Extinction or survival: partulid tree snails in American Samoa

Four partulid tree snail species are known from American Samoa. In 1998, we surveyed the recently established National Park (units on three islands: Tutuila, Tau, Ofu) and neighboring areas for partulids. On Tutuila, Samoana abbreviata, previously considered probably extinct, was extremely rare (15 snails seen); Samoana conica was more common (288 snails) but still rare; Eua zebrina was the most common (1102 snails), at one locality perhaps near its natural abundance. The species have similar distributions within the Park. All three have declined dramatically since the 1920s. Before 1980, when the predatory snail Euglandina rosea was introduced, habitat destruction, and perhaps rat predation and shell collecting, probably caused the decline. The Park provides protection to the Tutuila partulids by protecting habitat, although development is still a potential problem. But predation by E. rosea may yet cause their extinction. On Ofu (only outside the Park), 12 live Samoana thurstoni were found; 31 have now been recorded by western science. Also, an apparently robust population of E. zebrina, previously considered a Tutuila endemic, was found. Euglandina rosea is not on Ofu, so these populations are important remnants of the fauna. No partulids were found on Tau; none has ever been recorded there.     

Host-pathogen interactions in a varying environment: temperature,behavioural fever and fitness

We demonstrate how variable temperatures, mediated by host thermoregulation and behavioural fever, critically affect the interaction between a host (the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria) and a pathogen (the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae var. acridum). By means of behavioural thermoregulation, infected locusts can raise their body temperatures to fever levels. The adaptive value of this behaviour was examined using three thermal regimes wherein maximum body temperatures achievable were: (i) below, or (ii) at normally preferred temperatures, or were (iii) unrestricted, allowing heightened fever temperatures. All infected locusts ultimately succumbed to disease, with median survival times of 8, 15 and 21 days post-infection, respectively. Crucially, only those locusts able to fever produced viable offspring. This represents, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of the adaptive value of behavioural fever following infection with a naturally occurring pathogen. By contrast, although normal host thermoregulation moderately reduced pathogen reproduction (by 35%), there was no additional negative effect of fever, resulting in an asymmetry in the fitness consequences of fever for the host and the pathogen. The dependency of the host-pathogen interaction upon external abiotic conditions has implications for how virulence and resistance are treated both theoretically and in the management of pests and diseases.     

Extinction, survival or recovery of large predatory fishes

Large predatory fishes have long played an important role in marine ecosystems and fisheries. Overexploitation, however, is gradually diminishing this role. Recent estimates indicate that exploitation has depleted large predatory fish communities worldwide by at least 90% over the past 50-100 years. We demonstrate that these declines are general, independent of methodology, and even higher for sensitive species such as sharks. We also attempt to predict the future prospects of large predatory fishes. (i) An analysis of maximum reproductive rates predicts the collapse and extinction of sensitive species under current levels of fishing mortality. Sensitive species occur in marine habitats worldwide and have to be considered in most management situations. (ii) We show that to ensure the survival of sensitive species in the northwest Atlantic fishing mortality has to be reduced by 40-80%. (iii) We show that rapid recovery of community biomass and diversity usually occurs when fishing mortality is reduced. However, recovery is more variable for single species, often because of the influence of species interactions. We conclude that management of multi-species fisheries needs to be tailored to the most sensitive, rather than the more robust species. This requires reductions in fishing effort, reduction in bycatch mortality and protection of key areas to initiate recovery of severely depleted communities.     

Genotype by environment interactions in winter survival in red deer

1. The extent to which environmental heterogeneity interacts with genetic hetero geneity to affect individual fitness within populations has the potential to affect the dynamics of natural populations and the amount of genetic variation maintained in natural populations, yet is a relatively poorly investigated topic in either ecology or evolutionary biology.
2. Many individual-based studies are precluded from such investigations by the practical problems of measuring heritability of traits affecting fitness and the difficulties of experimental manipulation of the study population. One way of demonstrating how commonly genotype by environmental interactions affect fitness, though not their overall importance in determining fitness, is to investigate fitness in a population subdivided by genotype at one or more marker loci.
3. We analyse data on calf winter survival from a population of red deer from the Isle of Rum, Scotland. Data on individual survival, environmental fluctuations and genotype at 13 loci were collected from 1982 to 1994.
4. We found associations between survival over the first winter of life and calf genotype at two out of three allozyme loci and five out of 10 microsatellite loci. All of the results remained significant under randomization tests. Other genotypes that initially appeared to have an association with survival were rejected when bootstrapped, usually due to insufficient data or anomalies in the data.
5. Our results suggest that associations between fitness and genotype are common. Five out of the seven associations found involved interactions with environmental variables. Four of these showed density-dependent selection with different genotypes showing high survival at high population size compared to low population size and one interacted with autumn rainfall. In a sixth case, genotype interacted with sex.     

The impact of variable stoichiometry on predator-prey interactions: a multinutrient approach

A model for prey and predators is formulated in which three essential nutrients can limit growth of both populations. Prey take up dissolved nutrients, while predators ingest prey, assimilate a fraction of ingested nutrients that depends on their current nutrient status, and recycle the balance. Although individuals are modeled as identical within populations, amounts of nutrients within individuals vary over time in both populations, with reproductive rates increasing with these amounts. Equilibria and their stability depend on nutrient supply conditions. When nutrient supply increases, unusual results can occur, such as a decrease of prey density. This phenomenon occurs if, with increasing nutrient, predators sequester rather than recycle nutrients. Furthermore, despite use of a linear functional response for predators, high nutrient supply can destabilize equilibria. Responses to nutrient supply depend on the balance between assimilation and recycling of nutrients by predators, which differs depending on the identity of the limiting nutrient. Applied to microbial ecosystems, the model predicts that the efficiency of organic carbon mineralization is reduced when supply of mineral nutrients is low and when equilibria are unstable. The extent to which predators recycle or sequester limiting nutrients for their prey is of critical importance for the stability of predator-prey systems and their response to enrichment.     

Bio-economics of a renewable resource in a seasonally varying environment

In this paper we study the bio-economics of a renewable resource with governing dynamics described by two distinct growth functions (viz., logistic and Gompertz growth functions) in a seasonally varying environment. Seasonality is introduced into the system by taking the involved ecological parameters to be periodic. In this work, we establish a procedure to obtain the optimal path and compute the optimal effort policy which maximizes the net revenue to the harvester for a fairly general optimal control problem and apply this procedure to the considered models to derive some important conclusions. These problems are solved on the infinite horizon. We find that, for both the models, the optimal harvest policy and the corresponding optimal path are periodic after a finite time. We also obtain optimal solution, a suboptimal harvesting policy and the corresponding suboptimal approach path to reach this optimal solution. The key results are illustrated using numerical simulations and we compare the revenues to the harvester along the optimal and suboptimal paths. The general procedure developed in this work, for obtaining the optimal effort policy and the optimal path, has wider applicability.     

Arctic spring: hormone-behavior interactions in a severe environment

Arctic breeding birds arrive on their nesting grounds in spring when weather conditions may still be extreme (low temperature, snow). The brief Arctic summer requires that they begin breeding as early as possible to take advantage of the ephemeral abundance of food to feed young. Failure to adjust to the local phenology results in drastically reduced reproductive success. Hormone-behavior adaptations may have evolved that maximize survival and reproductive success in the Arctic. It has been shown that the interrelationship of testosterone and territorial aggression, as birds arrive on the Arctic breeding grounds, varies according to species and locality. In some, territoriality is extremely brief following which birds become apparently refractory to the effects of testosterone. Others are territorial throughout the breeding season, but the dependence of these behaviors upon activation by testosterone is lost. Extensive data also indicate that Arctic birds modulate the adrenocortical response to acute stress. Secretion of corticosterone in response to a standardized capture stress protocol, used to mimic acute stress as a function of local environmental conditions, varies with the stage in the breeding cycle. Arctic breeding birds modulate the sensitivity of the adrenocortical response to acute stress at both the population and individual levels. These modulations are thought to be adaptations to allow the onset of territorial behavior and breeding in the face of potentially stressful conditions. Behavioral and physiological responses to corticosterone treatment are also diminished. A combination of these two hormone-behavior interrelationships can form important components of the proximate mechanisms by which birds, and other vertebrates, breed successfully in a severe and often capricious environment.     

Bacterial survival in a dilute environment

Bacteria were isolated from lake water, and their ability to remain viable in a dilute, nutrient-deficient environment was tested by a method that permits suspension of test bacteria between two appressed microporous membranes in an aqueous environment. This approach permitted separation of the lake isolates into two categories. Members of the tribe Klebsielleae were shown to have a prolonged survival rate of 40% or better after 24 h, whereas nonsurvivors were not viable for much longer than 24 h. These nonsurvivors belonged to the genera Acinetobacter, Aeromonas, Alcaligenes, Erwinia, Escherichia, Flavobacterium, and Pseudomonas. Differences in ribonuclease and adenosine triphosphatase levels between Escherichia coli (nonsurvivor) and Klebsiella (survivor) cells were detected. At pH 7.5, stressed E. coli cells contained 14% of the adenosine triphosphatase activity detected in the control, whereas at pH 5.5, in the presence of calcium ions, these same cells contained 50% of the control adenosine triphosphatase levels. At pH 7.2, E. coli cells were strongly inhibited by an adenosine triphosphatase inhibitor, bathophenanthroline (88%); oligomycin (64%); and the proton ionophore carbonyl- cyanide-m-chlorophenyl hydrazone (67%). Both sodium azide and valinomycin were only moderately inhibitory (15 and 28%, respectively). Although the ability to scavenge internal endogenous reserves seems important, we postulate that certain enteric bacteria are capable of utilizing acidic conditions (pH 5.5) as an electrochemical gradient to generate necessary high-energy intermediates for prolongation of survival beyond that possible in environments of near-neutraL pH.     

Persistence of predator-prey systems in an uncertain environment

Summary The time derivatives of prey and predator populations are assumed to satisfy a set of inequalities, instead of a precise differential equation, reflecting an uncertain environmental and/or lack of knowledge by the modeler. A system of differential equations is found whose solution gives the boundary of a persistent set, which is positive flow invariant for any system satisfying the inequalities. Conditions are given for the persistent set to be bounded away from both axes, which show that resonance effects cannot drive either predator or prey to extinction if that does not happen for an autonomous system satisfying the inequalities. In general predator-prey systems are more persistent when there is strong asymptotic stability, when there is correlation between prey and predator dynamics, when the effect of perturbations is density dependent, and are more persistent under perturbations of the prey than of the predator.     

Chytridiomycosis impacts predator-prey interactions in larval amphibian communities

Despite ecologists increasingly recognizing pathogens as playing significant roles in community dynamics, few experimental studies have quantified patterns of disease impacts on natural systems. Amphibians are experiencing population declines, and a fungal pathogen (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis; Chytridiomycota) is a suspected causal agent in many declines. We studied the effects of a pathogenic fungus on community interactions between the gray treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis, and eastern newts, Notophthalmus viridescens. Recent studies have characterized chytridiomycosis as an emerging infectious disease, whose suspected rapid range expansion and widespread occurrence pose a significant risk for amphibian populations worldwide. We reared larvae in outdoor polyethylene experimental tanks and tested the effects of initial larval density, predator presence, and fungal exposure on Hyla recruitment and predator-prey interactions between Hyla and Notophthalmus. Newts reduced treefrog survival, and high intraspecific density decreased metamorphic body mass independent of B. dendrobatidis. The presence of fungi reduced treefrog body mass at metamorphosis by 34%, but had no significant main effect on survival or larval period length. B. dendrobatidis differentially affected larval development in the presence of predators; Hyla developed slower when reared with the pathogen, but only when newts were present. This significant predator-by-pathogen interaction suggests that the impact of chytridiomycosis on larval amphibians may be exacerbated in complex communities. Our data suggest that B. dendrobatidis effects on host life history may be complex and indirect. Direct measurements of the community-level effects of pathogens offer an important opportunity to understand a significant threat to global biodiversity—declining amphibian populations.     

The average lifetime of a population in a varying environment

I derive an approximate formula relating the average time to extinction of a population in a varying environment to its initial size, its equilibrium size (if it is self-regulated), its innate capacity for natural increase, and the impact upon it of environmental variation. The greater the impact of environmental variation, the more slowly a population's prospective lifetime increases with increase in its equilibrium size. The lifetimes of populations greatly influenced by environmental variation are more sensitive to the relative amplitude of fluctuation in their numbers than to their equilibrium size. Since species tend to avoid competitive displacement by specializing, rendering themselves more sensitive to environmental change, and since populations are no more likely to risk extinction in one environment than in another, the degree to which a community's populations fluctuate will be unrelated to environmental stability.     

Impact of abiotic factors on predator-prey interactions: DNA-based gut content analysis in a microcosm experiment

The effects of predators on prey populations can be modified by a number of abiotic factors. Here, we investigated the combined and separate effects of rain and ground-dwelling predators on aphid populations in a microcosm experiment lasting for 21 days, using PCR to analyse the gut content of the predators. Rain significantly dislodged aphids from shoots and ears by 57% and 25%, respectively. The gut content analysis showed that more predators consumed aphids in the rain treatment than without rain, indicating higher availability of aphids to ground-dwelling predators after rain. However, no synergistic effects of rain and ground-dwelling predators on aphid population development could be demonstrated. Rain alone significantly decreased aphid populations by 27%, suggesting that this is a significant mortality factor. Predators alone had no significant effect on aphid numbers, but the gut content analyses showed aphid consumption also in the no-rain treatments, indicating that aphids were available to the predators on the soil surface even without rain. Our results suggest that weather conditions such as rain can modify predator-prey interactions in the field. Employing PCR-based predator gut content analyses proved to be useful as trophic links could be directly verified.     

Learning rules for optimal selection in a varying environment: mate choice revisited

The quality of a chosen partner can be one of the most significantfactors affecting an animal's long-term reproductive success.We investigate optimal mate choice rules in an environment wherethere is both local variation in the quality of potential mateswithin each local mating pool and spatial (or temporal) variationin the average quality of the pools themselves. In such a situation,a robust rule that works well across a variety of environmentswill confer a significant reproductive advantage. We formulatea full Bayesian model for updating information in such a varyingenvironment and derive the form of the rule that maximizes expectedreward in a spatially varying environment. We compare the theoreticalperformance of our optimal learning rule against both fixedthreshold rules and simpler near-optimal learning rules andshow that learning is most advantageous when both the localand environmental variances are large. We consider how optimalsimple learning rules might evolve and compare their evolutionwith that of fixed threshold rules using genetic algorithmsas minimal models of the relevant genetics. Our analysis pointsup the variety of ways in which a near-optimal rule can be expressed.Finally, we describe how our results extend to the case of temporallyvarying environments.     

Size and survival in a stochastic environment

Summary Spatial and temporal variability in environmental conditions can significantly influence fluctuations in body size if the environmental heterogeneity gives rise to variable size dependent mortality rates, or dispersal between sites incurs a reproductive cost. Temporal variability has a greater effect than spatial variability. These conclusions are derived from a model based on the assumption that the innate capacity for increase, r _m , is a suitable fitness measure. The limitations of this model are discussed and an alternative approach using the parent-offspring regression presented. It is suggested that models based upon the latter approach are more appropriate for investigations of the evolution of traits (showing continuous variation) in variable environments because it does not require the assumption that some fitness measure is being optimized and because it may give more insight into the rates of change of the character.     

Loss of alleles in a haploid population with varying environment

The evolution of populations may be affected by a number of factors. The basic forces of migration, mutation, and selection are self-explanatory. However, finite populations are also known to be subject to the fundamental undirected force of genetic drift—the random fluctuation of gene frequencies. It is this random effect which will be investigated via the consideration of discrete stochastic models.     

Systems analysis of an acarine predator-prey system II: Interactions in discontinuous environment

An acarine predator-prey system in a circular stepping-stone environment was described with a simulation model to elucidate the factors responsible for persistence of the system. The main assumptions in this model are: (1) The prey are inevitably eliminated in patches in which predators exist. (2) The density of prey declines and becomes extinct by plant defoliation due to feeding by prey. In this regard this model is different from the models which mimickedHuffaker's (1958) experiments and assumed stable plant-prey relations. Analyses showed that the critical factor in persistence of the predator-prey system was the plant-prey relations, at any combination of other parameters involved in the model. The predator-prey system did not persist long under the unstable relationship of prey and plant. Otherwise the system persisted longer especially when I used a larger number of patches, a larger amount of plant in each patch, and long-distance-migrations of the prey. In particular, frequent emigration of the prey regardless of plant conditions was most effective.     

Environmental constraints upon locomotion and predator-prey interactions in aquatic organisms: an introduction

Environmental constraints in aquatic habitats have become topics of concern to both the scientific community and the public at large. In particular, coastal and freshwater habitats are subject to dramatic variability in various environmental factors, as a result of both natural and anthropogenic processes. The protection and sustainable management of all aquatic habitats requires greater understanding of how environmental constraints influence aquatic organisms. Locomotion and predator-prey interactions are intimately linked and fundamental to the survival of mobile aquatic organisms. This paper summarizes the main points from the review and research articles which comprise the theme issue 'Environmental constraints upon locomotion and predator-prey interactions in aquatic organisms'. The articles explore how natural and anthropogenic factors can constrain these two fundamental activities in a diverse range of organisms from phytoplankton to marine mammals. Some major environmental constraints derive from the intrinsic properties of the fluid and are mechanical in nature, such as viscosity and flow regime. Other constraints derive from direct effects of factors, such as temperature, oxygen content of the water or turbidity, upon the mechanisms underlying the performance of locomotion and predator-prey interactions. The effect of these factors on performance at the tissue and organ level is reflected in constraints upon performance of the whole organism. All these constraints can influence behaviour. Ultimately, they can have an impact on ecological performance. One issue that requires particular attention is how factors such as temperature and oxygen can exert different constraints on the physiology and behaviour of different taxa and the ecological implications of this. Given the multiplicity of constraints, the complexity of their interactions, and the variety of biological levels at which they can act, there is a clear need for integration between the fields of physiology, biomechanics, behaviour, ecology, biological modelling and evolution in both laboratory and field studies. For studies on animals in their natural environment, further technological advances are required to allow investigation of how the prevailing physico-chemical conditions influence basic physiological processes and behaviour.