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The evolution of city life
Urbanization represents a dominant and growing form of disturbance to Earth's natural ecosystems, affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services on a global scale. While decades of research have illuminated the effects of urban environmental change on the structure and function of ecological communities in cities, only recently have researchers begun exploring the effects of urbanization on the evolution of urban populations. The 15 articles in this special feature represent the leading edge of urban evolutionary biology and address existing gaps in our knowledge. These gaps include: (i) the absence of theoretical models ex...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Santangelo, J. S., Rivkin, L. R., Johnson, M. T. J. Tags: genomics, ecology, evolution Special feature Source Type: research

Widespread use of emersion and cutaneous ammonia excretion in Aplocheiloid killifishes
The invasion of land required amphibious fishes to evolve new strategies to avoid toxic ammonia accumulation in the absence of water flow over the gills. We investigated amphibious behaviour and nitrogen excretion strategies in six phylogenetically diverse Aplocheiloid killifishes (Anablepsoides hartii, Cynodonichthys hildebrandi, Rivulus cylindraceus, Kryptolebias marmoratus, Fundulopanchax gardneri, and Aplocheilus lineatus) in order to determine if a common strategy evolved. All species voluntarily emersed (left water) over several days, and also in response to environmental stressors (low O2, high temperature). All spe...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Livingston, M. D., Bhargav, V. V., Turko, A. J., Wilson, J. M., Wright, P. A. Tags: physiology Development and physiology Source Type: research

Correction to: reply to Woodley of Menie et al.
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Arslan, R. C., Willführ, K. P., Frans, E. M., Verweij, K. J. H., Bürkner, P.-C., Myrskylä, M., Voland, E., Almqvist, C., Zietsch, B. P., Penke, L. Tags: evolution Corrections Source Type: research

Before platelets: the production of platelet-activating factor during growth and stress in a basal marine organism
Corals and humans represent two extremely disparate metazoan lineages and are therefore useful for comparative evolutionary studies. Two lipid-based molecules that are central to human immunity, platelet-activating factor (PAF) and Lyso-PAF were recently identified in scleractinian corals. To identify processes in corals that involve these molecules, PAF and Lyso-PAF biosynthesis was quantified in conditions known to stimulate PAF production in mammals (tissue growth and exposure to elevated levels of ultraviolet light) and in conditions unique to corals (competing with neighbouring colonies over benthic space). Similar to...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Galtier d'Auriac, I., Quinn, R. A., Maughan, H., Nothias, L.-F., Little, M., Kapono, C. A., Cobian, A., Reyes, B. T., Green, K., Quistad, S. D., Leray, M., Smith, J. E., Dorrestein, P. C., Rohwer, F., Deheyn, D. D., Hartmann, A. C. Tags: biochemistry, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Phenotypic selection on floral traits in an urban landscape
Native species are increasingly living in urban landscapes associated with abiotic and biotic changes that may influence patterns of phenotypic selection. However, measures of selection in urban and non-urban environments, and exploration of the mechanisms associated with such changes, are uncommon. Plant–animal interactions have played a central role in the evolution of flowering plants and are sensitive to changes in the urban landscape, and thus provide opportunities to explore how urban environments modify selection. We evaluated patterns of phenotypic selection on the floral and resistance traits of Gelsemium se...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Irwin, R. E., Warren, P. S., Adler, L. S. Tags: ecology, evolution Special feature Source Type: research

Female perception of copulatory courtship by male titillators in a bushcricket
Males of the bushcricket Metrioptera roeselii bear paired titillators that are spiny genital structures supposedly functioning as copulatory courtship devices. During copulation, the male inserts its titillators into the female's genital chamber, where they rhythmically tap on the sensilla-covered dorsal surface of the genital fold. Here, we investigated the stimulatory function of male titillators during mating in M. roeselii. Tracer backfills of presumptive mechanosensory sensilla at the female genital fold revealed a thick bundle of sensory axons entering the last unfused abdominal ganglion (AG-7). Electrophysiological ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Wulff, N. C., Schöneich, S., Lehmann, G. U. C. Tags: neuroscience, behaviour, evolution Source Type: research

Why war is a man's game
Interest in the evolutionary origins and drivers of warfare in ancient and contemporary small-scale human societies has greatly increased in the last decade, and has been particularly spurred by exciting archaeological discoveries that suggest our ancestors led more violent lives than previously documented. However, the striking observation that warfare is an almost-exclusively male activity remains unexplained. Three general hypotheses have been proposed, concerning greater male effectiveness in warfare, lower male costs, and patrilocality. But while each of these factors might explain why warfare is more common in men, t...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Micheletti, A. J. C., Ruxton, G. D., Gardner, A. Tags: behaviour, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Information use during movement regulates how fragmentation and loss of habitat affect body size
An individual's body size is central to its behaviour and physiology, and tightly linked to its movement ability. The spatial arrangement of resources and a consumer's capacity to locate them are therefore expected to exert strong selection on consumer body size. We investigated the evolutionary impact of both the fragmentation and loss of habitat on consumer body size and its feedback effects on resource distribution, under varying levels of information used during habitat choice. We developed a mechanistic, individual-based, spatially explicit model, including several allometric rules for key consumer traits. Our model r...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Hillaert, J., Vandegehuchte, M. L., Hovestadt, T., Bonte, D. Tags: computational biology, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Genetic determination of migration strategies in large soaring birds: evidence from hybrid eagles
In this study, we show that genetic factors in soaring birds are more important than previously assumed. We used global positioning system (GPS)-telemetry to compare the autumn journeys and wintering ranges of two closely related large raptorial bird species, the greater spotted eagle Clanga clanga and the lesser spotted eagle Clanga pomarina, and hybrids between them. The timing of migration in hybrids was similar to that of one parental species, but the wintering distributions and home range sizes were similar to those of the other. Tracking data were supported by habitat suitability modelling, based on GPS fixes and rin...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Väli, U., Mirski, P., Sellis, U., Dagys, M., Maciorowski, G. Tags: behaviour, ecology Source Type: research

Mosquito-borne transmission in urban landscapes: the missing link between vector abundance and human density
With escalating urbanization, the environmental, demographic, and socio-economic heterogeneity of urban landscapes poses a challenge to mathematical models for the transmission of vector-borne infections. Classical coupled vector–human models typically assume that mosquito abundance is either independent from, or proportional to, human population density, implying a decreasing force of infection, or per capita infection rate with host number. We question these assumptions by introducing an explicit dependence between host and vector densities through different recruitment functions, whose dynamical consequences we ex...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Romeo-Aznar, V., Paul, R., Telle, O., Pascual, M. Tags: theoretical biology, ecology, health and disease and epidemiology Source Type: research

Balancing selection and introgression of newt immune-response genes
The importance of interspecific introgression as a source of adaptive variation is increasingly recognized. Theory predicts that beneficial genetic variants cross species boundaries easily even when interspecific hybridization is rare and gene flow is strongly constrained throughout the genome. However, it remains unclear whether certain classes of genes are particularly prone to adaptive introgression. Genes affected by balancing selection (BS) may constitute such a class, because forms of BS that favour novel, initially rare alleles, should facilitate introgression. We tested this hypothesis in hybridizing newts by compa...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Fijarczyk, A., Dudek, K., Niedzicka, M., Babik, W. Tags: evolution Source Type: research

Temperature drives Zika virus transmission: evidence from empirical and mathematical models
Temperature is a strong driver of vector-borne disease transmission. Yet, for emerging arboviruses we lack fundamental knowledge on the relationship between transmission and temperature. Current models rely on the untested assumption that Zika virus responds similarly to dengue virus, potentially limiting our ability to accurately predict the spread of Zika. We conducted experiments to estimate the thermal performance of Zika virus (ZIKV) in field-derived Aedes aegypti across eight constant temperatures. We observed strong, unimodal effects of temperature on vector competence, extrinsic incubation period and mosquito survi...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Tesla, B., Demakovsky, L. R., Mordecai, E. A., Ryan, S. J., Bonds, M. H., Ngonghala, C. N., Brindley, M. A., Murdock, C. C. Tags: ecology, evolution, health and disease and epidemiology Source Type: research

The onset of ecological diversification 50 years after colonization of a crater lake by haplochromine cichlid fishes
Adaptive radiation research typically relies on the study of evolution in retrospective, leaving the predictive value of the concept hard to evaluate. Several radiations, including the cichlid fishes in the East African Great Lakes, have been studied extensively, yet no study has investigated the onset of the intraspecific processes of niche expansion and differentiation shortly after colonization of an adaptive zone by cichlids. Haplochromine cichlids of one of the two lineages that seeded the Lake Victoria radiation recently arrived in Lake Chala, a lake perfectly suited for within-lake cichlid speciation. Here, we infer...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 15, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Moser, F. N., van Rijssel, J. C., Mwaiko, S., Meier, J. I., Ngatunga, B., Seehausen, O. Tags: genomics, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Correction to 'Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia)
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 8, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Gorton, A. J., Moeller, D. A., Tiffin, P. Tags: genetics, ecology, evolution Corrections Source Type: research

Signatures of human-commensalism in the house sparrow genome
House sparrows (Passer domesticus) are a hugely successful anthrodependent species; occurring on nearly every continent. Yet, despite their ubiquity and familiarity to humans, surprisingly little is known about their origins. We sought to investigate the evolutionary history of the house sparrow and identify the processes involved in its transition to a human-commensal niche. We used a whole genome resequencing dataset of 120 individuals from three Eurasian species, including three populations of Bactrianus sparrows, a non-commensal, divergent house sparrow lineage occurring in the Near East. Coalescent modelling supports ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 8, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Ravinet, M., Elgvin, T. O., Trier, C., Aliabadian, M., Gavrilov, A., Saetre, G.-P. Tags: genomics, evolution Special feature Source Type: research