Environmental correlates of life history pattern in ground-beetles on Tenerife (Canary Islands)

The spatial and temporal structure of Carabus (Nesaeocarabus) interruptus Dejean, 1831 populations and the independent effects of climate along altitudinal gradients in the island of Tenerife, especially whether environmental preferences constrains the species breeding patterns at local and regional scales were evaluated. Ground-beetles were sampled with twenty-one pitfall traps in each of the forty-one plots during one year study. Some sampled specimens were dissected and dried to determine sex, weight and ovarian maturation. The populations were restricted to the middle climatic zone (600–1700 m). There was a long adult activity period from October to June and the changes in the weekly capture success were strongly correlated with the rainfall and temperature. Overall the males during winter were more active than the females. The emergence of new adults occurred only in spring and the body dry weight peaked in April–May. From start of autumn the weight was recovered to the initial values of the cycle, increased and peaked in January. The females prolonged its oviposition period from mid-autumn to the starting of spring. The species showed a winter breeding pattern and the seasonal variations in multiple life history traits could correspond with the changing conditions of the microclimatic variables. An evolutionary ecological model could help explain the life history pattern variability among the Carabus species in South-western Europe. The species could tackle the geographic dispersion of their populations for the single purpose of seeking a suitable hydrothermal environment (high rainfall and mild temperatures) if the food was insured.     

Microhabitat selection of the European rabbit on La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain

Little information exists regarding habitat selection on oceanic islands for the introduced European rabbitOryctolagus cuniculus Linnaeus, 1758. I employed the sharp altitude gradient of one of the Canary Islands, La Palma, to analyze factors relating to rabbit abundance. I used pellet counts to assess rabbit abundance in relation to microhabitat variables during June and July of 1999 and 2001. Number of rabbits varied with grass cover in the different biotopes for both years. They were particularly abundant in biotopes at low elevation and with rich grass cover. Rabbits were more numerous in 2001 than in 1999, and selected shrub protection in places with high levels of grass cover. Areas with vegetation transformed by humans were particularly suitable for wild rabbits, in contrast to less disturbed island biotopes. Rabbit abundance was usually associated with rich grass cover, which might be a limiting factor on La Palma.     

Physiological responses of tagasaste to a progressive drought in its native environment on the Canary Islands

Diurnal courses of gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence, shoot water potential (Ψ) and leaf relative water content (RWC_leaf) were recorded in Chamaecytisus proliferus (L. fil.) Link ssp. proliferus var. palmensis (Christ) (tagasaste) growing in natural conditions in the North-West slope of Tenerife, Canary Islands. During the studied period (April–July 2000), the soil relative water content (RWC_soil) progressively decreased, while the air vapour pressure deficit increased. As a consequence a decrease in Ψ and RWC_leaf took place as well as a decrease in stomatal conductance (g_s) and CO₂ assimilation rate (A). These characteristics, typical of an anisohydric plant, allowed this species to endure a mild drought.Photochemical efficiency of PSII (φ_PSII) followed the inverse pattern to that observed for the photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD), decreasing at midday and recovering during the late afternoon. This recovering at the end of each day, and the constant values of the maximum quantum yield of PSII photochemistry (F_v/F_m) during the studied period, indicate that there was no permanent damage to the photosynthetic apparatus due to mild water stress.     

Temporal evolution of the ABO allele frequencies in the Canary Islands: the impact of the European colonization

The indigenous Canary Islands population suffered a strong cultural and genetic impact when they were colonized by Europeans in the fifteenth century. The molecular analysis of the ABO blood group gene on aboriginal and seventeenth to eighteenth century remains confirms the demographic history of the islands depicted by previous archaeological, anthropological, and genetic studies. ABO allele frequencies clearly related Canarian aborigines with North African Berber populations, its most probable source of origin, and is far related to Iberian and to the current population of the archipelago. The historical sample shows a congruent intermediate position testifying already a strong European influence that would go in augment since then to present times, affecting all the islands with the important exception of La Gomera.     

Demographic history has influenced nucleotide diversity in European Pinus sylvestris populations

To infer the role of natural selection in shaping standing genetic diversity, it is necessary to assess the genomewide impact of demographic history on nucleotide diversity. In this study we analyzed sequence diversity of 16 nuclear loci in eight Pinus sylvestris populations. Populations were divided into four geographical groups on the basis of their current location and the geographical history of the region: northern Europe, central Europe, Spain, and Turkey. There were no among-group differences in the level of silent nucleotide diversity, which was approximately 0.005/bp in all groups. There was some evidence that linkage disequilibrium extended further in northern Europe than in central Europe: the estimates of the population recombination rate parameter, rho, were 0.0064 and 0.0294, respectively. The summary statistics of nucleotide diversity in central and northern European populations were compatible with an ancient bottleneck rather than the standard neutral model.     

关于加那利群岛的照叶林问题

加那利群岛位于非洲大陆西北不远大西洋中。岛上的照叶林,是在山地垂直带一定高度上,由于局部特殊的水分条件下发育而成的山地植被类型。它与东亚、北美等的地带性常绿阔叶林既有相同,又有差异之处。 由于它是一个非地带性的类型,故在论述全球性的亚热带照叶林时,没有必要作为一个典型代表加以讨论。     

Pollination of Habenaria tridactylites on the Canary Islands

We investigated the pollination of Habenaria tridactylites, an endemic orchid of the Canary Islands. The entirely green, widely open flowers have a long spur containing nectar. We carried out fieldwork, a molecular clock analysis, herbarium surveys, identified pollinators by both morphology and DNA barcoding, and measured the length of floral spurs and insect tongues using a combination of traditional and innovative micro‐CT scanning methods to 1) determine the pollinator of this orchid and 2) investigate correlations between local mean spur length and age, altitude and longitude of the island. Habenaria tridactylites was found to be pollinated on Tenerife by both small and intermediate sized moth species with variable tongue lengths and mostly belonging to Geometridae and to a lesser extent Crambidae, Erebidae, Noctuidae and Tortricidae. Of the sixteen moth species identified, nine are endemic to the Canary Islands or Macaronesia. The different local populations of H. tridactylites on the islands of Gran Canaria, El Hierro, La Gomera, La Palma and Tenerife with different ages and distances from mainland Africa, did not show a significant correlation of mean spur length and altitude, but did show a significant and positive linear correlation with longitude and the geological age of the island. The latter is congruent with the evolutionary arms race theory first proposed by Darwin, suggesting that flowers gradually evolve longer spurs and pollinators longer tongues.     

New records of bryophytes from the Canary Islands

Abstract

Two members each of the Adelanthaceae and Schistochilaceae and three of the Porellaceae are recorded from Mulanje Mountain, of which Adelanthus lindenbergianus (Lehm.) Mitt., Porella abyssinica (Nees) Trev. var. hoehnelii (Steph.) Pócs, Porella capensis (Gott.) Mitt. and P. subdentata (Mitt.) Steph. are first records for Malawi.     

Y-chromosome lineages in Cabo Verde Islands witness the diverse geographic origin of its first male settlers

The Y-chromosome haplogroup composition of the population of the Cabo Verde Archipelago was profiled by using 32 single-nucleotide polymorphism markers and compared with potential source populations from Iberia, west Africa, and the Middle East. According to the traditional view, the major proportion of the founding population of Cabo Verde was of west African ancestry with the addition of a minor fraction of male colonizers from Europe. Unexpectedly, more than half of the paternal lineages (53.5%) of Cabo Verdeans clustered in haplogroups I, J, K, and R1, which are characteristic of populations of Europe and the Middle East, while being absent in the probable west African source population of Guiné-Bissau. Moreover, a high frequency of J* lineages in Cabo Verdeans relates them more closely to populations of the Middle East and probably provides the first genetic evidence of the legacy of the Jews. In addition, the considerable proportion (20.5%) of E3b(xM81) lineages indicates a possible gene flow from the Middle East or northeast Africa, which, at least partly, could be ascribed to the Sephardic Jews. In contrast to the predominance of west African mitochondrial DNA haplotypes in their maternal gene pool, the major west African Y-chromosome lineage E3a was observed only at a frequency of 15.9%. Overall, these results indicate that gene flow from multiple sources and various sex-specific patterns have been important in the formation of the genomic diversity in the Cabo Verde islands.An erratum to this article can be found at     

Biodiversity of Apis mellifera populations from Tenerife (Canary Islands) and hybridisation with East European races

The biodiversity of honeybee (Apis mellifera) populations from Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) has been assessed by restriction analysis of a mitochondrial non-coding intergenic region. Seventy-nine colonies were analysed from thirteen apiaries in six populations that have been kept from recent queen introduction. The length and restriction pattern of the PCR amplified products of the intergenic region identified four mitochondrial haplotypes. One of these haplotypes shows the same restriction pattern and composition of the intergenic region carried by honeybees belonging to the African lineage. Two haplotypes are characterised by a particular intergenic region found with high frequency in the Canarian populations. The haplotype representative of the East European honeybee lineage shows a frequency of 35%, thus indicating introduction of queen honeybees. The finding of this haplotype in Canarian honeybees suggests that hybridisation between the endemic Apis mellifera populations and imported bees is occurring in Tenerife.     

Tracking colonization and diversification of insect lineages on islands: mitochondrial DNA phylogeography of Tarphius canariensis (Coleoptera: Colydiidae) on the Canary Islands.

The genus Tarphius Erichson (Coleoptera: Colydiidae) is represented by 29 species on the Canary Islands. The majority are rare, single-island endemics intimately associated with the monteverde (laurel forest and fayal-brezal). The Tarphius canariensis complex is by far the most abundant and geographically wide-spread, occurring on Gran Canaria, Tenerife and La Palma. Eighty-seven individuals from the T. canariensis complex were sequenced for 444 bp of the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome oxidase I gene (COI), 597 bp of the COII gene and the intervening tRNA(leu) gene. A neighbour-joining analysis of maximum-likelihood distances put La Palma as a single monophyletic clade of haplotypes occurring within a larger clade comprising all Tenerife haplotypes. Gran Canarian haplotypes were also monophyletic occurring on a separate lineage. Using a combination of the phylogeographic pattern for T. canariensis, geological data, biogeography of the remaining species and estimated divergence times, we proposed a Tenerifean origin in the old Teno massif and independent colonizations from here to north-eastern Tenerife (Anaga), Gran Canaria and La Palma. New methods of estimating diversification rates using branching times were applied to each island fauna. All islands exhibited a gradually decreasing rate of genetic diversification similar to that seen for Brachyderes rugatus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) from the Canary Islands.     

Evolution of biometric and life‐history traits in lizards (Gallotia) from the Canary Islands

The aim was to study as to how biometric and life‐history traits of endemic lacertids in the Canary Islands (genus Gallotia) may have evolved, and possible factors affecting the diversification process of this taxon on successively appearing islands have been deduced. To that end, comparative analyses of sexual dimorphism and scaling of different body, head and life‐history traits to body size in 10 species/subspecies of Gallotia have been carried out. Both Felsenstein's independent contrasts and Huey and Bennett's ‘minimum evolution’ analyses show that male and female snout‐vent length (SVL) changed proportionally (sexual size dimorphism not changing with body size) throughout the evolution of these lizards and all within‐sex biometric traits have changed proportionally to SVL. Life‐history traits (size at sexual maturity, clutch size, hatchling SVL and mass, and life span) are highly correlated with adult female body size, the first two being the only traits with a positive allometry to female SVL. These results, together with the finding that the slope of hatchling SVL to female SVL regression was lower than that of SVL at maturity to female SVL, indicates that larger females reach maturity at a larger size, have larger clutches and, at the same time, have relatively smaller hatchlings than smaller females. There was no significant correlation between any pair of life‐history traits after statistically removing the effect of body size. As most traits changed proportionally to SVL, the major evolutionary change has been that of body size (a ca. threefold change between the largest and the smallest species), that is suggested to be the effect of variable ecological conditions faced by founder lizards in each island.     

Plant genetic diversity in the Canary Islands: a conservation perspective

The Canary Islands are an Atlantic volcanic archipelago with a rich flora of ～570 endemic species. The endemics represent ～40% of the native flora of the islands, and ～20% of the endemics are in the E (endangered) category of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A review of allozyme variation in 69 endemic species belonging to 18 genera and eight families is presented. The average species-level genetic diversity (H(T)) at allozyme loci is 0.186, which is twice as high as the mean reported for endemics of Pacific archipelagos. Possible factors contributing to this higher diversity are discussed, but the reasons remain obscure. An average of 28% of the allozyme diversity within species resides among populations, indicating a high level of interpopulational differentiation. Studies of reproductive biology indicate that many of the endemic species are outcrossers. The high total diversity within species, the relatively high differentiation among populations, and the outcrossing breeding systems have implications for species conservation. Decreased population sizes in outcrossing species would promote biparental inbreeding and increase inbreeding depression. The relatively high proportion of allozyme diversity among populations indicates that the most effective strategy for preserving genetic variation in species is to conserve as many populations as possible. The genetic diversity in many Canary Island endemics is endangered by: (1) overgrazing by introduced animals, such as barbary sheep, goats, mouflons, rabbits, and sheep; (2) interspecific hybridization following habitat disturbance or planting of endemics along roadsides or in public gardens; (3) competition with alien plant species; and (4) decline of population size because of urban development and farming.