Moosdelacruz8603

We found that colder winter temperatures were associated with an increase in δ15N and δ15N levels had a weak positive relationship with nest productivity. We also found that sites with a more diverse tree community were associated with a broader isotopic niche width in nestlings. Our findings suggest that nestling diet is affected by climate, and under future warming climate scenarios, White-headed Woodpecker nestling diet may shift in favor of lower trophic level prey (prey with lower δ15N levels). The impact of such changes on woodpecker populations merits further study.In intraspecific competition, the sex of competing individuals is likely to be important in determining the outcome of competitive interactions and the way exposure to conspecifics during development influences adult fitness traits. Previous studies have explored differences between males and females in their response to intraspecific competition. However, few have tested how the sex of the competitors, or any interactions between focal and competitor sex, influences the nature and intensity of competition. We set up larval seed beetles Callosobruchus maculatus to develop either alone or in the presence of a male or female competitor and measured a suite of traits development time, emergence weight; male ejaculate mass, copulation duration, and lifespan; and female lifetime fecundity, offspring egg-adult survival, and lifespan. We found effects of competition and competitor sex on the development time and emergence weight of both males and females, and also of an interaction between focal and competitor sex Females emerged lighter when competing with another female, while males did not. There was little effect of larval competition on male and female adult fitness traits, with the exception of the effect of a female competitor on a focal female's offspring survival rate. Selleckchem 1-Methyl-3-nitro-1-nitrosoguanidine Our results highlight the importance of directly measuring the effects of competition on fitness traits, rather than distant proxies for fitness, and suggest that competition with the sex with the greater resource requirements (here females) might play a role in driving trait evolution. We also found that male-male competition during development resulted in shorter copulation times than male-female competition, a result that remained when controlling for the weight of competitors. Although it is difficult to definitively tease apart the effects of social environment and access to resources, this result suggests that something about the sex of competitors other than their size is driving this pattern.Adaptation of long-living forest trees to respond to environmental changes is essential to secure their performance under adverse conditions. Water deficit is one of the most significant stress factors determining tree growth and survival. Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.), the main source of softwood in southwestern Europe, is subjected to recurrent drought periods which, according to climate change predictions for the years to come, will progressively increase in the Mediterranean region. The mechanisms regulating pine adaptive responses to environment are still largely unknown. The aim of this work was to go a step further in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying maritime pine response to water stress and drought tolerance at the whole plant level. A global transcriptomic profiling of roots, stems, and needles was conducted to analyze the performance of siblings showing contrasted responses to water deficit from an ad hoc designed full-sib family. Although P. pinaster is considered a recalcitrant species for vegetative propagation in adult phase, the analysis was conducted using vegetatively propagated trees exposed to two treatments well-watered and moderate water stress. The comparative analyses led us to identify organ-specific genes, constitutively expressed as well as differentially expressed when comparing control versus water stress conditions, in drought-sensitive and drought-tolerant genotypes. Different response strategies can point out, with tolerant individuals being pre-adapted for coping with drought by constitutively expressing stress-related genes that are detected only in latter stages on sensitive individuals subjected to drought.Deep roots have long been thought to allow trees to coexist with shallow-rooted grasses. However, data demonstrating how root distributions affect water uptake and niche partitioning are uncommon.We describe tree and grass root distributions using a depth-specific tracer experiment six times over two years in a subtropical savanna, Kruger National Park, South Africa. These point-in-time measurements were then used in a soil water flow model to simulate continuous water uptake by depth and plant growth form (trees and grasses) across two growing seasons. This allowed estimates of the total amount of water a root distribution could absorb as well as the amount of water a root distribution could absorb in excess of the other rooting distribution (i.e., unique hydrological niche).Most active tree and grass roots were in shallow soils The mean depth of water uptake was 22 cm for trees and 17 cm for grasses. Slightly deeper rooting distributions provided trees with 5% more soil water than the grasses in a drier season, but 13% less water in a wetter season. Small differences also provided each rooting distribution (tree or grass) with unique hydrological niches of 4 to 13 mm water.The effect of rooting distributions has long been inferred. By quantifying the depth and timing of water uptake, we demonstrated how even small differences in rooting distributions can provide plants with resource niches that can contribute to species coexistence. Differences in total water uptake and unique hydrological niche sizes were small in this system, but they indicated that tradeoffs in rooting strategies can be expected to contribute to tree and grass coexistence because 1) competitive advantages change over time and 2) plant growth forms always have access to a soil resource pool that is not available to the other plant growth form.Piscine novirhabdovirus = Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia Virus (VHSV) first appeared in the Laurentian Great Lakes with large outbreaks from 2005 to 2006, as a new and novel RNA rhabdovirus subgenogroup (IVb) that killed >30 fish species. Interlude periods punctuated smaller more localized outbreaks in 2007, 2010, and 2017, although some fishes tested positive in the intervals. There have not been reports of outbreaks or positives from 2018, 2019, or 2020. Here, we employ a combined population genetics and phylogenetic approach to evaluate spatial and temporal evolutionary trajectory on its G-gene sequence variation, in comparison with whole-genome sequences (11,083 bp) from a subset of 44 individual isolates (including 40 newly sequenced ones). Our results show that IVb (N = 184 individual fish isolates) diversified into 36 G-gene haplotypes from 2003 to 2017, stemming from two originals ("a" and "b"). G-gene haplotypes "a" and "b" differed by just one synonymous single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) substitution, remained the most abundant until 2011, then disappeared.