Life history plasticity does not confer resilience to environmental change in the mole salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum)

Oecologia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 183 (3) ◽  
pp. 739-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney L. Davis ◽  
David A.W. Miller ◽  
Susan C. Walls ◽  
William J. Barichivich ◽  
Jeffrey Riley ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Michael Belitz ◽  
Vijay Barve ◽  
Joshua Doby ◽  
Maggie Hantak ◽  
Elise Larsen ◽  
...  

Insect phenological lability is key for determining which species will adapt under environmental change. However, little is known about when adult insect activity terminates, and overall activity duration. We used community-science and museum specimen data to investigate the effects of climate and urbanization on timing of adult insect activity for 101 species varying in life history traits. We found detritivores and species with aquatic larval stages extend activity periods most rapidly in response to increasing regional temperature. Conversely, species with subterranean larval stages have relatively constant durations regardless of regional temperature. Multivoltine and univoltine species both extended their period of adult activity similarly in warmer conditions. Longer adult durations may represent a general response to warming, but voltinism data in subtropical environments is likely underreported. This effort provides a framework to address drivers of adult insect phenology at continental scales, and a basis for predicting species response to environmental change.


PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e5746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verena Tams ◽  
Jennifer Lüneburg ◽  
Laura Seddar ◽  
Jan-Phillip Detampel ◽  
Mathilde Cordellier

Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a genotype to produce different phenotypes depending on the environment. It has an influence on the adaptive potential to environmental change and the capability to adapt locally. Adaptation to environmental change happens at the population level, thereby contributing to genotypic and phenotypic variation within a species. Predation is an important ecological factor structuring communities and maintaining species diversity. Prey developed different strategies to reduce their vulnerability to predators by changing their behaviour, their morphology or their life history. Predator-induced life history responses inDaphniahave been investigated for decades, but intra-and inter-population variability was rarely addressed explicitly. We addressed this issue by conducting a common garden experiment with 24 clonal lines of EuropeanDaphnia galeataoriginating from four populations, each represented by six clonal lines. We recorded life history traits in the absence and presence of fish kairomones. Additionally, we looked at the shape of experimental individuals by conducting a geometric morphometric analysis, thus assessing predator-induced morphometric changes. Our data revealed high intraspecific phenotypic variation within and between fourD. galeatapopulations, the potential to locally adapt to a vertebrate predator regime as well as an effect of the fish kairomones on morphology ofD. galeata.


1981 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond D. Semlitsch

The terrestrial activity and summer home range of Ambystoma talpoideum is described in two populations in South Carolina. Emigration of adults from breeding sites occurred from March through May during 1979 and 1980. Adults spent 237–354 days in terrestrial habitats before returning to breeding sites during autumn and early winter. Females spent significantly more time in terrestrial habitats than males. Movement of A. talpoideum into and out of the breeding sites around the perimeter of the Carolina bays was nonrandom. Salamanders used corridors of dense vegetation more frequently than open, grassy shoreline areas. Emigration of individual adults to summer home ranges occurred within several nights and summer home ranges were established 81–261 m from the edge of the bays. Juveniles emigrated significantly shorter distances (12–67 m) than adults. Summer home ranges comprised several focal points of activity or "activity centers." The area of each activity center was relatively constant among individuals (0.02–0.21 m2) when compared with the area of a "minimum polygon" home range (0.11–23.3 m2). Ambystoma talpoideum inhabited burrow systems within each activity center. Burrows ran parallel to the surface of the forest floor and averaged 1.7 cm in diameter and 4.7 cm below the surface.


Author(s):  
Chris M Stone

Abstract Medical Entomology as a field is inherently global – thriving on international and interdisciplinary collaborations and affected dramatically by arthropod and pathogen invasions and introductions. This past year also will be remembered as the year in which the SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 pandemic affected every part of our lives and professional activities and impacted (or changed, sometimes in good ways) our ability to collaborate and detect or respond to invasions. This incredible year is the backdrop for the 2020 Highlights in Medical Entomology. This article highlights the broad scope of approaches and disciplines represented in the 2020 published literature, ranging from sensory and chemical ecology, population genetics, impacts of human-mediated environmental change on vector ecology, life history and the evolution of vector behaviors, to the latest developments in vector surveillance and control.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (34) ◽  
pp. e2026212118
Author(s):  
Anurag A. Agrawal ◽  
Amy P. Hastings ◽  
John L. Maron

Dormancy has repeatedly evolved in plants, animals, and microbes and is hypothesized to facilitate persistence in the face of environmental change. Yet previous experiments have not tracked demography and trait evolution spanning a full successional cycle to ask whether early bouts of natural selection are later reinforced or erased during periods of population dormancy. In addition, it is unclear how well short-term measures of fitness predict long-term genotypic success for species with dormancy. Here, we address these issues using experimental field populations of the plant Oenothera biennis, which evolved over five generations in plots exposed to or protected from insect herbivory. While populations existed above ground, there was rapid evolution of defensive and life-history traits, but populations lost genetic diversity and crashed as succession proceeded. After >5 y of seed dormancy, we triggered germination from the seedbank and genotyped >3,000 colonizers. Resurrected populations showed restored genetic diversity that reduced earlier responses to selection and pushed population phenotypes toward the starting conditions of a decade earlier. Nonetheless, four defense and life-history traits remained differentiated in populations with insect suppression compared with controls. These findings capture key missing elements of evolution during ecological cycles and demonstrate the impact of dormancy on future evolutionary responses to environmental change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnaud G. Barras ◽  
Sébastien Blache ◽  
Michael Schaub ◽  
Raphaël Arlettaz

Species- and population-specific responses to their environment may depend to a large extent on the spatial variation in life-history traits and in demographic processes of local population dynamics. Yet, those parameters and their variability remain largely unknown for many cold-adapted species, which are exposed to particularly rapid rates of environmental change. Here, we compared the demographic traits and dynamics for an emblematic bird species of European mountain ecosystems, the ring ouzel (Turdus torquatus). Using integrated population models fitted in a Bayesian framework, we estimated the survival probability, productivity and immigration of two populations from the Western European Alps, in France (over 11 years) and Switzerland (over 6 years). Juvenile apparent survival was lower and immigration rate higher in the Swiss compared to the French population, with the temporal variation in population growth rate driven by different demographic processes. Yet, when compared to populations in the northwestern part of the range, in Scotland, these two Alpine populations both showed a much lower productivity and higher adult survival, indicating a slower life-history strategy. Our results suggest that demographic characteristics can substantially vary across the discontinuous range of this passerine species, essentially due to contrasted, possibly locally evolved life-history strategies. This study therefore raises the question of whether flexibility in life-history traits is widespread among boreo-alpine species and if it might provide adaptive potential for coping with current environmental change.


Author(s):  
Wolf U. Blanckenhorn

Organisms can respond to environmental change by modifying their behavior to obtain an instant response, through short-term phenotypically plastic, often physiological, adjustments, and/or by adapting their life history through a more long-term evolutionary response. Behavioural and physiological responses, in fact, can occur at all these three temporal scales. Examples of behaviors so affected include congregation, dispersal, foraging, migration, or mating. Such responses have consequences at the population and community levels, and ultimately for the evolution of species. This chapter discusses insect examples of these kinds, with an emphasis on human-induced factors, such as (primarily) climate change, pollution, fragmentation, and urbanization.


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