Grace Capshaw, Clarice A Diebold, Danielle M Adams, Jack G Rayner, Gerald S Wilkinson, Cynthia F Moss, Amanda M Lauer
{"title":"Resistance to age-related hearing loss in the echolocating big brown bat (<i>Eptesicus fuscus</i>).","authors":"Grace Capshaw, Clarice A Diebold, Danielle M Adams, Jack G Rayner, Gerald S Wilkinson, Cynthia F Moss, Amanda M Lauer","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1560","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1560","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Hearing mediates many behaviours critical for survival in echolocating bats, including foraging and navigation. Although most mammals are susceptible to progressive age-related hearing loss, the evolution of biosonar, which requires the ability to hear low-intensity echoes from outgoing sonar signals, may have selected against the development of hearing deficits in bats. Many echolocating bats exhibit exceptional longevity and rely on acoustic behaviours for survival to old age; however, relatively little is known about the ageing bat auditory system. In this study, we used DNA methylation to estimate the ages of wild-caught big brown bats (<i>Eptesicus fuscus</i>) and measured hearing sensitivity in young and ageing bats using auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs). We found no evidence for hearing deficits in bats up to 12.5 years of age, demonstrated by comparable thresholds and similar ABR and DPOAE amplitudes across age groups. We additionally found no significant histological evidence for cochlear ageing, with similar hair cell counts, afferent and efferent innervation patterns in young and ageing bats. Here, we demonstrate that big brown bats show minimal evidence for age-related hearing loss and therefore represent informative models for investigating mechanisms that may preserve hearing function over a long lifetime.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2034","pages":"20241560"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142583835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Aaron M Eger, Caitlin O Blain, Amelia L Brown, Sharon S W Chan, Kelsey I Miller, Adriana Vergés
{"title":"Kelp forests versus urchin barrens: a comparison of ecosystem functions and services provided by two alternative stable marine habitats.","authors":"Aaron M Eger, Caitlin O Blain, Amelia L Brown, Sharon S W Chan, Kelsey I Miller, Adriana Vergés","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1539","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1539","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Kelp forests and urchin barrens are two stable states in rocky reef ecosystems, each providing unique ecosystem functions like habitat for marine species and primary production. While studies frequently show that kelp forests support higher levels of some ecosystem functions than urchin barren habitats, no research has yet compared average differences. To address this gap, we first conducted a meta-analysis of studies that directly compared the ecosystem functions, services and general attributes provided by each habitat. We also compiled individual studies on ecosystem properties from both habitats and qualitatively assessed the benefits provided. The meta-analysis included 388 observations from 55 studies across 14 countries. We found that kelp forests consistently delivered higher levels of ecosystem properties such as biodiversity, species richness, abalone abundance and sea urchin roe quality. Urchin barrens supported higher urchin density and crustose coralline algae cover. The qualitative review further supported these findings, showing that kelp forests ranked higher in 11 out of 15 ecosystem properties. These findings can help guide decisions on managing rocky reef habitats and demonstrate the benefits of preserving or expanding kelp forests.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2034","pages":"20241539"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11538989/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142583733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Donald James McLean, Marie E Herberstein, Hanna Kokko
{"title":"Asymmetric arms races between predators and prey: a tug of war between the life-dinner principle and the rare-enemy principle.","authors":"Donald James McLean, Marie E Herberstein, Hanna Kokko","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1052","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1052","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Antagonistic co-evolution can be asymmetric, where one species lags behind another. Asymmetry in a predator-prey context is expressed by the 'life-dinner principle', a classic informal model predicting that prey should be in some sense ahead in this arms race, since prey are running for their lives, while predators lag as they only run for their dinner. The model has undergone surprisingly little theoretical scrutiny. We derive analytical models that show coevolutionary outcomes do not always align with the life-dinner principle. Our results show that other important asymmetries can easily reverse the outcome, especially the rare-enemy principle: predators are usually outnumbered by their prey, sometimes substantially (trophic asymmetry), which can make selection on prey relatively weak. We additionally show that the antagonists typically exhibit different evolutionary responses to a situation where both predator and prey start out as equally fast runners. Although predators sometimes become so efficient that attacks always succeed, attack success often reaches a stable intermediate value. We conclude that the life-dinner principle has some validity as a metaphor, but its effect is of an 'all else being equal' type, which is surprisingly easily overridden by other features of the evolutionary dynamics.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2032","pages":"20241052"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11461046/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142392709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Emily A Hardison, Gail D Schwieterman, Erika J Eliason
{"title":"Correction to: 'Diet changes thermal acclimation capacity, but not acclimation rate, in a marine ectotherm (<i>Girella nigricans</i>) during warming' (2023), by Hardison <i>et al</i>.","authors":"Emily A Hardison, Gail D Schwieterman, Erika J Eliason","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2055","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.2055","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2032","pages":"20242055"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11444778/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142366329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marco Camaiti, Mark N Hutchinson, Christy A Hipsley, Rocio Aguilar, Jay Black, David G Chapple, Alistair R Evans
{"title":"Patterns of girdle shape and their correlates in Australian limb-reduced skinks.","authors":"Marco Camaiti, Mark N Hutchinson, Christy A Hipsley, Rocio Aguilar, Jay Black, David G Chapple, Alistair R Evans","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1653","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1653","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The evolution of limb reduction in squamates is a classic example of convergence, but the skeletal morphological patterns associated with it are underexplored. To provide insights on the biomechanical and developmental consequences of transitions to limb reduction, we use geometric morphometrics to examine the morphology of pectoral and pelvic girdles in 90 species of limb-reduced skinks and their fully limbed relatives. Clavicle shapes converge towards an acute anterior bend when forelimbs are lost but hindlimbs are retained-a morphology typical of sand-swimmers. This may either indicate functional adaptations to locomotion in fine substrates, or a developmental consequence of complete limb loss. The shape of limb-bearing elements of both girdles (coracoid and pelvis) instead closely mirrors limb reduction, becoming more simplified as undulation replaces limbed locomotion. Integration between girdles decreases in taxa lacking elements of the forelimbs but not hindlimbs, indicating differential selection on each girdle in response to distinct locomotory strategies. However, this pattern becomes less clear when considering phylogenetic history, perhaps because it is limited to one specific clade (<i>Lerista</i>). We show how the functional demands of locomotion can induce changes at different levels of organismal organization, including both external and internal structures.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2032","pages":"20241653"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11444766/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142366333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anniina L K Mattila, Øystein H Opedal, Maria H Hällfors, Laura Pietikäinen, Susanna H M Koivusaari, Marko-Tapio Hyvärinen
{"title":"The potential for evolutionary rescue in an Arctic seashore plant threatened by climate change.","authors":"Anniina L K Mattila, Øystein H Opedal, Maria H Hällfors, Laura Pietikäinen, Susanna H M Koivusaari, Marko-Tapio Hyvärinen","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1351","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1351","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The impacts of climate change may be particularly severe for geographically isolated populations, which must adjust through plastic responses or evolve. Here, we study an endangered Arctic plant, <i>Primula nutans</i> ssp. <i>finmarchica</i>, confined to Fennoscandian seashores and showing indications of maladaptation to warming climate. We evaluate the potential of these populations to evolve to facilitate survival in the rapidly warming Arctic (i.e. evolutionary rescue) by utilizing manual crossing experiments in a nested half-sibling breeding design. We estimate G-matrices, evolvability and genetic constraints in traits with potentially conflicting selection pressures. To explicitly evaluate the potential for climate change adaptation, we infer the expected time to evolve from a northern to a southern phenotype under different selection scenarios, using demographic and climatic data to relate expected evolutionary rates to projected rates of climate change. Our results indicate that, given the nearly 10-fold greater evolvability of vegetative than of floral traits, adaptation in these traits may take place nearly in concert with changing climate, given effective climate mitigation. However, the comparatively slow expected evolutionary modification of floral traits may hamper the evolution of floral traits to track climate-induced changes in pollination environment, compromising sexual reproduction and thus reducing the likelihood of evolutionary rescue.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2032","pages":"20241351"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11445713/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142361935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Camille Mellin, Rick D Stuart-Smith, Freddie Heather, Elizabeth Oh, Emre Turak, Graham J Edgar
{"title":"Coral responses to a catastrophic marine heatwave are decoupled from changes in total coral cover at a continental scale.","authors":"Camille Mellin, Rick D Stuart-Smith, Freddie Heather, Elizabeth Oh, Emre Turak, Graham J Edgar","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1538","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1538","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The services provided by the world's coral reefs are threatened by increasingly frequent and severe marine heatwaves. Heatwave-induced degradation of reefs has often been inferred from the extent of the decline in total coral cover, which overlooks extreme variation among coral taxa in their susceptibility and responses to thermal stress. Here, we provide a continental-scale assessment of coral cover changes at 262 shallow tropical reef sites around Australia, using ecological survey data on 404 coral taxa before and after the 2016 mass bleaching event. A strong spatial structure in coral community composition along large-scale environmental gradients largely dictated how coral communities responded to heat stress. While heat stress variables were the best predictors of change in total coral cover, the pre-heatwave community composition best predicted the temporal beta-diversity index (an indicator of change in community composition over time). Indicator taxa in each coral community differed before and after the heatwave, highlighting potential winners and losers of climate-driven coral bleaching. Our results demonstrate how assessment of change in total cover alone may conceal very different responses in community structure, some of which showed strong regional consistency, and may provide a telling outlook of how coral reefs may reorganize in a warmer future.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2032","pages":"20241538"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11461067/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142392628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In search of the genetic variants of human sex ratio at birth: was Fisher wrong about sex ratio evolution?","authors":"Siliang Song, Jianzhi Zhang","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1876","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1876","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The human sex ratio (fraction of males) at birth is close to 0.5 at the population level, an observation commonly explained by Fisher's principle. However, past human studies yielded conflicting results regarding the existence of sex ratio-influencing mutations-a prerequisite to Fisher's principle, raising the question of whether the nearly even population sex ratio is instead dictated by the random X/Y chromosome segregation in male meiosis. Here we show that, because a person's offspring sex ratio (OSR) has an enormous measurement error, a gigantic sample is required to detect OSR-influencing genetic variants. Conducting a UK Biobank-based genome-wide association study that is more powerful than previous studies, we detect an OSR-associated genetic variant, which awaits verification in independent samples. Given the abysmal precision in measuring OSR, it is unsurprising that the estimated heritability of OSR is effectively zero. We further show that OSR's estimated heritability would remain virtually zero even if OSR is as genetically variable as the highly heritable human standing height. These analyses, along with simulations of human sex ratio evolution under selection, demonstrate the compatibility of the observed genetic architecture of human OSR with Fisher's principle and render it plausible that multiple OSR-influencing genetic variants segregate among humans.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2033","pages":"20241876"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11479764/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142473131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Magnus L Aaskov, Atsushi Ishimatsu, Jens R Nyengaard, Hans Malte, Henrik Lauridsen, Nguyen Thi Kim Ha, Do Thi Thanh Huong, Mark Bayley
{"title":"Modulation of gill surface area does not correlate with oxygen loss in <i>Chitala ornata</i>.","authors":"Magnus L Aaskov, Atsushi Ishimatsu, Jens R Nyengaard, Hans Malte, Henrik Lauridsen, Nguyen Thi Kim Ha, Do Thi Thanh Huong, Mark Bayley","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1884","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1884","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Air-breathing fish risk losing aerially sourced oxygen to ambient hypoxic water since oxygenated blood from the air-breathing organ returns through the heart to the branchial basket before distribution. This loss is thought to help drive the evolutionary reduction in gill size with the advent of air-breathing. In many teleost fish, gill size is known to be highly plastic by modulation of their anatomic diffusion factor (ADF) with inter-lamellar cell mass (ILCM). In the anoxia-tolerant crucian carp, ILCM recedes with hypoxia but regrows in anoxia. The air-breathing teleost <i>Chitala ornata</i> has been shown to increase gill ADF from normoxic to mildly hypoxic water by reducing ILCM. Here, we test the hypothesis that ADF is modulated to minimize oxygen loss in severe aquatic hypoxia by measuring ADF, gas-exchange, and by using computed tomography scans to reveal possible trans-branchial shunt vessels. Contrary to our hypothesis, ADF does not modulate to prevent oxygen loss and despite no evident trans-branchial shunting, <i>C. ornata</i> loses only 3% of its aerially sourced O<sub>2</sub> while still excreting 79% of its CO<sub>2</sub> production to the severely hypoxic water. We propose this is achieved by ventilatory control and by compensating the minor oxygen loss by extra aerial O<sub>2</sub> uptake.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2033","pages":"20241884"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11521143/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142473132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Move less, spend more: the metabolic demands of short walking bouts.","authors":"F Luciano, L Ruggiero, A E Minetti, G Pavei","doi":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1220","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rspb.2024.1220","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The metabolic cost of steady-state walking is well known; however, across legged animals, most walking bouts are too short to reach steady state. Here, we investigate how bout duration affects the metabolic cost of human walking with varying mechanical power, metabolic intensity and duration. Ten participants walked for 10- to 240-s bouts on a stair climber at 0.20, 0.25 and 0.36 m s<sup>-1</sup> and on a treadmill at 1.39 m s<sup>-1</sup>. Oxygen uptake was time-integrated and divided by bout duration to get bout average uptake (V̇O<sub>2(b)</sub>). Fitting of oxygen uptake kinetics allowed calculating non-metabolic oxygen exchange during phase-I transient and, hence, non-steady-state metabolic cost (<i>C</i> <sub>met(b)</sub>) and efficiency. For 240-s bouts, such variables were also calculated at steady state. Across all conditions, shorter bouts had higher V̇O<sub>2(b)</sub> and <i>C</i> <sub>met(b)</sub>, with proportionally greater non-metabolic oxygen exchange. As the bout duration increased, V̇O<sub>2(b)</sub>, <i>C</i> <sub>met(b)</sub> and efficiency approached steady-state values. Our findings show that the time-averaged oxygen uptake and metabolic cost are greater for shorter than longer bouts: 30-s bouts consume 20-60% more oxygen than steady-state extrapolations. This is partially explained by the proportionally greater non-metabolic oxygen uptake and leads to lower efficiency for shorter bouts. Inferring metabolic cost from steady state substantially underestimates energy expenditure for short bouts.</p>","PeriodicalId":20589,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"291 2033","pages":"20241220"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11521144/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142473133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}