Search results for "systematics."
showing 10 items of 4966 documents
Fuzzy quantification of common and rare species in ecological communities (FuzzyQ)
2021
International audience; Most species in ecological communities are rare, whereas only a few are common. This distributional paradox has intrigued ecologists for decades but the interpretation of species abundance distributions remains elusive.We present Fuzzy Quantification of Common and Rare Species in Ecological Communities (FuzzyQ) as an R package. FuzzyQ shifts the focus from the prevailing species-categorization approach to develop a quantitative framework that seeks to place each species along a rarity-commonness gradient. Given a community surveyed over a number of sites, quadrats, or any other convenient sampling unit, FuzzyQ uses a fuzzy clustering algorithm that estimates a probab…
Inbreeding reveals mode of past selection on male reproductive characters in Drosophila melanogaster
2013
Directional dominance is a prerequisite of inbreeding depression. Directionality arises when selection drives alleles that increase fitness to fixation and eliminates dominant deleterious alleles, while deleterious recessives are hidden from it and maintained at low frequencies. Traits under directional selection (i.e., fitness traits) are expected to show directional dominance and therefore an increased susceptibility to inbreeding depression. In contrast, traits under stabilizing selection or weakly linked to fitness are predicted to exhibit little-to-no inbreeding depression. Here, we quantify the extent of inbreeding depression in a range of male reproductive characters and then infer t…
Interspecific variation in the relationship between clutch size, laying date and intensity of urbanization in four species of hole-nesting birds
2016
Marie Vaugoyeau [et al.]
Clutch-size variation in Western Palaearctic secondary hole-nesting passerine birds in relation to nest box design.
2014
Møller, A.P. [et al.]
Intraspecific social information use in the selection of nest site characteristics
2012
Animals commonly acquire information about the environment by monitoring how others interact with it. The importance of social information use probably varies among species. In particular, many migratory birds breeding in northern latitudes rely on social information provided by resident tits when making important decisions and are able to copy or reject selectively the decisions of tits exhibiting good or bad fitness correlates, respectively. However, little is known about the role of social information use among resident tits. In a field experiment we tested whether great tits, Parus major, given a choice between two novel alternative features on adjacent nest sites, copy or reject conspe…
Length of activity season drives geographic variation in body size of a widely distributed lizard
2013
Understanding the factors that drive geographic variation in life history is an important challenge in evolutionary ecology. Here, we analyze what predicts geographic variation in life-history traits of the common lizard, Zootoca vivipara, which has the globally largest distribution range of all terrestrial reptile species. Variation in body size was predicted by differences in the length of activity season, while we found no effects of environmental temperature per se. Females experiencing relatively short activity season mature at a larger size and remain larger on average than females in populations with relatively long activity seasons. Interpopulation variation in fecundity was largely…
Colour variation and alternative reproductive strategies in females of the Common lizard Lacerta vivipara
2007
Within-sex colour variation is a widespread phenomenon in animals that often plays a role in social selection. In males, colour variation is typically associated with the existence of alternative reproductive strategies. Despite ecological conditions theoretically favourable to the emergence of such alternative strategies in females, the social significance of colour variation in females has less commonly been addressed, relative to the attention given to male strategies. In a population of the common lizard, females display three classes of ventral colouration: pale yellow, orange and mixed. These ventral colours are stable through individual's life and maternally heritable. Females of dif…
Resource availability and goshawk offspring sex ratio variation: a large-scale ecological phenomenon
2002
Summary 1. Local population studies have shown that sex allocation among many birds and mammals seems to be partly non-random and in connection to surrounding factors, such as environmental or parental quality. In this scenario, if environmental quality varies in space and time, it is feasible that environmental quality also comes to influence offspring sex ratio on larger geographical scales. 2. Investigating this idea - using nation-wide data sets on size-dimorphic Finnish northern goshawks Accipiter gentilis from 1989 to 1998 - we found that offspring sex ratio is related to spatial and temporal variation in availability of their main prey, woodland grouse species. 3. In a majority of lo…
Effects of interspecific coexistence on laying date and clutch size in two closely related species of hole-nesting birds
2018
Co-existence between great tits Parus major and blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus, \ud but also other hole nesting taxa, constitutes a classic example of species\ud co-occurrence resulting in potential interference and exploitation competition\ud for food and for breeding and roosting sites. However, the spatial and temporal\ud variation in co-existence and its consequences for competition remain poorly\ud understood. 2.We used an extensive database on reproduction in nest boxes by\ud great and blue tits based on 87 study plots across Europe and Northern Africa\ud during 1957-2012 for a total of 19,075 great tit and 16,729 blue tit clutches to \ud assess correlative evidence for a relationship …
Substantial decline of Northern European peatland bird populations: Consequences of drainage
2017
Northern European peatlands are important habitats for biological conservation because they support rich biodiversity and unique species compositions. However, historical management of peatland habitats has had negative consequences for biodiversity and their degradation remains a major conservation concern. Despite increasing awareness of the conservation value of peatlands, the statuses and ecological requirements of peat land species have remained largely understudied. Here, we first analysed temporal trends of Northern European peatland birds to document the status of their populations using bird data from five different countries. Second, we used Finnish monitoring data to assess habit…