scholarly journals Ant nest architecture is shaped by local adaptation and plastic response to temperature

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Madison Sankovitz ◽  
Jessica Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Temperature Treatment ◽  
Nest Size ◽  
Nest Architecture ◽  
Plastic Response ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Significant Interaction Effect ◽  
Ant Nest

AbstractSocial insects are among the most abundant arthropods in terrestrial ecosystems, where they provide ecosystem services. The effect of subterranean activity of ants on soil is well-studied, yet little is known about nest architecture due to the difficulty of observing belowground patterns. Furthermore, many species’ ranges span environmental gradients, and their nest architecture is likely shaped by the climatic and landscape features of their specific habitats. We investigated the effects of two temperature treatments on the shape and size of nests built by Formica podzolica ants collected from high and low elevations in the Colorado Rocky Mountains in a full factorial experiment. Ants nested in experimental chambers with soil surface temperatures matching the local temperatures of sample sites. We observed a plastic response of nest architecture to conditions experienced during excavation; workers experiencing a high temperature excavated deeper nests than those experiencing a cooler temperature. Further, we found evidence of local adaptation to temperature, with a significant interaction effect of natal elevation and temperature treatment on nest size and complexity. Specifically, workers from high elevation sites built larger nests with more tunnels when placed in the cool surface temperature treatment, and workers from low elevation sites exhibited the opposite pattern. Our results suggest that subterranean ant nest architecture is shaped by a combination of plastic and locally adapted building behaviors; we suggest that the flexibility of this ‘extended phenotype’ likely contributes to the widespread success of ants.

scholarly journals Trends in the effects of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems in the Republic of Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sei-Woong Choi ◽  
Woo-Seok Kong ◽  
Ga-Young Hwang ◽  
Kyung Ah Koo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Community Ecology ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Plant Phenology ◽  
Republic Of Korea ◽  
Cold Adapted ◽  
Climate Change Effects ◽  
The Republic

AbstractIn this review, we aimed to synthesize the current knowledge on the observed and projected effects of climate change on the ecosystems of Korea (i.e., the Republic of Korea (ROK) or South Korea), as well as the main causes of vulnerability and options for adaptation in these ecosystems based on a range of ecological and biogeographical data. To this end, we compiled a set of peer-reviewed papers published since 2014. We found that publication of climate-related studies on plants has decreased in the field of plant phenology and physiology, whereas such publication has rapidly increased in plant and animal community ecology, reflecting the range shifts and abundance change that are occurring under climate change. Plant phenology studies showed that climate change has increased growing seasons by advancing the timing of flowering and budburst while delaying the timing of leafing out. Community ecology studies indicated that the future ranges of cold-adapted plants and animals could shrink or shift toward northern and high-elevation areas, whereas the ranges of warm-adapted organisms could expand and/or shift toward the areas that the aforementioned cold-adapted biota previously occupied. This review provides useful information and new insights that will improve understanding of climate change effects on the ecosystems of Korea. Moreover, it will serve as a reference for policy-makers seeking to establish future sectoral adaptation options for protection against climate change.

scholarly journals Complex landscape topography can facilitate local adaptation during a range shift

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Fitt ◽  
Lesley T. Lancaster
Keyword(s):  
Gene Flow ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Spatial Differentiation ◽  
Niche Differentiation ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Range Shift ◽  
Landscape Complexity ◽  
Topographic Complexity ◽  
Complex Landscape

Warming climates provide many species the opportunity to colonise newly-suitable regions at higher latitudes and elevations. Despite becoming warmer, higher latitudes and elevations nevertheless offer novel climatic challenges, such as greater thermal variability and altered frequency of weather events, and these challenges exert selection on expanding populations. However, high gene flow and genetic drift during the expansion phase may limit the degree to which species can adapt to novel climatic conditions at the range front. Here we examine how landscape topographic complexity influences the opportunity for local adaptation to novel conditions during a range shift. Using RAD-seq data, we investigated whether elevation, latitude, climatic niche differentiation, and gene flow across a complex landscape were associated with signatures of adaptation during recent range expansion of the damselfly Ischnura elegans in Northeast Scotland. Our data revealed two distinct routes of colonisation, with admixture between these routes resulting in increased heterozygosity and population density. Expansion rates, assessed as directional rates of gene flow, were greater between more climatically similar sites than between climatically divergent sites. Significant genetic structure and allelic turnover was found to emerge near the range front at sites characterised by high elevation, low directional gene flow, and high spatial differentiation in climate regimes. This predictive combination of factors suggests that landscape complexity may be a prerequisite for promoting differentiation of populations, and providing opportunities for local adaptation, during rapid or contemporary range shifts.

scholarly journals Morphogenesis of an extended phenotype: four-dimensional ant nest architecture

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (68) ◽  
pp. 586-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Minter ◽  
Nigel R. Franks ◽  
Katharine A. Robson Brown
Keyword(s):  
Computed Tomography ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Ct Scanning ◽  
Nest Architecture ◽  
Extended Phenotype ◽  
Micro Computed Tomography ◽  
Local Competition ◽  
Ant Nest ◽  
Dimensional Growth ◽  
Resolution Dataset

Animals produce a variety of structures to modify their environments adaptively. Such structures represent extended phenotypes whose development is rarely studied. To begin to rectify this, we used micro-computed tomography (CT) scanning and time-series experiments to obtain the first high-resolution dataset on the four-dimensional growth of ant nests. We show that extrinsic features within the environment, such as the presence of planes between layers of sediment, influence the architecture of Lasius flavus nests, with ants excavating horizontal tunnels along such planes. Intrinsically, the dimensions of the tunnels are associated with individual colonies, the dynamics of excavation can be explained by negative feedback and the angular distribution of tunnels is probably a result of local competition among tunnels for miners. The architecture and dynamics of ant nest excavation therefore result from local interactions of ants with one another and templates inherent in the environment. The influence of the environment on the form of structures has been documented across both biotic and abiotic domains. Our study opens up the utility of CT scanning as a technique for observing the morphogenesis of such structures.

scholarly journals Complex landscape topography can facilitate local adaptation during a range shift

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Fitt ◽  
Lesley T. Lancaster
Keyword(s):  
Gene Flow ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Spatial Differentiation ◽  
Niche Differentiation ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Range Shift ◽  
Landscape Complexity ◽  
Topographic Complexity ◽  
Complex Landscape

Warming climates provide many species the opportunity to colonise newly-suitable regions at higher latitudes and elevations. Despite becoming warmer, higher latitudes and elevations nevertheless offer novel climatic challenges, such as greater thermal variability and altered frequency of weather events, and these challenges exert selection on expanding populations. However, high gene flow and genetic drift during the expansion phase may limit the degree to which species can adapt to novel climatic conditions at the range front. Here we examine how landscape topographic complexity influences the opportunity for local adaptation to novel conditions during a range shift. Using RAD-seq data, we investigated whether elevation, latitude, climatic niche differentiation, and gene flow across a complex landscape were associated with signatures of adaptation during recent range expansion of the damselfly Ischnura elegans in Northeast Scotland. Our data revealed two distinct routes of colonisation, with admixture between these routes resulting in increased heterozygosity and population density. Expansion rates, assessed as directional rates of gene flow, were greater between more climatically similar sites than between climatically divergent sites. Significant genetic structure and allelic turnover was found to emerge near the range front at sites characterised by high elevation, low directional gene flow, and high spatial differentiation in climate regimes. This predictive combination of factors suggests that landscape complexity may be a prerequisite for promoting differentiation of populations, and providing opportunities for local adaptation, during rapid or contemporary range shifts.

scholarly journals Presence of Microplastics in the Food Web of the Largest High-Elevation Lake in North America

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 264
Author(s):  
Stephanie C. Driscoll ◽  
Hayley C. Glassic ◽  
Christopher S. Guy ◽  
Todd M. Koel
Keyword(s):  
Food Web ◽  
Water Samples ◽  
Lake Trout ◽  
Cutthroat Trout ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Oncorhynchus Clarkii ◽  
Global Action ◽  
Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout

Microplastics have been documented in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems throughout the world. However, few studies have investigated microplastics in freshwater fish diets. In this study, water samples and three trophic levels of a freshwater food web were investigated for microplastic presence: amphipods (Gammarus lacustris), Yellowstone cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii bouvieri), and lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush). Microplastics and other anthropogenic materials were documented in water samples, amphipods, and fish, then confirmed using FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared) and Raman spectroscopy. Our findings confirmed the presence of microplastics and other anthropogenic materials in three trophic levels of a freshwater food web in a high-elevation lake in a national park, which corroborates recent studies implicating the global distribution of microplastics. This study further illustrates the need for global action regarding the appropriate manufacturing, use, and disposal of plastics to minimize the effects of plastics on the environment.

scholarly journals Selective sorting of ancestral introgression in maize and teosinte along an elevational cline

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Calfee ◽  
Daniel Gates ◽  
Anne Lorant ◽  
M. Taylor Perkins ◽  
Graham Coop ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Zea Mays ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Chromosome 9 ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
Sympatric Populations ◽  
Maize Populations ◽  
Elevational Range ◽  
Local Sourcing

AbstractWhile often deleterious, hybridization can also be a key source of genetic variation and pre-adapted haplotypes, enabling rapid evolution and niche expansion. Here we evaluate these opposing selection forces on introgressed ancestry between maize (Zea mays ssp. mays), and its wild teosinte relative. Introgression from ecologically diverse teosinte may have facilitated maize’s global range expansion, in particular to challenging high elevation regions (> 1500 m). We generated low-coverage genome sequencing data for 348 maize and mexicana individuals to evaluate patterns of introgression in 14 sympatric population pairs, spanning the elevational range of Zea mays ssp. mexicana, a teosinte endemic to the mountains of Mexico. While recent hybrids are commonly observed in sympatric populations and mexicana demonstrates fine-scale local adaptation, we find that the majority of mexicana ancestry tracts introgressed >1000 generations ago. This mexicana ancestry seems to have maintained much of its diversity and likely came from a common ancestral source, rather than contemporary sympatric populations, resulting in relatively low FST between mexicana ancestry tracts sampled from geographically distant maize populations. Introgressed mexicana ancestry is reduced in lower-recombination rate quintiles of the genome and around domestication genes, consistent with pervasive selection against introgression. However, we also find mexicana ancestry increases across the sampled elevational gradient and that high introgression peaks are most commonly shared among high-elevation maize populations, consistent with introgression from mexicana facilitating adaptation to the highland environment. In the other direction, we find patterns consistent with adaptive and clinal introgression of maize ancestry into sympatric mexicana at many loci across the genome, suggesting that maize also contributes to adaptation in mexicana, especially at the lower end of its elevational range. In sympatric maize, in addition to high introgression regions we find many genomic regions where selection for local adaptation maintains steep gradients in introgressed mexicana ancestry across elevation, including at least two inversions: the well-characterized Inv4m and a new 3 Mb inversion Inv9f surrounding the macrohairless1 locus on chromosome 9. The bulk of our ancestry selection outliers show no signals of sweeps or local sourcing from sympatric populations and so likely represent ancestral introgression sorted by selection, resulting in correlated but distinct outcomes of introgression in different contemporary maize landrace populations.

scholarly journals Absence of population structure across elevational gradients despite large phenotypic variation in mountain chickadees ( Poecile gambeli )

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 170057 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie L. Branch ◽  
Joshua P. Jahner ◽  
Dovid Y. Kozlovsky ◽  
Thomas L. Parchman ◽  
Vladimir V. Pravosudov
Keyword(s):  
Gene Flow ◽  
Genetic Differentiation ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Phenotypic Variation ◽  
Population Genetic ◽  
Indirect Evidence ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Elevational Gradients ◽  
Mountain Chickadees

Montane habitats are characterized by predictably rapid heterogeneity along elevational gradients and are useful for investigating the consequences of environmental heterogeneity for local adaptation and population genetic structure. Food-caching mountain chickadees inhabit a continuous elevation gradient in the Sierra Nevada, and birds living at harsher, high elevations have better spatial memory ability and exhibit differences in male song structure and female mate preference compared to birds inhabiting milder, low elevations. While high elevation birds breed, on average, two weeks later than low elevation birds, the extent of gene flow between elevations is unknown. Despite phenotypic variation and indirect evidence for local adaptation, population genetic analyses based on 18 073 single nucleotide polymorphisms across three transects of high and low elevation populations provided no evidence for genetic differentiation. Analyses based on individual genotypes revealed no patterns of clustering, pairwise estimates of genetic differentiation ( F ST , Nei's D) were very low, and AMOVA revealed no evidence for genetic variation structured by transect or by low and high elevation sites within transects. In addition, we found no consistent evidence for strong parallel allele frequency divergence between low and high elevation sites within the three transects. Large elevation-related phenotypic variation may be maintained by strong selection despite gene flow and future work should focus on the mechanisms underlying such variation.

scholarly journals Stigmergic construction and topochemical information shape ant nest architecture

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (5) ◽  
pp. 1303-1308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anaïs Khuong ◽  
Jacques Gautrais ◽  
Andrea Perna ◽  
Chaker Sbaï ◽  
Maud Combe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Stochastic Model ◽  
Social Insects ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Lasius Niger ◽  
Nest Construction ◽  
Nest Architecture ◽  
Individual Behaviors ◽  
Ant Nest ◽  
Key Features

The nests of social insects are not only impressive because of their sheer complexity but also because they are built from individuals whose work is not centrally coordinated. A key question is how groups of insects coordinate their building actions. Here, we use a combination of experimental and modeling approaches to investigate nest construction in the ant Lasius niger. We quantify the construction dynamics and the 3D structures built by ants. Then, we characterize individual behaviors and the interactions of ants with the structures they build. We show that two main interactions are involved in the coordination of building actions: (i) a stigmergic-based interaction that controls the amplification of depositions at some locations and is attributable to a pheromone added by ants to the building material; and (ii) a template-based interaction in which ants use their body size as a cue to control the height at which they start to build a roof from existing pillars. We then develop a 3D stochastic model based on these individual behaviors to analyze the effect of pheromone presence and strength on construction dynamics. We show that the model can quantitatively reproduce key features of construction dynamics, including a large-scale pattern of regularly spaced pillars, the formation and merging of caps over the pillars, and the remodeling of built structures. Finally, our model suggests that the lifetime of the pheromone is a highly influential parameter that controls the growth and form of nest architecture.

scholarly journals Pervasive Genomic Signatures of Local Adaptation to Altitude Across Highland Specialist Andean Hummingbird Populations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa C W Lim ◽  
Ke Bi ◽  
Christopher C Witt ◽  
Catherine H Graham ◽  
Liliana M Dávalos
Keyword(s):  
Gene Flow ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Genetic Drift ◽  
Population Genetic ◽  
Environmental Gradients ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Nucleotide Polymorphisms ◽  
Peruvian Andes ◽  
Tropical Mountains

Abstract Populations along steep environmental gradients are subject to differentiating selection that can result in local adaptation, despite countervailing gene flow, and genetic drift. In montane systems, where species are often restricted to narrow ranges of elevation, it is unclear whether the selection is strong enough to influence functional differentiation of subpopulations differing by a few hundred meters in elevation. We used targeted capture of 12 501 exons from across the genome, including 271 genes previously implicated in altitude adaptation, to test for adaptation to local elevations for 2 highland hummingbird species, Coeligena violifer (n = 62) and Colibri coruscans (n = 101). For each species, we described population genetic structure across the complex geography of the Peruvian Andes and, while accounting for this structure, we tested whether elevational allele frequency clines in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showed evidence for local adaptation to elevation. Although the 2 species exhibited contrasting population genetic structures, we found signatures of clinal genetic variation with shifts in elevation in both. The genes with SNP-elevation associations included candidate genes previously discovered for high-elevation adaptation as well as others not previously identified, with cellular functions related to hypoxia response, energy metabolism, and immune function, among others. Despite the homogenizing effects of gene flow and genetic drift, natural selection on parts of the genome evidently optimizes elevation-specific cellular function even within elevation range-restricted montane populations. Consequently, our results suggest local adaptation occurring in narrow elevation bands in tropical mountains, such as the Andes, may effectively make them “taller” biogeographic barriers.

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