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2022

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Articles 91 - 118 of 118

Full-Text Articles in Evolution

Sentience As Part Of Emotional Lives, Frans B. M. De Waal Jan 2022

Sentience As Part Of Emotional Lives, Frans B. M. De Waal

Animal Sentience

It is high time to explore the sentience of invertebrate animals, but this topic cannot be discussed without also exploring their emotional lives, including positive emotions. Sentience probably evolved to allow the regulation of emotions by endowing them with feelings.

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Decapod Sentience: Promising Framework And Evidence, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg Md Jan 2022

Decapod Sentience: Promising Framework And Evidence, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg Md

Animal Sentience

Strong points of the target article by Crump et al. are that it offers clear criteria for judging whether decapods are sentient, an effective semi-quantitative grading system for this purpose, and an astute, critical review of the literature. It concludes plausibly that major subgroups of decapods are sentient. A minor problem is that it includes classical, Pavlovian learning as a marker of sentience along with the more valid marker of complex (e.g., operant) learning. Another minor problem is that it does not distinguish results that are negative because of likely absence of sentience from results that are negative because they …

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Integrating Evolution Into The Study Of Animal Sentience, Walter Veit Jan 2022

Integrating Evolution Into The Study Of Animal Sentience, Walter Veit

Animal Sentience

Like many others, I see Crump et al. (2022) as a milestone for improving upon previous guidelines and for extending their framework to decapod crustaceans. Their proposal would benefit from a firm evolutionary foundation by adding the comparative measurement of life-history complexity as a ninth criterion for attributing sentience to nonhuman animals.

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Animal Sentience Research: Synthesis And Proposals, Andrew Crump, Heather Browning, Alex Schnell, Charlotte Burn, Jonathan Birch Jan 2022

Animal Sentience Research: Synthesis And Proposals, Andrew Crump, Heather Browning, Alex Schnell, Charlotte Burn, Jonathan Birch

Animal Sentience

Most commentaries on our target article broadly support our approach to evaluating evidence of animal sentience. In this Response, we clarify the framework’s purpose and address criticisms of our criteria. A recurring theme is that a framework to synthesise current evidence of sentience is not the same as an agenda for future directions in animal sentience research. Although future directions are valuable, our framework aims to evaluate existing evidence and inform animal welfare legislation.

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Mortality In Interspecific Hybrids Of Nasonia Vitripennis And Nasonia Giraulti, Bonnie Cobb Jan 2022

Mortality In Interspecific Hybrids Of Nasonia Vitripennis And Nasonia Giraulti, Bonnie Cobb

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Nasonia is a parasitoid wasp genus that serves as an emerging model for studying speciation due to an incompatibility between nuclear and mitochondrial genomes between sister taxa. Short generation times, easy rearing in a lab setting, producing large amounts of progeny, and whole genome sequencing make Nasonia is an excellent candidate for studying incomplete reproductive isolation. Nasonia have five chromosomes and exhibit haplo-diploid sex determination in which fertilized eggs develop into diploid females and unfertilized eggs develop into haploid males. Recessive phenotypes are hidden in diploid females but are laid bare in haploid males as there is no interaction between …

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Evaluating Population Genetic Structure And Potential Genomic Signals Of Natural Selection In A Migratory Songbird (Protonotaria Citrea), Tyler A. Hohenstein Jan 2022

Evaluating Population Genetic Structure And Potential Genomic Signals Of Natural Selection In A Migratory Songbird (Protonotaria Citrea), Tyler A. Hohenstein

Theses and Dissertations

In this study I attempted to further resolve the population genetic structure in the Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea), and conducted an outlier SNP analysis and exploratory gene ontology analysis to investigate potential ongoing natural selection in the species. This analysis of population structure confirms previous work by DeSaix et al. (2019), where weak population structure was observed between eastern sites along the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and western sites in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, possibly due to a genetic discontinuity across the Appalachian Mountains. I conducted two forms of outlier SNP analyses, a principal component analysis (PCA)-based approach to identify SNPs …

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The Naming Of Homo Bodoensis By Roksandic And Colleagues Does Not Resolve Issues Surrounding Middle Pleistocene Human Evolution, Eric Delson, Chris Stringer Jan 2022

The Naming Of Homo Bodoensis By Roksandic And Colleagues Does Not Resolve Issues Surrounding Middle Pleistocene Human Evolution, Eric Delson, Chris Stringer

Publications and Research

Roksandic et al. (2022) proposed the new species name Homo bodoensis as a replacement name for Homo rhodesiensis Woodward, 1921, because they felt it was poorly and variably defined and was linked to sociopolitical baggage. However, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature includes regulations on how and when such name changes are allowed, and Roksandic et al.'s arguments meet none of these requirements. It is not permitted to change a name solely because of variable (or erroneous) later use once it has been originally defined correctly, nor can a name be modified because it is offensive to one or more …

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The Sweet Smell Of Mystery: The Scent Glands Of Oncopeltus Fasciatus, Despina Tsitlakidou Jan 2022

The Sweet Smell Of Mystery: The Scent Glands Of Oncopeltus Fasciatus, Despina Tsitlakidou

Wayne State University Theses

Scent glands (ScGs) are defensive glands that are found among a wide variety of insect orders. These glands represent a specialized function of the exocrine system; however, the developmental mechanism remains unclear. Previous functional studies of the endocrine glands revealed that the endocrine and tracheal systems utilize similar genetic regulatory networks which indicate that these systems have common primordia. In Drosophila, sal is localized in the prothoracic gland while in Oncopeltus the gene is localized in the duct cells of the abdominal scent glands (Hanna & Popadić, 2020; Sánchez-Higueras et al., 2014). RNAi mediated knockdown of sal resulted in significant …

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Functional Trade-Offs Between Terrestrial And Aquatic Locomotion In The Amphibious Fish Kryptolebias Marmoratus, Erik Axlid Jan 2022

Functional Trade-Offs Between Terrestrial And Aquatic Locomotion In The Amphibious Fish Kryptolebias Marmoratus, Erik Axlid

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The mangrove rivulus (Kryptolebias marmoratus) is a phenotypically plastic teleost fish that can spend considerable time on land and traverse the terrestrial realm through a ballistic behavior termed the tail-flip jump. The tail-flip jump is a transitional stage between fully aquatic and terrestrial lifestyles. Therefore, understanding this behavior can provide insight into how organisms adapt to new environments over evolutionary time. Taxa that are successful tail-flip jumpers have a deep caudal peduncle and uniform body shape. Studies of K. marmoratus show that terrestrial acclimation and exercise improves tail-flip jumping performance due to muscle remodeling, but the implications of these muscular …

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Time To Stop Pretending We Don’T Know Other Animals Are Sentient Beings, Marc Bekoff Jan 2022

Time To Stop Pretending We Don’T Know Other Animals Are Sentient Beings, Marc Bekoff

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al.’s target article is an outstanding review of some of the history of the science of sentience, but one would have liked to see a much stronger “call to action.” We don’t need any more data to know that many other animals are sentient beings whose lives must be protected from harm in a wide variety of contexts. It is not anti-science to want more action on behalf of other animals right now.

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Identifying The Human Homologs Of Yeast Rab Proteins Ypt10 & Ypt11 And A Global-Scale Louse Endosymbiont Genome Variation, Nathaniel P. Smith Jan 2022

Identifying The Human Homologs Of Yeast Rab Proteins Ypt10 & Ypt11 And A Global-Scale Louse Endosymbiont Genome Variation, Nathaniel P. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a late-onset fatal neurodegenerative disease that causes loss of upper and/or lower motor neurons, and currently has no treatment or cure available. Over 90% of cases occur spontaneously with unknown causes, highlighting the complexity of the disease, and only 10% of cases are linked to heritable genetic mutations. Numerous ALS-linked genes are conserved through evolution, and model organisms may therefore provide opportunities to understand disease pathology at a molecular or cellular level, proving instrumental in identifying therapeutic targets. ALS subtype 8 (ALS8) is caused by an autosomal dominant P56S mutation in the VAPB gene that …

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Sentience In Decapod Crustaceans: A General Framework And Review Of The Evidence, Andrew Crump, Heather Browning, Alex Schnell, Charlotte Burn, Jonathan Birch Jan 2022

Sentience In Decapod Crustaceans: A General Framework And Review Of The Evidence, Andrew Crump, Heather Browning, Alex Schnell, Charlotte Burn, Jonathan Birch

Animal Sentience

We outline a framework for evaluating scientific evidence of sentience, focusing on pain experience. It includes eight neural and cognitive-behavioural criteria, with confidence levels for each criterion reflecting the reliability and quality of the evidence. We outline the rationale for each criterion and apply our framework to a controversial sentience candidate: decapod crustaceans. We have either high or very high confidence that true crabs (infraorder Brachyura) satisfy five criteria, amounting to strong evidence of sentience. Moreover, we have high confidence that both anomuran crabs (infraorder Anomura) and astacid lobsters/crayfish (infraorder Astacidea) meet three criteria—substantial evidence of sentience. The case is, …

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Of Course Crustaceans Are Sentient: But There's More To The Story, Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska, William B. Miller Jr. Jan 2022

Of Course Crustaceans Are Sentient: But There's More To The Story, Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska, William B. Miller Jr.

Animal Sentience

We are in basic agreement with Crump et al. that animal welfare, particularly with regard to the experience of pain, is a topic of importance. However, we come to the issue from a different perspective, one in which all species are sentient and can feel pain. The implications of this theory are discussed.

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Defending Human Difference By Raising The Bar, Joe Gough Jan 2022

Defending Human Difference By Raising The Bar, Joe Gough

Animal Sentience

Chapman & Huffman (C&H) offer a theory of why we humans want to believe that we are different: to justify our cruelty to animals. This commentary offers further supporting evidence of this and examines more closely what the claim that humans are ‘different’ amounts to. It also considers some methodological issues in animal psychology closely related to C&H ‘s theory. These problems result from a common strategy for defending hypotheses about human difference.

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Anthropogenic Influences On The Decline, Restoration, And Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics Of Lake Superior’S Coaster Brook Trout, Austin Johnson Jan 2022

Anthropogenic Influences On The Decline, Restoration, And Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics Of Lake Superior’S Coaster Brook Trout, Austin Johnson

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The coaster brook trout is a life history variant of the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) that is characterized by either lake residency or migration between stream and lake habitats. Coaster brook trout were once widespread throughout Lake Superior and its tributaries, but populations declined sharply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Historically, brook trout were a popular target of recreational and subsistence fishing in the Lake Superior basin, and it has been hypothesized that angling pressure combined with multiple forms of industrial development are what drove the coaster brook trout’s decline. In the mid …

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Sentience Politics : A Fishy Perspective, Culum Brown Jan 2022

Sentience Politics : A Fishy Perspective, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

The plight of fishes has almost certainly got worse since Bentham (1789) coined the phrase “The question is not Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?” Despite the fact that fishes are increasingly recognised as sentient animals worthy of protection under animal welfare legislation in many countries around the world, fishing practices are almost universally exempt activities. The human population continues to grow, and, surprisingly, per capita intake of fish is still increasing (FAO 2020). The source of this fish is not wild stocks (catches of which have remained more or less stagnant for …

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Legal Recognition Of Animal Sentience: The Case For Cautious Optimism, Jane Kotzmann Jan 2022

Legal Recognition Of Animal Sentience: The Case For Cautious Optimism, Jane Kotzmann

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al.’s target article provides a valuable indication of the work that was required to reach the point where animals are recognised as sentient in various laws. To ensure this work was not in vain, the language of sentience needs to be used as a moral currency to demand further cultural change involving greater human respect for animals.

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An Integrative Investigation Of The Synechococcus A/B Clade During Adaptive Radiation At The Upper Thermal Limit Of Phototrophy, Christopher L. Pierpont Jan 2022

An Integrative Investigation Of The Synechococcus A/B Clade During Adaptive Radiation At The Upper Thermal Limit Of Phototrophy, Christopher L. Pierpont

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Thermophilic microorganisms have been scientifically observed since the early nineteenth century and have spurred many questions about the limits of life and the capacity of organisms to survive extreme conditions. Decades of research on thermophile proteins and genomes have yielded several proposed correlates of temperature that may contribute to adaptation of bacteria and archaea to high temperature. However, many of the generalizations reported are drawn from analyses of deeply divergent taxa or from individual case studies in isolation from mesophilic relatives. Members of the Synechococcus A/B (SynAB) group are the only cyanobacteria with members able to grow above 65 °C …

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All Living Organisms Are Sentient, Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska, William B. Miller Jr. Jan 2022

All Living Organisms Are Sentient, Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska, William B. Miller Jr.

Animal Sentience

We argue that all living organisms, from the simplest unicellular prokaryotes to Homo sapiens, have valenced experiences—feelings as states of preference—and are capable of cognitive representations. Bacteria can learn, form stable memories, and communicate, hence solve problems. Rowan et al.'s statement that "Subjective feelings are just that — subjective — and are available only to the animal (or human) experiencing them" is true but irrelevant. When we see a fish flopping about in the bottom of a boat we immediately recognize suffering without having a glimpse of the nature of piscine distress. Some controlled anthropomorphism can go a …

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The Science Of Animal Sentience And The Politics Of Animal Welfare Should Be Kept Separate, Marian Stamp Dawkins Jan 2022

The Science Of Animal Sentience And The Politics Of Animal Welfare Should Be Kept Separate, Marian Stamp Dawkins

Animal Sentience

Although linked historically by Rowan et al., the scientific study of animal sentience and political campaigns to improve animal welfare should be kept separate, for at least two reasons. First, the separation makes it clear that standards of evidence acceptable for ethical or political decisions on animal welfare can be lower than those required for a rigorously scientific approach to animal sentience. Second, it helps to avoid confirmatory bias in the form of giving undue weight to results that are in line with pre-conceived ideas and political views.

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Strong Inferences About Pain In Invertebrates Require Stronger Evidence, Edgar T. Walters Jan 2022

Strong Inferences About Pain In Invertebrates Require Stronger Evidence, Edgar T. Walters

Animal Sentience

Evidence for sentience in animals distantly related to humans is often sought in observations of behavioral and neural responses to noxious stimuli that would be painful in humans. Most proposed criteria for painful sentience in “lower” animals such as decapod crustaceans have no necessary links to the affective (“suffering”) component of pain. The best evidence for painful affect in animals is learned aversion to stimuli associated with noxious experience, and conditioned preference for contexts associated with relief from aversive consequences of noxious experience, as expressed in voluntary behavior. Such evidence is currently lacking for any invertebrate except octopus.

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The Reality And Prevalence Of Animal Sentience, Antonio Damasio Jan 2022

The Reality And Prevalence Of Animal Sentience, Antonio Damasio

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al use findings from neurobiology, clinical neurology, and general biology to argue for the extensive presence of sentience in animals, but they are wisely cautious concerning when in the phylogenetic scale that emergence occurred.

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The Question Is Not “Can Humans Talk?” Or “Can They Suffer?” But “Can They Reason?”, Clive Phillips Jan 2022

The Question Is Not “Can Humans Talk?” Or “Can They Suffer?” But “Can They Reason?”, Clive Phillips

Animal Sentience

In their target article, Rowan et al (2022) make a welcome attempt to chart the development of Western progress over the past two hundred years toward formally recognizing that animals feel. They outline the heroic efforts of Compassion in World Farming to gain for animals the status of sentient beings rather than merely human property. A broader view exists, from human prehistory to the present day, in which animals have been (and still are) understood to be sentient by indigenous peoples as well as by some Eastern religions. Growing recognition in the West that animals feel represents a new age …

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Getting To The Root Cause: The Genetic Underpinnings Of Root System Architecture And Rhizodeposition In Sorghum, Farren Smith Jan 2022

Getting To The Root Cause: The Genetic Underpinnings Of Root System Architecture And Rhizodeposition In Sorghum, Farren Smith

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Plants are some of the most diverse organisms on earth, consisting of more than 350,000 different species. To understand the underlying processes that contributed to plant diversification, it is fundamental to identify the genetic and genomic components that facilitated various adaptations over evolutionary history. Most studies to date have focused on the underlying controls of above-ground traits such as grain and vegetation; however, little is known about the “hidden half” of plants. Root systems comprise half of the total plant structure and provide vital functions such as anchorage, resource acquisition, and storage of energy reserves. The execution of these key …

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Population Genomics Of Redbreast Sunfish (Lepomis Auritus): Exploring Gene Flow And Local Adaptation In A Widely Distributed Freshwater Fish, Garret J. Strickland Jan 2022

Population Genomics Of Redbreast Sunfish (Lepomis Auritus): Exploring Gene Flow And Local Adaptation In A Widely Distributed Freshwater Fish, Garret J. Strickland

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Little information is available concerning the distribution of genetic diversity in non-salmonid, non-imperiled, freshwater fish. In order to fill in this knowledge gap, I conducted a population genomics survey in Redbreast Sunfish (Lepomis auritus; RBS), a widespread, generalist species distributed along the Atlantic slope rivers of eastern North America. I sampled four basins (ACF, Savannah, Roanoke, and James) at eight sites each with a factorial experimental design. Sites were distributed among coastal plain, Piedmont, or mountain ecoregions in order to capture the greatest range of environmental states experienced by RBS, with the intention of finding evidence for local adaptation to …

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An Analysis Of The Spatial Genetic Structure Of A Hybrid Zone Between Two Species Of Killifish, Fundulus Heteroclitus And F. Grandis, Andrew Lee Hardy Jan 2022

An Analysis Of The Spatial Genetic Structure Of A Hybrid Zone Between Two Species Of Killifish, Fundulus Heteroclitus And F. Grandis, Andrew Lee Hardy

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hybridization offers unique insight into the evolutionary process of speciation and the forces that maintain barriers to reproduction. In northeast Florida, a hybrid zone between two species of killifish, Fundulus heteroclitus and F. grandis, has been identified near Flagler Beach, FL, although the exact boundaries of the hybrid zone remain unknown (Gonzalez et al. 2009). This study aims to determine the fine-scale spatial genetic patterns of the hybrid zone and test the hypothesis that species ranges are influenced by changes in dominant vegetation. Results from an ADMIXTURE analysis and FST data indicated the boundary of the area of …

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Evolution Of Life-History Characteristics In Gadoidei, Joshua Hittie Jan 2022

Evolution Of Life-History Characteristics In Gadoidei, Joshua Hittie

Master's Theses

Life-history characteristics (e.g., age and growth) have been used extensively to understand the temporal population dynamics of fish species, but less so within a phylogenetic framework. This study investigates life-history characteristics within the suborder Gadoidei (order: Gadiformes) and to test the extent of phylogenetic signal for those characteristics. To accomplish this, a phylogeny of Gadoidei was first constructed based on both mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Within this phylogenetic framework, life-history traits, including growth rate, age at maturity, and longevity, as well as ecological data, such as water depth and diet type, were mapped to the phylogeny using parsimony analysis to …

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Three-Dimensional Staging Series Of Anolis Sagrei, Lilian Epperlein Jan 2022

Three-Dimensional Staging Series Of Anolis Sagrei, Lilian Epperlein

Master's Theses

With the rapid rise of Evo-devo and the concurrent development of new imaging techniques, comparative studies of development have accelerated over the last decade. Squamates, lizards and snakes, lack a traditional experimental model species for developmental investigations, yet are important for understanding fundamental evolutionary questions because of their remarkable diversity. However, several squamate species have growing communities of biologists building new resources for comparative and experimental studies of lizard development. Creation of detailed embryological atlases for these species will help promote their advancement. In the past, scientists have had to rely on destructive methods to take apart biological samples which …

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