Search results for "COMPETITION"
showing 10 items of 1409 documents
Male mating success during parturial intermoults in the terrestrial isopod Armadillidium vulgare revealed by the use of a microsatellite locus
2007
3 pages; International audience; We investigated the value of microsatellite DNA markers to improve our knowledge of mating strategy with inference to sperm competition in particular, in the woodlouse Armadillidium vulgare. In terrestrial isopods, mature females develop a brood pouch or marsupium before egg laying, the pouch being formed by overlapping oöstegites during a special moult called parturial moult. Under laboratory conditions, we show that Armadillidium vulgare females are able to mate during parturial intermoults, even in the presence of a physical barrier such as that represented by the ventral marsupial plates. Our results reveal that the contribution of a second male mating w…
Territoriality versus flocking in the Zenaida dove (Zenaida aurita): resource polymorphism revisited using morphological and genetic analyses.
2011
11 pages; International audience; The term “resource polymorphism” refers to the existence of alternative phenotypes in relation to resource use, as a result of disruptive selection. Evidence for resource polymorphism is widespread in fish but remains scarce in birds. Although Zenaida Doves (Zenaida aurita) usually defend year-round territories, doves on Barbados can also be observed foraging at seed-storage sites in large flocks with little, if any, inter-individual aggression. On the basis of morphological variation, it has been suggested (Sol et al. 2005) that this represents a case of resource polymorphism, primarily driven by competition for territories. Using new data, we revisited th…
Comparative analyses of caste, sex, and developmental stage‐specific transcriptomes in two Temnothorax ants
2020
Abstract Social insects dominate arthropod communities worldwide due to cooperation and division of labor in their societies. This, however, makes them vulnerable to exploitation by social parasites, such as slave‐making ants. Slave‐making ant workers pillage brood from neighboring nests of related host ant species. After emergence, host workers take over all nonreproductive colony tasks, whereas slavemakers have lost the ability to care for themselves and their offspring. Here, we compared transcriptomes of different developmental stages (larvae, pupae, and adults), castes (queens and workers), and sexes of two related ant species, the slavemaker Temnothorax americanus and its host Temnoth…
Social interactions modulate the virulence of avian malaria infection
2013
There is an increasing understanding of the context-dependent nature of parasite virulence. Variation in parasite virulence can occur when infected individuals compete with conspecifics that vary in infection status; virulence may be higher when competing with uninfected competitors. In vertebrates with social hierarchies, we propose that these competition-mediated costs of infection may also vary with social status. Dominant individuals have greater competitive ability than competing subordinates, and consequently may pay a lower prevalence-mediated cost of infection. In this study we investigated whether costs of malarial infection were affected by the occurrence of the parasite in compet…
Parasite and host assemblages: embracing the reality will improve our knowledge of parasite transmission and virulence.
2010
10 pages; International audience; Interactions involving several parasite species (multi-parasitized hosts) or several host species (multi-host parasites) are the rule in nature. Only a few studies have investigated these realistic, but complex, situations from an evolutionary perspective. Consequently, their impact on the evolution of parasite virulence and transmission remains poorly understood. The mechanisms by which multiple infections may influence virulence and transmission include the dynamics of intrahost competition, mediation by the host immune system and an increase in parasite genetic recombination. Theoretical investigations have yet to be conducted to determine which of these…
Population differentiation for adaptive traits and their underlying loci in forest trees : theoretical predictions and experimental results
2000
Population differentiation has been investigated in forest trees since provenance tests were established. A vast amount of results has accumulated in numerous reports and articles about intraspecific variation, that have been summarized in textbooks about forest genetics (Wright 1976). Provenance differences exist for almost any adaptive trait that has been measured in provenance test and for almost any species. These results contrast markedly with data based on biochemical markers as isozymes. As shown by the literature review by Hamrick et al. (1992), forest trees usually exhibit extremely low levels of differentiation for isozymes. Results derived from isozyme surveys are confirmed by ot…
Characterization of Fusarium oxysporum populations by growth parameter evaluation in microtiter plates
1997
Trophic competition for the C source is the main mechanism involved in the interaction between pathogenic and non-pathogenic populations of Fusarium oxysporum. Therefore, a phenotypical characterization based on the growth characteristics of these populations will provide classical genotypical characterizations with additionnal information of ecological significance.
An ecological multi-Level theory of competition for resources used to analyse density-dependence effects in fruit production
2014
International audience; Lescourret and Génard (2003) developed a multi-level theory of competition for resources applied to fruit production, considering that any collection of unit parts (cells or seeds in a fruit, fruits in an infructescence or in a tree...) can form a population and the population is subject to competition, whatever the level of organization. The principles of the theory are that the mass of each unit decreases when the number of units in the population increases and that the total mass of the population increases as the number of units increases until it reaches a maximum, after which it decreases. A three-parameter model based on that theory was used to analyse the lev…
Parasitoids flip a coin before deciding to superparasitize
2004
Summary 1. Host acceptance decision in parasitic wasps depends strongly on the parasitism status of the encountered host. In solitary species, a host allows the development of only a single parasitic larva, and then any oviposition in an already parasitized host leads to larval competition and to potential loss of offspring. The ability of parasitoids to discriminate between parasitized and healthy hosts is well documented. Despite this, parasitized hosts are still accepted by the foraging wasps, an occurrence termed superparasitism. 2. In the last decades, theoretical studies have suggested that under certain circumstances superparasitism can be optimal. Generally, the superparasitism theo…
Fruit size in relation to competition for resources: A common model shared by two species and several genotypes grown under contrasted carbohydrate l…
2012
International audience; Fruit size is one important criterion of fruit external quality affecting consumer acceptance. The effects of seed number on fruit size in two fleshy fruits, grape and tomato, of different genotypes and grown under distinct carbohydrate availability levels were analyzed with a model. The two-parameter model described within-fruit resource competition and was able to well represent the commonly observed decrease in fresh weight per seed along with the increase in number of seeds, regardless of species, genotypes, and carbohydrate levels that were evaluated in this study. However, carbohydrate levels largely modified the correlation between seed number and fresh weight…