Natural Selection of Wild Reindeer Life History Traits by Food Limitation and Predation

Oikos ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terje Skogland
2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1815) ◽  
pp. 20151421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Arnqvist ◽  
Ahmed Sayadi ◽  
Elina Immonen ◽  
Cosima Hotzy ◽  
Daniel Rankin ◽  
...  

The ultimate cause of genome size (GS) evolution in eukaryotes remains a major and unresolved puzzle in evolutionary biology. Large-scale comparative studies have failed to find consistent correlations between GS and organismal properties, resulting in the ‘ C -value paradox’. Current hypotheses for the evolution of GS are based either on the balance between mutational events and drift or on natural selection acting upon standing genetic variation in GS. It is, however, currently very difficult to evaluate the role of selection because within-species studies that relate variation in life-history traits to variation in GS are very rare. Here, we report phylogenetic comparative analyses of GS evolution in seed beetles at two distinct taxonomic scales, which combines replicated estimation of GS with experimental assays of life-history traits and reproductive fitness. GS showed rapid and bidirectional evolution across species, but did not show correlated evolution with any of several indices of the relative importance of genetic drift. Within a single species, GS varied by 4–5% across populations and showed positive correlated evolution with independent estimates of male and female reproductive fitness. Collectively, the phylogenetic pattern of GS diversification across and within species in conjunction with the pattern of correlated evolution between GS and fitness provide novel support for the tenet that natural selection plays a key role in shaping GS evolution.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joffrey Moiroux ◽  
Joan van Baaren ◽  
Mathilde Poyet ◽  
Aude Couty ◽  
Patrice Eslin ◽  
...  

Evolution ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine M. Kirk ◽  
Simon P. Blomberg ◽  
David L. Duffy ◽  
Andrew C. Heath ◽  
Ian P. F. Owens ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Catherine Paul ◽  
Pragya Singh ◽  
Alice B. Dennis ◽  
Caroline Müller

ABSTRACTIntergenerational effects, also known as parental effects in which the offspring phenotype is influenced by the parental phenotype, can occur in response to parental early life food-limitation and adult reproductive environment. However, little is known about how these parental life stage-specific environments interact with each other and with the offspring environment to influence offspring phenotype, particularly in organisms that realize distinct niches across ontogeny. We examined the effects of parental early life starvation and adult reproductive environment on offspring traits under matching or mismatching offspring early life starvation conditions using the holometabolous, haplo-diploid insect Athalia rosae (turnip sawfly). We show that the parental early life starvation treatment had context-dependent intergenerational effects on the life-history and consumption traits of offspring larvae, partly in interaction with offspring conditions and sex, while there was no significant effect of parental adult reproductive environment. In addition, while offspring larval starvation led to numerous gene- and pathway-level expression differences, parental starvation impacted fewer genes and only the ribosomal pathway. Our findings reveal that parental starvation evokes complex intergenerational effects on offspring life-history traits, consumption patterns as well as gene expression, although the effects are less pronounced than those of offspring starvation.


2005 ◽  
Vol 272 (1564) ◽  
pp. 769-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Ferretti ◽  
Paulo E Llambías ◽  
Thomas E Martin

Since David Lack first proposed that birds rear as many young as they can nourish, food limitation has been accepted as the primary explanation for variation in clutch size and other life‐history traits in birds. The importance of food limitation in life-history variation, however, was recently questioned on theoretical grounds. Here, we show that clutch size differences between two populations of a neotropical thrush were contrary to expectations under Lack's food limitation hypothesis. Larger clutch sizes were found in a population with higher nestling starvation rate (i.e. greater food limitation). We experimentally equalized clutches between populations to verify this difference in food limitation. Our experiment confirmed greater food limitation in the population with larger mean clutch size. In addition, incubation bout length and nestling growth rate were also contrary to predictions of food limitation theory. Our results demonstrate the inability of food limitation to explain differences in several life-history traits: clutch size, incubation behaviour, parental feeding rate and nestling growth rate. These life-history traits were better explained by inter‐population differences in nest predation rates. Food limitation may be less important to life history evolution in birds than suggested by traditional theory.


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