Search results for "history traits"
showing 10 items of 44 documents
Evidence for a conserved queen-worker genetic toolkit across slave-making ants and their ant hosts
2021
AbstractThe ecological success of social Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps) depends on the division of labour between the queen and workers. Each caste is highly specialised in its respective function in morphology, behaviour and life-history traits, such as lifespan and fecundity. Despite strong defences against alien intruders, insect societies are vulnerable to social parasites, such as workerless inquilines or slave-making (dulotic) ants. Here, we investigate whether gene expression varies in parallel ways between lifestyles (slave-making versus host ants) across five independent origins of ant slavery in the “Formicoxenus-group” of the ant tribe Crematogastrini. As caste differences are o…
Effect of river restoration on life-history strategies in fish communities
2019
Assessments of river restoration outcomes are mostly based on taxonomic identities of species, which may not be optimal because a direct relationship to river functions remains obscure and results are hardly comparable across biogeographic borders. The use of ecological species trait information instead of taxonomic units may help to overcome these challenges. Abundance data for fish communities were gathered from 134 river restoration projects conducted in Switzerland, Germany and Finland, monitored for up to 15 years. These data were related to a dataset of 22 categories of ecological traits describing fish life-history strategies to assess the outcome of the restoration projects. Restora…
Ocean acidification and elevated temperature negatively affect recruitment, oxygen consumption and calcification of the reef-building Dendropoma cris…
2019
Expected temperature rise and seawater pH decrease may affect marine organism fitness. By a transplant experiment involving air-temperature manipulation along a natural CO2 gradient, we investigated the effects of high pCO(2) (similar to 1100 mu atm) and elevated temperature (up to +2 degrees C than ambient conditions) on the reproductive success, recruitment, growth, shell chemical composition and oxygen consumption of the early life stages of the intertidal reef-building vermetid Dendropoma cristatum. Reproductive success was predominantly affected by temperature increase, with encapsulated embryos exhibiting higher survival in control than elevated temperature conditions, which were in t…
Costs and benefits of inflammation in host-parasite relationships
2016
Host-parasite interactions are characterized by trade-offs that involve both plastic and microevolutionary responses. On one hand, while immunity is essential to fight parasites, it can also cause damage to the host, leading to autoimmunity and inflammatory diseases. On the other hand, parasites have to cope with the immune environnement provided by the host. This raises the question of the costs and benefits of the inflammatory response for the two partners of the interaction. With different experimental and literature-based approaches, I showed that immunopathology is a trait that likely persists because of the immediate benefits of the immune response in terms of protection against paras…
Bryophytes of Europe Traits (BET) dataset
2023
The Bryophytes of Europe Traits (BET) dataset includes values for 65 biological and ecological traits and 25 bioclimatic variables for all 1816 bryophytes included in the European Red List (Hodgetts et al. 2019). The traits are compiled from several regional trait datasets and manually complemented using Floras, species-specific literature and expert knowledge. The bioclimatic variables are calculated using the European range of each species. Details regarding the trait compilation and extraction of bioclimatic variables can be found in the corresponding data paper (Van Zuijlen et al. 2023).
Laboratory relationships between adult lifetime reproductive success and fitness surrogates in a Drosophila littoralis population
2011
The difficulties in measuring total fitness of individuals necessitate the use of fitness surrogates in ecological and evolutionary studies. These surrogates can be different components of fitness (e.g. survival or fecundity), or proxies more uncertainly related to fitness (e.g. body size or growth rate). Ideally, fitness would be measured over the lifetime of individuals; however, more convenient short-time measures are often used. Adult lifetime reproductive success (adult LRS) is closely related to the total fitness of individuals, but it is difficult to measure and rarely included in fitness estimation in experimental studies. We explored phenotypic correlations between female adult LRS…
Assessing the Cost of Mounting an Immune Response
2003
International audience; The evolution of parasite resistance has often been assumed to be governed by antagonistic selection pressures. Defense against pathogens, by mounting an immune response, confers evident benefits but may also incur costs, so that the optimal level of defense is expected to depend on the balance between benefits and costs. Although the benefits of immune surveillance are well known, estimates of costs are still equivocal. Here we studied the behavioral and physiological modifications associated with exposure to a onreplicating antigen (lipopolysaccharide [LPS] of Escherichia coli) in a passerine species, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus).We further investigated wh…
Absence of long-term effects of reproduction on longevity in the mouse model.
2014
Background Most human demographic data, particularly those on natural fertility populations, find no relationship or even a positive association between fertility and longevity. The present study aims to ascertain whether there is a trade-off between fertility and longevity in the mouse model. Methods The study was focused on the first litter produced by 10- to 14-wk-old hybrid (C57BL/6JIco female X CBA/JIco male) mice. A single female/male per litter was individually housed with a male/female at the age of 25 and 52 wk, respectively, until the end of reproductive life in females or natural death in males under controlled housing conditions. Post-reproductive females and virgin mice were re…
Ecologie évolutive de la malaria aviaire : effets des caractéristiques de l'hôte et de l'environnement
2012
Host-parasite interactions are one of the main topics in evolutionary sciences. This complex coevolution depends on several trade-offs and can be influenced by environmental factors. Here, we propose to study host-parasite interactions with a multi-level approach, using experimental and natural population studies, focusing on avian malaria parasites. First, we studied the effect of host characteristics, and more precisely the immune system. The immune system confers benefits in terms of protection against the parasite, but can also generated immunopathological costs. Life history traits, like age or social status, appear to modify parasitemia but not prevalence. In a second part, we evaluat…
Evolutionary Conflict Between Maternal and Paternal Interests: Integration with Evolutionary Endocrinology
2016
International audience; Conflict between mates, as well as conflict between parents and offspring are due to divergent evolutionary interests of the interacting individuals. Hormone systems provide genetically based proximate mechanisms for mediating phenotypic adaptation and maladaptation characteristic of evolutionary conflict between individuals. Testosterone (T) is among the most commonly studied hormones in evolutionary biology, and as such, its role in shaping sexually dimorphic behaviors and physiology is relatively well understood, but its role in evolutionary conflict is not as clear. In this review, we outline the genomic conflicts arising within the family unit, and incorporate m…