Life Sciences Commons^™

Adaptation Reshapes The Distribution Of Fitness Effects, Diego Tenoch Morales Lopez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The process of adaptation has been of interest since the XIX century, when Darwin first proposed the idea of natural selection. Since then, there has been a myriad of theoretical and empirical works that have expanded the field. From the many evolutionary insights these works have produced, a foundational idea is that spontaneous mutations in the genome of organisms can produce changes to their reproductive success that might confer an advantage for the mutant organisms with respect to their peers. Therefore, mutations drive adaptive evolution by virtue of their heritable effects on fitness. Empirical measures of the distribution of these …

The Long-Term Effects Of Wildfire Severity On Oak-Pine Communities And Their Microclimates, Scott Glenn Culbert

Theses and Dissertations--Forestry and Natural Resources

In the eastern U.S., fire-dependent tree species have historically dominated upland forest communities, but are now experiencing widespread regeneration challenges as a result of 20^th century fire suppression policies, and are being replaced by mesophytic species. Wildfires that contain areas of high burn severity may provide an important means of mitigating these challenges and facilitating fire-dependent species regeneration and recruitment into larger size classes. One mechanism by which high-severity fire can accomplish this is by modifying understory microclimate characteristics to be more conducive to these species’ growth. A wildfire within the Daniel Boone National Forest, Kentucky, USA, provided the …

An Optimal Lysis Time Maximizes Bacteriophage Fitness In Quasi-Continuous Culture, Sherin Kannoly, Abhyudai Singh, John J. Dennehy

Publications and Research

Optimality models have a checkered history in evolutionary biology. While optimality models have been successful in providing valuable insight into the evolution of a wide variety of biological traits, a common objection is that optimality models are overly simplistic and ignore organismal genetics. We revisit evolutionary optimization in the context of a major bacteriophage life history trait, lysis time. Lysis time refers to the period spanning phage infection of a host cell and its lysis, whereupon phage progenies are released. Lysis time, therefore, directly determines phage fecundity assuming progeny assembly does not exhaust host resources prior to lysis. Noting that …

Copepods As A Model System For Exploring The Impacts Of Climate Change On Marine Ectotherms, Lauren Ashlock

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Marine ecosystems provide essential habitat to ecologically and economically impactful species and provide humans with a wealth of ecosystem services. With climate change, marine ecosystems are increasing in mean temperature and temperature variability. Marine ectotherms are vulnerable to this change and are important sentinels of warming, as their internal physiology is dependent on the external thermal environment.

Copepods are marine ectotherms that play a critical role in trophic transfer and nutrient cycling. Importantly, copepods are relatively short-lived, allowing them to track ocean change as it happens. Together, these qualities make copepods a reliable model for understanding the impacts of global …

An Environmental Study To Adapt Some Hadhramout Coast Plant For Drought And Salinity Tolerance, Fatehia Ali Bashantoof, Ahmed Sbit Bamousy, Abdulkarim Saber Ali

Hadhramout University Journal of Natural & Applied Sciences

The study was conducted between May 2016-August 2017. An auger was used to collect 60 random soil samples to carry out the physical and chemical analyses. The selected plants were Salola baryosma and Aeurops lagopoides in the salt marsh and Prosopis juliflora and Calotropis procera in the valleys. The results revealed clear physical and chemical differences within the soils of the salt marshes and valleys that prove to be sandy, loamy, basic and saline. All investigated variables differ in the selected areas e.g. % of sand, silt, clay. The soil of all the salt marshes was devoid of gravel which …

Micro- And Macroevolution Of Drab Plumage Color In Birds, Rafael Marcondes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

I address the evolution of drab bird colors at micro- and macroevolutionary scales. I use as a study system the Furnariida, a clade of >600 Neotropical passerine species that, despite tremendous ecological and morphological diversity, are colored almost exclusively in shades of brown and grey produced by melanin pigments.

In chapters two and three, I took a macroevolutionary approach and showed that (1) plumage colors in the Furnariida evolve at similar rates in a monochromatic clade, males of a dichromatic clade, and females of a dichromatic clade; (2) ventral plumage color evolves faster than dorsal; (3) bird species that occupy …

Analysis Of Genomic Sequence Data Reveals The Origin And Evolutionary Separation Of Hawaiian Hoary Bat Populations, Corinna A. Pinzari, Lin Kang, Pawel Michalak, Lars S. Jermiin, Donald K. Price, Frank J. Bonaccorso

Life Sciences Faculty Research

We examine the genetic history and population status of Hawaiian hoary bats (Lasiurus semotus), the most isolated bats on Earth, and their relationship to northern hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus), through whole-genome analysis of single-nucleotide polymorphisms mapped to a de novo-assembled reference genome. Profiles of genomic diversity and divergence indicate that Hawaiian hoary bats are distinct from northern hoary bats, and form a monophyletic group, indicating a single ancestral colonization event 1.34 Ma, followed by substantial divergence between islands beginning 0.51 Ma. Phylogenetic analysis indicates Maui is central to the radiation across the archipelago, with the southward expansion to Hawai‘i and …

Plant Evolution And Urbanization: Quantifying The Effects Of Natural Selection In Shaping Shepherd’S Purse (Capsella Bursa-Pastoris) Populations In New York City, Rebecca Panko

Dissertations

The aim of this study is to quantify the effects of natural selection in shaping Capsella bursa-pastoris populations along an urban-rural gradient in New York City.

A reciprocal transplant experiment with 168 lab-germinated C. bursa-pastoris seedlings from both urban and rural populations are grown in eight paired home and away sites distributed throughout the New York metropolitan area. Sites are visited approximately thirteen times to record plant fitness. There is evidence for local adaptation of urban populations: urban plants have longer reproductive durations and produce more seed pods in urban environments. These findings suggest that urban plants are better adapted …

Interspecific Differences In Stressor Tolerance Drive Community-Level Changes In A Small Aquatic Ecosystem, Jennifer M. Weathered

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The global human population is expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 and an increase in food yield will be needed to provide for the future generations. Insects are among the biggest threats to food production and are therefore the subject of intense chemical control through the application of pesticides. The ability of insects to evolve resistance to pesticides after repeated use has been documented. However, how evolved responses affect individuals’ behaviors, their interactions with others, and how these factors impact overall patterns in distribution remains relatively unexplored in the bromeliad.

The aquatic insect communities housed in water-holding tropical plants …

From Genes To Species: Ecological Speciation With Gene Flow In Neodiprion Pinetum And N. Lecontei, Emily E. Bendall

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

My dissertation focuses on how differences accumulate across the genome during ecological speciation with geneflow. To do this I used two species of Neodiprionpine sawflies, which are plant-feeding hymenopterans with high host specificity. I used experimental crosses to measure both intrinsic and extrinsic postzygotic isolation and to understand the contribution of specific traits to reproductive isolation. Despite substantial genetic divergence and haploid males in which all recessive incompatibilities should be expressed, I found surprisingly little evidence of intrinsic postzygotic isolation. Recombination in hybrid males may reconstitute viable genotypes and counteract the effects of haploidy in males. Nevertheless, hybrids have …

Drought Responsive Gene Expression Regulatory Divergence Between Upland And Lowland Ecotypes Of A Perennial C4 Grass, John T. Lovell, Scott Schwartz, David B. Lowry, Eugene V. Shakirov, Jason E. Bonnette, Xiaoyu Weng, Mei Wang, Jenifer Johnson, Avinash Sreedasyam, Christopher Plott, Jerry Jenkins, Jeremy Schmutz, Thomas E. Juenger

Yevgeniy (Eugene) Shakirov

Climatic adaptation is an example of a genotype-by-environment interaction (G×E) of fitness. Selection upon gene expression regulatory variation can contribute to adaptive phenotypic diversity; however, surprisingly few studies have examined how genome-wide patterns of gene expression G×E are manifested in response to environmental stress and other selective agents that cause climatic adaptation. Here, we characterize drought-responsive expression divergence between upland (drought-adapted) and lowland (mesic) ecotypes of the perennial C₄ grass, Panicum hallii, in natural field conditions. Overall, we find that cis-regulatory elements contributed to gene expression divergence across 47% of genes, 7.2% of which exhibit drought-responsive G×E. …

Remote Sensing Of Ploidy Level In Quaking Aspen (Populus Tremuloides Michx.), Benjamin Blonder, Bente J. Graae, Burke Greer, Marja Haagsma, Kenny Helsen, Rozália E. Kapás, Henry Pai, Jolanta Rieksta, Dillon Sapena, Christopher J. Still, Richard Strimbeck

Aspen Bibliography

1. Ploidy level in plants may influence ecological functioning, demography and response to climate change. However, measuring ploidy level typically requires intensive cell or molecular methods.
2. We map ploidy level variation in quaking aspen, a dominant North American tree species that can be diploid or triploid and that grows in spatially extensive clones. We identify the predictors and spatial scale of ploidy level variation using a combination of genetic and ground‐based and airborne remote sensing methods.
3. We show that ground‐based leaf spectra and airborne canopy spectra can both classify aspen by ploidy level with a precision‐recall harmonic mean of 0.75–0.95 and …

Adaptation To A Geothermal Soil Mosaic Shapes Genome-Wide Patterns Of Diversity And Differentiation In Yellowstone Monkeyflowers (M. Guttatus), Kory M. Kolis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Local adaptation across habitat mosaics can generate phenotypic divergence in the face of gene flow; however, adaptive divergence in reproductive traits may also create barriers to genetic exchange within and among distinct habitats. In plants, life-history, phenology, and mating system traits may lead to divergent selection over short (microgeographic) spatial scales. Changes to these traits are likely to directly affect patterns of gene flow and genomic diversity. In this study, we combined field, common garden, and population genomic approaches to investigate phenotypic and genetic variation in Mimulus guttatus (yellow monkeyflowers) adapted to a complex geothermal soil mosaic in Yellowstone National …

Effects Of Soil Nitrogen On Diploid Advantage In Fireweed, Chamerion Angustifolium (Onagraceae), Alex L. Bales, Erika Hersch-Green

Department of Biological Sciences Publications

In many ecosystems, plant growth and reproduction are nitrogen limited. Current and predicted increases of global reactive nitrogen could alter the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of plant populations. Nitrogen is a major component of nucleic acids and cell structures, and it has been predicted that organisms with larger genomes should require more nitrogen for growth and reproduction and be more negatively affected by nitrogen scarcities than organisms with smaller genomes. In a greenhouse experiment, we tested this hypothesis by examining whether the amount of soil nitrogen supplied differentially influenced the performance (fitness, growth, and resource allocation strategies) of diploid and …

Local Adaptation Signatures In Thermal Performance Of The Temperate Coral Astrangia Poculata, Hannah Elise Aichelman

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

The Northern Star Coral (Astrangia poculata) is an understudied temperate scleractinian coral that provides unique opportunities to understand the roles of phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation in coral physiological tolerance limits. Astrangia poculata inhabits hard bottom ecosystems from the northwestern Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and withstands an annual temperature range up to 20°C. Additionally, A. poculata is facultatively symbiotic and co-occurs in both symbiotic (“brown”) and aposymbiotic (“white”) states. Here, brown and white A. poculata were collected from Virginia (VA) and Rhode Island (RI), USA and exposed to heat (18-32°C) and cold (18-6°C) temperature assays during …

Potential Interactions Of Sea Level Rise And Sedimentation In The Lower Puyallup River, Jeff Parsons

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

Sea level rise and sedimentation have both been documented to contribute to future flooding in the densely developed Lower Puyallup River valley. However, their impacts have only been analyzed in isolation. In the Lower Puyallup River, these processes will interact. As sea level rises, the salt wedge, which is often flushed from leveed river channel, will be increasingly located in the leveed river channel, exacerbating sedimentation issues. Since the reach is no longer dredged, this sedimentation will decrease conveyance and increase the risk of the flooding over time. The interactions of the salt wedge and sedimentation will be nonlinear and …

A Watershed Approach To Recovering Salmon In Changing Climate Conditions, Beth Ledoux, Jessica Engel, Morgan Schniedler Ruff, Colin Wahl

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

The Snohomish Basin Forum adopted the Snohomish Basin Protection Plan in 2015 which clearly stated that the survival of our iconic salmon will be challenged by climate change. From that integrative watershed planning effort the Snohomish Basin Technical Committee investigated how locally predicted impacts of climate change affect salmon recovery in the Snohomish Basin and what key actions can be taken to ameliorate those impacts. As the basin continues to implement the Snohomish Basin Salmon Recovery Plan, it will be critical to restore and protect areas that preserve the basin’s hydrologic patterns and key habitat functions that support salmon in …

Integrated Floodplain Management In Washington: How Can We Make It More Resilient?, Guillaume Mauger, Andrew M. Smith, Cindy Dittbrenner, Se-Yeun Lee, Jason Won

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

Floodplains are home to a wide range of economic, cultural, and natural resources. Although there is a strong desire to include climate change into these planning efforts, very little guidance has been developed to help incorporate climate impacts into planning and design. This is further complicated by weak or non-existent coordination among the various agencies, jurisdictions, and interests that have a stake in floodplain management. This talk will describe a recent assessment – from the perspective of agency-level flood risk managers – of ways to better integrate climate change in floodplain management. The work was focused on the Washington State …

Climate Robust Culvert Design: Probabilistic Estimates Of Fish Passage Impediments, Guillaume Mauger, Alan F. Hamlet, Se-Yeun Lee, Jason Won

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

*** This abstract is for a "Snapshot" (5-min) presentation. *** Many Washington State culverts are currently inadequate for fish passage. Apart from a few special cases, the standard for sizing culverts in Washington State is based on a simple linear function of bankfull width (BFW). This reflects a geomorphic approach to culvert design that can be applied across a large range of situations (Barnard et al. 2013, 2015). Future changes in BFW have previously been estimated by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) (Wilhere et al. 2016), by estimating the percent change in BFW derived from projected changes …

The Evolutionary History Of Nebraska Deer Mice: Local Adaptation In The Face Of Strong Gene Flow, Susanne P Pfeifer, Stefan Laurent, Vitor C. Sousa, Catherine R. Linnen, Matthieu Foll, Laurent Excoffier, Hopi E. Hoekstra, Jeffrey D. Jensen

Biology Faculty Publications

The interplay of gene flow, genetic drift, and local selective pressure is a dynamic process that has been well studied from a theoretical perspective over the last century. Wright and Haldane laid the foundation for expectations under an island-continent model, demonstrating that an island-specific beneficial allele may be maintained locally if the selection coefficient is larger than the rate of migration of the ancestral allele from the continent. Subsequent extensions of this model have provided considerably more insight. Yet, connecting theoretical results with empirical data has proven challenging, owing to a lack of information on the relationship between genotype, phenotype, …

Natural And Anthropogenic Drivers Of Tree Evolutionary Dynamics, Brandon M. Lind

Theses and Dissertations

Species of trees inhabit diverse and heterogeneous environments, and often play important ecological roles in such communities. As a result of their vast ecological breadth, trees have become adapted to various environmental pressures. In this dissertation I examine various environmental factors that drive evolutionary dynamics in threePinusspecies in California and Nevada, USA. In chapter two, I assess the role of management influence of thinning, fire, and their interaction on fine-scale gene flow within fire-suppressed populations of Pinus lambertiana, a historically dominant and ecologically important member of mixed-conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada, California. Here, I find evidence …

Emerging Infectious Disease And The Imperiled Relict Leopard Frog, Anthony Wayne Waddle

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the aquatic fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has emerged as a major contributing factor for worldwide amphibian declines. Although relatively recently described, the impacts from the disease this pathogen causes have been definitively tied to amphibian declines, including some that occurred decades ago. In some cases, declines of individual species occurred with little documentation and are thus poorly understood. The relict leopard frog (Rana onca = Lithobates onca) has experienced such a decline and by the latter part of the 20th century only occurred in two general areas in southern Nevada. Recent research has found …

All Roads Lead To Weediness: Stories About Weedy Rice Origins, Weedy Genes And Weed Competitiveness, Zhongyun Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

Weedy rice (Oryza spp.), a weedy relative of cultivated rice (O.sativa), infests and persists in cultivated rice fields worldwide. Many weedy rice populations have evolved similar adaptive traits, considered part of the ‘agricultural weed syndrome’, making this an ideal model to study the genetic basis of parallel evolution. Using population genetics analyses of South Asian and US weedy rice, my research reveals multiple independent evolution events giving rise to weed groups in the two geographic areas. Weeds in South Asia have highly heterogenous genetic backgrounds, with contributions from both cultivated varieties (aus and indica) …

Family Living Sets The Stage For Cooperative Breeding And Ecological Resilience In Birds, Michael Griesser, Szymon M. Drobniak, Shinichi Nakagawa, Carlos A. Botero

Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations

Cooperative breeding is an extreme form of cooperation that evolved in a range of lineages, including arthropods, fish, birds, and mammals. Although cooperative breeding in birds is widespread and well-studied, the conditions that favored its evolution are still unclear. Based on phylogenetic comparative analyses on 3,005 bird species, we demonstrate here that family living acted as an essential stepping stone in the evolution of cooperative breeding in the vast majority of species. First, families formed by prolonging parent–offspring associations beyond nutritional independency, and second, retained offspring began helping at the nest. These findings suggest that assessment of the conditions that …

The Landscape Of Extreme Genomic Variation In The Highly Adaptable Atlantic Killifish, Noah M. Reid, Craig E. Jackson, Don Gilbert, Patrick Minx, Michael J. Montague, Thomas H. Hampton, Lily W. Helfrich, Benjamin L. King, Diane E. Nacci, Neel Aluru

Dartmouth Scholarship

Understanding and predicting the fate of populations in changing environments require knowledge about the mechanisms that support phenotypic plasticity and the adaptive value and evolutionary fate of genetic variation within populations. Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) exhibit extensive phenotypic plasticity that supports large population sizes in highly fluctuating estuarine environments. Populations have also evolved diverse local adaptations. To yield insights into the genomic variation that supports their adaptability, we sequenced a reference genome and 48 additional whole genomes from a wild population. Evolution of genes associated with cell cycle regulation and apoptosis is accelerated along the killifish lineage, which …

The Role Of Habitat Management In Shaping Predation, Animal Color, And Gene Flow In A Metapopulation Of Florida Scrub Lizards (Sceloporus Woodi), Richard William Orton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic disturbance is known to affect biological diversity at the community, species, and genetic levels. Habitat fragmentation, in particular, has been shown to impact predator abundance and distribution, impede dispersal, and augment genetic drift. In small populations, which often result from habitat fragmentation, the effects of human disturbance may be disproportionately expressed. Small populations are more susceptible to selection pressures and random drift because genetic and phenotypic frequencies can become rapidly fixed, in comparison to larger populations. In turn, fixation of maladaptive alleles or morphs can accelerate extinction. For example, cryptic color polymorphism can be maintained by apostatic selection, where …

The Plasticity Of Functional Traits In The Dipterocarps Of Borneo, Ju Ping Chan

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Plasticity plays an important role in the adaptation of sessile organisms like plants to the environment. Plants have been shown to respond plastically in heterogeneous environments, with plants originating from more resource-diverse environments thought to display greater plasticity. There is also evidence that fast-growing species show greater plasticity, as acquisition of resources from resource flushes is greatly aided by faster adaptations. We tested these theories in a Bornean tropical rain forest among three soil specialization groups (clay specialists, sandy loam specialists, and generalists) using two treatments of soil (clay versus sandy loam) and two treatments of light (high versus low). …

[Re]Visiting The Rime: A Case Study Of Adaptation As Process And Product With The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Sally Ferguson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis combines adaptation theory with ecology to examine Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and its adaptations; it argues further combinations of adaptation with evolutionary theory and ecological ideas could allow for a better interpretation of many texts. The adaptation Rime of the Modern Mariner (2011) by Nick Hayes and the appropriation Perelandra (1943) by C.S. Lewis will also be present in individual chapters to examine the texts' interactions with each other as they evolve and how each work represents the combined theory.

Drought Responsive Gene Expression Regulatory Divergence Between Upland And Lowland Ecotypes Of A Perennial C4 Grass, John T. Lovell, Scott Schwartz, David B. Lowry, Eugene V. Shakirov, Jason E. Bonnette, Xiaoyu Weng, Mei Wang, Jenifer Johnson, Avinash Sreedasyam, Christopher Plott, Jerry Jenkins, Jeremy Schmutz, Thomas E. Juenger

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Climatic adaptation is an example of a genotype-by-environment interaction (G×E) of fitness. Selection upon gene expression regulatory variation can contribute to adaptive phenotypic diversity; however, surprisingly few studies have examined how genome-wide patterns of gene expression G×E are manifested in response to environmental stress and other selective agents that cause climatic adaptation. Here, we characterize drought-responsive expression divergence between upland (drought-adapted) and lowland (mesic) ecotypes of the perennial C₄ grass, Panicum hallii, in natural field conditions. Overall, we find that cis-regulatory elements contributed to gene expression divergence across 47% of genes, 7.2% of which exhibit drought-responsive G×E. …

Beyond The Adaptationist Legacy: Updating Our Teaching To Include A Diversity Of Evolutionary Mechanisms, Rebecca M. Price, Kathryn E. Perez

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A paradigm shift away from viewing evolution primarily in terms of adaptation - the "adaptationist programme" of Gould and Lewontin - began in evolutionary research more than 35 years ago, but that shift has yet to occur within evolutionary education research or within teaching standards. We review three instruments that can help education researchers and educators undertake this paradigm shift. The instruments assess how biology undergraduates understand three evolutionary processes other than natural selection: genetic drift, dominance relationships among allelic pairs, and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). Testing with these instruments reveals that students often explain a diversity of evolutionary mechanisms …