependence has the major structuring effect on these bird communities. In addition, envi…
The evolutionary dynamics of adaptive virginity, sex-allocation and altruistic helping in haplodiploid animals
2018
In haplodiploids, females can produce sons from unfertilized eggs without mating. However, virgin reproduction is usually considered to be a result of a failure to mate, rather than an adaptation. Here, we build an analytical model for evolution of virgin reproduction, sex-allocation, and altruistic female helping in haplodiploid taxa. We show that when mating is costly (e.g., when mating increases predation risk), virginity can evolve as an adaptive female reproductive strategy. Furthermore, adaptive virginity results in strongly divergent sex-ratios in mated and virgin queen nests ("split sex ratios"), which promotes the evolution of altruistic helping by daughters in mated queen nests. H…