Search results for "Oration"
showing 10 items of 2042 documents
Optimizing management to enhance multifunctionality in a boreal forest landscape
2016
Summary The boreal biome, representing approximately one-third of remaining global forests, provides a number of crucial ecosystem services. A particular challenge in forest ecosystems is to reconcile demand for an increased timber production with provisioning of other ecosystem services and biodiversity. However, there is still little knowledge about how forest management could help solve this challenge. Hence, studies that investigate how to manage forests to reduce trade-offs between ecosystem services and biodiversity are urgently needed to help forest owners and policy makers take informed decisions. We applied seven alternative forest management regimes using a forest growth simulator…
Biased predation could promote convergence yet maintain diversity within Müllerian mimicry rings of Oreina leaf beetles.
2019
Mullerian mimicry is a classic example of adaptation, yet Muller's original theory does not account for the diversity often observed in mimicry rings. Here, we aimed to assess how well classical Mullerian mimicry can account for the colour polymorphism found in chemically defended Oreina leaf beetles by using field data and laboratory assays of predator behaviour. We also evaluated the hypothesis that thermoregulation can explain diversity between Oreina mimicry rings. We found that frequencies of each colour morph were positively correlated among species, a critical prediction of Mullerian mimicry. Predators learned to associate colour with chemical defences. Learned avoidance of the green…
A genomic map of climate adaptation in Mediterranean cattle breeds
2019
International audience; Domestic species such as cattle (Bos taurus taurus and B. t. indicus) represent attractive biological models to characterize the genetic basis of short term evolutionary response to climate pressure induced by their post-domestication history. Here, using newly generated dense SNP genotyping data, we assessed the structuring of genetic diversity of 21 autochtonous cattle breeds from the whole Mediterranean basin and performed genome-wide association analyses with covariables discriminating the different Mediterranean climate sub-types. This provided insights into both the demographic and adaptive histories of Mediterranean cattle. In particular, a detailed functional…
Evaporation from soils of different texture covered by layers of water repellent and wettable soils
2020
Water repellent soils are able to channel water deep into the soil profile by fingered flow, minimising water storage in the water repellent top layer where water is most susceptible to evaporation. To date, the effect of water repellent or wettable surface layer on evaporation from wet sublayer has only been reported for coarse materials, and an increase in water repellency led to a greater delay in water evaporation. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of water repellent vs. wettable top layers with different thickness on water evaporation from coarse and fine texture subsoils that were pre-moistened. Clay loam soil samples were taken from Pinus pinaster woodland of Ciavo…
Variable crab camouflage patterns defeat search image formation.
2021
Understanding what maintains the broad spectrum of variation in animal phenotypes and how this influences survival is a key question in biology. Frequency dependent selection – where predators temporarily focus on one morph at the expense of others by forming a “search image” – can help explain this phenomenon. However, past work has never tested real prey colour patterns, and rarely considered the role of different types of camouflage. Using a novel citizen science computer experiment that presented crab “prey” to humans against natural backgrounds in specific sequences, we were able to test a range of key hypotheses concerning the interactions between predator learning, camouflage and mor…
The current and future state of animal coloration research
2017
Animal colour patterns are a model system for understanding evolution because they are unusually accessible for study and experimental manipulation. This is possible because their functions are readily identifiable. In this final paper of the symposium we provide a diagram of the processes affecting colour patterns and use this to summarize their functions and put the other papers in a broad context. This allows us to identify significant ‘holes’ in the field that only become obvious when we see the processes affecting colour patterns, and their interactions, as a whole. We make suggestions about new directions of research that will enhance our understanding of both the evolution of colour …
The effects of drainage and restoration of pine mires on habitat structure, vegetation and ants
2016
Habitat loss and degradation are the main threats to biodiversity worldwide. For example, nearly 80% of peatlands in southern Finland have been drained. There is thus a need to safeguard the remaining pristine mires and to restore degraded ones. Ants play a pivotal role in many ecosystems and like many keystone plant species, shape ecosystem conditions for other biota. The effects of mire restoration and subsequent vegetation succession on ants, however, are poorly understood. We inventoried tree stands, vegetation, water-table level, and ants (with pitfall traps) in nine mires in southern Finland to explore differences in habitats, vegetation and ant assemblages among pristine, drained (30…
Warning coloration can be disruptive: aposematic marginal wing patterning in the wood tiger moth
2015
Warning (aposematic) and cryptic colorations appear to be mutually incompatible because the primary function of the former is to increase detectability, whereas the function of the latter is to decrease it. Disruptive coloration is a type of crypsis in which the color pattern breaks up the outline of the prey, thus hindering its detection. This delusion can work even when the prey’s pattern elements are highly contrasting; thus, it is possible for an animal’s coloration to combine both warning and disruptive functions. The coloration of the wood tiger moth (Parasemia plantaginis) is such that the moth is conspicuous when it rests on vegetation, but when it feigns death and drops to the gras…
Forty questions of importance to the policy and practice of native oyster reef restoration in Europe
2020
© 2020 The Authors. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd Oyster reefs are among the most threatened marine habitats globally. In Europe, oyster reefs have been extirpated from most locations within their historical range. Active restoration of the native oyster (Ostrea edulis) in Europe has grown substantially in recent years. In sharing experiences between oyster restoration projects in Europe at the Native Oyster Restoration Alliance conference, NORA2, in Edinburgh in May 2019, it became apparent that a number of similar barriers are experienced. This study identified the top 40 questions, which, if answered, would have the greatest inf…
Experimentally induced community assembly of polypores reveals the importance of both environmental filtering and assembly history
2019
The community assembly of wood-inhabiting fungi follows a successional pathway, with newly emerging resource patches being colonised by pioneer species, followed by those specialised on later stages of decay. The primary coloniser species have been suggested to strongly influence the assembly of the later-arriving community. We created an artificial resource pulse and studied the assembly of polypores over an 11yr period to ask how the identities of the colonising species depend on the environmental characteristics and the assembly history of the dead wood unit. Our results support the view that community assembly in fungi is a highly stochastic process, as even detailed description of the …