scholarly journals Advancement in long-distance bird migration through individual plasticity in departure

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse R. Conklin ◽  
Simeon Lisovski ◽  
Phil F. Battley

AbstractGlobally, bird migration is occurring earlier in the year, consistent with climate-related changes in breeding resources. Although often attributed to phenotypic plasticity, there is no clear demonstration of long-term population advancement in avian migration through individual plasticity. Using direct observations of bar-tailed godwits (Limosa lapponica) departing New Zealand on a 16,000-km journey to Alaska, we show that migration advanced by six days during 2008–2020, and that within-individual advancement was sufficient to explain this population-level change. However, in individuals tracked for the entire migration (50 total tracks of 36 individuals), earlier departure did not lead to earlier arrival or breeding in Alaska, due to prolonged stopovers in Asia. Moreover, changes in breeding-site phenology varied across Alaska, but were not reflected in within-population differences in advancement of migratory departure. We demonstrate that plastic responses can drive population-level changes in timing of long-distance migration, but also that behavioral and environmental constraints en route may yet limit adaptive responses to global change.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Coulson ◽  
Bruce E Kendall ◽  
Julia Barthold ◽  
Floriane Plard ◽  
Susanne Schindler ◽  
...  

AbstractUnderstanding how the natural world will be impacted by environmental change over the coming decades is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. Addressing this challenge is difficult because environmental change can generate both population level plastic and evolutionary responses, with plastic responses being either adaptive or non-adaptive. We develop an approach that links quantitative genetic theory with data-driven structured models to allow prediction of population responses to environmental change via plasticity and adaptive evolution. After introducing general new theory, we construct a number of example models to demonstrate that evolutionary responses to environmental change over the short-term will be considerably slower than plastic responses, and that the rate of adaptive evolution to a new environment depends upon whether plastic responses are adaptive or non-adaptive. Parameterization of the models we develop requires information on genetic and phenotypic variation and demography that will not always be available, meaning that simpler models will often be required to predict responses to environmental change. We consequently develop a method to examine whether the full machinery of the evolutionarily explicit models we develop will be needed to predict responses to environmental change, or whether simpler non-evolutionary models that are now widely constructed may be sufficient.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Biek ◽  
Naomi Akamine ◽  
Michael K Schwartz ◽  
Toni K Ruth ◽  
Kerry M Murphy ◽  
...  

Male-biased dispersal is a common trait in mammals, including carnivores, but its genetic consequences at the population level have been rarely considered for solitary species. We used long-term genetic data from cougars ( Puma concolor ) in and around Yellowstone National Park to test predictions based on differences in dispersal behaviour among males and females. Consistent with frequent long-distance dispersal of males, we found support for our prediction of less than expected allele sharing in pair-wise comparisons. In contrast, female residents present at the same time and females separated by few generations failed to share more alleles than expected, contrary to our predictions based on limited female dispersal. However, we find that genetic contributions of females with higher reproductive success were still noticeable in subsequent generations, consistent with female offspring showing fidelity to their natal area. These results highlight the importance of male dispersal for inbreeding avoidance, but do not indicate that short-distance dispersal or philopatry in female cougars results in spatial clustering of related individuals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 331-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie C. Snell-Rood ◽  
Megan E. Kobiela, ◽  
Kristin L. Sikkink, ◽  
Alexander M. Shephard

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity provides a mechanism of developmental rescue in novel and rapidly changing environments. Understanding the underlying mechanism of plasticity is important for predicting both the likelihood that a developmental response is adaptive and associated life-history trade-offs that could influence patterns of subsequent evolutionary rescue. Although evolved developmental switches may move organisms toward a new adaptive peak in a novel environment, such mechanisms often result in maladaptive responses. The induction of generalized physiological mechanisms in new environments is relatively more likely to result in adaptive responses to factors such as novel toxins, heat stress, or pathogens. Developmental selection forms of plasticity, which rely on within-individual selective processes, such as shaping of tissue architecture, trial-and-error learning, or acquired immunity, are particularly likely to result in adaptive plasticity in a novel environment. However, both the induction of plastic responses and the ability to be plastic through developmental selection come with significant costs, resulting in delays in reproduction, increased individual investment, and reduced fecundity. Thus, we might expect complex interactions between plastic responses that allow survival in novel environments and subsequent evolutionary responses at the population level.


2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Upham ◽  
Yingjie Yang ◽  
David Raper ◽  
Callum Thomas ◽  
David Gillingwater ◽  
...  

Genetics ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 146 (2) ◽  
pp. 471-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Travisano

The effect of environment on adaptation and divergence was examined in two sets of populations of Escherichia coli selected for 1000 generations in either maltose- or glucose-limited media. Twelve replicate populations selected in maltose-limited medium improved in fitness in the selected environment, by an average of 22.5%. Statistically significant among-population genetic variation for fitness was observed during the course of the propagation, but this variation was small relative to the fitness improvement. Mean fitness in a novel nutrient environment, glucose-limited medium, improved to the same extent as in the selected environment, with no statistically significant among-population genetic variation. In contrast, 12 replicate populations previously selected for 1000 generations in glucose-limited medium showed no improvement, as a group, in fitness in maltose-limited medium and substantial genetic variation. This asymmetric pattern of correlated responses suggests that small changes in the environment can have profound effects on adaptation and divergence.


Author(s):  
A. D. Chalfoun

Abstract Purpose of Review Anthropogenic activities can lead to the loss, fragmentation, and alteration of wildlife habitats. I reviewed the recent literature (2014–2019) focused on the responses of avian, mammalian, and herpetofaunal species to oil and natural gas development, a widespread and still-expanding land use worldwide. My primary goals were to identify any generalities in species’ responses to development and summarize remaining gaps in knowledge. To do so, I evaluated the directionality of a wide variety of responses in relation to taxon, location, development type, development metric, habitat type, and spatiotemporal aspects. Recent Findings Studies (n = 70) were restricted to the USA and Canada, and taxonomically biased towards birds and mammals. Longer studies, but not those incorporating multiple spatial scales, were more likely to detect significant responses. Negative responses of all types were present in relatively low frequencies across all taxa, locations, development types, and development metrics but were context-dependent. The directionality of responses by the same species often varied across studies or development metrics. Summary The state of knowledge about wildlife responses to oil and natural gas development has developed considerably, though many biases and gaps remain. Studies outside of North America and that focus on herpetofauna are lacking. Tests of mechanistic hypotheses for effects, long-term studies, assessment of response thresholds, and experimental designs that isolate the effects of different stimuli associated with development, remain critical. Moreover, tests of the efficacy of habitat mitigation efforts have been rare. Finally, investigations of the demographic effects of development across the full annual cycle were absent for non-game species and are critical for the estimation of population-level effects.


Author(s):  
James ROSE

ABSTRACT Within the context of the work and achievements of James Croll, this paper reviews the records of direct observations of glacial landforms and sediments made by Charles Lyell, Archibald and James Geikie and James Croll himself, in order to evaluate their contributions to the sciences of glacial geology and Quaternary environmental change. The paper outlines the social and physical environment of Croll's youth and contrasts this with the status and experiences of Lyell and the Geikies. It also outlines the character and role of the ‘Glasgow School’ of geologists, who stimulated Croll's interest into the causes of climate change and directed his focus to the glacial and ‘interglacial’ deposits of central Scotland. Contributions are outlined in chronological order, drawing attention to: (i) Lyell's high-quality observations and interpretations of glacial features in Glen Clova and Strathmore and his subsequent rejection of the glacial theory in favour of processes attributed to floating icebergs; (ii) the significant impact of Archibald Geikie's 1863 paper on the ‘glacial drift of Scotland’, which firmly established the land-ice theory; (iii) the fact that, despite James Croll's inherent dislike of geology and fieldwork, he provided high-quality descriptions and interpretations of the landforms and sediments of central Scotland in order to test his theory of climate change; and (iv) the great communication skills of James Geikie, enhanced by contacts and evidence from around the world. It is concluded that whilst direct observations of glacial landforms and sediments were critical to the long-term development of the study of glaciation, the acceptance of this theory was dependent also upon the skills, personality and status of the Geikies and Croll, who developed and promoted the concepts. Sadly, the subsequent rejection of the land-ice concept by Lyell resulted in the same factors challenging the acceptance of the glacial theory.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 3281
Author(s):  
Xu He ◽  
Yong Yin

Recently, deep learning-based techniques have shown great power in image inpainting especially dealing with squared holes. However, they fail to generate plausible results inside the missing regions for irregular and large holes as there is a lack of understanding between missing regions and existing counterparts. To overcome this limitation, we combine two non-local mechanisms including a contextual attention module (CAM) and an implicit diversified Markov random fields (ID-MRF) loss with a multi-scale architecture which uses several dense fusion blocks (DFB) based on the dense combination of dilated convolution to guide the generative network to restore discontinuous and continuous large masked areas. To prevent color discrepancies and grid-like artifacts, we apply the ID-MRF loss to improve the visual appearance by comparing similarities of long-distance feature patches. To further capture the long-term relationship of different regions in large missing regions, we introduce the CAM. Although CAM has the ability to create plausible results via reconstructing refined features, it depends on initial predicted results. Hence, we employ the DFB to obtain larger and more effective receptive fields, which benefits to predict more precise and fine-grained information for CAM. Extensive experiments on two widely-used datasets demonstrate that our proposed framework significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches both in quantity and quality.


2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 1351-1360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumud K. Kunjilwar ◽  
Harvey M. Fishman ◽  
Dario J. Englot ◽  
Roger G. O'Neil ◽  
Edgar T. Walters

Learning and memory depend on neuronal alterations induced by electrical activity. Most examples of activity-dependent plasticity, as well as adaptive responses to neuronal injury, have been linked explicitly or implicitly to induction by Ca2+ signals produced by depolarization. Indeed, transient Ca2+ signals are commonly assumed to be the only effective transducers of depolarization into adaptive neuronal responses. Nevertheless, Ca2+-independent depolarization-induced signals might also trigger plastic changes. Establishing the existence of such signals is a challenge because procedures that eliminate Ca2+ transients also impair neuronal viability and tolerance to cellular stress. We have taken advantage of nociceptive sensory neurons in the marine snail Aplysia, which exhibit unusual tolerance to extreme reduction of extracellular and intracellular free Ca2+ levels. The axons of these neurons exhibit a depolarization-induced memory-like hyperexcitability that lasts a day or longer and depends on local protein synthesis for induction. Here we show that transient localized depolarization of these axons in an excised nerve–ganglion preparation or in dissociated cell culture can induce short- and intermediate-term axonal hyperexcitability as well as long-term protein synthesis–dependent hyperexcitability under conditions in which Ca2+ entry is prevented (by bathing in nominally Ca2+ -free solutions containing EGTA) and detectable Ca2+ transients are eliminated (by adding BAPTA-AM). Disruption of Ca2+ release from intracellular stores by pretreatment with thapsigargin also failed to affect induction of axonal hyperexcitability. These findings suggest that unrecognized Ca2+-independent signals exist that can transduce intense depolarization into adaptive cellular responses during neuronal injury, prolonged high-frequency activity, or other sustained depolarizing events.


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