All posts; Tags Include "selection"
- September 27, 2012
- 07:06 AM
- 293 views
Journal club: Choosy females speed speciation of poison dart frogs
by GrrlScientist in Maniraptora
SUMMARY: Female poison dart frogs’ distinct preferences for mates with particular colours may be a first step in the process of speciation Strawberry dart frog, Dendrobates pumilio, photographed at La Loma Jungle Lodge on Isla Bastimentos, Panama. Image: Cori Richards-Zawacki. Speciation is often a subtle thing, starting with a tiny difference here or there, and after a few generations, these changes begin to add up into something obvious. But speciation only happens after a portion of a p........ Read more »
Corinne L. Richards-Zawacki, Ian J . Wang, & Kyle Summers. (2012) Mate choice and the genetic basis for colour variation in a polymorphic dart frog: inferences from a wild pedigree. Molecular Ecology, 3879-3892. info:/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2012.05644.x
- September 27, 2012
- 04:00 AM
- 442 views
Choosy females speed speciation of poison dart frogs | @GrrlScientist
by GrrlScientist in GrrlScientist
Female poison dart frogs' distinct preferences for mates with particular colours may be a first step in the process of speciation... Read more »
Corinne L. Richards-Zawacki, Ian J . Wang, & Kyle Summers. (2012) Mate choice and the genetic basis for colour variation in a polymorphic dart frog: inferences from a wild pedigree. Molecular Ecology, 3879-3892. info:/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2012.05644.x
- December 23, 2011
- 05:24 AM
- 610 views
Hot? Or not? The economics of red-hot chili peppers
by GrrlScientist in Maniraptora
SUMMARY: Chilis that produce the hottest fruits grow best when they are given lots of water... Read more »
Haak, D., McGinnis, L., Levey, D., & Tewksbury, J. (2011) Why are not all chilies hot? A trade-off limits pungency. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.2091
Tewksbury, J., Reagan, K., Machnicki, N., Carlo, T., Haak, D., Penaloza, A., & Levey, D. (2008) Evolutionary ecology of pungency in wild chilies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(33), 11808-11811. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0802691105
- Biology
- Ecology / Conservation
- secondary compounds
- fruit chemistry
- chemical defence
- secondary metabolite
- capsaicinoids
- capsaicin
- natural selection
- chili peppers
- Evolutionary Biology
- Capsicum chacoense
- Botany
- Environment
- Agriculture
- Ecology
- Chemical Biology
- directed deterrence
- genetic correlation
- frugivory
- December 22, 2011
- 01:03 PM
- 867 views
Hot? Or not? The economics of red hot chili peppers | @GrrlScientist
by GrrlScientist in GrrlScientist
Chilies that produce the hottest fruits grow best when they are given lots of water... Read more »
Haak, D., McGinnis, L., Levey, D., & Tewksbury, J. (2011) Why are not all chilies hot? A trade-off limits pungency. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.2091
- November 2, 2011
- 04:03 PM
- 407 views
Night of the Bargain Hunter: some bats pick prey based on the cost of the hunt
by Matt Soniak in mattsoniak.com
While they’re less likely to Wall Street than a barn upstate, bats are as concerned as we are about the economy. Their economy revolves around energy instead of money, though, and a problem on the balance sheet can be a matter of life and death. If they spend more energy catching a meal than that [...]... Read more »
Koselj K, Schnitzler HU, & Siemers BM. (2011) Horseshoe bats make adaptive prey-selection decisions, informed by echo cues. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 278(1721), 3034-41. PMID: 21367788
Jones, G. (1990) Prey Selection by the Greater Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum): Optimal Foraging by Echolocation?. The Journal of Animal Ecology, 59(2), 587. DOI: 10.2307/4882
Salvatore J. Agosta, David Morton, & Kellie M. Kuhn. (2003) Feeding ecology of the bat Eptesicus fuscus: ‘preferred’ prey abundance as one factor influencing prey selection and diet breadth . Journal of Zoology , 260(2), 169-177. info:/10.1017/S0952836903003601
- February 23, 2011
- 12:17 PM
- 2,410 views
Happiness Gets Better With Age
by APS Daily Observations in Daily Observations
Older people tend to be wiser, but did you know they tend to be happier too? A recent paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science suggests this may be ... Read more »
Ong, A. (2010) Pathways Linking Positive Emotion and Health in Later Life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(6), 358-362. DOI: 10.1177/0963721410388805
Urry, H., & Gross, J. (2010) Emotion Regulation in Older Age. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(6), 352-357. DOI: 10.1177/0963721410388395
- October 27, 2010
- 05:49 AM
- 1,677 views
How the leopard got its spots
by GrrlScientist in GrrlScientist
A new study shows why leopards and other big cats are spotted, striped or melanistic -- all black. In short, big cats' patterning and pattern attributes evolved in relation to their ecology and behaviors... Read more »
William L. Allen, Innes C. Cuthill, Nicholas E. Scott-Samuel, & Roland Baddeley. (2010) Why the leopard got its spots: relating pattern development to ecology in felids. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. info:/10.1098/rspb.2010.1734
- September 13, 2010
- 08:59 AM
- 671 views
Elephant fish diversification via rapidly evolving electrical signals
by Graves in Down the Cellar
We usually think about organisms diversifying by moving in to fill previously unoccupied or recently-vacated niches—areas free of predators, or where native species have vanished, or with abundant, underutilized resources. The idea is that organisms seize opportunities, and that seems to be the major story told by decades of work on the Galapagos finches by Peter and Rosemary Grant.
Is this ... Read more »
Arnegard ME, McIntyre PB, Harmon LJ, Zelditch ML, Crampton WG, Davis JK, Sullivan JP, Lavoué S, & Hopkins CD. (2010) Sexual signal evolution outpaces ecological divergence during electric fish species radiation. The American naturalist, 176(3), 335-56. PMID: 20653442
- September 5, 2010
- 09:30 AM
- 661 views
The sex lives of yeast: Evidence for honest signaling
by Graves in Down the Cellar
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast used in baking bread and brewing beer, has a long history as a useful eukaryotic model organism. Yeast reproduce by budding, but sometimes haploid cells sexually reproduce by secreting pheromones and fusing into one diploid cell, which can then undergo meiosis to create four spores. Lately, this facultative sexual reproduction has been targeted by evolutionary ... Read more »
Smith C, & Greig D. (2010) THE COST OF SEXUAL SIGNALING IN YEAST. Evolution; international journal of organic evolution. PMID: 20584074
- August 23, 2010
- 08:40 AM
- 616 views
Sex role-reversed pipefish and the possibility of cryptic male choice
by Graves in Down the Cellar
Sexual selection exists because of anisogamy: females produce only a few, large gametes while males produce a greater number of small gametes. Because females invest more, and because their productivity is not usually limited by the availability of male gametes, females should be the choosy sex. Males, on the other hand, can increase their own reproductive success by simply tacking on additional ... Read more »
Paczolt, K.A., & Jones, A.G. (2010) Post-copulatory sexual selection and sexual conflict in the evolution of male pregnancy. Nature, 464(7287), 401-404. DOI: 10.1038/nature08861
- August 9, 2010
- 08:47 PM
- 9,760 views
Lack of neutrality in bacteria and where pseudogenes go when they die
by Jonathan Eisen in The Tree of Life
Pseudogenes, which are in essence regions of the genome that used to be genes but no longer able to produce a functional unit, have long been considered to be models of the genetic equivalent of Switzerland's neutrality. With this assumption of neutrality in hand, researchers have used studies of pseudogenes to better understand what happens to DNA when it is not visible to any form of natural selection. That is, pseudogenes have been thought to be neither harmful (as in, they are........ Read more »
Kuo, C., & Ochman, H. (2010) The Extinction Dynamics of Bacterial Pseudogenes. PLoS Genetics, 6(8). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001050
- March 29, 2010
- 09:47 AM
- 1,233 views
Made for Each Other: Evolution of Monogamy in Poison Frogs
by GrrlScientist in Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
tags: evolution, evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, animal behavior, molecular ecology, parental care, mating systems, monogamy, sexual selection, frogs, poison dart frogs, Dendrobatidae, Ranitomeya, bpr3.org/?p=52,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper, journal club
Peruvian mimic poison frog, Ranitomeya imitator.
Image: Jason Brown [larger view]
To know the breeding system is to know the genetic architecture of a species.
To know the evolution of a breeding system is to kn........ Read more »
Brown JL, Morales V, & Summers K. (2010) A key ecological trait drove the evolution of biparental care and monogamy in an amphibian. The American Naturalist, 175(4), 436-46. PMID: 20180700
- March 19, 2010
- 11:00 AM
- 1,373 views
Size Matters -- Bigger is Better, Even for Male Pipefish
by GrrlScientist in Maniraptora
SUMMARY: New research shows evidence for cryptic mate choice in Gulf pipefish. ... Read more »
Paczolt, K., & Jones, A. (2010) Post-copulatory sexual selection and sexual conflict in the evolution of male pregnancy. Nature, 464(7287), 401-404. DOI: 10.1038/nature08861
- November 24, 2009
- 06:09 PM
- 759 views
Pagel on Darwin
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Mark Pagel, evolutionary theorist extraordinaire, has published an Insight piece in Nature on Natural selection 150 years on. Pagel, well known for myriad projects in natural selecition theory and adaptation, and for developing with Harvey the widely used statistical phylogenetic method (and for being a reader of my thesis) wishes Charles Darwin a happy 200th birthday, and assesses this question: Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Mark Pagel. (2009) Natural selection 150 years on. Nature, 457(7231), 808-811. DOI: 10.1038/nature07889
- February 12, 2009
- 02:48 PM
- 1,685 views
Pagel on Darwin
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Mark Pagel, evolutionary theorist extraordinaire, has published an Insight piece in Nature on Natural selection 150 years on. Pagel, well known for myriad projects in natural selecition theory and adaptation, and for developing with Harvey the widely used statistical phylogenetic method (and for being a reader of my thesis) wishes Charles Darwin a happy 200th birthday, and assesses this question:
How has Darwin's theory of Natural Selection fared over the last 150 years, and what needs to be........ Read more »
Mark Pagel. (2009) Natural selection 150 years on. Nature, 457(7231), 808-811. DOI: 10.1038/nature07889
- November 14, 2008
- 08:20 PM
- 1,807 views
Can Evolution "Learn" From Past Environments?
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
The paper I'm about to discuss is a minefield of potential misconceptions that arise from the way we often use language do describe natural phenomena. This is a situation where it would be easier to start with a disclaimer ... a big giant obvious quotation mark ... and then use the usual misleading, often anthropomorphic language. But I don't think I should do that. We'll address this research the hard way, but the result will be worth the extra work.
Here is the basic hypothesis. The null m........ Read more »
Merav Parter, Nadav Kashtan, & Uri Alon. (2008) Facilitated Variation: How Evolution Learns from Past Environments To Generalize to New Environments. PLoS Computational Biology, 4(11). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000206
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