Search results for "selection"
showing 10 items of 1940 documents
Bill colour and immunocompetence in the European blackbird
2003
The level of expression of secondary sexual characters has been suggested to signal male ability to resist parasitic infestations. To test this idea, several studies have examined the link between sexual signals and immunocompetence in birds. However, most of them have used only a single aspect of immune response to evaluate immunocompetence. We investigated the relation between bill colour and immunocompetence in captive male European blackbirds, Turdus merula, during the breeding season by assessing both cell-mediated and humoral components of the immune system. The blackbird is a sexually dimorphic species with bill colour varying from yellow to orange in males. Humoral immunity was asse…
Forceps size and immune function in the earwig Forficula auricularia L.
2007
Females of many species select their mates on the basis of the size or intensity of sexual ornaments, and it has been suggested that these provide reliable signals of a male’s ability to resist parasites and pathogens. European earwigs, Forficula auricularia, are sexually dimorphic in forceps shape and length. Male forceps are used as weapons in male contests for access to females, but recent findings suggest that females also choose males on the basis of their forceps length. In the present study, we tested the hypotheses that in the European earwig, F. auricularia, the size of forceps is correlated with immune function and that immune function differs between the sexes. We found that enca…
Quantification of sexual dimorphism in Asellus aquaticus (Crustacea: Isopoda) using outline approaches
2002
A marked sexual dimorphism is often observed in arthropods species in which males perform precopulatory mate guarding. It is generally thought to reflect the influence of sexual selection. Until now, sexual dimorphisms associated with mate guarding have mainly been qualitatively described. However, assessing the effects of sexual selection on sexual dimorphims requires a preliminary quantitative assessment of differences in morphology between sexes. Using Fourier analyses, we tested if morphological dimorphisms could be quantitatively assessed in the isopod Asellus aquaticus. In addition, we checked whether sexual dimorphism in shape was exclusively related to mate guarding through consider…
Sperm competition and small size advantage for males of the golden orb-web spider Nephila edulis
2000
Sexual selection, through female choice and/or male‐male competition, has influenced the nature and direction of sexual size dimorphism in numerous species. However, few studies have examined the influence of sperm competition on size dimorphism. The orb-web spider Nephila edulis has a polygamous mating system and extreme size dimorphism. Additionally, the frequency distribution of male body size is extremely skewed with most males being small and few large. The duration of copulation, male size and sexual cannibalism have been identified as the significant factors determining patterns of sperm precedence in spiders. In double mating trials, females were assigned to three treatments: either…
THE EFFECT OF ALTERNATIVE PREY ON THE DYNAMICS OF IMPERFECT BATESIAN AND MÜLLERIAN MIMICRIES
2004
Both Batesian and Müllerian mimicries are considered classical evidence of natural selection where predation pressure has, at times, created a striking similarity between unrelated prey species. Batesian mimicry, in which palatable mimics resemble unpalatable aposematic species, is parasitic and only beneficial to the mimics. By contrast, in classical Müllerian mimicry the cost of predators' avoidance learning is shared between similar unpalatable co-mimics, and therefore mimicry benefits all parties. Recent studies using mathematical modeling have questioned the dynamics of Müllerian mimicry, suggesting that fitness benefits should be calculated in a way similar to Batesian mimicry; that i…
Evolutionary processes in the emergence and recent spread of the syphilis agent, Treponema pallidum
2022
Abstract The incidence of syphilis has risen worldwide in the last decade in spite of being an easily treated infection. The causative agent of this sexually transmitted disease is the bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum (TPA), very closely related to subsp. pertenue (TPE) and endemicum (TEN), responsible for the human treponematoses yaws and bejel, respectively. Although much focus has been placed on the question of the spatial and temporary origins of TPA, the processes driving the evolution and epidemiological spread of TPA since its divergence from TPE and TEN are not well understood. Here, we investigate the effects of recombination and selection as forces of genetic diver…
Involvement of nitrate reductase and pyoverdine in competitiveness of Pseudomonas fluorescens strain C7R12 in soil
2001
ABSTRACT Involvement of nitrate reductase and pyoverdine in the competitiveness of the biocontrol strain Pseudomonas fluorescens C7R12 was determined, under gnotobiotic conditions, in two soil compartments (bulk and rhizosphere soil), with the soil being kept at two different values of matric potential (−1 and −10 kPa). Three mutants affected in the synthesis of either the nitrate reductase (Nar − ), the pyoverdine (Pvd − ), or both (Nar − Pvd − ) were used. The Nar − and Nar − Pvd − mutants were obtained by site-directed mutagenesis of the wild-type strain and of the Pvd − mutant, respectively. The selective advantage given by nitrate reductase and pyoverdine to the wild-type strain was as…
Learning Automata Based Q-learning for Content Placement in Cooperative Caching
2019
An optimization problem of content placement in cooperative caching is formulated, with the aim of maximizing sum mean opinion score (MOS) of mobile users. Firstly, a supervised feed-forward back-propagation connectionist model based neural network (SFBC-NN) is invoked for user mobility and content popularity prediction. More particularly, practical data collected from GPS-tracker app on smartphones is tackled to test the accuracy of mobility prediction. Then, a learning automata-based Q-learning (LAQL) algorithm for cooperative caching is proposed, in which learning automata (LA) is invoked for Q-learning to obtain an optimal action selection in a random and stationary environment. It is p…
An Automatic System for the Analysis and Classification of Human Atrial Fibrillation Patterns from Intracardiac Electrograms
2008
This paper presents an automatic system for the analysis and classification of atrial fibrillation (AF) patterns from bipolar intracardiac signals. The system is made up of: 1) a feature- extraction module that defines and extracts a set of measures potentially useful for characterizing AF types on the basis of their degree of organization; 2) a feature-selection module (based on the Jeffries-Matusita distance and a branch and bound search algorithm) identifying the best subset of features for discriminating different AF types; and 3) a support vector machine technique-based classification module that automatically discriminates the AF types according to the Wells' criteria. The automatic s…
Honesty of agonistic signalling and effects of size and motivation asymmetry in contests
1999
Game theoretical models predict that the main function of fighting behaviour is to assess the relative fighting ability of opponents. The sequential assessment game has often been used to investigate contests, while honest signalling theory has received much less attention. With the wolf spider Hygrolycosa rubrofasciata we investigated whether male agonistic signalling can reveal honest information about fighting ability, and how size and motivation asymmetries affect male fighting behaviour. We also determined whether male–male competition affects the courtship behaviour of the males. We found that agonistic drumming activity is an honest indicator of male fighting ability, and that relati…