Lucia Salis, Erik van den Hoorn, Domien G.M. Beersma, Roelof A. Hut & Marcel E. Visser In seasonal environments, decisions such as when to reproduce or when to move from one place to another have a large impact on the survival and fitness of many organisms. In insects, the timing of transitions from one life…
Category: evolutionary ecology
Still armed after domestication? Impacts of domestication and agronomic selection on silicon defences in cereals
Kimberley J. Simpson, Ruth N. Wade, Mark Rees, Colin P. Osborne & Sue E. Hartley When humans domesticated wild plants thousands of years ago to produce the crops we rely upon today, they caused substantial changes in these plants. Some of these changes are obvious and desirable, such as increased yield and faster growth, but…
Nectar bacteria affect the survival of nectar-feeding animals
Marijke Lenaerts, Tim Goelen, Caroline Paulussen, Beatriz Herrera-Malaver, Jan Steensels, Wim Van den Ende, Kevin J. Verstrepen, Felix Wäckers, Hans Jacquemynand Bart Lievens When insects visit flowers looking for food, they commonly inoculate floral nectar with bacteria and yeasts. These microbes then gobble sugars and amino acids or convert them into other compounds which could…
Changing your body form to improve your growth
Marc Pépino, Pierre Magnan, and Raphaël Proulx Individual living organisms have the ability to modify their morphology, physiology, or behaviour in response to environmental changes, referred to as phenotypic plasticity. Over the longer term, populations of the same species inhabiting different environments could evolve toward distinct forms, a process called resource polymorphism. For example, brook…
Context-dependent defences in turtle ants: resource defensibility and threat level induce dynamic shifts in soldier deployment
Scott Powell, Matina Donaldson‐Matasci, Augustus Woodrow‐Tomizuka, Anna Dornhaus How do you best defend yourself in a dangerous world, when attacks may occur in many places simultaneously and you only have a limited supply of defensive resources? This is a fundamental problem faced by all organisms, and a common solution is the evolution of sophisticated strategies…
Slow metabolic rate helps beetles to live long – but males benefit from a faster lifestyle
Göran Arnqvist, Biljana Stojković, Johanna L. Rönn and Elina Immonen Animals tend to be either fast reproducers or long-lived, because it is hard to be both. This kind of negative relationship between reproduction and longevity arises due to limiting amounts of resources available to individuals. Species optimise the use of available resources differently, which results…
Through bony traits, evolution can alter the resource requirements of a species
Daniel J. Durston and Rana W. El-Sabaawi In today’s rapidly changing world, an important question is how are ecosystems likely to change as a consequence of evolution? The answer here starts with an understanding of why species have the current effects that they do. We know all species affect their ecosystems through the consumption and…
Environment affects the evolution of disease severity in a fish parasite.
Muayad A Mahmud, Janette E Bradley, Andrew D C MacColl Infectious parasites vary greatly in their severity (virulence), e.g. from the common cold to the Ebola virus, but the reasons why are poorly understood. To be successful, parasites have to spread to new victims (hosts), and to do so they use host resources to multiply….
When mothers compete with their offspring: insights into the evolution of family life
Jos Kramer, Maximilian Körner, Janina MC Diehl, Christine Scheiner, Aytül Yüksel-Dadak, Teresa Christl, Philip Kohlmeier and Joël Meunier Decades of research on mammals and birds have taught us that parental care almost always renders the presence of parents beneficial to immature offspring regardless of the prevailing environmental conditions. This is because offspring in these animals…
Diet drives beak diversification in waterfowl
Aaron M Olsen Bird beaks are often cited as a classic example of evolution by natural selection. Over generations, it is thought that beak shapes that are better suited to eating particular foods will outcompete less favourable beak shapes and be passed on to offspring, through a process known as adaptation. Over time this would…
Lowland tropical stream insects are more vulnerable to climate warming than their temperate relatives
Alisha A. Shah, Brian A. Gill, Andrea C. Encalada , Alexander S. Flecker , W. Chris Funk, Juan M. Guayasamin, Boris C. Kondratieff, N. LeRoy Poff, Steven A. Thomas, Kelly R. Zamudio & Cameron K. Ghalambor For decades, scientists have pondered how temperature shapes the physiology, ecology, distribution, and evolution of organisms. It has long…
Blue tit hatching time is unaffected by environmental variation experienced by the mother
Caroline E. Thomson, Jarrod D. Hadfield In birds, eggs within a clutch often hatch at different times, rather than all at once, due to the mother starting incubation before all the eggs in the nest have been laid. Chicks that hatch last in the nest are often at a competitive disadvantage and therefore often attain…
