Search results for "evolution"
showing 10 items of 11096 documents
ALHAMBRA Ks band selected catalogue
2017
Galaxy formation and evolution are an essential part of astronomy and cosmology today. To better understand the processes that are involved in the mechanism behind them it is necessary to study the physical processes in the observable universe at different epochs, which requires large astronomical surveys. In the case of the ALHAMBRA Survey, near infrared images (NIR) provide extra information that significantly increases the scientific value of the data, particularly for strongly-reddened elliptical galaxies, AGN or moderate-redshift starburst galaxies. The selection in the optical band F814W (used for ALHAMBRA’s original catalogue in Molino et al. (2014)) creates a bias against intrinsica…
Measuring, comparing and interpreting phenotypic selection on floral scent
2022
Natural selection on floral scent composition is a key element of the hypothesis that pollinators and other floral visitors drive scent evolution. The measure of such selection is complicated by the high-dimensional nature of floral scent data and uncertainty about the cognitive processes involved in scent-mediated communication. We use dimension reduction through reduced-rank regression to jointly estimate a scent composite trait under selection and the strength of selection acting on this trait. To assess and compare variation in selection on scent across species, time and space, we reanalyse 22 datasets on six species from four previous studies. The results agreed qualitatively with prev…
Subtropical streams harbour higher genus richness and lower abundance of insects compared to boreal streams, but scale matters
2018
Aim: Biological diversity typically varies between climatically different regions, and regions closer to the equator often support higher numbers of taxa than those closer to the poles. However, these trends have been assessed for a few organism groups, and the existing studies have rarely been based on extensive identical surveys in different climatic regions. Location: We conducted standardized surveys of wadeable streams in a boreal (western Finland) and a subtropical (south-eastern Brazil) region, sampling insects identically from 100 streams in each region and measuring the same environmental variables in both regions. Taxon: Aquatic insects. Methods: Comparisons were made at the scale…
Do allopatric male Calopteryx virgo damselflies learn species recognition?
2012
There is a growing amount of empirical evidence that premating reproductive isolation of two closely related species can be reinforced by natural selection arising from avoidance of maladaptive hybridization. However, as an alternative for this popular reinforcement theory, it has been suggested that learning to prefer conspecifics or to discriminate heterospecifics could cause a similar pattern of reinforced premating isolation, but this possibility is much less studied. Here, we report results of a field experiment in which we examined (i) whether allopatric Calopteryx virgo damselfly males that have not encountered heterospecific females of the congener C. splendens initially show discri…
Rotational effects on the oscillation frequencies of newly born proto-neutron stars
2003
In this paper we study the effects of rotation on the frequencies of the quasi-normal modes of a proto-neutron star (PNS) born in a gravitational collapse during the first minute of life. Our analysis starts a few tenths of seconds after the PNS formation, when the stellar evolution can be described by a sequence of equilibrium configurations. We use the evolutionary models developed by Pons et al. (1999; 2001) that describe how a non rotating star cools down and contracts while neutrino diffusion and thermalization processes dominate the stellar dynamics. For assigned values of the evolution time, we set the star into slow rotation and integrate the equations of stellar perturbations in th…
Fault diagnosis of induction motors broken rotor bars by pattern recognition based on noise cancelation
2014
Current signal monitoring (CSM) can be used as an effective tool for diagnosing broken rotor bars fault in induction motors. In this paper, fault diagnosis and classification based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) is done in two stages. In the first stage, a filter is designed to remove irrelevant fault components (such as noise) of current signals. The coefficients of the filter are obtained by least square (LS) algorithm. Then by extracting suitable time domain features from filter's output, a neural network is trained for fault classification. The output vector of this network is represented in one of four categories that includes healthy mode, a 5 mm crack on a bar, one broken bar, …
The genome sequence of Blochmannia floridanus: Comparative analysis of reduced genomes
2003
Bacterial symbioses are widespread among insects, probably being one of the key factors of their evolutionary success. We present the complete genome sequence of Blochmannia floridanus , the primary endosymbiont of carpenter ants. Although these ants feed on a complex diet, this symbiosis very likely has a nutritional basis: Blochmannia is able to supply nitrogen and sulfur compounds to the host while it takes advantage of the host metabolic machinery. Remarkably, these bacteria lack all known genes involved in replication initiation ( dna A, pri A, and rec A). The phylogenetic analysis of a set of conserved protein-coding genes shows that Bl. floridanus is phylogenetically related to Buch…
Chronic Background Radiation Correlates With Sperm Swimming Endurance in Bank Voles From Chernobyl
2022
Sperm quantity and quality are key features explaining intra- and interspecific variation in male reproductive success. Spermatogenesis is sensitive to ionizing radiation and laboratory studies investigating acute effects of ionizing radiation have indeed found negative effects of radiation on sperm quantity and quality. In nature, levels of natural background radiation vary dramatically, and chronic effects of low-level background radiation exposure on spermatogenesis are poorly understood. The Chernobyl region offers a unique research opportunity for investigating effects of chronic low-level ionizing radiation on reproductive properties of wild organisms. We captured male bank voles (Myo…
First insights into female sperm storage duration in tardigrades.
2022
Female sperm storage is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and it has been shown to be linked to several evolutionary processes, from postcopulatory sexual selection to dispersal. Here we report, for the first time, long-term sperm storage in females of the tardigrade Macrobiotus polonicus. Females, isolated after a short contact with a male, were able to use the stored sperm for up to 5 weeks (mean of 2 weeks), which translates to a considerable proportion of female post-mating longevity under controlled laboratory conditions (60% on average). Our study provides the first insights into the duration of sperm storage, an underexplored feature of the reproductive biology of tardigrades. Additio…
To resistance mechanisms and beyond: an evolutionary approach of herbicide resistance
2014
The diversity of herbicide resistance mechanisms observed today in weed populations is the result of a very rapid evolution in response to the selection pressure exerted by herbicide applications. Herbicide resistance is a dynamic process: weed populations are undoubtedly still continuing to evolve, so that the long-term outcome of herbicide selection is currently unpredictable. The vast majority of the studies addressing herbicide resistance published to date are focussed on the identification of mechanisms endowing resistance, with the applied aim to develop resistance diagnosis methods. Understanding resistance evolution is key to set up proactive weed management strategies that should i…