Search results for "ELECTION"
showing 10 items of 2159 documents
The ecogenetic link between demography and evolution: can we bridge the gap between theory and data?
2007
Calls to understand the links between ecology and evolution have been common for decades. Population dynamics, i.e. the demographic changes in populations, arise from life history decisions of individuals and thus are a product of selection, and selection, on the contrary, can be modified by such dynamical properties of the population as density and stability. It follows that generating predictions and testing them correctly requires considering this ecogenetic feedback loop whenever traits have demographic consequences, mediated via density dependence (or frequency dependence). This is not an easy challenge, and arguably theory has advanced at a greater pace than empirical research. Howeve…
Do environmental diversity approaches lead to improved site selection? A comparison with the multi-species approach
2008
This paper suggests a new approach to select conservation areas cost-effectively according to the concept of complementarity and representation of focal natural features. The suggested environmental diversity (ED) site selection model maximizes ecological diversity, measured via ordination of the chosen taxa communities. Given their fundamental role in ecosystem functioning, vascular plants are chosen as the indicator taxa. We test the ED indicator model by contrasting it to the conventional site selection indicator (MS model), which maximizes the representation of species number in the indicator taxa. We demonstrate that the ED model is more cost-effective than the MS model. More important…
Continuous cover forestry is a cost-efficient tool to increase multifunctionality of boreal production forests in Fennoscandia
2017
Abstract Earlier research has suggested that the diversification of silvicultural strategies is a cost-efficient tool to ensure multifunctionality in production forests. This study compared the effects of continuous cover forestry and conventional rotation forestry on ecosystem services and biodiversity in boreal forests in Finland. We simulated over 25,000 commercial forest stands for 100 years under continuous cover and rotation forest management. Forests without management were used as a reference. We compared the effects of silvicultural practices over space and time on ecosystem services, biodiversity indicators and multifunctionality. Our results revealed that continuous cover forestr…
Stabilizing selection on microsatellite allele length at arginine vasopressin 1a receptor and oxytocin receptor loci
2017
The loci arginine vasopressin receptor 1a ( avpr1a ) and oxytocin receptor ( oxtr ) have evolutionarily conserved roles in vertebrate social and sexual behaviour. Allelic variation at a microsatellite locus in the 5′ regulatory region of these genes is associated with fitness in the bank vole Myodes glareolus . Given the low frequency of long and short alleles at these microsatellite loci in wild bank voles, we used breeding trials to determine whether selection acts against long and short alleles. Female bank voles with intermediate length avpr1a alleles had the highest probability of breeding, while male voles whose avpr1a alleles were very different in length had reduced probability of …
Ecological genomics of adaptation to unpredictability in experimental rotifer populations
2019
AbstractElucidating the genetic basis of phenotypic variation in response to different environments is key to understanding how populations evolve. Facultatively sexual rotifers can develop adaptive responses to fluctuating environments. In a previous evolution experiment, diapause-related traits changed rapidly in response to two selective regimes (predictable vs unpredictable) in laboratory populations of the rotifer Brachionus plicatilis. Here, we investigate the genomic basis of adaptation to environmental unpredictability in these experimental populations. We identified and genotyped genome-wide polymorphisms in 169 clones from both selective regimes after seven cycles of selection usi…
Behavioural, ecological, and evolutionary aspects of diversity in frog colour patterns
2016
The role of colours and colour patterns in behavioural ecology has been extensively studied in a variety of contexts and taxa, while almost overlooked in many others. For decades anurans have been the focus of research on acoustic signalling due to the prominence of vocalisations in their communication. Much less attention has been paid to the enormous diversity of colours, colour patterns, and other types of putative visual signals exhibited by frogs. With the exception of some anecdotal observations and studies, the link between colour patterns and the behavioural and evolutionary ecology of anurans had not been addressed until approximately two decades ago. Since then, there has been eve…
Crop density rather than ruderal plants explains the response of ancient segetal weeds
2018
AbstractThe influence of ruderal species and crop density on ancient segetal weeds was examined. The experiment was carried out on experimental plots with three different sewing densities of winter triticale. Weeding of ruderal taxa was applied on half of the plots to explore the relation between segetal and ruderal weeds. Variation in species composition by environmental variables was analysed by running Redundancy Analysis (RDA) combined with performing forward selection and variation partitioning for “weeding” and “crop density” as explanatory variables. Additionally, the effect of crop density and weeding was tested separately for segetal and ruderal species along the seasons with the u…
How do cuticular hydrocarbons evolve? Physiological constraints and climatic and biotic selection pressures act on a complex functional trait
2017
Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) cover the cuticles of virtually all insects, serving as a waterproofing agent and as a communication signal. The causes for the high CHC variation between species, and the factors influencing CHC profiles, are scarcely understood. Here, we compare CHC profiles of ant species from seven biogeographic regions, searching for physiological constraints and for climatic and biotic selection pressures. Molecule length constrained CHC composition: long-chain profiles contained fewer linear alkanes, but more hydrocarbons with disruptive features in the molecule. This is probably owing to selection on the physiology to build a semi-fluid cuticular layer, which is necessa…
Sexual selection in a wolf spider: Male drumming activity, body size, and viability
1996
Females are often believed to actively choose highly ornamented males (males with extravagant morphological signals or intense sexual display), and ornaments should be honest signals of male viability. However, this belief is relying only on some pieces of empirical evidence from birds. Our study reports active female choice on sexual display that indicates male viability in spiders. We established trials in which we studied female choice in relation to male courtship drumming activity and body size. Females chose the most actively drumming males as mating partners, but the body size of the males did not seem to be selected. Male drumming activity turned out to be a good predictor of male v…
Viability selection creates negative heterozygosity–fitness correlations in female Black Grouse Lyrurus tetrix
2017
There is widespread interest in the relationship between individual genetic diversity and fitness–related traits (heterozygosity–fitness correlations, HFC). Most studies found weak continuous increases of fitness with increasing heterozygosity while negative HFC have rarely been reported. Negative HFC are expected in cases of outbreeding depression and outbreeding is rare in natural populations; but negative HFC may also arise through viability selection acting on low heterozygosity individuals at an early stage producing a skew in the heterozygosity distribution leading to negative HFCs. We tested this idea using survival and clutch parameters (egg mass, egg volume, chick mass, clutch size…