Search results for "Algorithm"
showing 10 items of 4887 documents
Seed germination under osmotic stress across different wild populations of mountain rye (Secale strictum (C.Presl) C.Presl))
2020
The selection of resilient cultivars could help stem the losses in forage production due to a changing climate. Secale strictum is a wild grass with interesting potential as a forage crop. We studied the germination requirements of six wild S. strictum populations, representative of the whole species distribution range in Italy and occurring under different osmotic conditions (0 MPa, −0.8 MPa, −1.0 MPa, −1.2 MPa, −1.4 MPa and −1.6 MPa). Our aim was to find beneficial seed and germination traits for the possible use of this species as a crop. Different accessions of domesticated Secale cereale and ×Triticosecale were used as comparison. Some populations of S. strictum were drought tolerant a…
Spatiotemporal Structure of Host‐Pathogen Interactions in a Metapopulation
2009
International audience; The ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species are influenced by spatiotemporal variation in population size. Unfortunately, we are usually limited in our ability to investigate the numerical dynamics of natural populations across large spatial scales and over long periods of time. Here we combine mechanistic and statistical approaches to reconstruct continuous-time infection dynamics of an obligate fungal pathogen on the basis of discrete-time occurrence data. The pathogen, Podosphaera plantaginis, infects its host plant, Plantago lanceolata, in a metapopulation setting where the presence of the pathogen has been recorded annually for 6 years in similar to 4,00…
Estimation of fitness from energetics and life-history data: An example using mussels.
2017
Changing environments have the potential to alter the fitness of organisms through effects on components of fitness such as energy acquisition, metabolic cost, growth rate, survivorship, and reproductive output. Organisms, on the other hand, can alter aspects of their physiology and life histories through phenotypic plasticity as well as through genetic change in populations (selection). Researchers examining the effects of environmental variables frequently concentrate on individual components of fitness, although methods exist to combine these into a population level estimate of average fitness, as the per capita rate of population growth for a set of identical individuals with a particul…
Selection for reproduction under short photoperiods changes diapause-associated traits and induces widespread genomic divergence.
2019
The work has been supported by the Academyof Finland to A.H. (project 267244) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funding (NE/J020818/1 to M.G.R.; NE/L501852/1 to R.A.W.W.). The incidence of reproductive diapause is a critical aspect of life history in overwintering insects from temperate regions. Much has been learned about the timing, physiology and genetics of diapause in a range of insects, but how the multiple changes involved in this and other photoperiodically regulated traits are inter-related is not well understood. We performed quasinatural selection on reproduction under short photoperiods in a northern fly species, Drosophila montana, to trace the effects of photoper…
Plasmodium relictum infection and MHC diversity in the house sparrow (Passer domesticus).
2010
Antagonistic coevolution between hosts and parasites has been proposed as a mechanism maintaining genetic diversity in both host and parasite populations. In particular, the high level of genetic diversity usually observed at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is generally thought to be maintained by parasite-driven selection. Among the possible ways through which parasites can maintain MHC diversity, diversifying selection has received relatively less attention. This hypothesis is based on the idea that parasites exert spatially variable selection pressures because of heterogeneity in parasite genetic structure, abundance or virulence. Variable selection pressures should select for…
Testing hypotheses in evolutionary ecology with imperfect detection: capture-recapture structural equation modeling.
2012
8 pages; International audience; Studying evolutionary mechanisms in natural populations often requires testing multifactorial scenarios of causality involving direct and indirect relationships among individual and environmental variables. It is also essential to account for the imperfect detection of individuals to provide unbiased demographic parameter estimates. To cope with these issues, we developed a new approach combining structural equation models with capture-recapture models (CR-SEM) that allows the investigation of competing hypotheses about individual and environmental variability observed in demographic parameters. We employ Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling in a Bayesian frame…
Next-generation biological control
2020
Biological control is widely successful at controlling pests, but effective biocontrol agents are now more difficult to import from countries of origin due to more restrictive international trade laws (the Nagoya Protocol). Coupled with increasing demand, the efficacy of existing and new biocontrol agents needs to be improved with genetic and genomic approaches. Although they have been underutilised in the past, application of genetic and genomic techniques is becoming more feasible from both technological and economic perspectives. We review current methods and provide a framework for using them. First, it is necessary to identify which biocontrol trait to select and in what direction. Nex…
A Network Model for the Correlation between Epistasis and Genomic Complexity
2008
The study of genetic interactions (epistasis) is central to the understanding of genome organization and evolution. A general correlation between epistasis and genomic complexity has been recently shown, such that in simpler genomes epistasis is antagonistic on average (mutational effects tend to cancel each other out), whereas a transition towards synergistic epistasis occurs in more complex genomes (mutational effects strengthen each other). Here, we use a simple network model to identify basic features explaining this correlation. We show that, in small networks with multifunctional nodes, lack of redundancy, and absence of alternative pathways, epistasis is antagonistic on average. In c…
Experimental Introgression To Evaluate the Impact of Sex Specific Traits on Drosophila melanogaster Incipient Speciation
2019
AbstractSex specific traits are involved in speciation but it is difficult to determine whether their variation initiates or reinforces sexual isolation. In some insects, speciation depends of the rapid change of expression in desaturase genes coding for sex pheromones. Two closely related desaturase genes are involved in Drosophila melanogaster pheromonal communication: desat1 affects both the production and the reception of sex pheromones while desat2 is involved in their production in flies of Zimbabwe populations. There is a strong asymmetric sexual isolation between Zimbabwe populations and all other “Cosmopolitan” populations: Zimbabwe females rarely copulate with Cosmopolitan males w…
Social phenotype extended to communities: Expanded multilevel social selection analysis reveals fitness consequences of interspecific interactions
2015
In social species, fitness consequences are associated with both individual and social phenotypes. Social selection analysis has quantified the contribution of conspecific social traits to individual fitness. There has been no attempt, however, to apply a social selection approach to quantify the fitness implications of heterospecific social phenotypes. Here, we propose a novel social selection based approach integrating the role of all social interactions at the community level. We extended multilevel selection analysis by including a term accounting for the group phenotype of heterospecifics. We analyzed nest activity as a model social trait common to two species, the lesser kestrel (Falc…