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- Mills, James A., et al.
(author)
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Archiving Primary Data : Solutions for Long-Term Studies
- 2015
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In: Trends in Ecology & Evolution. - : Elsevier BV. - 0169-5347 .- 1872-8383. ; 30:10, s. 581-589
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The recent trend for journals to require open access to primary data included in publications has been embraced by many biologists, but has caused apprehension amongst researchers engaged in long-term ecological and evolutionary studies. A worldwide survey of 73 principal investigators (PIs) with long-term studies revealed positive attitudes towards sharing data with the agreement or involvement of the PI, and 93% of PIs have historically shared data. Only 8% were in favor of uncontrolled, open access to primary data while 63% expressed serious concern. We present here their viewpoint on an issue that can have non-trivial scientific consequences. We discuss potential costs of public data archiving and provide possible solutions to meet the needs of journals and researchers.
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- van Waalwijk van Doorn, Linda J C, et al.
(author)
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Improved Cerebrospinal Fluid-Based Discrimination between Alzheimer's Disease Patients and Controls after Correction for Ventricular Volumes
- 2017
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In: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. - : IOS Press. - 1387-2877 .- 1875-8908. ; 56:2, s. 543-555
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers may support the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We studied if the diagnostic power of AD CSF biomarker concentrations, i.e., Aβ42, total tau (t-tau), and phosphorylated tau (p-tau), is affected by differences in lateral ventricular volume (VV), using CSF biomarker data and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 730 subjects, from 13 European Memory Clinics. We developed a Matlab-algorithm for standardized automated segmentation analysis of T1 weighted MRI scans in SPM8 for determining VV, and computed its ratio with total intracranial volume (TIV) as proxy for total CSF volume. The diagnostic power of CSF biomarkers (and their combination), either corrected for VV/TIV ratio or not, was determined by ROC analysis. CSF Aβ42 levels inversely correlated to VV/TIV in the whole study population (Aβ42: r=-0.28; p<0.0001). For CSF t-tau and p-tau, this association only reached statistical significance in the combined MCI and AD group (t-tau: r=-0.15; p-tau: r=-0.13; both p<0.01). Correction for differences in VV/TIV improved the differentiation of AD versus controls based on CSF Aβ42 alone (AUC: 0.75 versus 0.81) or in combination with t-tau (AUC: 0.81 versus 0.91). In conclusion, differences in VV may be an important confounder in interpreting CSF Aβ42 levels.
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- Bonnet, Timothee, et al.
(author)
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Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals
- 2022
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 376:6596, s. 1012-1016
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The rate of adaptive evolution, the contribution of selection to genetic changes that increase mean fitness, is determined by the additive genetic variance in individual relative fitness. To date, there are few robust estimates of this parameter for natural populations, and it is therefore unclear whether adaptive evolution can play a meaningful role in short-term population dynamics. We developed and applied quantitative genetic methods to long-term datasets from 19 wild bird and mammal populations and found that, while estimates vary between populations, additive genetic variance in relative fitness is often substantial and, on average, twice that of previous estimates. We show that these rates of contemporary adaptive evolution can affect population dynamics and hence that natural selection has the potential to partly mitigate effects of current environmental change.
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- de Villemereuil, Pierre, et al.
(author)
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Fluctuating optimum and temporally variable selection on breeding date in birds and mammals
- 2020
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : NATL ACAD SCIENCES. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 117:50, s. 31969-31978
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Temporal variation in natural selection is predicted to strongly impact the evolution and demography of natural populations, with consequences for the rate of adaptation, evolution of plasticity, and extinction risk. Most of the theory underlying these predictions assumes a moving optimum phenotype, with predictions expressed in terms of the temporal variance and auto-correlation of this optimum. However, empirical studies seldom estimate patterns of fluctuations of an optimum phenotype, precluding further progress in connecting theory with observations. To bridge this gap, we assess the evidence for temporal variation in selection on breeding date by modeling a fitness function with a fluctuating optimum, across 39 populations of 21 wild animals, one of the largest compilations of long-term datasets with individual measurements of trait and fitness components. We find compelling evidence for fluctuations in the fitness function, causing temporal variation in the magnitude, but not the direction of selection. However, fluctuations of the optimum phenotype need not directly translate into variation in selection gradients, because their impact can be buffered by partial tracking of the optimum by the mean phenotype. Analyzing individuals that reproduce in consecutive years, we find that plastic changes track movements of the optimum phenotype across years, especially in bird species, reducing temporal variation in directional selection. This suggests that phenological plasticity has evolved to cope with fluctuations in the optimum, despite their currently modest contribution to variation in selection.
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- Hülsmann, Lisa, et al.
(author)
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Latitudinal patterns in stabilizing density dependence of forest communities
- 2024
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In: Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 627, s. 564-571
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Numerous studies have shown reduced performance in plants that are surrounded by neighbours of the same species1,2, a phenomenon known as conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD)3. A long-held ecological hypothesis posits that CNDD is more pronounced in tropical than in temperate forests4,5, which increases community stabilization, species coexistence and the diversity of local tree species6,7. Previous analyses supporting such a latitudinal gradient in CNDD8,9 have suffered from methodological limitations related to the use of static data10–12. Here we present a comprehensive assessment of latitudinal CNDD patterns using dynamic mortality data to estimate species-site-specific CNDD across 23 sites. Averaged across species, we found that stabilizing CNDD was present at all except one site, but that average stabilizingCNDD was not stronger toward the tropics. However, in tropical tree communities, rare and intermediate abundant species experienced stronger stabilizing CNDD than did common species. This pattern was absent in temperate forests, which suggests that CNDD influences species abundances more strongly in tropical forests than it does in temperate ones13. We also found that interspecific variation in CNDD, which might attenuate its stabilizing effect on species diversity14,15, was high but not significantly different across latitudes. Although the consequences of these patterns for latitudinal diversity gradients are difficult to evaluate, we speculate that a more effective regulation of population abundances could translate into greater stabilization of tropical tree communities and thus contribute to the high local diversity of tropical forests.
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- Leite, Melina de Souza, et al.
(author)
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Major axes of variation in tree demography across global forests
- 2024
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In: Ecography. - 0906-7590 .- 1600-0587.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The future trajectory of global forests is closely intertwined with tree demography, and a major fundamental goal in ecology is to understand the key mechanisms governing spatio-temporal patterns in tree population dynamics. While previous research has made substantial progress in identifying the mechanisms individually, their relative importance among forests remains unclear mainly due to practical limitations. One approach to overcome these limitations is to group mechanisms according to their shared effects on the variability of tree vital rates and quantify patterns therein. We developed a conceptual and statistical framework (variance partitioning of Bayesian multilevel models) that attributes the variability in tree growth, mortality, and recruitment to variation in species, space, and time, and their interactions – categories we refer to as organising principles (OPs). We applied the framework to data from 21 forest plots covering more than 2.9 million trees of approximately 6500 species. We found that differences among species, the species OP, proved a major source of variability in tree vital rates, explaining 28–33% of demographic variance alone, and 14–17% in interaction with space, totalling 40–43%. Our results support the hypothesis that the range of vital rates is similar across global forests. However, the average variability among species declined with species richness, indicating that diverse forests featured smaller interspecific differences in vital rates. Moreover, decomposing the variance in vital rates into the proposed OPs showed the importance of unexplained variability, which includes individual variation, in tree demography. A focus on how demographic variance is organized in forests can facilitate the construction of more targeted models with clearer expectations of which covariates might drive a vital rate. This study therefore highlights the most promising avenues for future research, both in terms of understanding the relative contributions of groups of mechanisms to forest demography and diversity, and for improving projections of forest ecosystems.
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