Predicting temperature mortality and selection in natural Drosophila populations

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 369 (6508) ◽  
pp. 1242-1245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico L. Rezende ◽  
Francisco Bozinovic ◽  
András Szilágyi ◽  
Mauro Santos

Average and extreme temperatures will increase in the near future, but how such shifts will affect mortality in natural populations is still unclear. We used a dynamic model to predict mortality under variable temperatures on the basis of heat tolerance laboratory measurements. Theoretical lethal temperatures for 11 Drosophila species under different warming conditions were virtually indistinguishable from empirical results. For Drosophila in the field, daily mortality predicted from ambient temperature records accumulate over weeks or months, consistent with observed seasonal fluctuations and population collapse in nature. Our model quantifies temperature-induced mortality in nature, which is crucial to study the effects of global warming on natural populations, and analyses highlight that critical temperatures are unreliable predictors of mortality.

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-52

Epimedium elatum (Morren & Decne) of family Berberidaceace is a rare perennial medicinal plant, endemic to high altitude forests of Northwestern Himalayas in India. Ethnobotanically, it has been used as an ingredient for treatment of bone-joint disorders, impotence and kidney disorders in Kashmir Himalayas. Phytochemically, it is rich in Epimedin ABC and Icariin; all of these have been demonstrated to possess remarkable biological activities like PDE-5 inhibition (treatment of erectile dysfunction), anticancer, antiosteoporosis antioxidant and antiviral properties. The present investigation reports its traditional usage, comprehensive distribution and conservation status from twenty ecogeographical regions in Kashmir Himalayas, India. The species was reported from Gurez valley for the first time. Numerous threats like excessive grazing, deforestration, habitat fragmentation, tourism encroachment, landslides and excessive exploitation have decreased its natural populations in most of the surveyed habitats. Consequently, its existence may become threatened in near future if timely conservation steps are not taken immediately by concerned stakeholders involved in medicinal plant research. Moreover, use of plant tissue culture techniques is recommended for development of its in vitro propagation protocols. Therefore, introduction of this medicinal plant in botanical gardens, protected sites and development of monitoring programmes are needed for its immediate conservation in Northwestern Himalayas, India.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Homayoun Fathollahzadeh ◽  
Fabio Kaczala ◽  
Amit Bhatnagar ◽  
William Hogland

The main dilemma of contaminated sediments has been the proper management with reduced environmental footprints. Furthermore, by considering the fact that global warming and climate change may complicate the choice of management options, finding appropriate solutions become extremely critical. In the present work, mining of contaminated sediments to recover valuable constituents such as metals and nutrients is proposed as sustainable strategy, both through enhancing resilience of ecosystem and remediation. Contaminated sediments in the Oskarshamn harbor, southeast of Sweden were collected and analyzed through a modified sequential extraction in order to evaluate the feasibility of metals recovery. The results have shown that among different metals present in the sediments, Cu and Pb can be initially considered as economically feasible to recover. The shifting in the concept of dredging and further remediation of contaminated sediments towards sediment mining and recover of valuable metals can be considered in the near future as a sustainable strategy to tackle contaminated harbor/ports areas. However, it must be highlighted that short and long-term environmental impacts related to such activities should be addressed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tushar Apurv ◽  
Ximing Cai ◽  
Xing Yuan

Abstract Meteorological droughts in the continental United States (CONUS) are known to oscillate at the multidecadal time scale in response to the sea surface temperatures (SST) variability over the Pacific Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean. While previous studies have focused on understanding the influence of SST oscillations on drought frequency over the CONUS, this information has not been integrated with global warming for future drought risk assessment at the decadal scale. In this study, we use the support vector machines (SVMs) to handle correlation between input variables for quantifying the influence of internal variability [Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) and Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO)] and global warming on the decadal changes in the severity of seasonal droughts over the CONUS during 1901–2015. The regional drivers of drought severity identified using SVMs are used for the assessment of decadal drought risk in the near future. We find internal variability as the dominant driver of decadal changes in drought severity in the southern and central Great Plains and global warming as the dominant driver for the southeastern and southwestern United States. In the southern Plains, the existing pattern of increasing drought severity is likely to persist in the near future if AMO and PDO remain in their positive and negative phases, respectively, while global warming is likely to contribute to increasing drought severity in the Southeast and Southwest. This study suggests an emerging role of global warming in drought risk over the southern states, where near-term climate change adaptation is necessary.


2010 ◽  
Vol 365 (1544) ◽  
pp. 1169-1176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fyodor A. Kondrashov ◽  
Alexey S. Kondrashov

The rate of spontaneous mutation in natural populations is a fundamental parameter for many evolutionary phenomena. Because the rate of mutation is generally low, most of what is currently known about mutation has been obtained through indirect, complex and imprecise methodological approaches. However, in the past few years genome-wide sequencing of closely related individuals has made it possible to estimate the rates of mutation directly at the level of the DNA, avoiding most of the problems associated with using indirect methods. Here, we review the methods used in the past with an emphasis on next generation sequencing, which may soon make the accurate measurement of spontaneous mutation rates a matter of routine.


Genome ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conxita Arenas ◽  
Goran Zivanovic ◽  
Francesc Mestres

Drosophila has demonstrated to be an excellent model to study the adaptation of organisms to global warming, with inversion chromosomal polymorphism having a key role in this adaptation. Here, we introduce a new index (Chromosomal Thermal Index or CTI) to quantify the thermal adaptation of a population according to its composition of “warm” and “cold” adapted inversions. This index is intuitive, has good statistical properties, and can be used to hypothesis on the effect of global warming on natural populations. We show the usefulness of CTI using data from European populations of D. subobscura, sampled in different years. Out of 15 comparisons over time, nine showed significant increase of CTI, in accordance with global warming expectations. Although large regions of the genome outside inversions contain thermal adaptation genes, our results show that the total amount of warm or cold inversions in populations seems to be directly involved in thermal adaptation, whereas the interactions between the inversions content of homologous and non-homologous chromosomes are not relevant.


2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1808) ◽  
pp. 20150401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex R. Gunderson ◽  
Jonathon H. Stillman

Global warming is increasing the overheating risk for many organisms, though the potential for plasticity in thermal tolerance to mitigate this risk is largely unknown. In part, this shortcoming stems from a lack of knowledge about global and taxonomic patterns of variation in tolerance plasticity. To address this critical issue, we test leading hypotheses for broad-scale variation in ectotherm tolerance plasticity using a dataset that includes vertebrate and invertebrate taxa from terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats. Contrary to expectation, plasticity in heat tolerance was unrelated to latitude or thermal seasonality. However, plasticity in cold tolerance is associated with thermal seasonality in some habitat types. In addition, aquatic taxa have approximately twice the plasticity of terrestrial taxa. Based on the observed patterns of variation in tolerance plasticity, we propose that limited potential for behavioural plasticity (i.e. behavioural thermoregulation) favours the evolution of greater plasticity in physiological traits, consistent with the ‘Bogert effect’. Finally, we find that all ectotherms have relatively low acclimation in thermal tolerance and demonstrate that overheating risk will be minimally reduced by acclimation in even the most plastic groups. Our analysis indicates that behavioural and evolutionary mechanisms will be critical in allowing ectotherms to buffer themselves from extreme temperatures.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (05) ◽  
pp. A01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara K. Yeo ◽  
Zachary Handlos ◽  
Alexandra Karambelas ◽  
Leona Yi-Fan Su ◽  
Kathleen M. Rose ◽  
...  

Research suggests non-experts associate different content with the terms “global warming” and “climate change.” We test this claim with Twitter content using supervised learning software to categorize tweets by topic and explore differences between content using “global warming” and “climate change” between 1 January 2012 and 31 March 2014. Twitter data were combined with temperature records to observe the extent to which temperature was associated with Twitter discussions. We then used two case studies to examine the relationship between extreme temperature events and Twitter content. Our findings underscore the importance of considering climate change communication on social media.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenxi Hu ◽  
Chi-Yung Tam ◽  
Xinwei Li ◽  
Kangning Huang ◽  
Chao Ren ◽  
...  

Abstract The impacts of future urban development and global warming forcing on hourly extreme rainfall over the Pearl River Delta (PRD) area have been investigated, by dynamically downscaling General Circulation Model (GCM) outputs using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) at convection-permitting resolution, coupled with an Urban Canopy Model (UCM). Three downscaling experiments corresponding to different urban land cover (1999 and projected 2030) and climate (1951-to-2000 and 2001-to-2050 GCM simulations) were designed. Near-future climate change (up to 2050) and 1999-to-2030 urban development effects on PRD extreme precipitation were then examined. Results show that climate change and rapid urban development forcing have comparable positive effects on the intensity as well as heavy hourly rainfall probability over the PRD megacity. Global warming tends to increase heavy rainfall probability (from 40 to 60mm/hr) by about 1.3 to 1.8 times, but suppresses the frequency of light rainfall. Urban development increases urban rainfall probability within the whole range of intensity, with frequency for very heavy rainfall (> 90mm/hr) almost doubled. Overall, forcing due to rapid urban development plays an important role for projecting rainfall characteristic over the highly urbanized coastal PRD megacity, with impacts that can be comparable to global warming in the near future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Dawn Holland ◽  
Hande Kucuk ◽  
Miguel León-Ledesma

Climate change is one of the most serious risks facing humanity. Temperature rises can lead to catastrophic climate and natural events that threaten livelihoods. From rising sea levels to flooding, bush fires, extreme temperatures and droughts, the economic and human cost is too large to ignore. More than 190 world leaders got together in Glasgow during November 2021 at the UN’s COP26 climate change summit to discuss progress on the Paris Agreement (COP21) and to agree on new measures to limit global warming. In Paris, countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2° and aim for 1.5° as well as to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate and raise the necessary funding to deliver on these aims. However, actions to date were not nearly enough as highlighted by the IPCC (2018) special report. The world is still on track to reach warming above 3° by 2100. As evident from figure 1, global temperatures have been on a steadily increasing path since the start of the 20th century and this process has substantially accelerated since the beginning of the 1980s. This has been unevenly distributed, with temperatures in the Northern hemisphere being a full 1°C higher than for the 1961–1990 average, whilst temperatures in the Southern hemisphere have increased by almost 0.5°C.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1171
Author(s):  
Junju Zhou ◽  
Jumei Huang ◽  
Xi Zhao ◽  
Li Lei ◽  
Wei Shi ◽  
...  

The increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events around the world has led to the frequent occurrence of global disasters, which have had serious impacts on the society, economic and ecological environment, especially fragile arid areas. Based on the daily maximum temperature and daily minimum temperature data of four meteorological stations in Shiyang River Basin (SRB) from 1960 to 2015, the spatio-temporal variation characteristics of extreme temperature indices were analyzed by means of univariate linear regression analysis, Mann–Kendall test and correlation analysis. The results showed that the extreme temperatures warming indices and the minimum of daily maximum temperature (TXn) and the minimum of daily minimum temperature (TNn) of cold indices showed an increasing trend from 1960 to 2016, especially since the 1990s, where the growth rate was fast and the response to global warming was sensitive. Except TXn and TNn, other cold indices showed a decreasing trend, especially Diurnal temperature (DTR) range, which decreased rapidly, indicating that the increasing speed of daily min-temperature were greater than of daily max-temperature in SRB. In space, the change tendency rate of the warm index basically showed an obvious altitude gradient effect that decreased with the altitude, which was consistent with Frost day (FD0) and Cool nights (TN10p) in the cold index, while Ice days (ID0) and Cool days (TX10p) are opposite. The mutation of the cold indices occurred earlier than the warm indices, illustrating that the cold indices in SRB were more sensitive to global warming. The change in extreme temperatures that would have a significant impact on the vegetation and glacier permafrost in the basin was the result of the combined function of different atmospheric circulation systems, which included the Arctic polar vortex, Western Pacific subtropical high and Qinghai-tibet Plateau circulation.


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