Morphological differentiation in Carduelis finches: Adaptive vs. constraint models

In this study we show that morphological diversification in the avian genus Carduelis (Carduelinae) has to a large extent been conservative. Using multivariate methods, we found only minor deviations from the common (ancestral) body-plan. In particular, variation in bill morphology was found to be more conservative than variation in other parts of the body. We argue that constraint models of population differentiation can successfully account for the variation in bill morphology in this genus, but are less successful in accounting for variation in other traits. This can be interpreted as a result of long-term overall stabilizing selection for a certain bill morphology which is related to the way the birds open seeds. A trait combination that is adaptive on the evolutionary time scale may thus act as a constraint on changes in bill morphology on the microevolutionary scale. We conclude that the most parsimonious explanation for low divergence in bill morphology in this genus is that all species have retained the ancestral bill morphology. This may mean that each species chooses its environment rather than being moulded by it. This argument seems to apply to bill morphology, but other traits studied in this genus appear to have evolved in a less constrained fashion. A new index of morphometric integration is introduced to describe covariance structures.     

The responses of peripheral and central mechanosensory lateral line units of weakly electric fish to moving objects

Mechanosensory lateral line afferents of weakly electric fish (Eigenmannia) responded to an object which moved parallel to the long axis of the fish with phases of increased spike activity separated by phases of below spontaneous activity. Responses increased with object speed but finally may show saturation. At increasingly greater distances the responses decayed as a power function of distance. For different object velocities the exponents (mean±SD) describing this response falloff were -0.71±0.4 (20 cm/s object velocity) and-1.9±1.25 (10 cm/s). Opposite directions of object movement may cause an inversion of the main features of the response histograms. In terms of peak spike rate or total number of spikes elicited, however, primary lateral line afferents were not directionally sensitive.Central (midbrain) lateral line units of weakly electric fish (Apteronotus) showed a jittery response if an object moved by. In midbrain mechanosensory lateral line, ampullary, and tuberous units the response to a rostral-tocaudal object movement may be different from that elicited by a caudal-to-rostral object motion. Central units of Apteronotus may receive input from two or more sensory modalities. Units may be lateral line-tuberous or lateral line-ampullary. Multimodal lateral line units were OR units, i.e., the units were reliably driven by a unimodal stimulus of either modality. The receptive fields of central units demonstrate a weak somatotopic organization of lateral line input: anterior body areas project to rostral midbrain, posterior body areas project to caudal midbrain.Abbreviation EOD electric organ discharge     

Influence of plant domestication on plant-pollinator interactions: Floral attributes and floral visitor communities in wild and cultivated squash plants

Premise

Domestication of plant species results in phenotypic modifications and changes in biotic interactions. Most studies have compared antagonistic plant-herbivore interactions of domesticated plants and their wild relatives, but little attention has been given to how domestication influences plant-pollinator interactions. Floral attributes and interactions of floral visitors were compared between sister taxa of the genus Cucurbita (Cucurbitaceae), the domesticated C. moschata, C. argyrosperma ssp. argyrosperma and its wild progenitor C. argyrosperma ssp. sororia in the place of origin.

Methods

We conducted univariate and multivariate analyses to compare floral morphological traits and analyzed floral reward (nectar and pollen) quantity and quality between flowers of wild and domesticated Cucurbita taxa. Staminate and pistillate flowers of all three taxa were video recorded, and visitation and behavior of floral visitors were registered and analyzed.

Results

Most floral morphological characteristics of flowers of domesticated taxa were larger in both staminate and pistillate flowers. Staminate and pistillate flowers presented distinct correlations between floral traits and integration indices between domesticated and wild species. Additionally, pollen quantity and protein to lipid ratio were greater in domesticated species. Cucurbit pollen specialists, Eucera spp., had the highest probability of visit for all Cucurbita taxa.

Conclusions

We provide evidence that floral traits of domesticated and wild Cucurbita species experienced different selection pressures. Domesticated Cucurbita species may have more resources invested towards floral traits, thereby increasing attractiveness to pollinators and potentially plant reproductive success. Wild ancestor plant populations should be conserved in their centers of origin to preserve plant-pollinator interactions.     

High-efficiency and multilocus targeted integration in CHO cells using CRISPR-mediated donor nicking and DNA repair inhibitors

Efforts to leverage clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) for targeted genomic modifications in mammalian cells are limited by low efficiencies and heterogeneous outcomes. To aid method optimization, we developed an all-in-one reporter system, including a novel superfolder orange fluorescent protein (sfOrange), to simultaneously quantify gene disruption, site-specific integration (SSI), and random integration (RI). SSI strategies that utilize different donor plasmid formats and Cas9 nuclease variants were evaluated for targeting accuracy and efficiency in Chinese hamster ovary cells. Double-cut and double-nick donor formats significantly improved targeting accuracy by 2.3–8.3-fold and 19–22-fold, respectively, compared to standard circular donors. Notably, Cas9-mediated donor linearization was associated with increased RI events, whereas donor nicking minimized RI without sacrificing SSI efficiency and avoided low-fidelity outcomes. A screen of 10 molecules that modulate the major mammalian DNA repair pathways identified two inhibitors that further enhance targeting accuracy and efficiency to achieve SSI in 25% of transfected cells without selection. The optimized methods integrated transgene expression cassettes with 96% efficiency at a single locus and with 53%–55% efficiency at two loci simultaneously in selected clones. The CRISPR-based tools and methods developed here could inform the use of CRISPR/Cas9 in mammalian cell lines, accelerate mammalian cell line engineering, and support advanced recombinant protein production applications.     

一种感知视觉运动信息的简化脑模型

视觉运动信息的感知过程,包括从局域运动检测到对模式整体运动的感知过程.我们以蝇视觉系统的图形-背景相对运动分辨的神经回路网络为基本框架,采用初级运动检测器的六角形阵列作为输入层,构造了一种感知视觉运动信息的简化脑模型,模拟了运动信息应该神经计算模型各个层次上的处理.该模型对差分行为实验结果作出了正确预测.本文并对空间生理整合的神经机制作了讨论.     

Sodium and potassium relations of Spergularia marina following N and P deprivation: results of short-term growth studies

In this, we consider the coordination of plant growth and ion acquisition, reporting the short-term adjustments of growth and K⁺ and Na⁺ relations which follow when plants are subject to a sudden deprivation of N and P. The plant used for the experiments, Spergularia marina (L.) Grieseb., is a small coastal halophyte, and the growth medium was 0.2 × modified seawater. By considering nutrients whose availability has not been changed, we report on an aspect of organismal integration which has received little attention either experimentally or in mathematical models. The studies are limited to the first 60 h after N and P deprivation in order to consider changes that, if they are not primary responses, are not temporally remote, passive adjustments. For growth analyses, plants were used approximately 30 days after germination and 16 days after transfer to solution culture. Random harvests were made at hourly invervals, and after 12 h, one-half of the plants were transferred to cultures without N or P. Tissue analyses were used to calculate relative growth rates, relative accumulation rates and net uptake rates. For comparison, isotope uptake studies using ⁴²K⁺ and ²²Na⁺ were conducted at 12, 36 and 60 h after deprivation. The effects on growth and biomass allocation were very rapid, detectable within 13 h. K⁺ transport also responded quickly, and from the beginning of the study, there was essentially no net translocation of K⁺ to the shoot. Isotope studies confirmed the responsiveness, with translocation reduced 33 and 90% after 12 and 36 h, respectively. Though Na⁺ adjustments were slower, they were coordinated with growth such that tissue concentrations in the N and P-deprived plants were comparable to those in the controls. We conclude that N and C are insufficient elements on which to build mathematical models useful to environmental physiologists. At a minimum, the incorporation of K⁺ relations in growth models would both allow the development of the osmotic potential needed to drive cell expansion, and provide a means to probe –experimentally as well as mathematically – the coordinating mechanisms of plant growth and resource management.     

Differentiation in sex investment by clones and populations of Daphnia

Dormancy is an ecological strategy by which organisms avoid stressful environments, but it also can have genetic consequences. Many facultative parthenogens shift from asexual to sexual reproduction to enter dormancy. Hence, conditions that favour dormancy are predicted to select for more sex, which should increase clonal diversity. We examined lake populations of Daphnia that face different ecological risks to remaining active year‐round, and quantified the extent to which they have differentiated in their investment in dormancy and sex. There was substantial genetic variation among populations and clones for sex induction and production of dormant eggs, and striking evidence of gender specialization. We also observed a positive association between the magnitudes of population‐level investment in dormancy and of variance among clones in sex induction. These results document an ecological gradient in dormancy that is manifest as a genetic gradient in clonal variation for the propensity to engage in sex.     

Sectoriality and physiological organisation in herbaceous plants: an overview

The physiological organisation of plants is considered in relation to the carbon economy of plant parts. Although assimilate is partitioned according to the relative strength of sinks, in many species there is also a very close relationship between partitioning and shoot phyllotaxy, giving rise to sectorial patterns of allocation whereby only certain sinks are supported by any source leaf. Essentially these sinks are in the same orthostichy as the source leaf. This constraint of the vascular architecture on assimilate distribution to developing sinks such as leaves, flowers and fruits is not always absolute, as following the loss of their principal source leaves these sinks can in many cases be supplied with assimilate by other leaves via new inter-orthostichy pathways. The supply of assimilate to major sinks such as developing fruits becomes more and more localised with time so that a fruit in an axillary position becomes largely supported by its subtending leaf; the reproductive node—a metamer-can thus be regarded as a relatively autonomous unit of the plant (an IPU). Similary, once established after a developmental phase of assimilate import, tiller ramets and branches in unitary plants tend to become physiologically autonomous modules. However, the functional autonomy of tillers is reversed following defoliation or shading as they are then sustained by the import of assimilate, subject to its availability, from unaffected tillers. Consequently the plant becomes physiologically integrated by the flow of assimilate from one part to another. The mainly autonomous ramets of many stoloniferous and rhizomatous species display a similar pattern of physiological integration in response to source manipulation, but in some species the ramets appear to maintain their independent functioning as a normal feature of the carbon allocation within the clone. In other clonal species, as the clone develops and becomes more structurally complex, vascular constraints start to restrict the movement of resources, and the clone becomes composed of a number of semi-autonomous IPUs. In unitary plants branches appear to remain very physiologically isolated in terms of their carbon economy once they become established, irrespective of a range of source-sink manipulations.These different patterns of physiological integration and organisation are discussed in relation to different strategies of assimilate utilisation and conservation.     

Clonal organization of populations of Asarum europaeum and Maianthemum bifolium in contrasting woodland habitats

Populations of two rhizomatous species, Asarum europaeum (asarabacca) and Maianthemum bifolium (May lily), were examined in two, and four forest habitats respectively, in the Roztocze National Park (south-eastern Poland). May lily populations were studied in habitats: the Carpathian beechwood, upland mixed fir forest, subboreal moist mixed coniferous forest and bog-alder forest. Asarabacca was studied in two habitats: beechwood and Scots pine community (an 80-year-old plantation). In both the species studied intra- and inter-populational differences of the size of genets in terms of above- and below-ground parts of individuals as well as the biomass and area occupied were observed. In May lily populations the greatest mean number of shoots per genet was found in the fir forest (11.62±3.29), a value almost twice as great as that in the moist coniferous forest and nearly three times greater than in the bog-alder forest. Total rhizome length was also the greatest in the fir forest (351.9±98.7 cm) followed by moist coniferous forest, beechwood and alder forest habitats. In all populations of May lily a greater part of total dry weight biomass is in below-ground organs. The greatest biomass value of a genet was found in the fir forest (4.275 g), the smallest in the bog-alder forest (0.110 g). All populations differed significantly in terms of leaf area, leaf length (with the exception of fir forest and beechwood habitats where the values were the greatest), and leaf width (excluding moist coniferous and bog-alder forests which had the smallest values). In the case of asarabacca, both the mean number of ramets per genet (3.36±0.45 vs. 2.49±0.20) and total rhizome length (40.3±6.4 cm vs. 21.1±1.8 cm) were greater in the beechwood habitat than in the pine community. In the first population genets had 3–5 times greater the total biomass of those from the pine community. Only genets of the latter had proportionately more dry weight biomass in above-ground parts. It seems to be correlated with greater rhizome dieback and disintegration of genets into smaller units. Both populations were significantly different in terms of all examined parameters of leaves. Genets of both the species studied were found to have their own structure of developmental phases that often differed for shoots and rhizomes.