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opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Species-specific effects of thermal stress on the expression of genetic variation across a diverse group of plant and animal taxa under experimental conditions

Assessing the genetic adaptive potential of populations and species is essential for better understanding evolutionary processes. However, the expression of genetic variation may depend on environmental conditions, which may speed up or slow down evolutionary responses. Thus, the same selection pressure may lead to different responses. Against this background, we here investigate the effects of thermal stress on genetic variation, mainly under controlled laboratory conditions. We estimated additive genetic variance (VA), narrow-sense heritability (h2), and the coefficient of genetic variation (CVA) under both benign control and stressful thermal conditions. We included six species spanning a diverse range of plant and animal taxa and a total of 25 morphological and life-history traits. Our results show that (1) thermal stress reduced fitness components, (2) the majority of traits showed significant genetic variation, and that (3) thermal stress affected the expression of genetic variation (VA, h2 or CVA) in only one third of the cases (25 of 75 analyses, mostly in one clonal species). Moreover, effects were highly species-specific, with genetic variation increasing in 11 and decreasing in 14 cases under stress. Our results hence indicate that thermal stress does not generally affect the expression of genetic variation under laboratory conditions but, nevertheless, increases or decreases genetic variation in specific cases. Consequently, predicting the rate of genetic adaptation might not be generally complicated by environmental variation, but requires a careful case-by-case consideration.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2020View details →

Number of bovine animals tested by age group, reporting country and target group, 2019

The tables contain the number of bovine animals tested by age group, reporting country and target group, 2019

opencc-zeroDec 2011View details →

Data from: Building genetic networks using relatedness information: a novel approach for the estimation of dispersal and characterization of group structure in social animals

Natal dispersal is an important life history trait driving variation in individual fitness and, therefore, a proper understanding of the factors underlying dispersal behaviour is critical to many fields including population dynamics, behavioural ecology and conservation biology. However, individual dispersal patterns remain difficult to quantify despite many years of research using direct and indirect methods. Here, we quantify dispersal in a single intensively-studied population of the cooperatively breeding chestnut-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus ruficeps) using genetic networks created from the combination of pairwise relatedness data and social networking methods and compare this to dispersal estimates from re-sighting data. Not only does this novel approach identify movements between social groups within our study sites but also provides an estimation of immigration rates of individuals originating outside the study site. Both genetic and re-sighting data indicated that dispersal was strongly female-biased, but the magnitude of dispersal estimates was much greater using genetic data. This suggests that many previous studies relying on mark-recapture data may have significantly underestimated dispersal. An analysis of spatial genetic structure within the sampled population also supports the idea that females are more dispersive, with females having no structure beyond the bounds of their own social group while male genetic structure expands for 750 meters from their social group. Although the genetic network approach we have used is an excellent tool for visualising the social and genetic microstructure of social animals and identifying dispersers, our results also indicate the importance of applying them in parallel with behavioural and life history data.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2022View details →

Number of bovine animals tested by age group, reporting country and target group, 2021

The tables contain the number of bovine animals tested by age group, reporting country and target group, 2021.

opencc-zeroFeb 2022View details →

Individual and collective encoding of risk in animal groups

The need to make fast decisions under risky and uncertain conditions is a widespread problem in the natural world. While there has been extensive work on how individual organisms dynamically modify their behavior to respond appropriately to changing environmental conditions (and how this is encoded in the brain), we know remarkably little about the corresponding aspects of collective information processing in animal groups. For example, many groups appear to show increased "sensitivity" in the presence of perceived threat, as evidenced by the increased frequency and magnitude of repeated cascading waves of behavioral change often observed in fish schools and bird flocks under such circumstances. How such context-dependent changes in collective sensitivity are mediated, however, is unknown. Here we address this question using schooling fish as a model system, focusing on 2 nonexclusive hypotheses: 1) that changes in collective responsiveness result from changes in how individuals respond to social cues (i.e., changes to the properties of the "nodes" in the social network), and 2) that they result from changes made to the structural connectivity of the network itself (i.e., the computation is encoded in the "edges" of the network). We find that despite the fact that perceived risk increases the probability for individuals to initiate an alarm, the context-dependent change in collective sensitivity predominantly results not from changes in how individuals respond to social cues, but instead from how individuals modify the spatial structure, and correspondingly the topology of the network of interactions, within the group. Risk is thus encoded as a collective property, emphasizing that in group-living species individual fitness can depend strongly on coupling between scales of behavioral organization.

Fig. 4 in From biggest to smallest mud dragons: size-latitude trends in a group of meiobenthic animals worldwide

Fig. 4 Representation of selected size-temperature and size-productivity trends: mean body size and temperature for the global analysis (a), maximum body size and temperature for the eastern Atlantic (b), mean body size and productivity for the western Atlantic (c), and mean body size and

Fig. 3 in From biggest to smallest mud dragons: size-latitude trends in a group of meiobenthic animals worldwide

Fig. 3 Representation of size-latitude trends between mean (a, b), minimum (c, d) and maximum (e, f) body size and raw values of latitude for the global analysis (left) and the hemisphere analyses (right), depicted separately for allomalorhagids (red dots and lines) and cyclorhagids (cyan dots and lines)

Fig. 1 in From biggest to smallest mud dragons: size-latitude trends in a group of meiobenthic animals worldwide

Fig. 1 World map with Hammer-Aitoff projection, showing all occurrence records of the phylum Kinorhyncha. Different symbols were used for each coastline (squares = western Atlantic, circles = eastern Atlantic, asterisks = western Pacific, diamonds = eastern Pacific, down-triangles = western Indian, up-triangles = eastern Indian). Drawings at the top

Fig. 2 Line art drawing representing a in From biggest to smallest mud dragons: size-latitude trends in a group of meiobenthic animals worldwide

Fig. 2 Line art drawing representing a generalized external morphology of a specimen of cyclorhagid Kinorhyncha. Measures used to calculate an approximation of kinorhynch body size are indicated. Abbreviations: LTS, lateral terminal spine; MSW, maximum sternal width; TL; total trunk length

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: Number of neighbors instead of group size significantly affects individual vigilance levels in large animal aggregations

The group size effect states that animals living in groups gain anti-predator benefits through reducing vigilance levels as group size increases. A basic assumption of group size effect is that all individuals are equally important for a focal individual, who may adjust its vigilance levels according to social information acquired from them. However, some studies have indicated that neighbors pose greater influences on an individual's vigilance decisions than other group members, especially in large aggregations. Vigilance has also been found to be directed to both predators (anti-predation vigilance) and conspecifics (social vigilance). Central individuals might rely more on social vigilance than peripheral individuals. To test these hypotheses, we examined the effects of flock size, number of neighbors and position within a flock on vigilance and competition of greater white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons) that form large foraging flocks in winter, controlling the effects of other variables (group identity, winter period, and site). We found that individual vigilance levels were significantly affected by number of neighbors and position within a flock, whereas flock size showed no effect. Individuals devoted a large component of vigilance to nearby flock mates. Central individuals directed a relatively larger proportion of vigilance to monitor neighbors than peripheral ones, indicating that central individuals more relied on social information acquired from neighbors, possibly caused by the more blocked visual field of central individuals. Moreover, some social vigilance may function as conducting or preventing agonistic interactions since competition intensity was positively correlated with number of neighbors. Our study therefore demonstrate that the number of neighbors is more important than group size in determining individual vigilance in large animal groups. Further studies are still needed to unravel which neighbors pose greater influence on individual vigilance, and the factors that influence individuals to acquire information from their neighbors to adjust vigilance behaviors.

opencc-zeroAug 2021View details →

Collective detection based on visual information in animal groups

We investigate key principles underlying individual, and collective, visual detection of stimuli, and how this relates to the internal structure of groups. While the individual and collective detection principles are generally applicable, we employ a model experimental system of schooling golden shiner fish ( Notemigonus crysoleucas ) to relate theory directly to empirical data, using computational reconstruction of the visual fields of all individuals. This reveals how the external visual information available to each group member depends on the number of individuals in the group, the position within the group, and the location of the external visually detectable stimulus. We find that in small groups, individuals have detection capability in nearly all directions, while in large groups, occlusion by neighbours causes detection capability to vary with position within the group. To understand the principles that drive detection in groups, we formulate a simple, and generally applicable, model that captures how visual detection properties emerge due to geometric scaling of the space occupied by the group and occlusion caused by neighbours. We employ these insights to discuss principles that extend beyond our specific system, such as how collective detection depends on individual body shape, and the size and structure of the group.