Search results for "Quotation"
showing 10 items of 18815 documents
Pace-of-life in a social insect: behavioral syndromes in ants shift along a climatic gradient
2017
Lay SummaryLinks between behavioral traits can shift with the local climate. We show that behavioral associations with temperature not only occur across, but also within populations. At warmer sites ant colonies increased their exploration and foraging activity, but were less aggressive. Moreover, at these warmer sites, more positive links were found between behaviors within populations compared to colder sites, where more negative links prevailed. Our study suggests that associations between behaviors shift along climatic gradients.
Olive Growing in a Time of Change: From Empiricism to Genomics
2016
Since its beginning, the olive crop has been a long-lived agricultural system in the Mediterranean Basin being well adapted to this area. Traditional olive growing, still prevalent in most producing areas, is characterized by low tree density and rainfed orchards with low yield and manually harvested. The traditional olive growing technology is local, diverse, and empirically based. New high density, irrigated, and mechanically harvested orchards has been progressively planted since the end of World War II. These plantations produce high crops at low costs, but they reduce the diversity of cultivars, increase the demand of inputs and the risk of environment unbalances. The expansion and int…
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…
Marine protected areas rescue a sexually selected trait in European lobster
2020
Abstract Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly implemented worldwide to maintain and restore depleted populations. However, despite our knowledge on the myriad of positive responses to protection, there are few empirical studies on the ability to conserve species’ mating patterns and secondary sexual traits. In male European lobsters (Homarus gammarus), the size of claws relative to body size correlates positively with male mating success and is presumably under sexual selection. At the same time, an intensive trap fishery exerts selection against large claws in males. MPAs could therefore be expected to resolve these conflicting selective pressures and preserve males with large cl…
Cnidarian Interaction with Microbial Communities: From Aid to Animal’s Health to Rejection Responses
2018
The phylum Cnidaria is an ancient branch in the tree of metazoans. Several species exert a remarkable longevity, suggesting the existence of a developed and consistent defense mechanism of the innate immunity capable to overcome the potential repeated exposure to microbial pathogenic agents. Increasing evidence indicates that the innate immune system in Cnidarians is not only involved in the disruption of harmful microorganisms, but also is crucial in structuring tissue-associated microbial communities that are essential components of the Cnidarian holobiont and useful to the animal’s health for several functions, including metabolism, immune defense, development, and behavior. Someti…
When Choice Makes Sense: Menthol Influence on Mating, Oviposition and Fecundity in Drosophila melanogaster
2016
International audience; The environment to which insects have been exposed as larvae and adults can affect subsequent behaviors, such as mating, oviposition, food preference or fitness. Experience can change female preference for oviposition, particularly in phytophagous insects. In Drosophila melanogaster, females avoid laying eggs on menthol rich-food when given the choice. Exposure to menthol during larval development reduces this aversion. However, this observation was not reproduced in the following generation. Recently, we have shown that oviposition-site preference (OSP) differs between wild type D. melanogaster lines freely or forcibly exposed to menthol. After 12 generations, menth…
Realistic genetic architecture enables organismal adaptation as predicted under the folk definition of inclusive fitness
2021
A fundamental task of evolutionary biology is to explain the pervasive impression of organismal design in nature, including traits benefiting kin. Inclusive fitness is considered by many to be a crucial piece in this puzzle, despite ongoing discussion about its scope and limitations. Here, we use individual-based simulations to study what quantity (if any) individual organisms become adapted to maximize when genetic architectures are more or less suitable for the presumed main driver of biological adaptation, namely cumulative multi-locus evolution. As an expository device, we focus on a hypothetical situation called Charlesworth's paradox, in which altruism is seemingly predicted to evolve…
Reproductive inequalities in the acanthocephalan Corynosoma cetaceum: looking beyond 'crowding' effects.
2018
Background: At present, much research effort has been devoted to investigate overall (average) responses of parasite populations to specific factors, e.g., density-dependence in fecundity or mortality. However, studies on parasite populations usually pay little attention to individual variation (inequality) in reproductive success. A previous study on the acanthocephalan Corynosoma cetaceum in franciscana dolphins, Pontoporia blainvillei, revealed no overall intensity-dependent, or microhabitat effects, on mass and fecundity of worms. In this study, we investigated whether the same factors could influence mass inequalities for this species of acanthocephalan.Methods: A total of 10,138 speci…
Sex-allocation conflict and sexual selection throughout the lifespan of eusocial colonies.
2018
AbstractModels of sex allocation conflict are central to evolutionary biology but have mostly assumed static decisions, where resource allocation strategies are constant over colony lifespan. Here, we develop a model to study how the evolution of dynamic resource allocation strategies is affected by the queen-worker conflict in annual eusocial insects. We demonstrate that the time of dispersal of sexuals affects the sex allocation ratio through sexual selection on males. Furthermore, our model provides three predictions that depart from established results of classic static allocation models. First, we find that the queen wins the sex allocation conflict, while the workers determine the max…
Quality Factors Influencing Consumer Demand for Small Fruit by Focus Group and Sensory Test
2017
ABSTRACTThe market of berries is a niche of high value in Italy. Small fruit’s healthy properties are well known in the international market, but little is known about the reason for a low commercialization rate of fresh small fruit in Italy. The objective of this study was to assess consumer preferences in Italy for selected berry species. Moreover, the study aims to identify the relevant attributes of berries that affect the demand for this produce according to consumers and to compare these attributes. We assessed relevant attributes affecting the demand for fresh berries for different consumers’ profiles and compared berries’ attributes rankings. The results reveal high concordance betw…