Search results for "POPULATION"
showing 10 items of 9945 documents
Antagonistic effects of a Mhc class I allele on malaria-infected house sparrows.
2008
8 pages; International audience; Genes of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (Mhc) play a fundamental role during the immune response because MHC molecules expressed on cell surface allow the recognition and presentation of antigenic peptides to T-lymphocytes. Although Mhc alleles have been found to correlate with pathogen resistance in several host-parasite systems, several studies have also reported associations between Mhc alleles and an accrued infection risk or an accelerated disease progression. The existence of these susceptibility alleles is puzzling, as the cost generated by the infection should rapidly eliminate them from the population. Here, we show that susceptibility alleles…
Sensitive measure of prevalence and parasitaemia of haemosporidia from European blackbird (Turdus merula) populations: value of PCR-RFLP and quantita…
2006
8 pages; International audience; Haemosporidian parasites are common in birds in which they act as an important selective pressure. While most studies so far have focused on the effect of their prevalence on host life-history traits, no study has measured the effect of parasitaemia. We developed molecular methods to detect, identify and quantify haemosporidia in 2 natural populations of the Blackbird Turdus merula. Three different parasite genotypes were found - 1 Haemoproteus and 2 Plasmodium. A PCR-RFLP screening revealed that only approximately 3% of blackbirds were free of parasites, compared to the 34% of uninfected birds estimated by blood smear screening. A quantitative PCR (q-PCR) a…
Effect of repeated exposure to Plasmodium relictum (lineage SGS1) on infection dynamics in domestic canaries.
2010
7 pages; International audience; Parasites are known to exert strong selection pressures on their hosts and, as such, favour the evolution of defence mechanisms. The negative impact of parasites on their host can have substantial consequences in terms of population persistence and the epidemiology of the infection. In natural populations, however, it is difficult to assess the cost of infection while controlling for other potentially confounding factors. For instance, individuals are repeatedly exposed to a variety of parasite strains, some of which can elicit immunological memory, further protecting the host from subsequent infections. Cost of infection is, therefore, expected to be partic…
Seed germination and seedling allogamy in Rosmarinus officinalis: the costs of inbreeding.
2018
Self‐pollination by geitonogamy is likely in self‐compatible plants that simultaneously expose a large number of flowers to pollinators. However, progeny of these plants is often highly allogamous. Although mechanisms to increase cross‐pollination have been identified and studied, their relative importance has rarely been addressed simultaneously in plant populations. We used Rosmarinus officinalis to explore factors that influence the probability of self‐fertilisation due to geitonogamy or that purge its consequences, focusing on their effects on seed germination and allogamy rate. We experimentally tested the effect of geitonogamy on the proportion of filled seeds and how it influences ge…
Resource profitability, but not caffeine, affects individual and collective foraging in the stingless beePlebeia droryana
2019
ABSTRACT Plants and pollinators form beneficial relationships, with plants offering resources in return for pollination services. Some plants, however, add compounds to nectar to manipulate pollinators. Caffeine is a secondary plant metabolite found in some nectars that affects foraging in pollinators. In honeybees, caffeine increases foraging and recruitment to mediocre food sources, which might benefit the plant, but potentially harms the colonies. For the largest group of social bees, the stingless bees, the effect of caffeine on foraging behaviour has not been tested yet, despite their importance for tropical ecosystems. More generally, recruitment and foraging dynamics are not well und…
Intergenerational fitness effects of the early life environment in a wild rodent.
2019
The early life environment can have profound, long-lasting effects on an individual's fitness. For example, early life quality might (a) positively associate with fitness (a silver spoon effect), (b) stimulate a predictive adaptive response (by adjusting the phenotype to the quality of the environment to maximize fitness) or (c) be obscured by subsequent plasticity. Potentially, the effects of the early life environment can persist beyond one generation, though the intergenerational plasticity on fitness traits of a subsequent generation is unclear. To study both intra- and intergenerational effects of the early life environment, we exposed a first generation of bank voles to two early life…
Detection of Allee effects in marine fishes: analytical biases generated by data availability and model selection
2017
The demographic Allee effect, or depensation, implies positive association between per capita population growth rate and population size at low abundances, thereby lowering growth ability of sparse populations. This can have far-reaching consequences on population recovery ability and colonization success. In the context of marine fishes, there is a widespread perception that Allee effects are rare or non-existent. However, studies that have failed to detect Allee effects in marine fishes have suffered from several fundamental methodological and data limitations. In the present study, we challenge the prevailing perception about the rarity of Allee effects by analysing nine populations of …
The effects of oil spills on marine fish: Implications of spatial variation in natural mortality.
2017
The effects of oil spills on marine biological systems are of great concern, especially in regions with high biological production of harvested resources such as in the Northeastern Atlantic. The scientific studies of the impact of oil spills on fish stocks tend to ignore that spatial patterns of natural mortality may influence the magnitude of the impact over time. Here, we first illustrate how spatial variation in natural mortality may affect the population impact by considering a thought experiment. Second, we consider an empirically based example of Northeast Arctic cod to extend the concept to a realistic setting. Finally, we present a scenario-based investigation of how the degree of …
Fine-scale population dynamics in a marine fish species inferred from dynamic state-space models
2017
1. Identifying the spatial scale of population structuring is critical for the conservation of natural populations and for drawing accurate ecological inferences. However, population studies often use spatially aggregated data to draw inferences about population trends and drivers, potentially masking ecologically relevant population sub‐structure and dynamics. 2. The goals of this study were to investigate how population dynamics models with and without spatial structure affect inferences on population trends and the identification of intrinsic drivers of population dynamics (e.g. density dependence). 3. Specifically, we developed dynamic, age‐structured, state‐space models to test differe…
Do phase-dependent life history traits in cyclic voles persist in a common environment?
2019
Phenotype and life history traits of an individual are a product of environmental conditions and the genome. Environment can be current or past, which complicates the distinction between environmental and heritable effects on the phenotype in wild animals. We studied genome–environment interactions on phenotype and life history traits by transplanting bank voles (Myodes glareolus) from northern and southern populations, originating from low or high population cycle phases, to common garden conditions in large outdoor enclosures. The first experiment focused on the persistence of body traits in autumn-captured overwintering populations. The second experiment focused on population growth and …