Search results for "Evolution"
showing 10 items of 11096 documents
The transformation of the Horatian Sabine farm in Persius? Satire 6
2020
The purpose of this article is to focus on the motif of the countryside in Roman satire. In particular, it aspires to study the way the Sabine farm is delineated in Horace's Satire 2.6 and later in his Epistles, in order to elucidate the evolution of this motif in Persius? 6th Satire. In this poem, Persius addresses Caesius Bassus, who retreats to Sabine to seek poetic inspiration, but seems trapped in the paths of earlier poetry and cannot attain bliss, while the poet achieves it in the port of Luna.
Constitution and Truth. The controversy between Rafael de Vélez and Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva with regards to the Apología del Trono
2017
This paper examines anti-liberal reactionary discourse in the first few years of the Spanish (liberal) Revolution. It is centred on the controversy that liberal congressman Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva and publicist and Capuchin Friar Rafael de Vélez courted between 1820 and 1825. The sources used refer directly to the writings of both protagonists taking Friar Vélez’s «Apología del Trono» as their starting point. Methodologically, the analysis’ perspective adopts part of the theoretical consideration that critique of Liberalism, in its diverse manifestations, was an inherent part of the revolutionary process rather than a marginal element of it. Analysis of said writings reveals the historic…
The First World War, the Russian Revolution and Varieties of Democracy in Northwest European Debates
2018
Camouflage in arid environments: the case of Sahara-Sahel desert rodents
2020
Deserts and semi-deserts, such as the Sahara-Sahel region in North Africa, are exposed environments with restricted vegetation coverage. Due to limited physical surface structures, these open areas provide a promising ecosystem to understand selection for crypsis. Here, we review knowledge on camouflage adaptation in the Sahara-Sahel rodent community, which represents one of the best documented cases of phenotype-environment convergence comprising a marked taxonomic diversity. Through their evolutionary history, several rodent species from the Sahara-Sahel have repeatedly evolved an accurate background matching against visually-guided predators. Top-down selection by predators is therefore …
Interpretation of gut microbiota data in the ‘eye of the beholder’: A commentary and re‐evaluation of data from ‘Impacts of radiation exposure on the…
2021
1.Evidence that exposure to environmental pollutants can alter the gut microbiota composition of wildlife includes studies of rodents exposed to radionuclides. 2.Antwis et al. (2021) used amplicon sequencing to characterise the gut microbiota of four species of rodent (Myodes glareolus, Apodemus agrarius, A. flavicollis and A. sylvaticus) inhabiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) to examine possible changes in gut bacteria (microbiota) and gut fungi (mycobiota) associated with exposure to radionuclides and whether the sample type (from caecum or faeces) affected the analysis. 3.The conclusions derived from the analyses of gut mycobiota are based on data that represent a mixture of inges…
Return of the Apex Predator : How Brown Trout (Salmo trutta) Re-Establishment Shapes an Ecosystem
2021
Re-establishment of a declined apex predator fish species in a lake ecosystem may have dramatic effects on other fish and plankton community already inhabiting the ecosystem. We studied mechanistically potential impacts of re-establishment of the brown trout (Salmo trutta) in the west-central European Lake Constance focusing on two commercially important fish species: whitefish and Eurasian perch. We compared simulation model outputs from two versions of an allometric trophic network model for Lake Constance, one with and one without the trout as the apex predator. The re-establishment of the declined brown trout reduced the perch population directly by predation and indirectly by increased…
Environmental context determines pollution impacts on ecosystem functioning
2023
Global change assessments have typically ignored synthetic chemical pollution, despite the rapid increase of pharmaceuticals, pesticides and industrial chemicals in the environment. Part of the problem reflects the multifarious origins of these micropollutants, which can derive from urban and agricultural sources. Understanding how micropollutants harm ecosystems is a major scientific challenge due to asymmetries of stress across trophic levels and ecological surprises generated by multiple drivers interacting in human-impacted landscapes. We used field assays above and below municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in 60 sampling locations across 20 Swiss streams to test how micropoll…
Age is not just a number : Mathematical model suggests senescence affects how fish populations respond to different fishing regimes
2021
Senescence is often described as an age-dependent increase in natural mortality (known as actuarial senescence) and an age-dependent decrease in fecundity (known as reproductive senescence), and its role in nature is still poorly understood. Based on empirical estimates of reproductive and actuarial senescence, we used mathematical simulations to explore how senescence affects the population dynamics of Coregonus albula, a small, schooling salmonid fish. Using an empirically based eco-evolutionary model, we investigated how the presence or absence of senescence affects the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a fish population during pristine, intensive harvest, and recovery phases. Our simulation …
Multiple-batch spawning: a risk-spreading strategy disarmed by highly intensive size-selective fishing rate
2022
Can the advantage of risk-managing life-history strategies become a disadvantage under human-induced evolution? Organisms have adapted to the variability and uncertainty of environmental conditions with a vast diversity of life-history strategies. One such evolved strategy is multiple-batch spawning, a spawning strategy common to long-lived fishes that ‘hedge their bets' by distributing the risk to their offspring on a temporal and spatial scale. The fitness benefits of this spawning strategy increase with female body size, the very trait that size-selective fishing targets. By applying an empirically and theoretically motivated eco-evolutionary mechanistic model that was parameterized for …
Size-selective harvesting fosters adaptations in mating behavior and reproductive allocation, affecting sexual selection in fish
2019
The role of sexual selection in the context of harvest‐induced evolution is poorly understood. However, elevated and trait‐selective harvesting of wild populations may change sexually selected traits, which in turn can affect mate choice and reproduction. We experimentally evaluated the potential for fisheries‐induced evolution of mating behaviour and reproductive allocation in fish. We used an experimental system of zebrafish (Danio rerio) lines exposed to large, small or random (i.e. control) size‐selective mortality. The large‐harvested line represented a treatment simulating the typical case in fisheries where the largest individuals are preferentially harvested. We used a full factoria…