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opencc-zeroMay 2024View details →

Data from: Understanding evolutionary rescue and parallelism in response to environmental stress

Evolutionary rescue, the process by which populations facing environmental stress avoid extinction through genetic adaptation, is a critical area of study in evolutionary biology. The order in which mutations arise and get established will be relevant to the population's rescue. This study investigates the degree of parallel evolution at the genotypic level between independent populations facing environmental stress and subject to different demographic regimes. Under density regulation, two regimes exist: in the former, the population can restore positive growth rates by adjusting its population size or through adaptive mutations, whereas in the second regime, the population is doomed to extinction unless a rescue mutation occurs. Analytical approximations for the likelihood of evolutionary rescue are obtained and contrasted with simulation results. We show that the initial level of maladaptation and the demographic regime significantly affect the level of parallelism. There is an evident transition between these two regimes. Whereas in the first regime, parallelism decreases with the level of maladaptation, it displays the opposite behavior in the rescue/extinction regime. These findings have important implications for understanding population persistence and the degree of parallelism in evolutionary responses as they integrate demographic effects and evolutionary processes.

opencc-by-4.0Feb 2018View details →

The effects of environmental history and thermal stress on coral physiology and immunity

This dataset has all data for the manuscript (Wall CB,  CA Ricci, GE Foulds, LD Mydlarz, RD Gates, HM Putnam (2018) The effects of environmental history and thermal stress on coral physiology and immunity. Marine Biology). Data included a zipped archive shape file for creating Kāne'ohe Bay map, physical data (light and temperature) from Kāne'ohe Bay and laboratory experiments, pCO2 data for Kāne'ohe Bay reef sites dowloaded from NOAA PMEL, and biological responses (PAM fluorometry, physiology, immune activity and oxidative profile).

Figure 4 in Limitations of allometry, morphometry, and fluctuating asymmetry in detecting environmental stress caused by lead soil contamination in aphids under field conditions

Figure 4 Fluctuating asymmetry (mean and error deviation) observed in the antenna and tibia of Brevicoryne brassicae in the presence (Lead (Pb)) and absence (Control) of lead.

Figure 3 in Limitations of allometry, morphometry, and fluctuating asymmetry in detecting environmental stress caused by lead soil contamination in aphids under field conditions

Figure 3 Negative allometry represented by the allometric coefficients of both the antenna and tibia and their confidence intervals; the values are related to the body length ofBrevicoryne brassicae in the presence (Lead (Pb)) and absence (Control) of lead.

Figure 1 in Limitations of allometry, morphometry, and fluctuating asymmetry in detecting environmental stress caused by lead soil contamination in aphids under field conditions

Figure 1 Brevicoryne brassicae placed in a dorsal-ventral position for structure measurement. (a): Total body length (b): antenomer length (c): length of the posterior tibia. Source: the authors.

Figure 2 in Limitations of allometry, morphometry, and fluctuating asymmetry in detecting environmental stress caused by lead soil contamination in aphids under field conditions

Figure 2 Mean length and standard error of the antenna, tibia and body length of Brevicoryne brassicae in the presence (Lead (Pb)) and absence (Control) of lead.

opencc-zeroMar 2023View details →

Early-life food stress hits females harder than males in insects: a meta-analysis of sex differences in environmental sensitivity

Fitness consequences of early-life environmental conditions are often sex-specific, but corresponding evidence for invertebrates remains inconclusive. Here we use meta-analysis to evaluate sex-specific sensitivity to early-life nutritional conditions in insects. Using literature-derived data for 85 species with broad phylogenetic and ecological coverage, we show that females are generally more sensitive to food stress than males. Stressful nutritional conditions during development typically lead to female-biased mortality and thus increasingly male-biased sex ratios of emerging adults. We further demonstrate that the general trend of higher sensitivity to food stress in females can primarily be attributed to their typically larger body size in insects and hence higher energy needs during development. By contrast, there is no consistent evidence of sex-biased sensitivity in sexually size-monomorphic species. Drawing conclusions regarding sex-biased sensitivity in species with male-biased size dimorphism remains to wait for the accumulation of relevant data. Our results suggest that environmental conditions leading to elevated juvenile mortality may potentially affect the performance of insect populations further by reducing the proportion of females among individuals reaching reproductive age. Accounting for sex-biased mortality is therefore essential to understanding the dynamics and demography of insect populations, not least importantly in the context of ongoing insect declines.

publicMay 2024View details →

Data from: Understanding evolutionary rescue and parallelism in response to environmental stress

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publicMar 2023View details →

Early-life food stress hits females harder than males in insects: a meta-analysis of sex differences in environmental sensitivity

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edi40/100

Environmental and behavioral sensor data to identify heat stress in dairy cows

Heat stress impairs the health and performance of dairy cows, yet only a few studies have investigated the diversity of cattle behavioral responses to heat waves. This research was conducted on an Italian Holstein dairy farm equipped with precision livestock farming sensors to assess potential different behavioral patterns of the animals. Three heat waves, defined as at least five consecutive days with mean daily temperature-humidity index higher than 72, were recorded in the farm area during the summer of 2021. Individual daily milk yield data of 102 cows were used to identify ‘heat-sensitive’ animals, meaning the cows that, under a given heat wave, experienced a milk yield drop that was not linked with other health events (e.g., mastitis). Milk yield drops were detected as perturbations of the lactation curve estimated by iteratively using Wood’s equation. Individual daily minutes of lying, chewing, and activity were retrieved from ear-tag-based accelerometer sensors. Semi-parametric generalized estimating equations models were used to assess behavioral deviations of heat-sensitive cows from the herd means under heat stress conditions. Heat waves were associated with an overall increase in the herd’s chewing and activity times, along with an overall decrease of lying time. Heat-sensitive cows spent approximately 15 min/d more chewing and performing activities (p < 0.05). The findings of this research suggest that the information provided by high-frequency sensor data could assist farmers in identifying cows for which personalized interventions to alleviate heat stress are needed.

openCC0Apr 2023View details →

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: Does gene flow aggravate or alleviate maladaptation to environmental stress in small populations?

Environmental change can expose populations to unfamiliar stressors, and maladaptive responses to those stressors may result in population declines or extirpation. Although gene flow is classically viewed as a cause of maladaptation, small and isolated populations experiencing high levels of drift and little gene flow may be constrained in their evolutionary response to environmental change. We provide a case study using the model Trinidadian guppy system that illustrates the importance of considering non-adaptive forces (i.e., gene flow and genetic drift) when predicting (mal)adaptive response to acute stress. We compared population genomic patterns and acute stress responses of inbred guppy populations from headwater streams either with or without a recent history of gene flow from a more diverse mainstem population. Compared to 'no-gene flow' analogues, we found that populations with recent gene flow showed higher genomic variation and increased stress tolerance – but only when exposed to a stress familiar to the mainstem population (heat shock). All headwater populations showed similar responses to a familiar stress in headwater environments (starvation) regardless of gene flow history, whereas exposure to an entirely unfamiliar stress (copper sulphate) showed population-level variation unrelated to environment or recent evolutionary history. Our results suggest that (mal)adaptive responses to acutely stressful environments are determined in part by recent evolutionary history and in part by previous exposure. In some cases, gene flow may provide the variation needed to persist, and eventually adapt, in the face of novel stress.

opencc-zeroApr 2020View details →

Strong species differences in life-history do not predict oxidative stress physiology or sensitivity to an environmental oxidant

1. Species typically align along a fast-slow life-history continuum, yet it is not clear to what extent oxidative stress physiology can be integrated with this continuum to form a 'pace-of-life syndrome', especially so in invertebrates. This is important, given the assumed role of oxidative stress in mediating life-history trade-offs, and the prediction that species with a faster pace should be more vulnerable to oxidative stress. 2. We tested whether a species' life-history pace, here represented by its growth rate, can predict species-level differentiation in physiology and sensitivity to oxidative stress. Therefore, we exposed four species of Ischnura damselflies that strongly align along a fast-slow life-history continuum to different levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. We measured an extended set of physiological traits linked to the pace-of-life: standard metabolic rate (SMR), oxidative stress physiology (antioxidant enzymes and oxidative damage), and defence/condition traits (investment in immune function, energy storage, and structural defence). 3. Despite strong species differences in growth rate and physiology, growth rate did not predict species-level differentiation in physiology. Hence there was no support for the integration of metabolic rate, oxidative stress physiology or defence/condition traits into a species-level syndrome. 4. UV exposure affected nearly all traits: it reduced growth rate and increased metabolic rate, affected all oxidative stress physiology traits and increased the two defence traits (immune function, and melanin content). Nevertheless, the pace-of-life based on growth rate did not predict sensitivity to UV. Instead, the observed pattern of investment in structural UV defence (melanin) might have reduced the need for enzymatic antioxidant defence, this way potentially decoupling the covariation between the life-history pace and oxidative stress physiology. 5. The absence of an integrated axis of life-history and physiological variation indicates no major constraints for the evolution of these traits among the studied damselfly species. Our study highlights that ecological differences between species may decouple covariation between species' life-history pace and their physiology, as well as their sensitivity to environmental stressors. 30-Mar-2020

zenodo36/100

Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Reveals Placental Response under Environmental Stress

This repository provides scRNA-seq data corresponding to the manuscript "Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Reveals Placental Response under Environmental Stress" by Van Buren, Azzara, Rangel-Moreno, de la Luz Garcia-Hernandez, Murphy, Cohen, Lin, and Park. The repository includes both count by gene matrices output from CellRanger version 6.0.1 (file names *_filtered_feature_matrix.h5 for each of the eight samples Control_1_M, Control_1_F, Control_2_M, Control_2_F, As_1_M, As_1_F, As_2_M, As_2_F), and a finalized Seurat object including cell type assignments as used for analyses in the manuscript (file name final_Seurat_obj.RData). Accompanying code used in analysis can be found at https://github.com/edvanburen/placenta_code.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2023View details →

opencc-zeroFeb 2024View details →

Vertical structural complexity of plant communities represents the combined effects of resource acquisition and environmental stress on the Tibetan Plateau

Knowledge of vertical structural complexity (VSC) is important, because the resulting spatial partitioning is closely linked to resource utilization and environmental adaptation. However, the spatial pattern of VSC on large scales and its underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we systematically investigated 2,013 plant communities through grid sampling on the Tibetan Plateau (TP). VSC was quantified as the maximum plant height within a plot (Height-max), coefficient of variation of plant height (Height-var), and Shannon evenness of plant height (Height-even). Precipitation dominated the spatial variation in VSC in forests and shrublands, supporting the classic physiological tolerance hypothesis (PTH). In contrast, for alpine meadows, steppes, and desert grasslands in extreme environments, non-resource limiting factors (e.g., wide diurnal temperature ranges and strong winds) dominate VSC variation. Generally, with the shifting of climate from favorable to extreme, the effect of resource availability gradually decreases, but the effect of non-resource limiting factors gradually increases, and that the PTH only applicable in "favorable conditions". With the help of machine learning models, maps of VSC at 1-km resolution were produced for the TP for the first time. Our new findings and maps of VSC provide new insights into macroecological studies, especially for adaptation mechanisms and model optimization.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Stressful city sounds: glucocorticoid responses to experimental traffic noise are environmentally dependent

A major challenge in urban ecology is to identify the environmental factors responsible for phenotypic differences between urban and rural individuals. However, the intercorrelation between the factors that characterise urban environments, combined with a lack of experimental manipulations of these factors in both urban and rural areas, hinder efforts to identify which aspects of urban environments are responsible for phenotypic differences. Among the factors modified by urbanisation, anthropogenic sound, particularly traffic noise, is especially detrimental to animals. The mechanisms by which anthropogenic sound affects animals are unclear, but one potential mechanism is through changes in glucocorticoid hormone levels. We exposed adult house wrens, Troglodytes aedon, to either traffic noise or pink noise. We found that urban wrens had higher initial (pre-restraint) corticosterone than rural wrens before treatment, and that traffic noise elevated initial corticosterone of rural, but not urban, wrens. By contrast, restraint stress-induced corticosterone was not affected by noise treatment. Our results indicate that traffic noise specifically contributes to determining the glucocorticoid phenotype, and suggest that glucocorticoids are a mechanism by which anthropogenic sound causes phenotypic differences between urban and rural animals.

opencc-zeroJul 2021View details →

Data from: High environmental stress and productivity increase functional diversity along a deep-sea hydrothermal vent gradient

Productivity and environmental stress are major drivers of multiple biodiversity facets and faunal community structure. Little is known on their interacting effects on early community assembly processes in the deep sea (>200 m), the largest environment on Earth. However, at hydrothermal vents productivity correlates, at least partially, with environmental stress. Here, we studied the colonization of rock substrata deployed along a deep-sea hydrothermal vent gradient at four sites with and without direct influence of vent fluids at 1700 m depth in the Lucky Strike vent field (Mid-Atlantic Ridge, MAR). We examined in detail the composition of faunal communities (>20 m) established after two years and evaluated species and functional patterns. We expected the stressful hydrothermal activity to (1) limit functional diversity and (2) filter for traits clustering functionally similar species. However, our observations did not support our hypotheses. On the contrary, our results show that hydrothermal activity enhanced functional diversity. Moreover, despite high species diversity, environmental conditions at surrounding sites appear to filter for specific traits, thereby reducing functional richness. In fact, diversity in ecological functions may relax the effect of competition allowing several species to coexist in high densities in the reduced space of the highly-productive vent habitats under direct fluid emissions. We suggest that the high productivity at fluid-influenced sites supports higher functional diversity and traits that are more energetically expensive. The presence of exclusive species and functional entities led to a high turnover between surrounding sites. As a result, some of these sites contributed more than expected to the total species and functional β-diversities. The observed faunal overlap and energy links (exported productivity) suggest that rather than operating as separate entities, habitats with and without influence of hydrothermal fluids may be considered as interconnected entities. Low functional richness and environmental filtering suggests that surrounding areas, with their very heterogeneous species and functional assemblages, may be especially vulnerable to environmental changes related to natural and anthropogenic impacts, including deep-sea mining.

opencc-zeroAug 2023View details →

No evidence that the widespread environmental contaminant caffeine alters energy balance or stress responses in fish

Anthropogenic sources of environmental pollution are ever-increasing as urban areas expand and more chemical compounds are used in daily life. The stimulant caffeine is one of the most consumed chemical compounds worldwide, and as a result, has been detected as an environmental contaminant in all types of major water sources on all continents. Exposure of wildlife to environmental pollutants can disrupt the energy balance of these organisms, as restoration of homeostasis is prioritised. In turn, energy allocated to other key biological processes such as growth or reproduction may be affected, consequently reducing the overall fitness of an individual. Therefore, we aimed to investigate if long-term exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of caffeine had any energetic consequences on wildlife. Specifically, we exposed wild eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) to one of three nominal concentrations of caffeine (0, 100, and 10,000 ng/L) and assayed individuals for metabolic rate, general activity, antipredator and foraging behaviour, and body size as measures of energy expenditure or energy intake. We found no differences in any measured traits between any of the given exposure treatments, indicating that exposure to caffeine at current environmental levels may not adversely affect the energy balance and fitness of vulnerable freshwater fish.