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opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: The effects of stress and glucocorticoids on vocalizations: a test in North American red squirrels

Acoustic signaling is an important means by which animals communicate both stable and labile characteristics. Although it is widely appreciated that vocalizations can convey information on labile state, such as fear and aggression, fewer studies have experimentally examined the acoustic expression of stress state. The transmission of such public information about physiological state could have broad implications, potentially influencing the behavior and life history traits of neighbors. North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) produce vocalizations known as rattles that advertise territorial ownership. We examined the influence of changes in physiological stress state on rattle acoustic structure through the application of a stressor (trapping and handling the squirrels) and by provisioning squirrels with exogenous glucocorticoids (GCs). We characterized the acoustic structure of rattles emitted by these squirrels by measuring rattle duration, mean frequency, and entropy. We found evidence that rattles do indeed exhibit a "stress signature." When squirrels were trapped and handled, they produced rattles that were longer in duration with a higher frequency and increased entropy. However, squirrels that were administered exogenous GCs had similar rattle duration, frequency, and entropy as squirrels that were fed control treatments and unfed squirrels. Our results indicate that short-term stress does affect the acoustic structure of vocalizations, but elevated circulating GC levels do not mediate such changes.

Data from: Genomic analysis and prediction within a US public collaborative winter wheat regional testing nursery

The development of inexpensive, whole-genome profiling enables a transition to allele-based breeding using genomic prediction models. These models consider alleles shared between lines to predict phenotypes and select new lines based on estimated breeding values. This approach can leverage highly-unbalanced datasets common to breeding programs. The Southern Regional Performance Nursery (SRPN) is a public nursery established by the USDA-ARS in 1931 to characterize performance and quality of near-release wheat varieties from breeding programs in the US Central Plains. New entries are submitted annually and can be reentered only once. The trial is grown at more than 30 locations each year and lines are evaluated for grain yield, disease resistance, and agronomic traits. Overall genetic gain is measured across years by including common check cultivars for comparison. We have generated whole-genome profiles via genotyping-by-sequencing for 939 SPRN entries dating back to 1992. We measured the diversity within the nursery and have explored its potential use as a GS training population. GS prediction models across years (average r= 0.33) outperformed year-to-year phenotypic correlation for yield (r=0.27) for a majority of the years evaluated, suggesting that genomic selection has the potential to outperform low heritability selection on yield in these highly variable environments. We also examined the predictability of programs using both program-specific and whole-set training populations. Generally, the predictability of a program was similar with both approaches. These results suggest that wheat breeding programs can collaboratively leverage the immense datasets that are generated from regional testing networks.

Data from: Does biological intimacy shape ecological network structure? A test using a brood pollination mutualism on continental and oceanic islands

Biological intimacy—the degree of physical proximity or integration of partner taxa during their life cycles—is thought to promote the evolution of reciprocal specialization and modularity in the networks formed by co‐occurring mutualistic species, but this hypothesis has rarely been tested. Here, we test this "biological intimacy hypothesis" by comparing the network architecture of brood pollination mutualisms, in which specialized insects are simultaneously parasites (as larvae) and pollinators (as adults) of their host plants to that of other mutualisms which vary in their biological intimacy (including ant‐myrmecophyte, ant‐extrafloral nectary, plant‐pollinator and plant‐seed disperser assemblages). We use a novel dataset sampled from leafflower trees (Phyllanthaceae: Phyllanthus s. l. [Glochidion]) and their pollinating leafflower moths (Lepidoptera: Epicephala) on three oceanic islands (French Polynesia) and compare it to equivalent published data from congeners on continental islands (Japan). We infer taxonomic diversity of leafflower moths using multilocus molecular phylogenetic analysis and examine several network structural properties: modularity (compartmentalization), reciprocality (symmetry) of specialization and algebraic connectivity. We find that most leafflower‐moth networks are reciprocally specialized and modular, as hypothesized. However, we also find that two oceanic island networks differ in their modularity and reciprocal specialization from the others, as a result of a supergeneralist moth taxon which interacts with nine of 10 available hosts. Our results generally support the biological intimacy hypothesis, finding that leafflower‐moth networks (usually) share a reciprocally specialized and modular structure with other intimate mutualisms such as ant‐myrmecophyte symbioses, but unlike nonintimate mutualisms such as seed dispersal and nonintimate pollination. Additionally, we show that generalists—common in nonintimate mutualisms—can also evolve in intimate mutualisms, and that their effect is similar in both types of assemblages: once generalists emerge they reshape the network organization by connecting otherwise isolated modules.

Data from: A framework for simultaneous tests of abiotic, biotic, and historical drivers of species distributions: empirical tests for North American wood warblers based on climate and pollen

Understanding how abiotic, biotic and historical factors shape species distributions remains a central question in ecology, but studies linking biotic factors to continental-scale patterns remain scarce. Here, we present a novel framework for simultaneously testing patterns expected when abiotic, biotic or historical factors drive species range limits. We use ecological niche models to produce empirical estimates of the "Biotic, Abiotic, and Movement" paradigm (BAM diagrams), which previously had only been used theoretically. Based on climatic and pollen data, as well as explicit consideration of dispersal limitations, we implement the framework for a group of North American birds (Oreothlypis warblers) with clear habitat associations. Because the pollen-based predictor variables characterize vegetation, they represent biotic factors needed by each bird species. Although continental-scale patterns of distribution traditionally are attributed to abiotic factors, only one species matched the hypothesis of solely abiotic drivers. In contrast, pollen-based models indicate biotic drivers for two species, correctly predicting their absence in climatically suitable areas. These results highlight the feasibility of considering and quantifying potential effects of biotic interactions on species ranges, especial when interactions can be decoupled from abiotic factors. Furthermore, the availability of pollen data now and in the Holocene highlights the potential of these data to be used to predict range shifts of other organisms tightly dependent on particular vegetation types.

opencc-zeroApr 2020View details →

Data from: Is repeatability of metabolic rate influenced by social separation? a test with a teleost fish

Metabolic rates are typically thought to have important influences on fitness and more broadly be relevant to the ecology and evolution of animals. Previous studies demonstrate that metabolic rates are repeatable to a certain extent under constant conditions, but how social conditions influence the repeatability of metabolic rate remains largely unknown. In this study we investigated the repeatability of resting metabolic rate (RMR) in the highly-social crucian carp (Carassius auratus) after being socially separated for different time periods relative to control fish that were not socially separated. We found that RMR was repeatable in fish in the control group, while the repeatability of RMR disappeared quickly (even within 7 d) when fish were exposed to social separation. This study is the first to examine the role of social separation at different time periods on the repeatability of intra-individual physiological variation in fish. We highlight that inter-individual repeatability of metabolic rate can be substantial over time but was eliminated by social separation. The findings indicate that the repeatability of metabolic rate in fish is condition-dependent, and that the change in repeatability of metabolic rate should not be overlooked when considering the ecological and evolutionary effects of environmental change.

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2021View details →

Quasi-static cyclic shear-compression tests on plastered rubble stone masonry walls - Experimental data

This dataset contains quasi-static cyclic shear-compression tests on six large-scale rubble stone masonry walls plus two example point clouds created from two specimens.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Testing genotypic variation of an invasive plant species in response to soil disturbance and herbivory

Herbivores, competitors, and predators can inhibit biological invasions ("biotic resistance" sensu Elton 1959), while disturbance typically promotes biological invasions. Although biotic resistance and disturbance are often considered separately in the invasion literature, these two forces may be linked. One mechanism by which disturbance may facilitate biological invasions is by decreasing the effectiveness of biotic resistance. The effects of both disturbance and biotic resistance may vary across invading genotypes, and genetic variation in the invasive propagule pool may increase the likelihood that some genotypes can overcome biotic resistance or take greater advantage of disturbance. We conducted an experimental field trial in which we manipulated soil disturbance (thatch removal and loosening soil) and the presence of insect herbivores and examined their effects on the invasion success of 44 Medicago polymorpha genotypes. As expected, insecticide reduced leaf damage and increased Medicago fecundity, suggesting that insect herbivores in this system provide some biotic resistance. Soil disturbance increased Medicago fecundity, but did not alter the effectiveness of biotic resistance by insect herbivores. We found significant genetic variation in Medicago in response to disturbance, but not in response to insect herbivores. These results suggest that the ability of Medicago to invade particular habitats depends on the amount of insect herbivory, the history of disturbance in the habitat, and how the specific genotypes in the invader pool respond to these factors.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: The molecular biogeography of the Indo-Pacific: testing hypotheses with multispecies genetic patterns

Aim: To test hypothesized biogeographic partitions of the tropical Indo-Pacific Ocean with phylogeographic data from 56 taxa, and to evaluate the strength and nature of barriers emerging from this test. Location: The Indo-Pacific Ocean. Time Period: Pliocene through the Holocene. Major Taxa Studied: 56 marine species. Methods: We tested eight biogeographic hypotheses for partitioning of the Indo-Pacific using a novel modification to analysis of molecular variance. Putative barriers to gene flow emerging from this analysis were evaluated for pairwise ΦST, and these ΦST distributions were compared to distributions from randomized datasets and simple coalescent simulations of vicariance arising from the Last Glacial Maximum. We then weighed the relative contribution of distance vs. environmental or geographical barriers to pairwise ΦST with a distance-based redundancy analysis (dbRDA). Results: We observed a diversity of outcomes, although the majority of species fit a few broad biogeographic regions. Repeated coalescent simulation of a simple vicariance model yielded a wide distribution of pairwise ΦST that was very similar to empirical distributions observed across five putative barriers to gene flow. Three of these barriers had median ΦST that were significantly larger than random expectation. Only 21 of 52 species analyzed with dbRDA rejected the null model. Among these, 15 had overwater distance as a significant predictor of pairwise ΦST, while 11 were significant for geographical or environmental barriers other than distance. Main Conclusions: Although there is support for three previously described barriers, phylogeographic discordance in the Indo-Pacific oceans indicates incongruity between processes shaping the distributions of diversity at the species and population levels. Among the many possible causes of this incongruity, genetic drift provides the most compelling explanation: given massive effective population sizes of Indo-Pacific species, even hard vicariance for tens of thousands of years can yield ΦST values that range from 0 to nearly 0.5.

opencc-zeroDec 2019View details →

Data from: A test of community assembly rules using foliar endophytes from a tropical forest canopy

Community assembly theory assumes that ecological communities are spatially delimited into patches. Within these patches, coexistence results from environmental filtering, competition, and immigration. Truly delineated communities exist in laboratory studies of microbial cultures in Petri dishes, yet empirical tests conducted in continuous environments often use patches defined by convention as opposed to realised boundaries. Here we perform a test of ecological community assembly rules using foliar endophyte communities from a tropical rainforest, where leaves are considered as patches for both fungal and bacterial communities. We determined the diversity of fungal and bacterial endophytes using environmental DNA sequencing of 365 top-canopy leaves, collected from 38 host trees belonging to 22 different species across a 4-hectare research plot. Three leaves were collected from three or more branches within each tree crown. We tested the effect of host tree species and their level of phylogenetic relatedness on community composition as well as the contribution of geographic distance between leaves to endophyte community diversity. Endophyte diversity significantly differed across host tree species, as did community composition. Within certain endophytic orders (Xylariales, Rhizobiales) species assemblages significantly differed across host tree species, but this trend was weaker or non-existent in other orders known to contain pathogens and saprotrophs (Polyporales, Solirubrobacterales). Phylogenetically related host tree species displayed more similar endophyte communities than expected by chance, but geographically close trees did not. Consistent with the finding of host-specificity, nearby leaves tended to host more similar communities than distantly positioned ones. These findings demonstrate that foliar endophytes are structured by dispersal across small spatial scales, but at the scale of the canopy they display patterns of neutral filtering, with only a small part of variation described by host tree differences. Endophyte communities thus act as a model system in evoking the rules predicted by theoretical community ecology.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Maternal oxidative stress and reproduction: testing the constraint, cost and shielding hypotheses in a wild mammal

1. Oxidative stress has been proposed as a central causal mechanism underlying the life history trade-off between current and future reproduction and survival in wild animals. 2. Whereas mixed evidence suggests that maternal oxidative stress may act both as a constraint and a cost to reproduction, some studies have reported a lack of association between reproduction and maternal oxidative stress. 3. The oxidative shielding hypothesis offers an alternative explanation, suggesting that mothers may pre-emptively mitigate the oxidative costs of reproduction by increasing antioxidant defences prior to reproduction. 4. We tested the oxidative constraint, cost, and shielding hypotheses using a longitudinal field study of oxidative stress levels in a species that breeds using daily energy income, the Columbian ground squirrel (Urocitellus columbianus). 5. Elevated maternal oxidative damage prior to reproduction was associated with higher maternal investment in litter mass at birth, but not at weaning. 6. Breeding females increased their antioxidant capacity and decreased their oxidative damage from birth to lactation compared to non-breeding females measured at the same time periods. However, lower maternal oxidative stress during lactation was not associated with higher offspring survival or mass growth over this period. 7. Our results provide little evidence for maternal oxidative stress acting as a constraint on, or cost to, reproduction in Columbian ground squirrels, but partially support the idea that oxidative shielding occurred to buffer potential oxidative costs of reproduction.

opencc-zeroJul 2019View details →

Data from: A weapons-testes trade-off in males is amplified in female traits

Sexually selected weapons are assumed to trade off with traits related to ejaculates, such as testes. Yet, remarkably little is known about what governs resource allocation and why trade-offs are found in some cases and not others. Often-used models depict competitive allocation occurring within the functional grouping of traits (e.g., reproduction); however, other factors including tissue expense and developmental timing may influence allocation. Experimental comparisons of investment across the sexes have the potential to illuminate allocation rules, because the sexes do not always use traits for the same functions. Here, we capitalize upon a species where females have weapons-testes homologues. We report that a documented trade-off in investment between hind-limb weapons and testes in leaf-footed cactus bugs, Narnia femorata, is even more pronounced in female hind limbs and ovaries. Female hind limbs in this species do not share the clear reproductive function of male hind limbs, therefore this trade-off spans trait functional groups. Such patterns of investment suggest that future studies of reproductive trade-offs should consider factors such as tissue expense and developmental timing.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: Examining the microclimate hypothesis in Amazonian birds: indirect tests of the 'visual constraints' mechanism

Proposed mechanisms for the decline of terrestrial and understory insectivorous birds in the tropics include a related subset that together has been termed the "microclimate hypothesis." One prediction from this hypothesis is that sensitivity to bright light environments discourages birds of the dimly lit rainforest interior from using edges, gaps, or disturbed forest. Using a hierarchical Bayesian framework and capture data across time and space, we tested this by first determining vulnerability based on differences in within-species capture rates between disturbed and undisturbed forest for 64 bird species at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project in central Amazonian Brazil. We found that 35 species (55%) were vulnerable to anthropogenic habitat degradation, whereas only four (6%) were more commonly captured in degraded forest. To infer visual sensitivity, we then examined two different characters: eye size (maximum pupil diameter) relative to body mass and the initiation time of dawn song, which presumably reflects a species' visual capacity under low light intensities. We predicted that species with large relative eye sizes and birds with earlier dawn songs would exhibit increased vulnerability in degraded habitats with bright light. Contrary to our predictions, however, vulnerability was positively correlated with the mean start time of dawn song. This indicates that species that wait to initiate dawn song are also more vulnerable to habitat degradation. After correcting for body size, there was no effect of eye size on vulnerability. Together, our results do not provide quantitative support for the light sensitivity mechanism of the microclimate hypothesis. More sensitive, experimental tests, such as behavioral assays with controlled light environments, especially in a comparative framework, are needed to rigorously evaluate the role of light sensitivity as an aspect of the microclimate hypothesis among Neotropical birds.

Data from: Statistically testing the role of individual learning and decision-making in trapline foraging

Trapline foraging, a behavior consisting of repeated visitation to spatially fixed resources in a predictable sequence, has been observed over diverse taxa and is important ecologically for efficient resource gathering. Despite this, few null models exist to test the significance of suspected traplines, particularly for studies interested in the role of individual decision-making in the formation of traplines versus the role of resource layouts and random movement patterns. Here we present a spatially explicit, individual-based null model, which may be used to test whether resource layout and realistic forager movement may account for sequence repeats in suspected traplines. In our model, we generate resource visitation sequences by modeling a forager without spatial memory using a random walk to discover and visit spatially-fixed resources. We quantify traplining using Determinism, a metric derived from recurrence quantification analysis. Using both simulated and empirical bee foraging data, we compared our model with two existing null models—a completely random model and a sample randomization model. The former creates null sequences by randomly selecting available resources, while the latter randomizes the order of visits in observed sequences. We found that our model has a higher propensity of being (correctly) rejected than a sample randomization model for trapliners, and a lower propensity of being (incorrectly) rejected for non-trapliners compared to a completely random model. The use of a spatially explicit individual-based null model to test the statistical significance of patterns in empirical data is a novel approach that may be useful for other spatial and individual-based processes.

Data from: Employing hypothesis testing and data from multiple genomic compartments to resolve recalcitrant backbone nodes in Goodenia s.l. (Goodeniaceae)

Goodeniaceae is a primarily Australian flowering plant family with a complex taxonomy and evolutionary history. Previous phylogenetic analyses have successfully resolved the backbone topology of the largest clade in the family, Goodenia s.l., but have failed to clarify relationships within the species-rich and enigmatic Goodenia clade C, a prerequisite for taxonomic revision of the group. We used genome skimming to retrieve sequences for chloroplast, mitochondrial, and nuclear markers for 24 taxa representing Goodenia s.l., with a particular focus on Goodenia clade C. We performed extensive hypothesis tests to explore incongruence in clade C and evaluate statistical support for clades within this group, using datasets from all three genomic compartments. The mitochondrial dataset is comparable to the chloroplast dataset in providing resolution within Goodenia clade C, though backbone support values within this clade remain low. The hypothesis tests provided an additional, complementary means of evaluating support for clades. We propose that the major subclades of Goodenia clade C (C1–C3 + Verreauxia) are the result of a rapid radiation, and each represents a distinct lineage.

Data from: Testing for human impacts in the mismatch of living and dead ostracode assemblages at nested spatial scales in subtropical lakes from the Bahamian archipelago

Naturally time-averaged accumulations of skeletal remains – death assemblages – provide reliable, albeit temporally coarse, information on the species composition and structure of communities in diverse settings, and their mismatch with local living communities usually signals recent human-driven ecological change. Here, we present the first test of live-dead mismatch as an indicator of human stress using ostracodes. On three islands along a gradient of human population density in the Bahamas, we compared the similarity of living and death assemblages in ten lakes with relatively low levels of human stress to live-dead similarity in eleven physically comparable lakes subject to industrial, agricultural, or other human activities currently or in the past. We find that live-dead agreement in pristine lakes is consistently excellent, boding well for using death assemblages in modern-day and paleolimnological biodiversity assessments. In most comparison of physically-similar paired lakes, sample-level live-dead mismatch in both taxonomic composition and species' rank-abundance is on average significantly greater in the stressed lake; live-dead agreement is not lower in all samples from stressed lakes, but is more variable. When samples are pooled for lake-level and island-level comparisons, stressed lakes still yield lower live-dead agreement but the significance of the difference with pristine lakes decreases – species that occur dead-only (or alive-only) in one sample are likely to occur alive (or dead) in other samples. Inter-island differences in live-dead agreement are congruent with, but not significantly correlated with, differences in human population density. This situation arises from heterogeneity in the timing and magnitudes of stresses and in the extent of post-stress recovery. Live-dead mismatch in ostracode assemblages thus may be a reliable indicator of human impact at the sample-level with the potential to be a widely-applicable tool for identifying impacted habitats, and perhaps, monitor the progress of their recovery.

opencc-by-sa-4.0Nov 2014View details →

Cyclic test data of five URM walls at half-scale

This data presents the results of a test series on five identical unreinforced masonry walls built at half-scale that were constructed using hollow clay brick units and standard cement-based mortar. The test units were subjected to quasi-static cycles of increasing drift demands and the tests differed with regard to the applied axial load and the moment restraint applied at the top of the walls. The walls were tested up to failure. Throughout the loading the deformations of the walls were recorded using a digital photogrammetric measurement system tracking the movement of 312 points per test unit.

opencc-zeroFeb 2015View details →

Module Data for the Empirical Investigation of Subsumption Test Hardness in Description Logic Classification

This dataset contains 224 modules of 14 distinct ontologies for the submission "Empirical Investigation of Subsumption Test Hardness in Description Logic Classification" to CADE, 2015. The submitted version with the dataset description can be found here: http://owl.cs.manchester.ac.uk/publications/supporting-material/subtest-hardness-in-classification/ The ontologies in this set are BioPortal ontologies from the snapshot provided at http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15667.  The following ontologies are in the set:  MFOEM - Emotion Ontology BT - Biotop Ontology NEMO - Neural Electromagnetic Ontology NTDO - Neglected Tropical Disease Ontology OBI - Ontology for Biomedical Investigations OGSF - Ontology for Genetic Susceptibility Factor ONL-MSA - Mental State Assemssment VSO - Vital Sign Ontology CAO - Clusters of Orthologous Groups Cog Analysis Ontology  ICO - Informed Consent Ontology OMRSE - Ontology of Medically Related Social Entities STATO - Statistics Ontology NPO - Nanoparticle Ontology OBCS - Ontology of Biological and Clinical Statistics

opencc-zeroMar 2015View details →

Test Dataset For Data On Acid HackDay

Saw tooth profiles predicting resistance or susceptibility of seven mutations in S.aureus DHFR to trimethoprim.

opencc-zeroJul 2015View details →

Assembled RADseq Data: "Historical introgression among the American live oaks and the comparative nature of tests for introgression"

Assembled sequence data for Eaton et al. (2015) "Historical introgression among the American live oaks and the comparative nature of tests for introgression". The unassembled sequence data are available on NCBI SRA.  Data sets were assembled using pyrad v.2.13 as described in notebook 1 from the study.