Genotype-environment associations support a mosaic hybrid zone between two tidal marsh birds

Local environmental features can shape hybrid zone dynamics when hybrids are bounded by ecotones or when patchily distributed habitat types lead to a corresponding mosaic of genotypes. We investigated the role of marsh-level characteristics in shaping a hybrid zone between two recently diverged avian taxa – Saltmarsh (Ammodramus caudacutus) and Nelson\u27s (A. nelsoni) sparrows. These species occupy different niches where allopatric, with caudacutus restricted to coastal marshes and nelsoni found in a broader array of wetland and grassland habitats and co-occur in tidal marshes in sympatry. We determined the influence of habitat types on the distribution of pure and hybrid sparrows and assessed the degree of overlap in the ecological niche of each taxon. To do this, we sampled and genotyped 305 sparrows from 34 marshes across the hybrid zone and from adjacent regions. We used linear regression to test for associations between marsh characteristics and the distribution of pure and admixed sparrows. We found a positive correlation between genotype and environmental variables with a patchy distribution of genotypes and habitats across the hybrid zone. Ecological niche models suggest that the hybrid niche was more similar to that of A. nelsoni and habitat suitability was influenced strongly by distance from coastline. Our results support a mosaic model of hybrid zone maintenance, suggesting a role for local environmental features in shaping the distribution and frequency of pure species and hybrids across space

Genotype-environment associations support a mosaic hybrid zone between two tidal marsh birds

Local environmental features can shape hybrid zone dynamics when hybrids are bounded by ecotones or when patchily distributed habitat types lead to a corresponding mosaic of genotypes. We investigated the role of marsh-level characteristics in shaping a hybrid zone between two recently diverged avian taxa – Saltmarsh (Ammodramus caudacutus) and Nelson\u27s (A. nelsoni) sparrows. These species occupy different niches where allopatric, with caudacutus restricted to coastal marshes and nelsoni found in a broader array of wetland and grassland habitats and co-occur in tidal marshes in sympatry. We determined the influence of habitat types on the distribution of pure and hybrid sparrows and assessed the degree of overlap in the ecological niche of each taxon. To do this, we sampled and genotyped 305 sparrows from 34 marshes across the hybrid zone and from adjacent regions. We used linear regression to test for associations between marsh characteristics and the distribution of pure and admixed sparrows. We found a positive correlation between genotype and environmental variables with a patchy distribution of genotypes and habitats across the hybrid zone. Ecological niche models suggest that the hybrid niche was more similar to that of A. nelsoni and habitat suitability was influenced strongly by distance from coastline. Our results support a mosaic model of hybrid zone maintenance, suggesting a role for local environmental features in shaping the distribution and frequency of pure species and hybrids across space

Why Make the World Move?

The next horizons of human-computer interaction promise a whirling world of digital bytes, physical bits, and their hybrids. Are human beings prepared to inhabit such cyber-physical, adaptive environments? Assuming an optimistic view, this chapter offers a reply, drawing from art and art history, environmental design, literature, psychology, and evolutionary anthropology, to identify wide-ranging motivations for the design of such “new places” of human-computer interaction. Moreover, the author makes a plea to researchers focused in the domain of adaptive environments to pause and take a longer, more comprehensive, more self-reflective view to see what we’re doing, to recognize where we are, and to possibly find ourselves and others within our designed artifacts and systems that make the world move.&nbsp

Why Make the World Move?

The next horizons of human-computer interaction promise a whirling world of digital bytes, physical bits, and their hybrids. Are human beings prepared to inhabit such cyber-physical, adaptive environments? Assuming an optimistic view, this chapter offers a reply, drawing from art and art history, environmental design, literature, psychology, and evolutionary anthropology, to identify wide-ranging motivations for the design of such “new places” of human-computer interaction. Moreover, the author makes a plea to researchers focused in the domain of adaptive environments to pause and take a longer, more comprehensive, more self-reflective view to see what we’re doing, to recognize where we are, and to possibly find ourselves and others within our designed artifacts and systems that make the world move.&nbsp

Inhabiting - landscapes and natures

About the book: The Handbook of Cultural Geography presents a state of the art assessment of the key questions informing cultural geography. Emphasizing the intellectual diversity of the discipline, the Handbook presents a comprehensive statement of the relationship between the cultural imagination and the geographical imagination while also looking at resonances between cultural geography and other disciplines. The work is cross-referenced throughout and presents a completely integrated overview of cultural geography. This will be an essential reference for any inquiry into how culture is spatially constituted and, equally, how geography is culturally constructed

Cultivated, Feral, Wild: The Urban as an Ecological Formation

This paper seeks to rethink the urban as an ecological formation. It argues that contrary to an emphasis on the built environment, articulated through refrains of capital, planning and design, cities are lived achievements, emerging through fabrications between human and other-than-human forces. Ecological formations are fleshed out in three modes: ecologies that involve the cultivated, feral and the wild. There are distinct forms of urban governance affiliated with each, taken as hybrids of biopolitical and vernacular practices. Rethinking cities as ecological formations enables a more radical understanding of the difference and heterogeneity of urban worlds than those on offer in urban theory. It signals a shift from animating urban geographies towards understandings of how other-than-human geographies are constitutive of urban worlds.European Research Council Horizon 2020 Starting Grant (uEcologies; Grant No. 759239

Local adaptation, phenotypic differentiation and hybrid fitness in diverged natural populations of Arabidopsis lyrata

Selection for local adaptation results in genetic differentiation in ecologically important traits. In a perennial, outcrossing model plant Arabidopsis lyrata, several differentiated phenotypic traits contribute to local adaptation, as demonstrated by fitness advantage of the local population at each site in reciprocal transplant experiments. Here we compared fitness components, hierarchical total fitness and differentiation in putatively ecologically important traits of plants from two diverged parental populations from different continents in the native climate conditions of the populations in Norway and in North Carolina (NC, U.S.A.). Survival and number of fruits per inflorescence indicated local advantage at both sites and aster life-history models provided additional evidence for local adaptation also at the level of hierarchical total fitness. Populations were also differentiated in flowering start date and floral display. We also included reciprocal experimental F1 and F2 hybrids to examine the genetic basis of adaptation. Surprisingly, the F2 hybrids showed heterosis at the study site in Norway, likely because of a combination of beneficial dominance effects from different traits. At the NC site, hybrid fitness was mostly intermediate relative to the parental populations. Local cytoplasmic origin was associated with higher fitness, indicating that cytoplasmic genomes also may contribute to the evolution of local adaptation

Studio inside, studio outside: Elasticity

Studio Inside and Outside is a practice-led investigation into two educational studio sites in a UK University that has recently relocated its Art & Design Department to a newly renovated building. As the fine art and graphic design courses settle into their new studios it has become increasingly apparent how influential educational studios are. Each discipline demands a different kind of space. Each discipline uses space differently. Space and its models of occupation influence how students work, understand their discipline, how they learn, and how they engage. The studio ‘vernacular’ – the way it looks and sounds – not only encompasses the educational needs of the student, but is fused with visions of what professional life in that discipline might look like. The studio not only houses the daily activities that make up learning, but is a powerful part of student subjectivities and engagement

Design for the Right to the Smart City in More-than-Human Worlds

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructure processes. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper aims to add to the growing body of critical and civic led smart city literature in HCI by leveraging concepts from the environmental humanities about more than human worlds, as a way to shift understandings within HCI of smart cities away from the exceptional and human centered, towards a more inclusive understanding that incorporates and designs for other others and other species. We illustrate through a case study that involved codesigning Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities, possibilities for creating more environmentally and socially just smart cities