scholarly journals How global extinctions impact regional biodiversity in mammals

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shan Huang ◽  
T. Jonathan Davies ◽  
John L. Gittleman
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Ecosystem Processes ◽  
Biodiversity Hotspots ◽  
Species Assemblage ◽  
Species Extinction ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function

Phylogenetic diversity (PD) represents the evolutionary history of a species assemblage and is a valuable measure of biodiversity because it captures not only species richness but potentially also genetic and functional diversity. Preserving PD could be critical for maintaining the functional integrity of the world's ecosystems, and species extinction will have a large impact on ecosystems in areas where the ecosystem cost per species extinction is high. Here, we show that impacts from global extinctions are linked to spatial location. Using a phylogeny of all mammals, we compare regional losses of PD against a model of random extinction. At regional scales, losses differ dramatically: several biodiversity hotspots in southern Asia and Amazonia will lose an unexpectedly large proportion of PD. Global analyses may therefore underestimate the impacts of extinction on ecosystem processes and function because they occur at finer spatial scales within the context of natural biogeography.

scholarly journals Tree Diversity Reduces Fungal Endophyte Richness and Diversity in a Large-Scale Temperate Forest Experiment

Diversity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric A. Griffin ◽  
Joshua G. Harrison ◽  
Melissa K. McCormick ◽  
Karin T. Burghardt ◽  
John D. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Fungal Endophytes ◽  
Fungal Endophyte ◽  
Tree Diversity ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
And Function

Although decades of research have typically demonstrated a positive correlation between biodiversity of primary producers and associated trophic levels, the ecological drivers of this association are poorly understood. Recent evidence suggests that the plant microbiome, or the fungi and bacteria found on and inside plant hosts, may be cryptic yet important drivers of important processes, including primary production and trophic interactions. Here, using high-throughput sequencing, we characterized foliar fungal community diversity, composition, and function from 15 broadleaved tree species (N = 545) in a recently established, large-scale temperate tree diversity experiment using over 17,000 seedlings. Specifically, we tested whether increases in tree richness and phylogenetic diversity would increase fungal endophyte diversity (the “Diversity Begets Diversity” hypothesis), as well as alter community composition (the “Tree Diversity–Endophyte Community” hypothesis) and function (the “Tree Diversity–Endophyte Function” hypothesis) at different spatial scales. We demonstrated that increasing tree richness and phylogenetic diversity decreased fungal species and functional guild richness and diversity, including pathogens, saprotrophs, and parasites, within the first three years of a forest diversity experiment. These patterns were consistent at the neighborhood and tree plot scale. Our results suggest that fungal endophytes, unlike other trophic levels (e.g., herbivores as well as epiphytic bacteria), respond negatively to increasing plant diversity.

scholarly journals Global-scale drivers of crop visitor diversity and the historical development of agriculture

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1915) ◽  
pp. 20192096 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Brown ◽  
Saul A. Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Habitat Management ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Region Of Origin ◽  
Flower Visitor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bee Diversity ◽  
Analyse Data

Understanding diversity in flower-visitor assemblages helps us improve pollination of crops and support better biodiversity conservation outcomes. Much recent research has focused on drivers of crop-visitor diversity operating over spatial scales from fields to landscapes, such as pesticide and habitat management, while drivers operating over larger scales of continents and biogeographic realms are virtually unknown. Flower and visitor traits influence attraction of pollinators to flowers, and evolve in the context of associations that can be ancient or recent. Plants that have been adopted into agriculture have been moved widely around the world and thereby exposed to new flower visitors. Remarkably little is known of the consequence of these historical patterns for present-day crop-visiting bee diversity. We analyse data from 317 studies of 27 crops worldwide and find that crops are visited by fewer bee genera outside their region of origin and outside their family's region of origin. Thus, recent human history and the deeper evolutionary history of crops and bees appear to be important determinants of flower-visitor diversity at large scales that constrain the levels of visitor diversity that can be influenced by field- and landscape-scale interventions.

scholarly journals Evolution of a chordate-specific mechanism for myoblast fusion

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haifeng Zhang ◽  
Renjie Shang ◽  
Kwantae Kim ◽  
Wei Zheng ◽  
Christopher J. Johnson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Myoblast Fusion ◽  
Last Common Ancestor ◽  
Functional Tests ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
New Genes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Vertebrates ◽  
And Function

The size of an animal is determined by the size of its musculoskeletal system. Myoblast fusion is an innovative mechanism that allows for multinucleated muscle fibers to compound the size and strength of individual mononucleated cells. However, the evolutionary history of the control mechanism underlying this important process is currently unknown. The phylum Chordata hosts closely related groups that span distinct myoblast fusion states: no fusion in cephalochordates, restricted fusion and multinucleation in tunicates, and extensive, obligatory fusion in vertebrates. To elucidate how these differences may have evolved, we studied the evolutionary origins and function of membrane-coalescing agents Myomaker and Myomixer in various groups of chordates. Here we report that Myomaker likely arose through gene duplication in the last common ancestor of tunicates and vertebrates, while Myomixer appears to have evolved de novo in early vertebrates. Functional tests revealed an unexpectedly complex evolutionary history of myoblast fusion in chordates. A pre-vertebrate phase of muscle multinucleation driven by Myomaker was followed by the later emergence of Myomixer that enables the highly efficient fusion system of vertebrates. Thus, our findings reveal the evolutionary origins of chordate-specific fusogens and illustrate how new genes can shape the emergence of novel morphogenetic traits and mechanisms.

scholarly journals Reconstruction of proto-vertebrate, proto-cyclostome and proto-gnathostome genomes provides new insights into early vertebrate evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoichiro Nakatani ◽  
Prashant Shingate ◽  
Vydianathan Ravi ◽  
Nisha E. Pillai ◽  
Aravind Prasad ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Gene Loss ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Genome Structure ◽  
Origin And Evolution ◽  
Long Read ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Genome Assemblies ◽  
Key Questions

AbstractAncient polyploidization events have had a lasting impact on vertebrate genome structure, organization and function. Some key questions regarding the number of ancient polyploidization events and their timing in relation to the cyclostome-gnathostome divergence have remained contentious. Here we generate de novo long-read-based chromosome-scale genome assemblies for the Japanese lamprey and elephant shark. Using these and other representative genomes and developing algorithms for the probabilistic macrosynteny model, we reconstruct high-resolution proto-vertebrate, proto-cyclostome and proto-gnathostome genomes. Our reconstructions resolve key questions regarding the early evolutionary history of vertebrates. First, cyclostomes diverged from the lineage leading to gnathostomes after a shared tetraploidization (1R) but before a gnathostome-specific tetraploidization (2R). Second, the cyclostome lineage experienced an additional hexaploidization. Third, 2R in the gnathostome lineage was an allotetraploidization event, and biased gene loss from one of the subgenomes shaped the gnathostome genome by giving rise to remarkably conserved microchromosomes. Thus, our reconstructions reveal the major evolutionary events and offer new insights into the origin and evolution of vertebrate genomes.

scholarly journals RecPD: A Recombination-Aware Measure of Phylogenetic Diversity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cedoljub Bundalovic-Torma ◽  
Darrell Desveaux ◽  
David S Guttman
Keyword(s):  
Pseudomonas Syringae ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Gene Families ◽  
Ancestral State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Study Type

A critical step in studying biological features (e.g., genetic variants, gene families, metabolic capabilities, or taxa) underlying traits or outcomes of interest is assessing their diversity and distribution. Accurate assessments of these patterns are essential for linking features to traits or outcomes and understanding their functional impact. Consequently, it is of crucial importance that the metrics employed for quantifying feature diversity can perform robustly under any evolutionary scenario. However, the standard metrics used for quantifying and comparing the distribution of features, such as prevalence, phylogenetic diversity, and related approaches, either do not take into consideration evolutionary history, or assume strictly vertical patterns of inheritance. Consequently, these approaches cannot accurately assess diversity for features that have undergone recombination or horizontal transfer. To address this issue, we have devised RecPD, a novel recombination-aware phylogenetic-diversity metric for measuring the distribution and diversity of features under all evolutionary scenarios. RecPD utilizes ancestral-state reconstruction to map the presence / absence of features onto ancestral nodes in a species tree, and then identifies potential recombination events in the evolutionary history of the feature. We also derive a number of related metrics from RecPD that can be used to assess and quantify evolutionary dynamics and correlation of feature evolutionary histories. We used simulation studies to show that RecPD reliably identifies evolutionary histories under diverse recombination and loss scenarios. We then apply RecPD in a real-world scenario in a preliminary study type III effector protein families secreted by the plant pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas syringae and demonstrate that prevalence is an inadequate metric that obscures the potential impact of recombination. We believe RecPD will have broad utility for revealing and quantifying complex evolutionary processes for features at any biological level.

Diversity and preserved shell coloration patterns of Miocene Conidae (Neogastropoda) from an exposure of the Gatun Formation, Colón Province, Panama

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
pp. 804-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Hendricks
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Feeding Habits ◽  
Shell Morphology ◽  
Snail Species ◽  
Cone Snail ◽  
Phylogenetic Studies ◽  
Biogeographic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Coloration Patterns

AbstractExtant members of the neogastropod family Conidae (cone snails) are renowned for their often dazzling shell coloration patterns and venomous feeding habits. Many cone snail species have also been described from the fossil record, but to date have been little used to understand the evolutionary history of extant clades. The cone snail fauna of the Miocene Gatun Formation of Colón Province, Panama is especially important for understanding the temporal and biogeographic history of tropical American Conidae. Intensive, focused collecting from an exposure of the lower Gatun Formation (deposited ca. 11–10 Ma) resulted in the discovery of nearly 900 specimens of Conidae. Remarkably, many of these well-preserved specimens exhibit revealed coloration patterns when exposed to ultraviolet light. The fluorescing coloration patterns were used in conjunction with other features of shell morphology to differentiate species and, in most cases, evaluate their potential relationships to members of the extant tropical American fauna. Nine species are fully described from this locality, one of which is recognized as new:Conus(Stephanoconus)woodringin. sp. At least one, and perhaps more, additional Conidae species are also present at the study locality. The diversity of this Conidae fauna is considered moderate relative to other recently analyzed tropical American fossil assemblages. The phylogenetic diversity of the assemblage, however, is noteworthy: six of the ten species can be confidently assigned to six different clades of extant Conidae, providing potentially useful calibration points for future phylogenetic studies.http://zoobank.org/8fe00c31-8f3f-4514-85af-29068e468cd3

Bacterial symbiont and salivary peptide evolution in the context of leech phylogeny

Parasitology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 138 (13) ◽  
pp. 1815-1827 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK E. SIDDALL ◽  
GI-SIK MIN ◽  
FRANK M. FONTANELLA ◽  
ANNA J. PHILLIPS ◽  
SARA C. WATSON
Keyword(s):  
Bioactive Compounds ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Blood Feeding ◽  
Medicinal Leech ◽  
Gene Products ◽  
Bacterial Symbionts ◽  
Evolutionary Selection ◽  
Salivary Peptide ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function

SUMMARYThe evolutionary history of leeches is employed as a general framework for understanding more than merely the systematics of this charismatic group of annelid worms, and serves as a basis for understanding blood-feeding related correlates ranging from the specifics of gut-associated bacterial symbionts to salivary anticoagulant peptides. A variety of medicinal leech families were examined for intraluminal crop bacterial symbionts. Species ofAeromonasand Bacteroidetes were characterized with DNA gyrase B and 16S rDNA. Bacteroidetes isolates were found to be much more phylogenetically diverse and suggested stronger evidence of phylogenetic correlation than the gammaproteobacteria. Patterns that look like co-speciation with limited taxon sampling do not in the full context of phylogeny. Bioactive compounds that are expressed as gene products, like those in leech salivary glands, have ‘passed the test’ of evolutionary selection. We produced and bioinformatically mined salivary gland EST libraries across medicinal leech lineages to experimentally and statistically evaluate whether evolutionary selection on peptides can identify structure-function activities of known therapeutically relevant bioactive compounds like antithrombin, hirudin and antistasin. The combined information content of a well corroborated leech phylogeny and broad taxonomic coverage of expressed proteins leads to a rich understanding of evolution and function in leech history.

Phylogenetic diversity, types of endemism and the evolutionary history of New World bats

Ecography ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (12) ◽  
pp. 1955-1966 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilo López-Aguirre ◽  
Suzanne J. Hand ◽  
Shawn W. Laffan ◽  
Michael Archer
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
New World ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Exploring the evolutionary history of centrosomes

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1650) ◽  
pp. 20130453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliette Azimzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Cell Cycle ◽  
Nuclear Envelope ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Structural Diversity ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Different Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tight Association ◽  
And Function ◽  
Molecular Components

The centrosome is the main organizer of the microtubule cytoskeleton in animals, higher fungi and several other eukaryotic lineages. Centrosomes are usually located at the centre of cell in tight association with the nuclear envelope and duplicate at each cell cycle. Despite a great structural diversity between the different types of centrosomes, they are functionally equivalent and share at least some of their molecular components. In this paper, we explore the evolutionary origin of the different centrosomes, in an attempt to understand whether they are derived from an ancestral centrosome or evolved independently from the motile apparatus of distinct flagellated ancestors. We then discuss the evolution of centrosome structure and function within the animal lineage.

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