scholarly journals Using Biogeography to Assess Key Adaptation Strength in Two Bird Families

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdel H. Halloway ◽  
Christopher J. Whelan ◽  
Çağan H. Şekercioğlu ◽  
Joel S. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
New World ◽  
Extreme Environments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Latitudinal Gradients ◽  
Old World ◽  
Extended Range

AbstractAdaptations can be thought of as evolutionary technologies which allow an organism to exploit environments. Among convergent taxa, adaptations may be largely equivalent with the taxa operating in a similar set of environmental conditions, divergent with the taxa operating in different sets of environmental conditions, or superior with one taxon operating within an extended range of environmental conditions than the other. With this framework in mind, we sought to characterize the adaptations of two convergent nectarivorous bird families, the New World hummingbirds (Trochilidae) and Old World sunbirds (Nectariniidae), by comparing their biogeography. Looking at their elevational and latitudinal gradients, hummingbirds not only extend into but also maintain species richness in more extreme environments. We suspect that hummingbirds have a superior key adaptation that sunbirds lack, namely a musculoskeletal architecture that allows for hovering. Through biogeographic comparisons, we have been able to assess and understand adaptations as evolutionary technologies among two convergent bird families, a process that should work for most taxa.

scholarly journals Latitudinal gradients in biotic niche breadth vary across ecosystem types

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1819) ◽  
pp. 20151589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa R. Cirtwill ◽  
Daniel B. Stouffer ◽  
Tamara N. Romanuk
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Food Webs ◽  
Niche Breadth ◽  
The Other ◽  
Latitudinal Gradients ◽  
Food Web Structure ◽  
Scaling Relationships ◽  
Web Structure ◽  
Scaling Relationship ◽  
The Tropics

Several properties of food webs—the networks of feeding links between species—are known to vary systematically with the species richness of the underlying community. Under the ‘latitude–niche breadth hypothesis’, which predicts that species in the tropics will tend to evolve narrower niches, one might expect that these scaling relationships could also be affected by latitude. To test this hypothesis, we analysed the scaling relationships between species richness and average generality, vulnerability and links per species across a set of 196 empirical food webs. In estuarine, marine and terrestrial food webs there was no effect of latitude on any scaling relationship, suggesting constant niche breadth in these habitats. In freshwater communities, on the other hand, there were strong effects of latitude on scaling relationships, supporting the latitude–niche breadth hypothesis. These contrasting findings indicate that it may be more important to account for habitat than latitude when exploring gradients in food-web structure.

scholarly journals Testing the sensory trade-off hypothesis in New World bats

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1885) ◽  
pp. 20181523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinwei Wu ◽  
Hengwu Jiao ◽  
Nancy B. Simmons ◽  
Qin Lu ◽  
Huabin Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Colour Vision ◽  
New World ◽  
Sensory System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Opsin Gene ◽  
Molecular Approach ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Old World ◽  
High Duty Cycle ◽  
Vampire Bats

Detection of evolutionary shifts in sensory systems is challenging. By adopting a molecular approach, our earlier study proposed a sensory trade-off hypothesis between a loss of colour vision and an origin of high-duty-cycle (HDC) echolocation in Old World bats. Here, we test the hypothesis in New World bats, which include HDC echolocators that are distantly related to Old World HDC echolocators, as well as vampire bats, which have an infrared sensory system apparently unique among bats. Through sequencing the short-wavelength opsin gene ( SWS1 ) in 16 species (29 individuals) of New World bats, we identified a novel SWS1 polymorphism in an HDC echolocator: one allele is pseudogenized but the other is intact, while both alleles are either intact or pseudogenized in other individuals. Strikingly, both alleles were found to be pseudogenized in all three vampire bats. Since pseudogenization, transcriptional or translational changes could separately result in functional loss of a gene, a pseudogenized SWS1 indicates a loss of dichromatic colour vision in bats. Thus, the same sensory trade-off appears to have repeatedly occurred in the two divergent lineages of HDC echolocators, and colour vision may have also been traded off against the infrared sense in vampire bats.

STUDIES ON STRONGYLOIDES OF PRIMATES: V. SYNONYMY OF THE SPECIES IN MONKEYS AND APES

1959 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Premvati
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
New World ◽  
Comparative Morphology ◽  
New World Primates ◽  
Free Living ◽  
Old World ◽  
History Of

A study of the comparative morphology and life history of S. fülleborni, S. cebus, and S. simiae in both the parasitic and free-living generations under different environmental conditions, and their comparison with the free-living stages from faeces of Old World and New World primates has led to the conclusion that the three species should be synonymized into one, for which the name Strongyloides fülleborni von Linstow (1905) has priority.

Douglas LePan: Poet of the New and Old Worlds

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 736-756
Author(s):  
Jonathan Locke Hart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New World ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Old World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Northrop Frye

C. Day Lewis said of The Wounded Prince (1948) that Douglas LePan was a poet “in whom the New and the Old World have met.” Like the other New World/Old World or Atlantic world poets, such as T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, LePan represents the individual in nature and the modern world. The other transatlantic poets had a United States-Britain axis, whereas LePan had a Canada- Britain connection. LePan and poets like him deserve study as part of a diversity of voices from smaller literatures, for the sound of beauty and not the noise of fame. During LePan’s life, others knew of his accomplishments, but, since his death, still others may have forgotten what Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood knew – that LePan’s poetry warranted close and considered attention. Before a close reading of some of his most lyrical poems, I provide a context, the critical reception of LePan as a poet, particularly in the years from 1948 to 1987, and some germane discussions of LePan’s poetry in subsequent years.

The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World

1962 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Pike
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The Other ◽  
Old World ◽  
Economic Sphere ◽  
History Of ◽  
Subsequent Opening

The turning point in the history of the Genoese merchants in Spain was the discovery of America and the subsequent opening of trading relations with the new continent. From then on, their ascent to economic predominance in Spain paralleled that nation's emergence as the dominant power of the sixteenth-century world. Fortune gave Spain two empires simultaneously, one in the Old World, the other in the New. Spain's unpreparedness for imperial responsibilities, particularly in the economic sphere, was the springboard for Genoese advancement. Strengthening and enlarging their colony in Seville —after 1503 the “door and port of the Indies” —the Genoese prepared to move across the Atlantic in the wake of Columbus.

Artifice and Reality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Long
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Old World ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Difference

Although Across the River and into the Trees takes place entirely in Venice and the surrounding region, Long argues that the presence of America is often evoked, emphasizing the difference of new world and old world, Europe and America, and present and past. The protagonist, Colonel Cantwell, has a foil in his chauffeur, the American Jackson, who does not appreciate the subtle values of the Italians. Jackson, to Long, represents the unenlightened mainstream American mindset. On the other hand, Long also points to moments where Cantwell idealizes America, looking toward a wonderful future upon his return with his Italian girlfriend, Renata.

The Geopolitics of Comparing and Representing the Other

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-298
Author(s):  
José Luís Jobim
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
South America ◽  
New World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Color ◽  
Old World ◽  
Approaches To Study ◽  
Intellectual Production

Abstract Ferdinand Denis, Almeida Garrett, and Alexandre Herculano were European authors who, during the nineteenth century, formulated a meaning for local color below the equator, and contributed to a comparativism that geopolitically originated from the Old World, which created comparisons based on the representation of the New World chiefly derived from the supposed characteristics of its “nature.” This article will identify traces of the demand made by Ferdinand Denis (1798–1890) that the intellectual production of the Americas must reflect the effect of the nature that inspires us, and formulate local ideas derived from this nature, although from the nineteenth century onwards this opinion was challenged. It will also highlight the importance, for South America, at this moment in history when authoritarianism is rearing its head again, of using comparative approaches to study narratives that represent the period of military dictatorships in South America, as well as to critically analyze the issue of languages in postcolonial contexts in Latin America.

scholarly journals Examination of the Legend of Atlantis in Reference to Protohistoric Communication with America

1886 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Hyde Clarke
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Old World

My historical investigations for some years have particularly borne upon the relations of America to the Old World. They refer to the questions whether the populations and civilisations of the New World are there born and indigenous, or whether they are imported from the other hemisphere, and therefore in no respect distinct.

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