Biology Commons^™

Testing The Cavefish Model: An Organism-Focused Theory Of Biological Design, Michael J. Boyle, Scott Arledge, Brian Thomas, Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Randy J. Guliuzza

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Poster Abstract

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is experimentally testing an engineering-based model of rapid biological adaptation: Continuous Environmental Tracking (CET). This model infers that organisms actively track conditions within specific environments to self-adjust through internal mechanisms and initiate adaptive functionality. The animal under investigation is Astyanax mexicanus (Mexican tetra), a freshwater fish with well-differentiated, interfertile morphotypes: eyed surface-dwelling fish (surface fish) with distinct pigmentation patterns, and eyeless cave-dwelling fish (cavefish) with minimal pigmentation. Aquaria within our newly established laboratory contain breeding pairs of cavefish exposed to either (A) cyclical light/dark patterns of full-spectrum high-intensity light, (B) minimal light …

Molecular Baraminology Of Marine And Freshwater Fish, Matthew Cserhati

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Background

How did freshwater and saltwater fish survive the Flood? Is it even possible for fish to adapt rapidly between saltwater and freshwater? What kind of biological mechanism make this process possible? What is the distribution of freshwater and saltwater fish species in different fish baramins?

Erosion and volcanic activity would have made the post-Flood waters saltier than the pre-Flood waters. Species richness in freshwater is currently estimated to be 14 times greater than in saltwater (Carrete Vega and Wiens, 2012), and the approximate number of freshwater and saltwater fish is about the same: around 15,000 (Seehausen and Wagner, 2014). …

A Review Of Crs Ekinds Predictive Success And Known Genetic Mechanisms Affecting The Prevalence Of Alleles In A Population: Meiotic Drive As A Competing Explanation For Patterns Attributed To Natural Selection, Jean K. Lightner

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

I propose a full paper the begins by introducing the Creation Research Society’s eKINDS (examination of kinds in natural diversification and speciation) project. Then, I will narrow the focus to one key topic of this initiative: finding the mechanisms that underly the rapid diversification and speciation evident in various created kinds of creatures as they reproduced and filled the earth. This can be divided into two categories: (1) the origin of alleles and (2) factors affecting the frequencies of those alleles, especially in the context of adaptation. In the standard neo-Darwinian paradigm, random mutation is claimed to account for the …

Testing The Cavefish Model: An Organism-Focused Theory Of Biological Design, Michael J. Boyle, Brian Thomas, Jeffery P. Tomkins, Randy J. Guliuzza

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

The significance of this research is multifaceted. At the 8^th ICC, Guliuzza and Gaskill (2018) introduced a novel paradigm: Continuous Environmental Tracking (CET). This theory infers that organisms actively and continuously track conditions within their specific environments to self-adjust through internal mechanisms that integrate molecular, biochemical, physiological and behavioral functionality of the whole organism. These mechanisms are predicted to operate by the same integrative principles that govern human-engineered control systems, suggesting that fish and other animals make highly-regulated responses in order to compensate for changes in external conditions that may exceed their routine efforts to maintain homeostasis. Moreover, the …

Temperature Effects On The Development Of The Axial Skeleton And Body Shape In Astyanax Mexicanus (Teleostei: Characidae), Joseph David Forberg

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Humans are causing large-scale changes in environmental conditions across the planet including in temperature. Changes in the environmental conditions can lead to phenotypic changes in ectotherms that affect adaptively important traits like body shape and the axial skeleton. Previous studies have shown that temperature changes during development significantly affects body shape and vertebral number in the Mexican tetra Astyanax mexicanus. How these changes arise early in development is not clear. In this study, I examine how changes in developmental temperature affect body shape in larval and juvenile fish, the order of ossification of elements of the axial skeleton, the size …

Time Domains Of Hypoxia Responses And -Omics Insights, James J. Yu, Amy L. Non, Erica C. Heinrich, Wanjun Gu, Joe Alcock, Esteban A. Moya, Elijah S. Lawrence, Michael S. Tift, Katie A. O'Brien, Jay F. Storz, Anthony V. Signore, Jane I. Khudyakov, William K. Milsom, Sean M. Wilson, Cynthia M. Beall, Francisco C. Villafuerte, Tsering Stobdan, Colleen G. Julian, Lorna G. Moore, Mark M. Fuster, Jennifer A. Stokes, Richard Milner, John B. West, Jiao Zhang, John Y. Shyy, Ainash Childebayeva, José Pablo Vázquez-Medina, Luu V. Pham, Omar A. Mesarwi, James E. Hall, Zachary A. Cheviron, Jeremy Sieker, Arlin B. Blood, Jason X. Yuan, Tatum S. Simonson, Et Al.

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The ability to respond rapidly to changes in oxygen tension is critical for many forms of life. Challenges to oxygen homeostasis, specifically in the contexts of evolutionary biology and biomedicine, provide important insights into mechanisms of hypoxia adaptation and tolerance. Here we synthesize findings across varying time domains of hypoxia in terms of oxygen delivery, ranging from early animal to modern human evolution and examine the potential impacts of environmental and clinical challenges through emerging multi-omics approaches. We discuss how diverse animal species have adapted to hypoxic environments, how humans vary in their responses to hypoxia (i.e., in the context …

Importance Of Local Weather And Environmental Gradients On Demography Of A Broadly Distributed Temperate Frog, Hallie Lingo, James C. Munger

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Amphibian populations are sensitive to environmental temperatures and moisture, which vary with local weather conditions and may reach new norms and extremes as contemporary climate change progresses. Using long-term (11–16 years) mark-recapture data from 10 populations of the Columbia spotted frog (Rana luteiventris) from across its U.S. range, we addressed hypotheses about how demographic relationships to weather depend upon a population’s position along climate gradients. We estimated the effect of seasonal weather on annual survival probability and recruitment rates both within populations and across the species’ range from subalpine forests to semi-arid deserts. We calculated population-specific weather variables …

A Draft Genome Provides Hypotheses On Drought Tolerance In A Keystone Plant Species In Western North America Threatened By Climate Change, Anthony E. Melton, James Beck, Stephanie J. Galla, Marcelo Serpe, Stephen Novak, Sven Buerki

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Climate change presents distinct ecological and physiological challenges to plants as extreme climate events become more common. Understanding how species have adapted to drought, especially ecologically important nonmodel organisms, will be crucial to elucidate potential biological pathways for drought adaptation and inform conservation strategies. To aid in genome-to-phenome research, a draft genome was assembled for a diploid individual of Artemisia tridentata subsp. tridentata, a threatened keystone shrub in western North America. While this taxon has few genetic resources available and genetic/genomics work has proven difficult due to genetic heterozygosity in the past, a draft genome was successfully assembled. Aquaporin …

Diminishing Opportunities For Sustainability Of Coastal Cities In The Anthropocene: A Review, John W. Day, Joel D. Gunn, Joseph Robert Burger

Biology Faculty Publications

The world is urbanizing most rapidly in tropical to sub-temperate areas and in coastal zones. Climate change along with other global change forcings will diminish the opportunities for sustainability of cities, especially in coastal areas in low-income countries. Climate forcings include global temperature and heatwave increases that are expanding the equatorial tropical belt, sea-level rise, an increase in the frequency of the most intense tropical cyclones, both increases and decreases in freshwater inputs to coastal zones, and increasingly severe extreme precipitation events, droughts, freshwater shortages, heat waves, and wildfires. Current climate impacts are already strongly influencing natural and human systems. …

Epigenetics As Driver Of Adaptation And Diversification In Microbial Eukaryotes, Agnes K.M. Weiner, Laura A. Katz

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Evolutionary Dynamics And Structural Consequences Of De Novo Beneficial Mutations And Mutant Lineages Arising In A Constant Environment, Margie Kinnersley, Katja Schwartz, Dong Dong Yang, Gavin Sherlock, Frank Rosenzweig

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Microbial evolution experiments can be used to study the tempo and dynamics of evolutionary change in asexual populations, founded from single clones and growing into large populations with multiple clonal lineages. High-throughput sequencing can be used to catalog de novo mutations as potential targets of selection, determine in which lineages they arise, and track the fates of those lineages. Here, we describe a long-term experimental evolution study to identify targets of selection and to determine when, where, and how often those targets are hit. Results: We experimentally evolved replicate Escherichia coli populations that originated from a mutator/nonsense suppressor ancestor …

Within- And Trans-Generational Environmental Adaptation To Climate Change: Perspectives And New Challenges, Naim M. Bautista, Amélie Crespel

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The current and projected impacts of climate change are shaped by unprecedented rates of change in environmental conditions. These changes likely mismatch the existing coping capacities of organisms within-generations and impose challenges for population resilience across generations. To better understand the impacts of projected scenarios of climate change on organismal fitness and population maintenance, it is crucial to consider and integrate the proximate sources of variability of plastic and adaptive responses to environmental change in future empirical approaches. Here we explore the implications of considering: (a) the variability in different time-scale events of climate change; (b) the variability in plastic …

Predators As Agents Of Selection And Diversification, Jerald B. Johnson, Mark C. Belk

Faculty Publications

Predation is ubiquitous in nature and can be an important component of both ecological and evolutionary interactions. One of the most striking features of predators is how often they cause evolutionary diversification in natural systems. Here, we review several ways that this can occur, exploring empirical evidence and suggesting promising areas for future work. We also introduce several papers recently accepted in Diversity that demonstrate just how important and varied predation can be as an agent of natural selection. We conclude that there is still much to be done in this field, especially in areas where multiple predator species prey …

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 …

Experimental Psychology Meets Behavioral Ecology: What Laboratory Studies Of Learning Polymorphisms Mean For Learning Under Natural Conditions, And Vice Versa, Brian H. Smith, Chelsea N. Cook

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Behavior genetics, and specifically the study of learning and memory, has benefitted immensely from the development of powerful forward- and reverse-genetic methods for investigating the relationships between genes and behavior. Application of these methods in controlled laboratory settings has led to insights into gene–behavior relationships. In this perspective article, we argue that the field is now poised to make significant inroads into understanding the adaptive value of heritable variation in behavior in natural populations. Studies of natural variation with several species, in particular, are now in a position to complement laboratory studies of mechanisms, and sometimes this work can lead …

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 …

Maladaptation In Feral And Domesticated Animals, Eben Gering, Darren Incorvaia, R. Henriksen, Dominic Wright

Eben Gering

Selection regimes and population structures can be powerfully changed by domestication and feralization, and these changes can modulate animal fitness in both captive and natural environments. In this review, we synthesize recent studies of these two processes and consider their impacts on organismal and population fitness. Domestication and feralization offer multiple windows into the forms and mechanisms of maladaptation. Firstly, domestic and feral organisms that exhibit suboptimal traits or fitness allow us to identify their underlying causes within tractable research systems. This has facilitated significant progress in our general understandings of genotype–phenotype relationships, fitness trade‐offs, and the roles of population …

Getting Back To Nature: Feralization In Animals And Plants, Eben Gering, Darren Incorvaia, R. Henriksen, Jeffrey Conner, Thomas Getty, Dominic Wright

Eben Gering

Formerly domesticated organisms and artificially selected genes often escape controlled cultivation, but their subsequent evolution is not well studied. In this review, we examine plant and animal feralization through an evolutionary lens, including how natural selection, artificial selection, and gene flow shape feral genomes, traits, and fitness. Available evidence shows that feralization is not a mere reversal of domestication. Instead, it is shaped by the varied and complex histories of feral populations, and by novel selection pressures. To stimulate further insight we outline several future directions. These include testing how ‘domestication genes’ act in wild settings, studying the brains and …

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. …

Positive Genetic Associations Among Fitness Traits Support Evolvability Of A Reef-Building Coral Under Multiple Stressors, Rachel M. Wright, Hanaka Mera, Carly D. Kenkel, Maria Nayfa, Line K. Bay, Mikhail V. Matz

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Climate change threatens organisms in a variety of interactive ways that requires simultaneous adaptation of multiple traits. Predicting evolutionary responses requires an understanding of the potential for interactions among stressors and the genetic variance and covariance among fitness-related traits that may reinforce or constrain an adaptive response. Here we investigate the capacity of Acropora millepora, a reef-building coral, to adapt to multiple environmental stressors: rising sea surface temperature, ocean acidification, and increased prevalence of infectious diseases. We measured growth rates (weight gain), coral color (a proxy for Symbiodiniaceae density), and survival, in addition to nine physiological indicators of coral and …

Getting Back To Nature: Feralization In Animals And Plants, Eben Gering, Darren Incorvaia, R. Henriksen, Jeffrey Conner, Thomas Getty, Dominic Wright

Biology Faculty Articles

Formerly domesticated organisms and artificially selected genes often escape controlled cultivation, but their subsequent evolution is not well studied. In this review, we examine plant and animal feralization through an evolutionary lens, including how natural selection, artificial selection, and gene flow shape feral genomes, traits, and fitness. Available evidence shows that feralization is not a mere reversal of domestication. Instead, it is shaped by the varied and complex histories of feral populations, and by novel selection pressures. To stimulate further insight we outline several future directions. These include testing how ‘domestication genes’ act in wild settings, studying the brains and …

Genomic Signatures Of Conflict And Cooperation In Plants And Social Amoebae, Katherine Sylvia Geist

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arms races involve bouts of reciprocal co-adaptation to a social environment. We have a strong sense for how arms races drive the evolution of genes in purely antagonistic contexts, such as host-pathogen or predator-prey. In these systems, conflict that produces arms races between two parties results in positive selection – the fixation of adaptive alleles between species – for both parties. However, we do not have an equal sense for how arms races during cooperative enterprises shape genic evolution. If we assume that arms races affect genic evolution similarly regardless of context – antagonistic or cooperative – then we would …

Maladaptation In Feral And Domesticated Animals, Eben Gering, Darren Incorvaia, R. Henriksen, Dominic Wright

Biology Faculty Articles

Selection regimes and population structures can be powerfully changed by domestication and feralization, and these changes can modulate animal fitness in both captive and natural environments. In this review, we synthesize recent studies of these two processes and consider their impacts on organismal and population fitness. Domestication and feralization offer multiple windows into the forms and mechanisms of maladaptation. Firstly, domestic and feral organisms that exhibit suboptimal traits or fitness allow us to identify their underlying causes within tractable research systems. This has facilitated significant progress in our general understandings of genotype–phenotype relationships, fitness trade‐offs, and the roles of population …

Phylogeography Of The Neotropical Fish Genus Rhoadsia (Teleostei: Characidae) In Ecuador, Roberto Valentino Cucalón Tamayo

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Western Ecuador is considered a biodiversity hotspot. Nevertheless, studies of population genetic structure and variation are rare, especially in aquatic species. The genus Rhoadsia is an endemic freshwater fish in this region with two recognized species, Rhoadsia minor and R. altipinna. Little is known about the evolutionary relationships of their populations, and due to morphological similarities, their validity as distinct species has been questioned. The present study uses a phylogeographic approach to examine the evolutionary history of the genus and the validity of the two described species. Furthermore, I investigated the possible geographical origin of the genus based on patterns …

Life Ascending: Mechanism And Process In Physiological Adaptation To High-Altitude Hypoxia, Jay F. Storz, Graham R. Scott

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

To cope with the reduced availability of O2 at high altitude, air-breathing vertebrates have evolved myriad adjustments in the cardiorespiratory system to match tissue O2 delivery with metabolic O2 demand. We explain how changes at interacting steps of the O2 transport pathway contribute to plastic and evolved changes in whole-animal aerobic performance under hypoxia. In vertebrates native to high altitude, enhancements of aerobic performance under hypoxia are attributable to a combination of environ- mentally induced and evolved changes in multiple steps of the pathway. Additionally, evidence suggests that many high-altitude natives have evolved mechanisms for attenuating maladaptive acclimatization responses to …

Effect Of Temperature Change On Synaptic Transmission At Crayfish Neuromuscular Junctions, Yuechen Zhu, Leo De Castro, Robin L. Cooper

Biology Faculty Publications

Ectothermic animals in areas characterised by seasonal changes are susceptible to extreme fluctuations in temperature. To survive through varied temperatures, ectotherms have developed unique strategies. This study focuses on synaptic transmission function at cold temperatures, as it is a vital component of ectothermic animals' survival. For determining how synaptic transmission is influenced by an acute change in temperature (20°C to 10°C within a minute) and chronic cold (10°C), the crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) neuromuscular junction (NMJ) was used as a model. To simulate chronic cold conditions, crayfish were acclimated to 15°C for 1 week and then to 10°C for …

Adaptation Mechanisms Of Two-Spotted Spider Mite, Tetranychus Urticae, To Arabidopsis Indole Glucosinolates, Golnaz Salehipourshirazi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch is a key agricultural pest that causes significant yield losses in a wide range of economically important crops. Rapid development of resistance to several classes of pesticides in T. urticae necessitates introduction of alternative management strategies to control this pest. Indole glucosinolates (IGs) are secondary metabolites found in Brassicaceae plants (including Arabidopsis thaliana) that have been shown to be effective against T. urticae and could be potential candidates to control spider mites. However, a laboratory population selected on IG-containing Arabidopsis was able to evolve adaptation to this plant. The overall objective of …

The Crs Ekinds Research Initiative: Where We Have Been And Where We Are Headed From Here, Jean K. Lightner, Kevin Anderson

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

The eKINDS research initiative began in 2016 in an effort to accelerate research on numerous outstanding questions related the diversification and speciation of plants and animals. The research encompasses three broad topics: a) identification of created kinds, b) identification of mechanisms that drive diversification and speciation within created kinds, and c) detailed analysis of individual created kinds in an attempt to propose a robust natural history that delineates key events as organisms reproduced and filled the earth following the time of the Flood.

As part of the eKINDS project, a new statistical tool is being developed to take advantage of …

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 …

Environmental Selection During The Last Ice Age On The Mother-To-Infant Transmission Of Vitamin D And Fatty Acids Through Breast Milk, Leslea J. Hlusko, Joshua P. Carlson, George Chaplin, Scott A. Elias, John F. Hoffecker, Michaela Huffman, Nina G. Jablonski, Tesla A. Monson, Dennis H. O'Rourke, Marin A. Pilloud, G. Richard Scott

Anthropology Faculty and Staff Publications

Because of the ubiquitous adaptability of our material culture, some human populations have occupied extreme environments that intensified selection on existing genomic variation. By 32,000 years ago, people were living in Arctic Beringia, and during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; 28,000–18,000 y ago), they likely persisted in the Beringian refugium. Such high latitudes provide only very low levels of UV radiation, and can thereby lead to dangerously low levels of biosynthesized vitamin D. The physiological effects of vitamin D deficiency range from reduced dietary absorption of calcium to a compromised immune system and modified adipose tissue function. The ectodysplasin A …