Bacterial adaptation is constrained in complex communities

© 2020, The Author(s). A major unresolved question is how bacteria living in complex communities respond to environmental changes. In communities, biotic interactions may either facilitate or constrain evolution depending on whether the interactions expand or contract the range of ecological opportunities. A fundamental challenge is to understand how the surrounding biotic community modifies evolutionary trajectories as species adapt to novel environmental conditions. Here we show that community context can dramatically alter evolutionary dynamics using a novel approach that ‘cages’ individual focal strains within complex communities. We find that evolution of focal bacterial strains depends on properties both of the focal strain and of the surrounding community. In particular, there is a stronger evolutionary response in low-diversity communities, and when the focal species have a larger genome and are initially poorly adapted. We see how community context affects resource usage and detect genetic changes involved in carbon metabolism and inter-specific interaction. The findings demonstrate that adaptation to new environmental conditions should be investigated in the context of interspecific interactions

Insect herbivores should follow plants escaping their relatives

Neighboring plants within a local community may be separated by many millions of years of evolutionary history, potentially reducing enemy pressure by insect herbivores. However, it is not known how the evolutionary isolation of a plant affects the fitness of an insect herbivore living on such a plant, especially the herbivore's enemy pressure. Here, we suggest that evolutionary isolation of host plants may operate similarly as spatial isolation and reduce the enemy pressure per insect herbivore. We investigated the effect of the phylogenetic isolation of host trees on the pressure exerted by specialist and generalist enemies (parasitoids and birds) on ectophagous Lepidoptera and galling Hymenoptera. We found that the phylogenetic isolation of host trees decreases pressure by specialist enemies on these insect herbivores. In Lepidoptera, decreasing enemy pressure resulted from the density dependence of enemy attack, a mechanism often observed in herbivores. In contrast, in galling Hymenoptera, enemy pressure declined with the phylogenetic isolation of host trees per se, as well as with the parallel decline in leaf damage by non-galling insects. Our results suggest that plants that leave their phylogenetic ancestral neighborhood can trigger, partly through simple density-dependency, an enemy release and fitness increase of the few insect herbivores that succeed in tracking these plants

Arthropod decline in grasslands and forests is associated with landscape-level drivers

Recent reports of local extinctions of arthropod species1, and of massive declines in arthropod biomass2, point to land-use intensification as a major driver of decreasing biodiversity. However, to our knowledge, there are no multisite time series of arthropod occurrences across gradients of land-use intensity with which to confirm causal relationships. Moreover, it remains unclear which land-use types and arthropod groups are affected, and whether the observed declines in biomass and diversity are linked to one another. Here we analyse data from more than 1 million individual arthropods (about 2,700 species), from standardized inventories taken between 2008 and 2017 at 150 grassland and 140 forest sites in 3 regions of Germany. Overall gamma diversity in grasslands and forests decreased over time, indicating loss of species across sites and regions. In annually sampled grasslands, biomass, abundance and number of species declined by 67%, 78% and 34%, respectively. The decline was consistent across trophic levels and mainly affected rare species; its magnitude was independent of local land-use intensity. However, sites embedded in landscapes with a higher cover of agricultural land showed a stronger temporal decline. In 30 forest sites with annual inventories, biomass and species number—but not abundance—decreased by 41% and 36%, respectively. This was supported by analyses of all forest sites sampled in three-year intervals. The decline affected rare and abundant species, and trends differed across trophic levels. Our results show that there are widespread declines in arthropod biomass, abundance and the number of species across trophic levels. Arthropod declines in forests demonstrate that loss is not restricted to open habitats. Our results suggest that major drivers of arthropod decline act at larger spatial scales, and are (at least for grasslands) associated with agriculture at the landscape level. This implies that policies need to address the landscape scale to mitigate the negative effects of land-use practices

EU:n tietosuoja-asetus 2016/679 (GDPR) ohjelmistoyrityksessä

Insinöörityössä tavoitteena oli tutustua EU:n tietosuoja-asetukseen 2016/679 sekä selvittää, millaisia vaatimuksia se aiheuttaa työn tilanneessa ohjelmistoyrityksessä ja suunnitella ja toteuttaa osa muutostöistä. Työn tavoitteet suunniteltiin yhdessä tilaajayrityksen kanssa. Työn aikana selvitettiin tietosuoja-asetuksen sisältöä ja sitä, miltä osin se kohdistuu yritykseen ja kuinka asetuksen ehdot käytännössä toteutettaisiin. Selvityksen aikana pyrittiin muodostamaan selkeä kuva siitä, missä asetuksen määrittämissä rooleissa yritys toimii ja mitkä niistä muodostuvat vastuut ovat. Pyrittiin myös muodostamaan käsitys yrityksen asiakkaiden tulevista tarpeista, joiden perusteella yrityksen ohjelmistotuote voitaisiin valmistella vastaamaan asetuksen vaatimuksia. Selvityksen perusteella yritykselle tehtiin nykytila-analyysi, jolla pyrittiin dokumentoimaan yrityksen tietoturvakäytännöt ja määrittämään, mitä puutteita yrityksen hallinnollisissa ja teknisissä tietoturva ja -suojakäytännöissä on. Analyysin perusteella priorisoitiin kehitysprojekteja yrityksen toimintatapojen ja ohjelmistotuotteen parantamiseen. Työn tuloksena luotiin uusia ominaisuuksia työn tilaajan ohjelmistotuotteeseen. Näitä olivat rekisteröityjen suostumuksen pyyntö ja tiedotus heidän oikeuksistaan, oikeus tulla unohdetuksi ja tietojen siirto. Lisäksi tarkastettiin ja laajennettiin tilaajayrityksen tietoturvasuunnitelmaa, tietoturvaesitettä ja tietoturvaohjeistusta yrityksen henkilöstölle ja asiakkaille.Aim of this thesis was to get acquainted with EU data protection regulation 2016/679, find out which of its requirements are notable in a software company that ordered the thesis and implement a part of the changes needed. Goals of the thesis were planned together with the company. Contents of the Data protection regulation were studied and a viewed from the roles the company is in as a data controller and a data processor. Company’s clients were studied to predict what requirements they will have for the company’s main software product soon. Based on the theoretical study, a current state analysis was done to document company’s managerial and technical data protection practices and find their flaws. Based on the analysis a few development projects were formed and prioritized especially focusing on the company’s main software product. Thesis’ results were data protection documentation and guidelines for the company’s personnel and clients and software feature implementations which enable data subjects’ rights to be forgotten, to transfer their data and to gather their consent and inform them of their rights