11,000年前生物大绝灭的原因——"天地生人"系列讲座(十)

在第9讲，我们向读者介绍了一件事实：在距今11，000年前，在我们生活的地球上曾发生过一次生物大绝灭。它是继恐龙绝灭之后又一次大的绝灭事件，是哺乳动物进化历史上最大规模的绝灭事件。     

一个孑遗类群-尖舌苣苔族(Klugieae)物种的居群绝灭速率及其指示意义

本文通过对尖舌苣苔族(Klugieae)的5个属中12个种59个地方居群消长动态的统计分析,计算了该族各属物种的居群绝灭速率。在120年的时间区间内,尖舌苣苔族物种的居群绝灭速率和生境受破坏程度呈正相关。显然,一个类群物种的居群绝灭速率对于该类群分布地区环境的受破坏程度具有较强的指示意义。尖舌苣苔族各属物种的居群绝灭速率与其系统发育年龄和进化程度密切相关。进化水平较低,即系统发育上比较原始的类群,其居群绝灭速率往往较高;进化水平较高,即系统发育上比较年青的类群,其居群绝灭速率则低。地区性特有类群,尤其是特有属更容易遭受绝灭的危险。藉此,可在短时期内比较准确地了解该类群的濒危过程。     

漫谈集群绝灭（上）：什么是集群绝灭

漫谈集群绝灭（上）——什么是集群绝灭徐星王原邵颖编译在地球的历史进程中,发生过多次的生物集群绝灭事件。其中,最为著名的一次是发生在白垩纪末期的恐龙大绝灭事件（见图一）。这些绝灭事件引起了科学家们的极大兴趣,因为这不仅关系到生物演化的进程,也涉及到我们...     

一个孑遗类群——尖舌苣苔族（Klugieae）物种的居群绝灭速率及其指？…

本文通过对尖舌苣苔族（Ｋｌｕｇｉｅａｅ）的５个属中１２个种５９个地方居群消长动态的统计分析。计算了该族各属物种的居群绝灭速率,在１２０年的时间区间内,尖舌苣苔族物种的居群绝灭速率和生境受破坏程度呈正相关,显然,一个类群物种的居群绝灭速率对于该类群分布地区环境的受破坏程度具有较强的指示意义,尖舌苣苔族物种的居群绝灭速率与其系统发育年龄和进化程度密切相关,进行了水平较低,即系统发育上比较原始的类群,其     

动物的易绝灭特征与保护优先性

各种人为干扰和自然因素促使大量物种走向濒危和绝灭。物种濒危和绝灭不是随机的。具有某些特征的物种容易濒危和绝灭 ,即易绝灭特征。易绝灭特征包括个体大 ,繁殖力低 ,扩散能力弱 ,营养级高 ,家域大 ,种群小 ,种群波动大 ,分布范围窄 ,种群密度低 ,栖息地特化程度高和特殊栖息地类型等。研究物种的易绝灭特征可以为生物多样性提供预防性 (proac tive)的优先保护措施。尽管物种的易绝灭特征已经用于实际的物种保护中 ,然而由于物种的各种特征对物种濒危和绝灭的影响十分复杂 ,各个易绝灭特征还有待于进一步深入的、准确的研究。探讨适合不同类群和不同地区物种的易绝灭特征是十分必要的。由于特殊地史发育、中医药传统和边境频繁的非法野生动物贸易 ,我国动物的濒危模式可能与国外有所不同。     

寿终者绝灭,创新者生存——"天地生人"系列讲座(19)

在地球的历史上至少存在着 16种不同层次的大年 (米切尔 ,1976)。其中对生物界的演化曾起过重要作用的大年约有下列 6种 :宏年 ,代年 ,纪年 ,世年 ,期年 ,事件年。在上述 6种层次的大年的冬末 ,生物界都发生了绝灭事件。如在 3个宏年的冬末 ,世界上曾分别发生过 3次著名的大绝灭事件。在前一讲已经对此做过系统的介绍 ,故这里不赘述了。在每个代年的冬末 ,绝灭事件的影响也不小。如发生在中生代年冬末的恐龙大绝灭事件 ,可谓妇孺皆知。在 12个纪年的冬末 ,绝灭事件的规模还相当大 ,如奥陶大绝灭、泥盆大绝灭、三叠大绝灭等皆被古生物学家归…     

事件沉积与恐龙绝灭

事件沉积与恐龙绝灭张玉宾迄今为止,有关恐龙等中生代古生物绝灭的假说有十多种,特别是自八十代初在中生界与新生界交界处发现富铱粘土层以来,灾变论的观点被越来越多的人所接受。但是,反对派引用大量证据,否认恐龙的绝灭与星球碰撞的灾变事件有关,指出在很多地方发...     

生物复苏——大绝灭后生物演化历史的第一幕

生命史是一部生物界短期,快速剧变与长期,慢速稳定相互交替的历史。大绝灭（即集群绝灭）事件反映了全球环境的大突变,点断了地质历史中的生命记录及其发展历程,预示着生物界的演化出现了最有意义的飞跃,近年来尝试研究大绝灭后全球生物界的残存－复苏及其基本型式,并探索复苏的控制因素,标志着地质科学中一个重心的转移（即从大绝灭转向其后的生物残存与复苏的研究）。生物复苏揭示了大绝灭后生物演化历史的第一幕,其研究的     

野生麋鹿绝灭原因的探讨

糜鹿（Elaphurus davidianus Milne-Edwards）是我国特产的珍兽。野生者已不复存在。现存者以目前英国驯养的鹿群为最有名。国内仅个别大的动物园才有少数饲养。 我们曾推断过我国野生糜鹿绝灭的时间（曹克清,1978）和地区（曹克清,1982）。本文拟就它们绝灭的主要原因试作专题探讨。我们认为它们的绝灭与自然的人为的和动物本身的因素有关,特别是人为因素。     

二维Lotka-Volterra竞争系统的β持续生存与β绝灭

利用极限理论与延拓方法研究了二维Lotka-Volterra竞争务统在有限时间内的持续生存与绝灭问题,即β持续生存与β绝灭问题.给出了种群β持续生存与β绝灭的一些充分条件.所得结论表明:种群的β持续生存和β绝灭与种群的初始数量有关.在一定条件下,只要控制种群的初始数量在一定范围内,即可保证两种群永远β持续生存.     

Extinction Events Can Accelerate Evolution

Extinction events impact the trajectory of biological evolution significantly. They are often viewed as upheavals to the evolutionary process. In contrast, this paper supports the hypothesis that although they are unpredictably destructive, extinction events may in the long term accelerate evolution by increasing evolvability. In particular, if extinction events extinguish indiscriminately many ways of life, indirectly they may select for the ability to expand rapidly through vacated niches. Lineages with such an ability are more likely to persist through multiple extinctions. Lending computational support for this hypothesis, this paper shows how increased evolvability will result from simulated extinction events in two computational models of evolved behavior. The conclusion is that although they are destructive in the short term, extinction events may make evolution more prolific in the long term.     

The probability that beneficial mutations are lost in populations with periodic bottlenecks

Population bottlenecks affect the dynamics of evolution, increasing the probability that beneficial mutations will be lost. Recent protocols for the experimental study of evolution involve repeated bottlenecks-when fresh media are inoculated during serial transfer or when chemostat tubes are changed. Unlike population reductions caused by stochastic environmental factors, these bottlenecks occur at known, regular intervals and with a fixed dilution ratio. We derive the ultimate probability of extinction for a beneficial mutation in a periodically bottlenecked population, using both discrete and continuous approaches. We show that both approaches yield the same approximation for extinction probability. From this, we derive an approximate expression for an effective population size.     

栖息地毁坏与动物物种灭绝关系的模拟研究

利用多个物种共存模式模拟了不同情况下的不同动物种群演化的动力学特性,研究结果表明：（1）由于栖息地的毁坏所导致的动手的种灭绝是依赖于对物种死亡率和有关平衡态的假设的,不同的假设下,既使栖息地的破坏率相同,灭绝的物种可能是竞争能力最强的若干物种,也可能是竞争能力相对较弱的若干物种,既不象传统的物种进化理论所认为的必是弱的物种先灭绝,也不象Tilman等人所认为的一定是最强的若干物种先灭绝;（2）如果弱的物种具有较高的平均死亡率,则当栖息地受到一定的毁坏时,将有较多强的物种灭绝,而且物种灭绝时间将大大缩短;（3）在物种死亡率不变的情形下,物种在未受毁坏栖息地上的平衡态和大占有率pl^0,将有利于物种的生存。     

Proceedings of the SMBE Tri-National Young Investigators' Workshop 2005. What is the role of genome duplication in the evolution of complexity and diversity?

Gene and genome duplications provide a source of genetic material for mutation, drift, and selection to act upon, making new evolutionary opportunities possible. As a result, many have argued that genome duplication is a dominant factor in the evolution of complexity and diversity. However, a clear correlation between a genome duplication event and increased complexity and diversity is not apparent, and there are inconsistencies in the patterns of diversity invoked to support this claim. Interestingly, several estimates of genome duplication events in vertebrates are preceded by multiple extinct lineages, resulting in preduplication gaps in extant taxa. Here we argue that gen(om)e duplication could contribute to reduced risk of extinction via functional redundancy, mutational robustness, increased rates of evolution, and adaptation. The timeline for these processes to unfold would not predict immediate increases in species diversity after the duplication event. Rather, reduced probabilities of extinction would predict a latent period between a genome duplication and its effect on species diversity or complexity. In this paper, we will develop the idea that genome duplication could contribute to species diversity through reduced probability of extinction.     

EVOLUTION AND EXTINCTION IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT: A QUANTITATIVE-GENETIC ANALYSIS

Because of the ubiquity of genetic variation for quantitative traits, virtually all populations have some capacity to respond evolutionarily to selective challenges. However, natural selection imposes demographic costs on a population, and if these costs are sufficiently large, the likelihood of extinction will be high. We consider how the mean time to extinction depends on selective pressures (rate and stochasticity of environmental change, and strength of selection), population parameters (carrying capacity, and reproductive capacity), and genetics (rate of polygenic mutation). We assume that in a randomly mating, finite population subject to density-dependent population growth, individual fitness is determined by a single quantitative-genetic character under Gaussian stabilizing selection with the optimum phenotype exhibiting directional change, or random fluctuations, or both. The quantitative trait is determined by a finite number of freely recombining, mutationally equivalent, additive loci. The dynamics of evolution and extinction are investigated, assuming that the population is initially under mutation-selection-drift balance. Under this model, in a directionally changing environment, the mean phenotype lags behind the optimum, but on the average evolves parallel to it. The magnitude of the lag determines the vulnerability to extinction. In finite populations, stochastic variation in the genetic variance can be quite pronounced, and bottlenecks in the genetic variance temporarily can impair the population's adaptive capacity enough to cause extinction when it would otherwise be unlikely in an effectively infinite population. We find that maximum sustainable rates of evolution or, equivalently, critical rates of environmental change, may be considerably less than 10% of a phenotypic standard deviation per generation.     

Does Mutational Robustness Inhibit Extinction by Lethal Mutagenesis in Viral Populations?

Lethal mutagenesis is a promising new antiviral therapy that kills a virus by raising its mutation rate. One potential shortcoming of lethal mutagenesis is that viruses may resist the treatment by evolving genomes with increased robustness to mutations. Here, we investigate to what extent mutational robustness can inhibit extinction by lethal mutagenesis in viruses, using both simple toy models and more biophysically realistic models based on RNA secondary-structure folding. We show that although the evolution of greater robustness may be promoted by increasing the mutation rate of a viral population, such evolution is unlikely to greatly increase the mutation rate required for certain extinction. Using an analytic multi-type branching process model, we investigate whether the evolution of robustness can be relevant on the time scales on which extinction takes place. We find that the evolution of robustness matters only when initial viral population sizes are small and deleterious mutation rates are only slightly above the level at which extinction can occur. The stochastic calculations are in good agreement with simulations of self-replicating RNA sequences that have to fold into a specific secondary structure to reproduce. We conclude that the evolution of mutational robustness is in most cases unlikely to prevent the extinction of viruses by lethal mutagenesis.     

Genetic Feedback and Human Population Regulation

Human population growth has been identified as a primary cause of ecologically destructive phenomena and, if left unchecked, will threaten the survivability of the human species. It has been demonstrated that genetic feedback is the mechanism by which species achieve ecological balance. The present analysis shows the applicability of this mechanism to human population regulation. In this model, the traits of behavior and culture are explained as following a four step process, similar to, and nested within genetic evolution. As species extinction is part and parcel of evolution, and environmental circumstances are changing rapidly, the population regulatory change that would take place on the genetic level of integration would be human extinction. However, the change on the cultural level, requiring a revision of the social contingency from “food production must be increased to feed a growing population” to “food production increases cause population increases,” would lead to human sustainability.     

Evolution of macromolecules: I. Dual coding systems

The evolution of proteins determined by two independently mutable coding mechanisms (e.g., one in which nucleic acids operate with unit coding ratio) has been analyzed kinetically in two ways. The first presumes a system of mutating and reproducing proteins; the dependent variables are the numbers of the various kinds of proteins—wild types, and mutants obtained by mutations in one or another of the two coding mechanisms. The second approach deals with kinds rather than numbers of proteins; the reproductive element in the evolving system is dealt with by assuming a specific rate of extinction for members of each protein class, due to the occurrence of lethal mutations in the proteins themselves or in other proteins in the organisms that carry them. If the two kinds of mutants occur at different rates, it is shown in both treatments that time will not necessarily extinguish the initial advantage of one of them—that is, the notion that the slower class will eventually occur often enough to produce a random distribution of the two classes after long periods of evolution is not in general true. The effects of mutation rate, reproduction rate, and extinction rate on the distribution of the various protein classes are analyzed. Contribution No. 666 from the Division of Basic Health Sciences.     

How does the magnitude of genetic variation affect ecological and reproductive character displacement?

While previous studies on character displacement tended to focus on trait divergence and convergence as a result of long-term evolution, recent studies suggest that character displacement can be a special case of evolutionary rescue, where rapid evolution prevents species extinction by weakening interspecific competition. Here we analyzed a simple model to examine how the magnitude of genetic variation affects evolutionary rescue via ecological and reproductive character displacement that weakens interspecific competition in exploitation of shared resources (i.e., resource competition) and in the mating process caused by incomplete species recognition (i.e., reproductive interference), respectively. We found that slow trait divergence due to small genetic variance results in species extinction in reproductive character displacement but not in ecological character displacement. This is because one species becomes rare in slow character displacement, and this causes deterministic extinction due to minority disadvantage of reproductive interference. On the other hand, there is no deterministic extinction in the process of ecological character displacement. Furthermore, species extinction becomes less likely in the case of positive covariance between ecological and reproductive traits as divergence of the ecological trait (e.g., root depths) increases the divergence speed of the reproductive trait (e.g., flower colors) and vice versa. It will be interesting to compare intraspecific genetic (co)variance of ecological and reproductive traits in future studies for understanding how ecological and reproductive character displacement occur without extinction.     

C-values of seven marine mammal species determined by flow cytometry

C-values, which estimate genome size, have puzzled geneticists for years because they bear no relationship to organismal complexity. Though C-values have been estimated for thousands of species, considerably more data are required in order to better understanding genome evolution. This is particularly true for mammals, in which C-values are known for less than 8% of the total number of mammalian species. Among marine mammals, a C-value has been estimated only for the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Thus examination of additional species of marine mammals is necessary for comparative purposes. It will enable a better understanding of marine mammal genome evolution, and it is also relevant to conservation, because larger genome size has been linked to increased likelihood of extinction in some plant and animal groups. Our study presents C-values of seven marine mammal species, including five cetacean species that are endangered to varying degrees. Similarly to the results for other groups, our results suggest that larger genome size in cetaceans is related to an increased likelihood of extinction.