1,720,999 research outputs found
Nutritional Influences on Sexual Selection in Butterflies
No full textFaculty Advisor: Emilie Snell-RoodThis research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).Henry, Sara; Bartoch, Cassandra; Swanson, Eli; Morehouse, Nate; Snell-Rood, Emilie. (2019). Nutritional Influences on Sexual Selection in Butterflies. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/203062
Complete data and statistical code for: Seeding roadsides is necessary but not sufficient for restoring native floral communities
No full textThe data files contain plant observations for 63 roadside sites observed during the time period of May-Aug of 2021. The Program R code here will read in and summarize those data, complete analyses needed to duplicate the results of the manuscript, and create visualizations used in publication. See readme file for more information.These data were collected in support of a Minnesota Department of Transportation funded study evaluating roadside plantings. The goal of our study was understand how roadside pollinator forage is affected by planting pollinator-friendly seed mixes in roadsides in Minnesota, USA. We used a field study of mixed-age roadside plantings to assess this flower diversity in roadsides planted with status quo non-native seed mixes to those planted with pollinator friendly, native seed mixes. We found that while these native seed mixes did increase the abundance of native flowers, the roadsides' flower communities of native and non-native seedmixes converged through time to grass dominated and unplanted colonizing species. This repository contains the complete datasets as a comma-separated-value files and Program R code necessary to replicate the data prep, exploration, analysis, and visualizations presented in the manuscript.Minnesota Department of TransportationNational Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. CON-75851, project 00074041Mitchell, Timothy S; Verhoeven, Michael R; Darst, Ashley L; Patterson, Cate; Snell-Rood, Emilie C. (2024). Complete data and statistical code for: Seeding roadsides is necessary but not sufficient for restoring native floral communities. Retrieved from the Data Repository for the University of Minnesota (DRUM), https://doi.org/10.13020/4jnq-d711
Olfactory cues of large carnivores modify red deer behavior and browsing intensity
Full text linkThis study examined the effect of perceived predation risk imposed by lynx (Lynx lynx) and wolf (Canis lupus) on red deer (Cervus elaphus) foraging behavior under experimental conditions. We hypothesized that in response to large carnivore scent red deer would increase their vigilance, although reducing the frequency and duration of visits to foraging sites. Consequently, browsing intensity on tree saplings was expected to decrease, whereas a higher proportion of more preferred species was expected to be browsed to compensate for higher foraging costs. We expected stronger responses towards the ambush predator lynx, compared with the cursorial predator wolf. These hypotheses were tested in a cafeteria experiment conducted within three red deer enclosures, each containing four experimental plots with olfactory cues of wolf, lynx, cow, and water as control. On each plot, a camera trap was placed and browsing intensity was measured for one consecutive week, repeated three times. Red deer reduced their visitation duration and browsing intensity on plots with large carnivore scent. Despite red deer showing a clear preference for certain tree species, the presence of large carnivore scent did not change selectivity towards different tree species. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found more pronounced effects of wolf (cursorial) compared with lynx (ambush). This study is the first to experimentally assess the perceived risk effects on the red deer foraging behavior of large carnivores differing in hunting modes. Our findings provide insights into the role of olfactory cues in predator-prey interactions and how they can modify fine-scale herbivore-plant interactions.publishedVersio
Complete data and statistical code for: Diversity of bumble bees and butterflies in Minnesota roadsides depends on floral diversity and abundance but not floral native status
No full textThe data files contain plant and pollinator observations for 63 roadside sites observed during the time period of May-Aug of 2021. The Program R code here will read in and summarize those data, complete analyses needed to duplicate the results of the manuscript, and create visualizations used in publication. See readme file for more information.The goal of our study was understand how roadside pollinator communities respond to planting pollinator-friendly seed mixes in roadsides in Minnesota, USA. We used a field study of mixed-age roadside plantings to assess this response by comparing bumble bee and butterfly communities in roadsides planted with status quo non-native seed mixes to those planted with pollinator friendly, native seed mixes. We show that while pollinator diversity is positively related to floral diversity in roadside plantings, the pollinator diversity in roadsides planted with pollinator-friendly native seed mixes was not different from those planted with status quo non-native seed mixes. This repository contains the complete datasets as a comma-separated-value files and Program R code necessary to replicate the data prep, exploration, analysis, and visualizations presented in the manuscript.Minnesota Department of TransportationNational Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. CON-75851, project 00074041Darst, Ashley L; Verhoeven, Michael R; Mitchell, Timothy S; Evans, Elaine; Tonsfeldt, Luke; Kjaer, Savannah; Snell-Rood, Emilie C. (2024). Complete data and statistical code for: Diversity of bumble bees and butterflies in Minnesota roadsides depends on floral diversity and abundance but not floral native status. Retrieved from the Data Repository for the University of Minnesota (DRUM), https://doi.org/10.13020/021p-qh16
Data from: Adult nutritional stress decreases oviposition choosiness and fecundity in female butterflies
No full textDespite the benefits of careful decision-making, not all animals are choosy. One explanation is that choosiness can cost time and energy and thus depend on nutrition. However, it is not clear how allocation to choosiness versus other components of life history shifts in the face of nutritional stress. We tested two hypotheses about the effects of nutritional stress on choosiness and other life history traits: 1) poor nutrition leads to compensatory shifts in life history strategy towards greater investment per offspring in terms of choosy oviposition behavior and egg resources, and 2) poor nutrition negatively affects a range of life history traits. Cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) females were reared under low or high nutrition conditions during the larval and adult stage in a fully factorial design. Choosiness was quantified as avoidance of conspecific models during oviposition. Adult life history traits included egg number, egg size, and thorax protein. Females that experienced nutritional stress as adults were less choosy and less fecund, in support of the second hypothesis. Yet females that were stressed as larvae invested more in thorax muscle, consistent with the first hypothesis. Overall, adult nutritional stress decreased investment in multiple reproductive traits, including a behavioral trait, but larval stress increased investment in flight, potentially to disperse away from nutritionally poor environments
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Costs of Plasticity in Host Use in Butterflies
No full textPhenotypic plasticity, the ability of a genotype to express different phenotypes in different environments, allows organisms to cope with variation in resources and invade novel environments. Biologists have long been fascinated with the costs and tradeoffs that generate and maintain variation in plasticity, such as possible increases in brain size and delays in reproduction associated with the evolution of learning. However, the costs of plasticity vary: many studies have failed to find costs of plasticity, the degree of costs often vary with the system or environments considered, and many costs of plasticity are variable even within the lifetime of an individual. This research adopts a developmental perspective to predict the degree and incidence of costs of plasticity, using host learning in butterflies as a case study. Learning, a mechanism of plasticity that develops through a trial-and-error sampling process, should result in developmental costs and allocation of energy towards development (at the expense of reproduction). Furthermore, costs of learning should be less pronounced in environments for which organisms have innate biases and for learned traits underlain by short-term memory, relative to long-term memory (which requires more developmental re-structuring). This research found support for all three predictions across three levels of costs: behavioral costs, tissue costs, and fecundity trade-offs. Butterflies exhibited genetic variation in their ability to learn to recognize different colored hosts. Genotypes with higher proxies for long-term memory emerged with relatively larger neural investment and smaller reproductive investment. In contrast to these costs of long-term learning, proxies of short-term learning were only correlated with increased exploration of a range of possible resources (types of non-hosts) early in the host-learning process. Family-level costs of plasticity emerged from the ability to learn to locate a red host, for which butterflies do not have an innate bias. Costs of learning were also induced by learning itself: following exposure to novel (red) host environments, individual butterflies, regardless of genetic background, increased exploratory behavior, increased neural investment, and re-allocated energy away from reproduction towards other functions (e.g., flight). Considering developmental mechanisms helps to predict how costs will influence the evolution of learning and plasticity
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Data from: Specialization and accuracy of host-searching butterflies in complex and simple environments
No full textPopulations that have access to a variety of resources are often composed of individuals that specialize on different subsets of resources. Understanding the behavioral mechanisms that drive such individual specialization will help us predict the strength of this specialization across different environments. Here, we explore the idea that individual specialization may be a consequence of constraints on an individual’s ability to process information. Because many environments contain an overwhelming number of resources and associated stimuli, individuals that specialize by focusing on only a subset of these resources may make more accurate decisions than individuals that generalize. Furthermore, we expect individuals in complex environments, where there are more resources and associated stimuli to process, to specialize during their search for resources compared to individuals in simple environments. We tested these predictions by measuring the accuracy and degree of specialization of naïve cabbage white butterflies (Pieris rapae) searching for two target host species (radish and cabbage) in simple (one distractor species) and more complex (four distractor species) environments. Only butterflies that specialized on cabbage were more accurate than butterflies that visited a mixture of both radish and cabbage. Furthermore, naïve butterflies searching for hosts in complex environments did not adopt more specialized foraging strategies than naive butterflies searching for hosts in simple environments. Taken together, these results suggest that the foraging benefits associated with specialization might only apply to certain resources (perhaps those that have readily recognizable cues) and that such specializations can be related to accuracy across multiple environments
Data from: Anthropogenic environments exert variable selection on cranial capacity in mammals
No full textIt is thought that behaviourally flexible species will be able to cope with novel and rapidly changing environments associated with human activity. However, it is unclear whether such environments are selecting for increases in behavioural plasticity, and whether some species show more pronounced evolutionary changes in plasticity. To test whether anthropogenic environments are selecting for increased behavioural plasticity within species, we measured variation in relative cranial capacity over time and space in 10 species of mammals. We predicted that urban populations would show greater cranial capacity than rural populations and that cranial capacity would increase over time in urban populations. Based on relevant theory, we also predicted that species capable of rapid population growth would show more pronounced evolutionary responses. We found that urban populations of two small mammal species had significantly greater cranial capacity than rural populations. In addition, species with higher fecundity showed more pronounced differentiation between urban and rural populations. Contrary to expectations, we found no increases in cranial capacity over time in urban populations—indeed, two species tended to have a decrease in cranial capacity over time in urban populations. Furthermore, rural populations of all insectivorous species measured showed significant increases in relative cranial capacity over time. Our results provide partial support for the hypothesis that urban environments select for increased behavioural plasticity, although this selection may be most pronounced early during the urban colonization process. Furthermore, these data also suggest that behavioural plasticity may be simultaneously favoured in rural environments, which are also changing because of human activity
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