| 1. |
- Schroeder, J., et al.
(författare)
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Fewer invited talks by women in evolutionary biology symposia
- 2013
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Ingår i: Journal of evolutionary biology. - : Wiley. - 1420-9101 .- 1010-061X. ; 26:9, s. 2063-2069
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Lower visibility of female scientists, compared to male scientists, is a potential reason for the under-representation of women among senior academic ranks. Visibility in the scientific community stems partly from presenting research as an invited speaker at organized meetings. We analysed the sex ratio of presenters at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) Congress 2011, where all abstract submissions were accepted for presentation. Women were under-represented among invited speakers at symposia (15% women) compared to all presenters (46%), regular oral presenters (41%) and plenary speakers (25%). At the ESEB congresses in 2001-2011, 9-23% of invited speakers were women. This under-representation of women is partly attributable to a larger proportion of women, than men, declining invitations: in 2011, 50% of women declined an invitation to speak compared to 26% of men. We expect invited speakers to be scientists from top ranked institutions or authors of recent papers in high-impact journals. Considering all invited speakers (including declined invitations), 23% were women. This was lower than the baseline sex ratios of early-mid career stage scientists, but was similar to senior scientists and authors that have published in high-impact journals. High-quality science by women therefore has low exposure at international meetings, which will constrain Evolutionary Biology from reaching its full potential. We wish to highlight the wider implications of turning down invitations to speak, and encourage conference organizers to implement steps to increase acceptance rates of invited talks.
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| 2. |
- Culina, Antica, et al.
(författare)
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Connecting the data landscape of long-term ecological studies : The SPI-Birds data hub
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Animal Ecology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0021-8790 .- 1365-2656. ; 90:9, s. 2147-2160
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long-term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and ecological processes in the wild. Furthermore, their number and global distribution provides a unique opportunity to assess the generality of patterns and to address broad-scale global issues (e.g. climate change). To solve data integration issues and enable a new scale of ecological and evolutionary research based on long-term studies of birds, we have created the SPI-Birds Network and Database ()-a large-scale initiative that connects data from, and researchers working on, studies of wild populations of individually recognizable (usually ringed) birds. Within year and a half since the establishment, SPI-Birds has recruited over 120 members, and currently hosts data on almost 1.5 million individual birds collected in 80 populations over 2,000 cumulative years, and counting. SPI-Birds acts as a data hub and a catalogue of studied populations. It prevents data loss, secures easy data finding, use and integration and thus facilitates collaboration and synthesis. We provide community-derived data and meta-data standards and improve data integrity guided by the principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR), and aligned with the existing metadata languages (e.g. ecological meta-data language). The encouraging community involvement stems from SPI-Bird's decentralized approach: research groups retain full control over data use and their way of data management, while SPI-Birds creates tailored pipelines to convert each unique data format into a standard format. We outline the lessons learned, so that other communities (e.g. those working on other taxa) can adapt our successful model. Creating community-specific hubs (such as ours, COMADRE for animal demography, etc.) will aid much-needed large-scale ecological data integration.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- van de Crommenacker, J, et al.
(författare)
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Testosterone, cuckoldry risk and extra-pair opportunities in the Seychelles warbler
- 2004
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Ingår i: Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2954. ; 271:1543, s. 1023-1031
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In male birds, testosterone (T) plays an important role in aggressive and mate-attraction behaviour. In the cooperatively breeding Seychelles warbler, Acrocephalus sechellensis, extra-group copulations (EGCs) occur frequently, but are not accompanied by sexual courtship displays as in within-pair copulations. Paternity is nearly always gained by primary males. We investigated whether T levels and sperm storage capability (cloacal protuberance (CP)) in adult primary and subordinate males were related to timing of egg laying, levels of cuckoldry and extra-group paternity (EGP) opportunities. During the sexually active period before egg laying, T levels and CP were only elevated or enlarged (respectively) in primary males, and some suggestion was found that subordinate males do not invest in elevated T levels. The peak in T occurred during the fertile period of the female partner and corresponded to the peak period of male sexual displays and mate guarding, but was independent of cuckoldry risk (density of neighbouring primary males). CP was also enhanced during this period; however, CP but not T remained elevated after egg laying by their mates, and CP but not T was positively related to EGP opportunities (density of neighbouring fertile females). We conclude that T is involved in sexual courtship displays and mate guarding, but not in gaining EGCs. These findings contrast with those in other species where EGP involves elaborate sexual displays.
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| 5. |
- Isaksson, Caroline, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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Oxidative stress physiology in relation to life history traits of a free-living vertebrate: the spotted snow skink, Niveoscincus ocellatus.
- 2011
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Ingår i: Integrative Zoology. - 1749-4877. ; 6:2, s. 140-149
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent research suggests that oxidative stress, via its links to metabolism and senescence, is a key mechanism linking life history traits such as fecundity and growth with survival; however, this has rarely been put under empirical scrutiny within free-living populations. Using a wild population of live-bearing skinks, we explored how plasma antioxidant activity (OXY), reactive oxidative metabolites (ROM), and the estimated oxidative stress index are associated with female and male life history. We found that male skinks have a significantly higher ROM and estimated oxidative stress index than female skinks, but this was not accompanied by a sex difference in mortality. Both sexes showed a non-linear association between OXY and age, indicating that the oldest and youngest individuals had the lowest OXY. Interestingly, female skinks with high OXY showed a decreased probability of survival to the following season. However, we found no significant associations between female reproductive investment (litter size or litter mass) or parturition date (i.e. metabolism) and oxidative status. Combined, our results offer mixed support for a role of oxidative stress in mediating life history traits and suggest that future studies need to explore oxidative stress during vitellogenesis in addition to using an intra-individual approach to understand the cost of reproduction and patterns of aging.
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| 6. |
- Komdeur, J, et al.
(författare)
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Experimental evidence that kin discrimination in the Seychelles warbler is based on association and not on genetic relatedness
- 2004
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Ingår i: Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2954. ; 271:1542, s. 963-969
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In cooperative breeding systems driven by kin selection, effective kin-recognition cues are important. Recognition could be achieved by the direct assessment of the genetic relatedness of individuals or by learning through association. In the Seychelles warbler, Acrocephalus sechellensis, female subordinates maximize indirect fitness by preferentially helping genetically related nestlings. Help seems to be based on the continued presence of the primary female who previously fed the subordinate in the nest but it has, so far, been impossible to discount the direct assessment of genetic relatedness. We used a cross-fostering experiment to separate the two possible cues. Adult birds did not discriminate between their own and cross-fostered eggs or nestlings. Cross-fostering resulted in nestlings that were unrelated to the primary female that raised them, but control nestlings were closely related to their primary females. The proportions of cross-fostered and control female offspring that stayed and became helpers on their 'natal' territory were similar. However, for both groups the chance of becoming a subordinate helper was associated with the continued presence of the primary female and not with any other factor tested. Our study provides strong evidence that helping decisions are based on associative-learning cues.
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| 7. |
- Komdeur, J, et al.
(författare)
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Why Seychelles Warblers fail to recolonize nearby islands: unwilling or unable to fly there?
- 2004
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Ingår i: Ibis. - 0019-1019. ; 146:2, s. 298-302
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Seychelles Warbler Acrocephalus sechellensis is a rare island endemic which, from 1920 to 1988, occurred only on Cousin Island (29 ha) in the Seychelles. Despite the saturated nature of this population and the possibility of obtaining higher reproductive success on new nearby islands, inter-island dispersal by Seychelles Warblers is extremely rare (0.10%). We test the hypothesis that Seychelles Warblers show an adaptation typical for island birds: a low-cost reduced-size flight apparatus. We compared the anatomy of the flight apparatus (wing shape, wing loading, skeletal parts and musculature) of Seychelles Warblers with that of three closely related migratory Acrocephalus species (Eurasian Reed Warbler A. scirpaceus, Australian Reed Warbler A. australis and African Reed Warbler A. baeticatus). Seychelles Warblers do not differ from the migratory warblers in pectoral mass and skeletal attachment area relative to body mass, wing shape and wing loading. Seychelles Warblers show the morphological structures required for sustained flight, but may have the behavioural reluctance to cross what they may regard as extensive bodies of water.
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| 8. |
- Lemoine, Melissa, et al.
(författare)
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Low but contrasting neutral genetic differentiation shaped by winter temperature in European great tits
- 2016
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Ingår i: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0024-4066 .- 1095-8312. ; 118:3, s. 668-685
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gene flow is usually thought to reduce genetic divergence and impede local adaptation by homogenising gene pools between populations. However, evidence for local adaptation and phenotypic differentiation in highly mobile species, experiencing high levels of gene flow, is emerging. Assessing population genetic structure at different spatial scales is thus a crucial step towards understanding mechanisms underlying intraspecific differentiation and diversification. Here, we studied the population genetic structure of a highly mobile species - the great tit Parus major - at different spatial scales. We analysed 884 individuals from 30 sites across Europe including 10 close-by sites (< 50 km), using 22 microsatellite markers. Overall we found a low but significant genetic differentiation among sites (F-ST = 0.008). Genetic differentiation was higher, and genetic diversity lower, in south-western Europe. These regional differences were statistically best explained by winter temperature. Overall, our results suggest that great tits form a single patchy metapopulation across Europe, in which genetic differentiation is independent of geographical distance and gene flow may be regulated by environmental factors via movements related to winter severity. This might have important implications for the evolutionary trajectories of sub-populations, especially in the context of climate change, and calls for future investigations of local differences in costs and benefits of philopatry at large scales.
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| 9. |
- Richardson, David, et al.
(författare)
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Altruism and infidelity among warblers
- 2003
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 422:6932, s. 580-580
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 10. |
- Richardson, David, et al.
(författare)
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Direct benefits and the evolution of female-biased cooperative breeding in Seychelles warblers
- 2002
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Ingår i: Evolution. - : Wiley. - 1558-5646 .- 0014-3820. ; 56:11, s. 2313-2321
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Inclusive fitness benefits have been suggested to be a major selective force behind the evolution of cooperative breeding. We investigated the fitness benefits selecting for cooperative breeding in the Seychelles warbler, Acroccphalus sechellensis. A microsatellite-based genotyping method was used to determine the relatedness of subordinates to group offspring in an isolated population of Seychelles warblers. The indirect and direct breeding benefits accruing to individual subordinates were then calculated for every successful breeding event over a three-year period. We show that female subordinates frequently gained parentage and that this, combined with high levels of extragroup paternity, resulted in low levels of relatedness between subordinates and nondescendent offspring within a territory. Direct breeding benefits were found to be significantly higher than indirect kin benefits for both female and male subordinates. As predicted, female subordinates gained significantly more direct breeding opportunities and therefore higher inclusive fitness benefits by being a subordinate within a group than did males. This may explain why most subordinates in the Seychelles warbler are female.
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