Search results for "Common"

The influence of slavemaking lifestyle, caste and sex on chemical profiles in Temnothorax ants: insights into the evolution of cuticular hydrocarbons

2017

Chemical communication is central for the formation and maintenance of insect societies. Generally, social insects only allow nest-mates into their colony, which are recognized by their cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs). Social parasites, which exploit insect societies, are selected to circumvent host recognition. Here, we studied whether chemical strategies to reduce recognition evolved convergently in slavemaking ants, and whether they extend to workers, queens and males alike. We studied CHCs of three social parasites and their related hosts to investigate whether the parasitic lifestyle selects for specific chemical traits that reduce host recognition. Slavemaker profiles were characterize…

2021

Most species are either parasites or exploited by parasites, making parasite–host interactions a driver of evolution. Parasites with complex life cycles often evolve strategies to facilitate transmission to the definitive host by manipulating their intermediate host. Such manipulations could explain phenotypic changes in the ant Temnothorax nylanderi, the intermediate host of the cestode Anomotaenia brevis. In addition to behavioral and morphological alterations, infected workers exhibit prolonged lifespans, comparable to that of queens, which live up to two decades. We used transcriptomic data from cestodes and ants of different castes and infection status to investigate the molecular unde…

2016

Sex differences in ageing rates and lifespan are common in nature, and an enduring puzzle for evolutionary biology. One possibility is that sex-specific mortality rates may result from recessive deleterious alleles in ‘unguarded’ heterogametic X or Z sex chromosomes (the unguarded X hypothesis). Empirical evidence for this is, however, limited. Here, we test a fundamental prediction of the unguarded X hypothesis in Drosophila melanogaster , namely that inbreeding shortens lifespan more in females (the homogametic sex in Drosophila ) than in males. To test for additional sex-specific social effects, we studied the lifespan of males and females kept in isolation, in related same-sex groups, …

Application of high resolution melting assay (HRM) to study temperature-dependent intraspecific competition in a pathogenic bacterium

2017

AbstractStudies on species’ responses to climate change have focused largely on the direct effect of abiotic factors and in particular temperature, neglecting the effects of biotic interactions in determining the outcome of climate change projections. Many microbes rely on strong interference competition; hence the fitness of many pathogenic bacteria could be a function of both their growth properties and intraspecific competition. However, due to technical challenges in distinguishing and tracking individual strains, experimental evidence on intraspecific competition has been limited so far. Here, we developed a robust application of the high-resolution melting (HRM) assay to study head-to…

SILVOLIVE, a Germplasm Collection of Wild Subspecies With High Genetic Variability as a Source of Rootstocks and Resistance Genes for Olive Breeding

2020

15 páginas.- 5 figuras.- 1 tabla.- referencias.- The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2020.00629/full#supplementary-material

Preserving Biodiversity in Marginal Rural Areas:Assessment of Morphological and Genetic Variabilityof a Sicilian Common Bean Germplasm Collection

2020

The historical cultivation of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) has resulted in the development of local populations/cultivars in restricted Italian rural areas. Many common bean landraces, still cultivated in small mountain areas from Sicily, have become outdated and endangered due to the commercial varieties spreading. These accessions are poorly known but often represent a genetic heritage to be preserved and enhanced. The ex situ conservation of fifty-seven Sicilian common bean landraces was carried out at the &ldquo

Using metabarcoding to reveal and quantify plant-pollinator interactions.

2016

AbstractGiven the ongoing decline of both pollinators and plants, it is crucial to implement effective methods to describe complex pollination networks across time and space in a comprehensive and high-throughput way. Here we tested if metabarcoding may circumvent the limits of conventional methodologies in detecting and quantifying plant-pollinator interactions. Metabarcoding experiments on pollen DNA mixtures described a positive relationship between the amounts of DNA from focal species and the number of trnL and ITS1 sequences yielded. The study of pollen loads of insects captured in plant communities revealed that as compared to the observation of visits, metabarcoding revealed 2.5 tim…

Evolutionary importance of intraspecific variation in sex pheromones

2021

Sex pheromones in many insect species are important species-recognition signals that attract conspecifics and inhibit attraction between heterospecifics; therefore, sex pheromones have predominantly been considered to evolve due to interactions between species. Recent research, however, is uncovering roles for these signals in mate choice, and that variation within and between populations can be drivers of species evolution. Variation in pheromone communication channels arises from a combination of context-dependent, condition-dependent, or genetic mechanisms in both signalers and receivers. Variation can affect mate choice and thus gene flow between individuals and populations, affecting s…

Insect societies fight back: the evolution of defensive traits against social parasites

2018

Insect societies face many social parasites that exploit their altruistic behaviours or their resources. Due to the fitness costs these social parasites incur, hosts have evolved various behavioural, chemical, architectural and morphological defence traits. Similar to bacteria infecting multicellular hosts, social parasites have to successfully go through several steps to exploit their hosts. Here, we review how social insects try to interrupt this sequence of events. They can avoid parasite contact by choosing to nest in parasite-free locales or evade attacks by adapting their colony structure. Once social parasites attack, hosts attempt to detect them, which can be facilitated by adjustme…

Life history evolution in social insects: a female perspective

2016

Social insects are known for their unusual life histories with fecund, long-lived queens and sterile, short-lived workers. We review ultimate factors underlying variation in life history strategies in female social insects, whose social life reshapes common trade-offs, such as the one between fecundity and longevity. Interspecific life history variation is associated with colony size, mediated by changes in division of labour and extrinsic mortality. In addition to the ratio of juvenile to adult mortality, social factors such as queen number influence life history trajectories. We discuss two hypotheses explaining why queen fecundity and lifespan is higher in single-queen societies and sugg…