Interlocality variation in speed of moult in the Citril Finch Serinus citrinella

The speed of avian moult has been related to body condition, and this to habitat quality. These facts suggest a relationship between habitat quality and moult speed. We looked for evidence of such a relationship in the Citril Finch Serinus citrinella in the Pyrenees, where, because of a Mediterranean influence, there is an important bioclimatic contrast between north- and south-facing slopes of the same mountain. This contrast strongly affects the general body condition of birds there (higher body mass, fat score and survival on north-facing slopes). Citril Finches in the higher quality area moulted more rapidly (measured as residual wing raggedness) than those in the lower quality area, the two sampling localities being only 5 km apart. As the birds initiated moult at the same time in the two locations, this difference in speed cannot have resulted from a differential effect of photoperiod. This stresses the importance of habitat selection, even at very small scales, for the completion of moult.     

Human enzyme polymorphism in the Canary Islands. III. Tenerife Island population

We analyzed the genetic polymorphism of eight red cell enzymes in samples from different geographical areas of Tenerife and the Iberian peninsula. The gene frequency heterogeneity found within the Tenerife samples was at the same level as that of Tenerife-mainland comparisons. The presence of the Negroid G6PD A+ allele in the Tenerife samples is evidence of an African admixture with a mean estimation of 4.5%.     

Cytology and morphology of the amphiploid Hordeum chilense (4x) × Aegilops squarrosa (4x)

Summary The intergeneric amphiploid Hordeum chilense × Aegilops squarrosa has been synthesized. The amphiploid plants have the expected chromosome number of 28. The average meiotic chromosome pairing was 12.48 bivalents + 3.04 univalents. The morphology of the amphiploid resembles that of the Aegilops parent. Nucleoli from both H. chilense and A. squarrosa are expressed in the amphiploid. Neither chromosome instability nor homoeologous pairing was found. The amphiploid is fertile and vigorous.     

Transcriptional activation by heterodimers of the achaete-scute and daughterless gene products of Drosophila

The achaete-scute complex (AS-C) and the daughterless (da) genes encode helix-loop-helix proteins which have been shown to interact in vivo and to be required for neurogenesis. We show in vitro that heterodimers of three AS-C products with DA bind DNA strongly, whereas DA homodimers bind weakly and homo or heterocombinations of AS-C products not at all. Proteins unable to dimerize did not bind DNA. Target sequences for the heterodimers were found in the promoters of the hunchback and the achaete genes. Using sequences of the former we show that the DNA binding results obtained in vitro fully correlate with the ability of different combinations to activate the expression of a reporter gene in yeast. Embryos deficient for the lethal of scute gene fail to activate hunchback in some neural lineages in a pattern consistent with the lack of a member of a multigene family.     

Enhanced detection of glycoproteins in polyacrylamide gels

A highly sensitive and simple method to enhance detection of glycoproteins resolved by either one- or two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis is described. The method is a modification of the procedure described by D. Fargeaud et al. (D. Fargeaud, J. C. Benoit, F. Kato, and G. Chappuis (1984) Arch. Virol. 80, 69-82) that uses concanavalin A conjugated with fluorescein isothyocyanate to detect the carbohydrate moiety of glycoproteins. Briefly, the electrophoresed gel is exposed to the fluorescent lectin, thoroughly washed, and sequentially transferred to 50% methanol in deionized water and to absolute methanol. The result is an abrupt dehydration of the gel which turns evenly white and stiff. At least a twofold enhancement of fluorescence is obtained as detected by exposing the treated gel to an appropriate uv source. The sensitivity of the procedure allows us to detect purified immunoglobulin molecules by their carbohydrate content in the range of 0.2 microgram of total protein. The specificity of the detection is demonstrated by a comparison with the corresponding polypeptide profile obtained by silver nitrate staining of the gel.     

Microgeographic and Temporal Genetic Differentiation in Natural Populations of DROSOPHILA SUBOBSCURA

Evidence of microgeographic and temporal genetic differentiation in natural populations of Drosophila subobscura is presented. The alcohol dehydrogenease locus was used as a genetic marker. Behavioral differences among the sexes and genotypes may explain these observations, although the molecular basis remains obscure.     

A comparative description of mitochondrial DNA differentiation in selected avian and other vertebrate genera

Levels of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence divergence between species within each of several avian (Anas, Aythya, Dendroica, Melospiza, and Zonotrichia) and nonavian (Lepomis and Hyla) vertebrate genera were compared. An analysis of digestion profiles generated by 13-18 restriction endonucleases indicates little overlap in magnitude of mtDNA divergence for the avian versus nonavian taxa examined. In 55 interspecific comparisons among the avian congeners, the fraction of identical fragment lengths (F) ranged from 0.26 to 0.96 (F = 0.46), and, given certain assumptions, these translate into estimates of nucleotide sequence divergence (p) ranging from 0.007 to 0.088; in 46 comparisons among the fish and amphibian congeners, F values ranged from 0.00 to 0.36 (F = 0.09), yielding estimates of P greater than 0.070. The small mtDNA distances among avian congeners are associated with protein-electrophoretic distances (D values) less than approximately 0.2, while the mtDNA distances among assayed fish and amphibian congeners are associated with D values usually greater than 0.4. Since the conservative pattern of protein differentiation previously reported for many avian versus nonavian taxa now appears to be paralleled by a conservative pattern of mtDNA divergence, it seems increasingly likely that many avian species have shared more recent common ancestors than have their nonavian taxonomic counterparts. However, estimates of avian divergence times derived from mtDNA- and protein-calibrated clocks cannot readily be reconciled with some published dates based on limited fossil remains. If the earlier paleontological interpretations are valid, then protein and mtDNA evolution must be somewhat decelerated in birds. The empirical and conceptual issues raised by these findings are highly analogous to those in the long-standing debate about rates of molecular evolution and times of separation of ancestral hominids from African apes.      

Methods for computing the standard errors of branching points in an evolutionary tree and their application to molecular data from humans and apes

Statistical methods for computing the standard errors of the branching points of an evolutionary tree are developed. These methods are for the unweighted pair-group method-determined (UPGMA) trees reconstructed from molecular data such as amino acid sequences, nucleotide sequences, restriction-sites data, and electrophoretic distances. They were applied to data for the human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and gibbon species. Among the four different sets of data used, DNA sequences for an 895-nucleotide segment of mitochondrial DNA (Brown et al. 1982) gave the most reliable tree, whereas electrophoretic data (Bruce and Ayala 1979) gave the least reliable one. The DNA sequence data suggested that the chimpanzee is the closest and that the gorilla is the next closest to the human species. The orangutan and gibbon are more distantly related to man than is the gorilla. This topology of the tree is in agreement with that for the tree obtained from chromosomal studies and DNA-hybridization experiments. However, the difference between the branching point for the human and the chimpanzee species and that for the gorilla species and the human-chimpanzee group is not statistically significant. In addition to this analysis, various factors that affect the accuracy of an estimated tree are discussed.