Search results for "SELE"
showing 10 items of 4721 documents
Selection for Robustness in Mutagenized RNA Viruses
2007
Mutational robustness is defined as the constancy of a phenotype in the face of deleterious mutations. Whether robustness can be directly favored by natural selection remains controversial. Theory and in silico experiments predict that, at high mutation rates, slow-replicating genotypes can potentially outcompete faster counterparts if they benefit from a higher robustness. Here, we experimentally validate this hypothesis, dubbed the ‘‘survival of the flattest,’’ using two populations of the vesicular stomatitis RNA virus. Characterization of fitness distributions and genetic variability indicated that one population showed a higher replication rate, whereas the other was more robust to mut…
Nest sites of Middle Spotted Woodpeckers Leiopicus medius in a primeval forest
2016
Forest management usually reduces the diversity and amount of substrates in which woodpeckers can excavate holes. In such conditions the recorded patterns of nest site selection could reflect a more reduced array of substrates than the species' nest site preferences. We analysed new data on nest sites of Middle Spotted Woodpeckers Leiopicus medius collected during 27 breeding seasons (1987–2013) in the strictly protected fragments of the Białowieża National Park in Poland. The birds could use diverse excavation substrates, of various statures, that varied in condition from living and healthy to dead and completely rotten. Middle Spotted Woodpeckers used a wide array of tree species, with li…
Stirring-assisted dead-end ultrafiltration for protein and polyphenol recovery from purple sweet potato juices: Filtration behavior investigation and…
2016
The potential of stirring assisted dead-end ultrafiltration (UF) to recover polyphenols from purple sweet potato (PSP) juices was evaluated. For this purpose, the effects of rotation speed (200–600 rpm), transmembrane pressure (TMP) (0.2–0.4 MPa), and membrane molecular weight cut-off (30–100 kDa) were investigated with a lab-scale filtration module. The results showed that the highest protein removal (86%) and polyphenol selectivity (12.2) were both obtained under higher rotation speed (600 rpm). Moreover, filtration flux was more important at 600 rpm due to the anti-fouling effect of shear rate generated by the rotation. The results also revealed that under TMP of 0.4 MPa, the cake resist…
Multiple paths to cold tolerance: the role of environmental cues, morphological traits and the circadian clock gene vrille
2021
AbstractBackgroundTracing the association between insect cold tolerance and latitudinally and locally varying environmental conditions, as well as key morphological traits and molecular mechanisms, is essential for understanding the processes involved in adaptation. We explored these issues in two closely-related species, Drosophila montana and Drosophila flavomontana, originating from diverse climatic locations across several latitudes on the coastal and mountainous regions of North America. We also investigated the association between sequence variation in one of the key circadian clock genes, vrille, and cold tolerance in both species. Finally, we studied the impact of vrille on fly cold…
Species-level selection reduces selfishness through competitive exclusion.
2007
Adaptation does not necessarily lead to traits which are optimal for the population. This is because selection is often the strongest at the individual or gene level. The evolution of selfishness can lead to a ‘tragedy of the commons’, where traits such as aggression or social cheating reduce population size and may lead to extinction. This suggests that species-level selection will result whenever species differ in the incentive to be selfish. We explore this idea in a simple model that combines individual-level selection with ecology in two interacting species. Our model is not influenced by kin or trait-group selection. We find that individual selection in combination with competitive ex…
Model‐based approaches to unconstrained ordination
2014
Summary Unconstrained ordination is commonly used in ecology to visualize multivariate data, in particular, to visualize the main trends between different sites in terms of their species composition or relative abundance. Methods of unconstrained ordination currently used, such as non-metric multidimensional scaling, are algorithm-based techniques developed and implemented without directly accommodating the statistical properties of the data at hand. Failure to account for these key data properties can lead to misleading results. A model-based approach to unconstrained ordination can address this issue, and in this study, two types of models for ordination are proposed based on finite mixtu…
Does recognized genetic management in supportive breeding prevent genetic changes in life-history traits?
2014
International audience; Supportive breeding is one of the last resort conservation strategies to avoid species extinction. Management of captive populations is challenging because several harmful genetic processes need to be avoided. Several recommendations have been proposed to limit these deleterious effects, but empirical assessments of these strategies remain scarce. We investigated the outcome of a genetic management in a supportive breeding for the Houbara Bustard. At the phenotypic level, we found an increase over generations in the mean values of gamete production, body mass and courtship display rate. Using an animal model, we found that phenotypic changes reflected genetic changes…
Protected areas buffer against harvest selection and rebuild phenotypic complexity
2020
14 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables.-- This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
A nondestructive intelligent approach to real‐time evaluation of chicken meat freshness based on computer vision technique
2019
In this study, the capability of a procedure based on combination of computer vision (CV) and artificial intelligence techniques examined for intelligent and nondestructive prediction of chicken meat freshness during the spoilage process at 4°C. The proposed system comprises the following stages: capture images, image preprocessing, image processing, computing channels, feature extraction, feature selection by a hybrid of genetic algorithm (GA) and artificial neuronal network (ANN), and prediction by using ANN. The number of neurons in input layer was determined 33 (selected features) and freshness used as the output. The ideal ANN model was obtained with 33‐10‐1 topology. The high performa…
Cross inhibition improves activity selection when switching incurs time costs
2015
Abstract We consider a behavioural model of an animal choosing between two activities, based on positive feedback, and examine the effect of introducing cross inhibition between the motivations for the two activities. While cross-inhibition has previously been included in models of decision making, the question of what benefit it may provide to an animal’s activity selection behaviour has not previously been studied. In neuroscience and in collective behaviour cross-inhibition, and other equivalent means of coupling evidence-accumulating pathways, have been shown to approximate statistically-optimal decision-making and to adaptively break deadlock, thereby improving decision performance. Sw…