Search results for "Genetic algorithm"
showing 10 items of 834 documents
Immune-mediated change in the expression of a sexual trait predicts offspring survival in the wild.
2011
9 pages; International audience; BACKGROUND: The "good genes" theory of sexual selection postulates that females choose mates that will improve their offspring's fitness through the inheritance of paternal genes. In spite of the attention that this hypothesis has given rise to, the empirical evidence remains sparse, mostly because of the difficulties of controlling for the many environmental factors that may covary with both the paternal phenotype and offspring fitness. Here, we tested the hypothesis that offspring sired by males of a preferred phenotype should have better survival in an endangered bird, the houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata undulata). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We…
Hybridization as Speciation? The Viewpoint of Greek Folk Biology (and Aristotle) on the Mutation of Species
2008
Modern evolutionary biologists, as for example Michael Arnold, attest that hybridizations could have a strong creative force in organismal evolution. Such an idea was considered as blasphemous by 19th century critics on evolutionism, and did not entirely convince Charles Darwin himself, but it would not have surprised the ancient Greeks and Romans, who knew that inter-specific couplings gave birth to new species. These new species, however, were considered as products of a process of "adulteration" or "involution", rather than "evolution".
Stabilising selection on immune response in male black grouse Lyrurus tetrix
2017
Illnesses caused by a variety of micro- and macro- organisms can negatively affect individuals’ fitness, leading to the expectation that immunity is under positive selection. However, immune responses are costly and individuals must trade-off their immune response with other fitness components (e.g. survival or reproductive success) meaning that individuals with intermediate response may have the greatest overall fitness. Such a process might be particularly acute in species with strong sexual selection because the condition-dependence of male secondary sexual-traits might lead to striking phenotypic differences amongst males of different immune response levels. We tested whether there is s…
Natural selection mediated by seasonal time constraints increases the alignment between evolvability and developmental plasticity
2021
Abstract Phenotypic plasticity can either hinder or promote adaptation to novel environments. Recent studies that have quantified alignments between plasticity, genetic variation, and divergence propose that such alignments may reflect constraints that bias future evolutionary trajectories. Here, we emphasize that such alignments may themselves be a result of natural selection and do not necessarily indicate constraints on adaptation. We estimated developmental plasticity and broad sense genetic covariance matrices (G) among damselfly populations situated along a latitudinal gradient in Europe. Damselflies were reared at photoperiod treatments that simulated the seasonal time constraints ex…
The founder principle, founder selection, and evolutionary divergence and convergence in natural populations of Philaenus
2009
Parts of the archipelago of the Baltic Sea are rising above the water level at a steady, slow rate. Plant species appear on the emerging islands in a definite order, and an early stage and a late stage can be distinguished in the development of meadows on the islands. In 1969–1973 four populations of Philaenus spumarius living in meadows at the early stage had widely different frequencies of the alleles determining colour polymorphism. In the same years three Philaenus populations living on islands with meadows at the late stage had closely similar allele frequencies. The differences between the Philaenus populations in the early stage meadows are ascribed partly to the founder principle an…
Sexual and postmating reproductive isolation between allopatric Drosophila montana populations suggest speciation potential
2011
This work was funded by a European Commission Research Training Grant RTN2-2001-00049, the Centre of Excellence for Evolutionary Research at the University of Jyväskylä and a Marie Curie Initial Training Network, ‘Understanding the evolutionary origin of biological diversity’ (ITN-2008-213780 SPECIATION) Background: Widely distributed species with populations adapted to different environmental conditions can provide valuable opportunities for tracing the onset of reproductive incompatibilities and their role in the speciation process. Drosophila montana, a D. virilis group species found in high latitude boreal forests in Nearctic and Palearctic regions around the globe, could be an excellen…
Intralocus sexual conflict for fitness: sexually antagonistic alleles for testosterone
2011
Intralocus sexual conflict occurs when a trait encoded by the same genetic locus in the two sexes has different optima in males and females. Such conflict is widespread across taxa, however, the shared phenotypic traits that mediate the conflict are largely unknown. We examined whether the sex hormone, testosterone (T), that controls sexual differentiation, contributes to sexually antagonistic fitness variation in the bank vole, Myodes glareolus . We compared (opposite-sex) sibling reproductive fitness in the bank vole after creating divergent selection lines for T. This study shows that selection for T was differentially associated with son versus daughter reproductive success, causing a …
Sperm competition accentuates selection on ejaculate attributes.
2019
Ejaculate attributes are important factors driving the probability of fertilizing eggs. When females mate with several males, competition between sperm to fertilize eggs should accentuate selection on ejaculate attributes. We tested this hypothesis in the North African houbara bustard ( Chlamydotis undulata undulata ) by comparing the strength of selection acting on two ejaculate attributes when sperm from single males or sperm from different males were used for insemination. In agreement with the prediction, we found that selection on ejaculate attributes was stronger when sperm of different males competed for egg fertilization. These findings provide the first direct comparison of the st…
TBL1XR1 mutations in Pierpont syndrome are not restricted to the recurrent p.Tyr446Cys mutation
2018
IF 2.264; International audience; Pierpont syndrome is a rare and sporadic syndrome, including developmental delay, facial characteristics, and abnormal extremities. Recently, a recurrent de novo TBL1XR1 variant (c.1337A > G; p.Tyr446Cys) has been identified in eight patients by whole‐exome sequencing. A dominant‐negative effect of this mutation is strongly suspected, since patients with TBL1XR1 deletion and other variants predicting loss of function do not share the same phenotype. We report two patients with typical Pierpont‐like syndrome features. Exome sequencing allowed identifying a de novo heterozygous missense TBL1XR1 variant in both patients, different from those already reported: …
Rapid Changes in the Sex Linkage of Male Coloration in Introduced Guppy Populations
2017
Theory predicts that the sex linkage of sexually selected traits can influence the direction and rate of evolution and should itself evolve in response to sex-specific selection. Some studies have found intraspecific differences in sex linkage associated with differences in selection pressures, but we know nothing about how fast these differences can evolve. Here we show that introduced guppy populations showing rapid evolution of male coloration also show rapid changes in sex-linkage patterns. A comparison, using hormonal manipulations in females, of introduced populations of different ages suggests a consistent increase of autosomal or X-linked coloration 2 years after introduction from h…