1. When prevention of invasive species’ introductions fails, society faces the challenge to manage these invasive species in an effective and efficient way. The success of this depends on biological aspects and on cooperation between decision makers and scientists. Using the case of the round goby Neogobius melanostomus, one of Europe’s worst invasive species, we propose an approach guiding scientists to co-produce effective and efficient population control measures in collaboration with decision makers. 2. We...

Closely related species are key models to investigate mechanisms leading to reproductive isolation and early stages of diversification, also at the genomic level. The brittle star cryptic species complex Ophioderma longicauda encompasses the sympatric broadcast spawning species C3 and the internal brooding species C5. Here we used de novo transcriptome sequencing and assembly in two closely related species displaying contrasting reproductive modes to compare their genetic diversity and to investigate the role of natural selection...

These data were collected as part of a comparative study of the relationship between female ornamentation and sexual dimorphism in eye morphology. Data come from specimens collected in the field in Scotland near Loch Lomond in the summers of 2009, 2010, and 2011 as well as the summer of 2012 near Glen Williams in Ontario, Canada. The repository contains raw image files including information on magnifications at which these were taken, excel spreadsheets of morphological...

Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies provide opportunities to gain novel insights into the genetic basis of phenotypic trait variation. Yet to date, progress in our understanding of genotype-phenotype associations in non-model organisms in general and natural vertebrate populations in particular has been hampered by small sample sizes typically available for wildlife populations and a resulting lack of statistical power, as well as a limited ability to control for false positive signals. Here we propose...

The molecular force of blood-stage infection (molFOB) is a quantitative surrogate metric for malaria transmission at population level and for exposure at individual level. Relationships between molFOB, parasite prevalence and clinical incidence were assessed in a treatment-to-reinfection cohort, where P.vivax (Pv) hypnozoites were eliminated in half the children by primaquine (PQ). Discounting relapses, children acquired equal numbers of new P. falciparum (Pf) and Pv blood-stage infections/year (Pf-molFOB=0-18, Pv-molFOB=0-23) resulting in comparable spatial and temporal patterns...

The globally increasing light pollution is a well-recognized threat to ecosystems, with negative effects on human, animal and plant wellbeing. The most well-known and widely documented consequence of light pollution is the generally fatal attraction of nocturnal insects to artificial light sources. However, the evolutionary consequences are unknown. Here we report that moth populations from urban areas with high, globally relevant levels of light pollution over several decades show a significantly reduced flight-to-light behaviour compared...

Understanding the effects of past climatic fluctuations on the distribution and population-size dynamics of cold-adapted species is essential for predicting their responses to ongoing global climate change. In spite of the heterogeneity of cold-adapted species, two main contrasting hypotheses have been proposed to explain their responses to Late Quaternary glacial cycles, namely, the interglacial contraction versus the interglacial expansion hypotheses. Here, we use the cold-adapted plant Primula farinosa to test two demographic models under each...

The homeoviscous adaptation hypothesis states that the relative abundance of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in membrane phospholipids of ectothermic organisms decreases with increasing temperatures to maintain vital membrane properties. We reared Daphnia magna at 15°, 20°, and 25°C and increasing dietary concentrations of the long-chain PUFA eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) to test the hypothesis that the well-documented increase in heat tolerance of high-temperature-reared Daphnia is due to a reduction in body PUFA concentrations. Heat tolerance was...

Because parasitism is thought to play a major role in shaping host genomes, it has been predicted that genomic regions associated with resistance to parasites should stand out in genome scans, revealing signals of selection above the genomic background. To test whether parasitism is indeed such a major factor in host evolution and to better understand host-parasite interaction at the molecular level, we studied genome-wide polymorphisms in 97 genotypes of the planktonic crustacean Daphnia magna...

Male secondary sexual traits are targets of inter- and/or intrasexual selection, but can vary due to a correlation with life-history traits or as by-product of adaptation to distinct environments. Trade-offs contributing to this variation may comprise conspicuousness toward conspecifics versus inconspicuousness toward predators, or between allocating resources into coloration versus the immune system. Here, we examine variation in expression of a carotenoid-based visual signal, anal-fin egg-spots, along a replicate environmental gradient in the haplochromine cichlid...

Food resource specialisation within novel environments is considered a common axis of diversification in adaptive radiations. Feeding specialisations are often coupled with striking morphological adaptations and exemplify the relation between morphology and diet (phenotype-environment correlations), as seen in, for example, Darwin finches, Hawaiian spiders and, in particular, the cichlid radiations in East Africa. The cichlids’ potential to rapidly exploit and occupy a variety of different habitats has previously been attributed to the variability and adaptability...

We use quantitative time-lapse microscopy combined with microfluidics to analyse the induction dynamics of the lac operon in single bacteria cells.

Hermaphroditic animals face the fundamental evolutionary optimization problem of allocating their resources to their male versus female reproductive function (e.g., testes and sperm versus ovaries and eggs) and this optimal sex allocation can be affected by both pre- and postcopulatory sexual selection. For example, local sperm competition (LSC)—the competition between related sperm for the fertilization of a partner’s ova—occurs in small mating groups and can favor a female-biased sex allocation, because, under LSC, investment into...

There is no general explanation for why species have restricted geographic distributions. One hypothesis posits that range expansion or increasing scarcity of suitable habitat result in accumulation of mutational load due to enhanced genetic drift, which constrains population performance towards range limits and further expansion. We tested this hypothesis in the North American plant, Arabidopsis lyrata. We experimentally assessed mutational load by crossing plants of 20 populations from across the entire species range and by...

Variation in gene expression contributes to ecological speciation by facilitating population persistence in novel environments. Likewise, immune response can be a relevant factor in speciation driven by adaptation to different environments. Previous studies examining gene expression differences between recently diverged ecotypes often relied on only one pair of populations, targeted the expression of only a subset of genes, or used wild caught-individuals. Here, we investigated the contribution of habitat-specific parasites and symbionts and the underlying...

The timing of sex in facultatively sexual organisms is critical to fitness, due to the differing demographic consequences of sexual vs. asexual reproduction. In addition to the costs of sex itself, an association of sex with the production of dormant life stages also influences the optimal use of sex, especially in environments where resting eggs are essential to survive unfavourable conditions. Here we document population dynamics and the occurrence of sexual reproduction in natural populations...

Changes in gene expression play a fundamental role in phenotypic evolution. Transcriptome evolutionary dynamics have so far mainly been compared among distantly related species and remain largely unexplored during rapid organismal diversification, in which gene regulatory changes have been suggested as particularly effective drivers of phenotypic divergence. Here, we studied gene expression evolution in a model system of adaptive radiation, the cichlid fishes of African Lake Tanganyika. By comparing gene expression profiles of six different...

Understanding the distribution of crossovers along chromosomes is crucial to evolutionary genomics because the crossover rate determines how strongly a genome region is influenced by natural selection. Nevertheless, generalities in the chromosome-scale distribution of crossovers have not been investigated formally. We fill this gap by synthesizing joint information on genetic and physical maps across 62 animal, plant, and fungal species. Our quantitative analysis reveals a strong and taxonomically wide-spread reduction of the crossover rate in...

Objective: To explore the utility of serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) as a biomarker for primary and secondary neuroaxonal injury after ischemic stroke (IS) and study its value for the prediction of clinical outcome. Methods: We used an ultrasensitive single-molecule array (Simoa) assay to measure sNfL levels in healthy controls (HC, N=30) and two independent cohorts of patients with IS: (1) with serial serum sampling at hospital arrival (N=196), at days 2, 3, and 7...

In species with multiple mating, intense sexual selection may occur both before and after copulation. However, comparing the strength of pre- and postcopulatory selection is challenging, because i) postcopulatory processes are generally difficult to observe and ii) the often-used opportunity for selection (I) metric contains both deterministic and stochastic components. Here, we quantified pre- and postcopulatory male fitness components of the simultaneously hermaphroditic flatworm, Macrostomum lignano. We did this by tracking fluorescent sperm—using transgenics—through the...

Rapid rates of land use and land cover change (LULCC) in eastern Africa and limited instances of genuinely equal partnerships involving scientists, communities and decision makers challenge the development of robust pathways toward future environmental and socioeconomic sustainability. We use a participatory modelling tool, Kesho, to assess the biophysical, socioeconomic, cultural and governance factors that influenced past (1959-1999) and present (2000-2018) LULCC in northern Tanzania and to simulate four scenarios of land cover change to...

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity and fixed genotypic differences have long been considered opposing strategies in adaptation. More recently, these mechanisms have been proposed to act complementarily and under certain conditions jointly facilitate evolution, speciation and even adaptive radiations. Here we investigate the relative contributions of adaptive phenotypic plasticity vs. local adaptation to fitness, using an emerging model system for studying early phases of adaptive divergence, the generalist cichlid fish species Astatotilapia burtoni. We tested direct fitness...

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-3-prf-10.1177_02676591211024817 for Outcome of right ventricular assist device implantation following left ventricular assist device implantation: Systematic review and meta-analysis by Gregory Reid, Constantin Mork, Brigita Gahl, Christian Appenzeller-Herzog, Ludwig K von Segesser, Friedrich Eckstein and Denis A Berdajs in Perfusion

The Supplementary Material (and text) to Van Damme et al., contains 10 Supplementary Figures (Figs S1-S10), 5 Supplementary Tables (Tables S1-S5), Supplementary Materials and Methods (ST1), Supplementary Discussion (ST2) and a complete reference list to the manuscript and supplement (Supplementary References SR1). All Supplementary material and text have been peer-reviewed as part of the manuscript. The supplementary discussion provides an additional framework including the importance of the findings of the phylogenomic study for the interpretation...

Genomic studies of parallel (or convergent) evolution often compare multiple populations diverged into two ecologically different habitats to search for loci repeatedly involved in adaptation. Because the shared ancestor of these populations is generally unavailable, the source of the alleles at adaptation loci, and the direction in which their frequencies were shifted during evolution, remain elusive. To shed light on these issues, we here use multiple populations of stickleback fish adapted to two different types...