摘要: The nutritional status of an individual can significantly influence its life history traits, including development, growth, reproduction, and survival. In the predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis Athias-Henriot (Acari: Phytoseiidae), the plasticity of life history traits, such as developmental time and size at maturity, is influenced by the quality and quantity of food. This study aimed to investigate the effects of dietary restriction at different life stages (i.e., juvenile, early adulthood, and later adulthood) on the lifespan and fecundity of P. persimilis. We found that reduced dietary intake during early adulthood resulted in a shorter lifespan for both male and female P. persimilis. Furthermore, this study demonstrated a sex-specific response to dietary restriction: it extended the lifespan of males but reduced that of females during later adulthood. Diet restriction during the postovipositional period of females showed the most variable life history trait response. Our results showed that the impact of diet restriction at different life stages can have combined influences on the postovipositional duration of P. persimilis, where the individuals receiving diet restriction during immature development and early adulthood had a greater reduction in ovipositional duration as those experiencing diet restriction during late adulthood. In addition, we observed a positive correlation between the lifespan and fecundity of females, with higher prey availability increasing both. The insights obtained from our research contribute to a better understanding of the aging process and dietary requirements of P. persimilis, which can facilitate the development of more effective biological control strategies using this predator for spider mites in agriculture.

摘要:

摘要: Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is one of the most important tyrosine kinase receptor families, which plays a pivotal role in cell signaling transduction and physiological processes. Studies on the EGFR gene in humans and other species have demonstrated its pivotal role in regulating the sodium ion balance and mediating sodium and water reabsorption in the kidney's proximal tubules. However, the impact of EGFR gene in how the Yarkand hare (Lepus yarkandensis) adapts to extreme environmental habitat remains unclear. The Yarkand hare is a desert-dwelling animal with multiple adaptations to cope with drought. Given the important physiological function of EGFR gene, we strived to understand its role in arid environment and explore the molecular mechanism of drought tolerance in the Yarkand hare. We first performed segmental cloning of the CDS of the Yarkand hare EGFR gene. Then, we constructed the phylogenetic tree of the Yarkand hare's EGFR gene and compared it with that of other species. The results showed that the Yarkand hare was most closely related to the Tolai hare (Lepus tolai). Through quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), we discovered that EGFR expression in the kidneys of the Yarkand hare was higher than in the allopatric Tolai hare from non-arid areas. Therefore, we hypothesized that EGFR gene overexpression in the kidney of the Yarkand hare may play a crucial role in drought adaptability. Subsequently, we inserted CDS of EGFR gene into a pcDNA3.1-EGFP expression vector to construct recombinant plasmid, which was transfected into HeLa cells and overexpressed. RT-qPCR demonstrated a notable and statistically significant increase in EGFR mRNA expression and western blot proved stable expression of this protein in HeLa cells. Through cell experiments, EGFR gene overexpression markedly enhanced the survival of Hela cells subjected to NaCl, H2O2, and heat stresses, increased superoxide dismutase activity, and decreased malondialdehyde content. In conclusion, these findings preliminarily suggest that EGFR might help the Yarkand hare adapt to extreme environmental conditions. EGFR manipulation in vivo could be a promising strategy to enhance the resilience of animals to extreme conditions.

摘要: Locomotion is thermally sensitive in ectotherms and therefore it is typically expressed differently among thermally heterogenous environments. Locomotion is a complex function, and whereas physiological and behavioral traits that influence locomotor performance may respond to thermal variation throughout life, other contributing traits, like body shape, may have more restricted responses. How morphology affects locomotor performance under variable temperature conditions is unknown. Here, we investigated 3 genetically distinct strains of zebrafish, Danio rerio (AB, WIK, and Tu) with a shared multi-generational history at 28 degrees C. After rearing fish at 28 degrees C, we measured prolonged swimming speed (Ucrit) at each of 6 temperatures (between 16 degrees C and 34 degrees C). Speed was strongly positively correlated among temperatures, resulting in most among individual variation being temperature-independent (i.e., fish were relatively fast or slow across all temperatures). However, we also detected significant variation along 2 axes reflecting temperature-dependent variation. Although strains differed in mean swimming performance, within strain (among-individual) patterns of speed variation were markedly consistent. Body shape and size explained significant variation among individuals in both temperature-independent and temperature-dependent axes of swimming speed variation. Notably, morphological traits that were most strongly associated with temperature-independent performance variation (i.e., faster-slower) differed from those associated with temperature-dependent (i.e., hotter-colder) variation. Further, there were significant differences among strains in both the direction and strength of association for specific morphological traits. Our results suggest that thermally heterogenous environments could have complex effects on the evolution of traits that contribute to whole organism performance traits.

摘要: Infant-care behavior, a range of caring behaviors by parental or alloparental individuals towards infants unable to live independently, plays a significant role in the survival of infants and the continuation of the species in non-human primates. During a behavioral ecological study of Taihangshan macaques, we observed 2 cases of infant adoptions by unrelated adult females. In case 1, a multiparous female adopted a lost infant from a neighboring group, with the infant being snatched back by her biological mother 35 days after the adoption. This is the first report of cross-group adoption in Macaca. In case 2, a nulliparous adult female, who had been once adopted by her elder sister, adopted an orphan from her group for 36 days. We describe the details of adoptions in Taihangshan macaques and explore possible reasons for adoptions to contribute to understanding the evolution of infant-care behavior and altruistic behavior of adoption in primates.

摘要: There are many short-lived animals, but those displaying a lifecycle with more than one generation per year (multivoltine lifecycle) are rare among terrestrial vertebrates. The multivoltine lifecycle requires rapid growth and maturation and a long active season. Thus, small lizards in humid tropical or subtropical areas are candidates for multivoltine lifecycles. To test this prediction, we conducted a capture-mark-recapture study of a subtropical grass lizard, Takydromus toyamai, endemic to Miyako Islands, Japan. Juveniles grew very quickly, averaging 0.3 mm/day in the warm season, and attained sexual maturity at 2.5 months post-hatching. The breeding season was very long, and hatchlings emerged from May to November. The prolonged breeding season and rapid growth to maturity allowed some individuals to produce a second generation in their first year. Estimates of hatching date from growth rates indicated that many females that hatched in May-June became gravid 76-120 days after hatching and 122-165 days after oviposition of the eggs from which they hatched. Analyses of juvenile survivorship and month of hatching suggest that nearly half of breeding adults were members of multivoltine generations, although the 2 generations were not discrete. The species is short-lived, with only 16% of individuals surviving beyond 12 months, and few individuals reproduced in a second year. We refer to this condition as a semi-multivoltine lifecycle. Individuals that hatch late in the season defer reproduction until the following year and become founders of the next season's cohort. This putative advantage of late-hatching individuals may have driven the evolution of this lifecycle.

摘要: Many prey species rely on publicly available personal and social information regarding local predation threats to assess risks and make context-appropriate behavioral decisions. However, in sexually dimorphic species, males and females are expected to differ in the perceived costs and/or benefits associated with predator avoidance decisions. Recent studies suggest that male Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) show reduced or absent responses to acute personal information cues, placing them at greater risk of predation relative to females. Our goal here was to test the hypothesis that adult (reproductively active) male guppies rely on social information to limit potential costs associated with their lack of response to risky personal cues. Adult male guppies were exposed to personal chemosensory cues (either conspecific alarm cues (AC), a novel odor, or a water control) in the presence of a shoal of three females inside a holding container that allowed the transmission of visual but not chemical cues. At the same time, we exposed females to either risk from AC or no risk, resulting in the display of a range of female behavior, from calm to alarmed, available as social information for males. Alarmed females caused male fright activity to increase and male interest in females to decrease, regardless of the personal cue treatment. These results indicate that male guppies rely more on female information regarding predation risk than their own personal information, probably to balance trade-offs between reproduction and predator avoidance.

摘要: Natal dispersal is a critical trait for individual fitness and the viability, structure, and genetic identity of populations. However, there is a pronounced information gap for large and long-lived species due to the difficulty of monitoring individuals at appropriate spatio-temporal scales. Here we study how individual traits and social and environmental characteristics influence natal dispersal decisions of griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) using long-term (30 years) monitoring of a large number of individuals marked as nestlings in Spain. Our results show a strong philopatry in both sexes, with some individuals recruiting as breeders on the same cliffs, and even the same nests, where they were born. This philopatric tendency was modulated by the effect of conspecific density on individual parameters and emphasized the importance of conspecific attraction and changes in food availability that may have influenced the increment in colony size and the colonization of new areas. Although further research is needed considering smaller colonies and more isolated population nuclei, our results highlight the importance of long-term studies on long-lived species to understand the factors that determine their population dynamics and their relationship with anthropogenic activities, whose effects should be predicted and managed using conservation criteria.

摘要: Noise pollution has been shown to affect wild animals in various ways, but little is known about its consequences at the community level. Investigating animals' overall vocal responses to noise across multiple sympatric species can reveal the complex nature of noise impacts but is challenging. In this study, we employed social network analysis (SNA) to evaluate how anuran communities and populations vary their calling behaviors in response to aircraft noise. SNA of anuran communities revealed that conspecific individuals increase the aggregation of their spectral (i.e., minimum frequency, maximum frequency, and dominant frequency), temporal (call duration, call rate, and call effort), and overall spectral-temporal features as an airplane passes through. SNA of populations also revealed that anurans could increase the interindividual similarity of multiple call characteristics in response to airplane noise. Furthermore, our network analysis of multiple species and multiple call traits revealed an effect of noise in species whose calling behavior did not change in previous separate analyses of each species and single traits. This study suggests that noise pollution may change the pattern of combined acoustic properties at the community level. Our findings highlight the importance of integrated methods and theories for understanding the ecological consequences of noise pollution in future studies.

摘要: Acoustic communication signals are important for species recognition and mate attraction across numerous taxa. For instance, most of the thousands of species of frogs have a species-specific advertisement call that females use to localize and discriminate among potential mates. Thus, the acoustic structure of the advertisement call is critical for reproductive success. The acoustic structure of calls will generally diverge over evolutionary time and can be influenced by the calls of sympatric species. While many studies have shown the influence of geography on contemporary call variation in populations of frogs, no study has compared the acoustic structure of frog calls across many species to ask whether we can detect an influence of divergence time and overall geographic overlap on the differences in acoustic structure of species-typical calls that we observe now. To this end, we compared acoustic features of the calls of 225 species of frogs within 4 families. Furthermore, we used a behavioral assay from 1 species of frog to determine which acoustic features to prioritize in our large-scale analyses. We found evidence that both phylogeny (time) and geography (place) relate to advertisement call acoustics albeit with large variation in these relationships across the 4 families in the analysis. Overall, these results suggest that, despite the many ecological and evolutionary forces that influence call structure, the broad forces of time and place can shape aspects of advertisement call acoustics.