Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing-Based Approaches Can Help Transform Our Economies

Despite wider recognition of human interdependence with the rest of nature, our economies continue to fail to adequately value ecosystem services. This failure is largely attributed to the economic frameworks and related measures that focus on the production and consumption of marketed goods and services, but do not consider the other essential elements upon which our lives depend. This paper highlights how the Ecosystem Services approach can shift the focus to human wellbeing while remaining within biophysical planetary boundaries. An Ecosystem Services approach applies three fundamental principles of Ecological Economics: sustainable scale, efficient allocation, and fair distribution, which are vital for sustainable economies and societies. We provide case studies, from both a local and national scale, demonstrating how such an approach offers a holistic perspective of understanding what “development” actually means. Transforming our economies to appropriately consider planetary limits, overcome societal addictions, learn from Indigenous and local communities about ways of sustainable living, and realizing the importance of ecosystem services will contribute to developing economies that are resilient, and that enhance sustainable human wellbeing

Editorial: Grazing in future multi-scapes: From thoughtscapes to landscapes, creating health from the ground up

More than half the land surface of the Earth is used for grazing (United Nations General Assembly, 2022), with Asia at 36% and Africa at 30% of the total. About 91% of global grass- and range-lands are unfenced with few boundaries and limited crop farming (Reid et al., 2014). The remaining grass- and range-lands are privately owned and used, with 13% in North America, 10% in Australia and New Zealand, 8% in South America, and 3% in Europe; all with a mix of more intensive grazing and cultivated land. No wonder why across the world's landscapes, grazing and browsing herbivores—both wild and livestock—(be they within a spatial and temporal pastoral context, whether they naturally graze or are grazed by farmers, ranchers, shepherds, and nomadic peoples—all termed pastoralists), fulfill essential roles in driving the composition, structure, and dynamics of pastoral ecosystem. The provision of ecosystem services, including social, economic, and cultural benefits to families, farms, and communities, is accordingly impacted (Gregorini, 2015)

Karyotypes versus Genomes: The Nymphalid Butterflies Melitaea cinxia, Danaus plexippus, and D. chrysippus

his is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Karger via the DOI in this recordThe number of sequenced lepidopteran genomes is increasing rapidly. However, the corresponding assemblies rarely represent whole chromosomes and generally also lack the highly repetitive W sex chromosome. Knowledge of the karyotypes can facilitate genome assembly and further our understanding of sex chromosome evolution in Lepidoptera. Here, we describe the karyotypes of the Glanville fritillary Melitaea cinxia (n = 31), the monarch Danaus plexippus (n = 30), and the African queen D. chrysippus (2n = 60 or 59, depending on the source population). We show by FISH that the telomeres are of the (TTAGG) n type, as found in most insects. M. cinxia and D. plexippus have “conventional” W chromosomes which are heterochromatic in meiotic and somatic cells. In D. chrysippus, the W is inconspicuous. Neither telomeres nor W chromosomes are represented in the published genomes of M. cinxia and D. plexippus. Representation analysis in sequenced female and male D. chrysippus genomes detected an evolutionarily old autosome-Z chromosome fusion in Danaus. Conserved synteny of whole chromosomes, so called “macro synteny”, in Lepidoptera permitted us to identify the chromosomes involved in this fusion. An additional and more recent sex chromosome fusion was found in D. chrysippus by karyotype analysis and classical genetics. In a hybrid population between 2 subspecies, D. c. chrysippus and D. c. dorippus, the W chromosome was fused to an autosome that carries a wing colour locus. Thus, cytogenetics and the present state of genome data complement one another to reveal the evolutionary history of the species

A neo-W chromosome in a tropical butterfly links colour pattern, male-killing, and speciation

PublishedJournal Article© 2016, Royal Society of London. All rights reserved.Sexually antagonistic selection can drive both the evolution of sex chromosomes and speciation itself. The tropical butterfly the African Queen, Danaus chrysippus, shows two such sexually antagonistic phenotypes, the first being sex-linked colour pattern, the second, susceptibility to a male-killing, maternally inherited mollicute, Spiroplasma ixodeti, which causes approximately 100% mortality in male eggs and first instar larvae. Importantly, this mortality is not affected by the infection status of the male parent and the horizontal transmission of Spiroplasma is unknown. In East Africa, male-killing of the Queen is prevalent in a narrow hybrid zone centred on Nairobi. This hybrid zone separates otherwise allopatric subspecies with different colour patterns. Here we show that a neo-W chromosome, a fusion between the W (female) chromosome and an autosome that controls both colour pattern and malekilling, links the two phenotypes thereby driving speciation across the hybrid zone. Studies of the population genetics of the neo-W around Nairobi showthat the interaction between colour pattern and male-killer susceptibility restricts gene flow between two subspecies of D. chrysippus. Our results demonstrate how a complex interplay between sex, colour pattern, malekilling, and a neo-W chromosome, has set up a genetic ‘sink’ that keeps the two subspecies apart. The association between the neo-W and male-killing thus provides a ‘smoking gun’ for an ongoing speciation process.Matt McClements (Blink Studios Ltd) designed the figures, Bernard Rono assisted with fieldwork, and Samuel Katoi provided specimens from Watamu. Fieldwork at Silole Sanctuary (Kitengela) was sanctioned by Nani Croze, Eric Krystall, John Keen, and Mark van Rampelberg. Simon Martin scrutinized the first draft of the manuscript and made valuable suggestions for its improvement. Spiroplasma screening was carried out at icipe. D.A.S.S. thanks the Linnean Society of London and the Outreach Fund of the Royal Entomological Society of London for funding. I.J.G., D.A.S.S., W.T., and K.S. are Research Affiliates of the National Museums of Kenya

Snout Shape in Extant Ruminants

Copyright: © 2014 Tennant, MacLeod. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. [4.0 license]. The attached file is the published version of the article

Neo sex chromosomes, colour polymorphism and male-killing in the African queen butterfly, Danaus chrysippus (L.)

This is the final version. Available from MDPI via the DOI in this record. The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/10/9/291/s1, Figure S1: (a) Histograms showing the frequencies (per cent) of (A) females and (B–D) the three homozygous recessive phenotypes aa (B), bb (C) and cc (D) at Nairobi. Symbols on the co-ordinate: J = January, F = February, A = Insects 2019, 10, 291 20 of 25 April, M = May, J/A = July/August, N = November. x = the mean value of the six samples [13]; (b) Frequencies (per cent) as three-month moving averages for the cc genotype (o) and females (•) in monthly samples of D.chrysippus from February 1972 to September 1975 on the campus of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The approximate durations of wet seasons (dashed lines indicating periods that are variable) and the two monsoons (SE = south–east, NE = north–east) are shown at the top [13]; Table S1: Sex ratios of Danaus chrysippus collected as eggs, Athi River Plains, Nairobi, 1986–1994. (Expected numbers if the true sex ratio is stable at 74.5% female in parentheses); Table S2: Disassortative (negative non-random) mating for C locus genotype (expected numbers in parentheses if mate choice is random) in D. chrysippus at Kitengela, Kenya, May–July 2015.Danaus chrysippus (L.), one of the world’s commonest butterflies, has an extensive range throughout the Old-World tropics. In Africa it is divided into four geographical subspecies which overlap and hybridise freely in the East African Rift: Here alone a male-killing (MK) endosymbiont, Spiroplasma ixodetis, has invaded, causing female-biased populations to predominate. In ssp. chrysippus, inside the Rift only, an autosome carrying a colour locus has fused with the W chromosome to create a neo-W chromosome. A total of 40-100% of Rift females are neo-W and carry Spiroplasma, thus transmitting a linked, matrilineal neo-W, MK complex. As neo-W females have no sons, half the mother’s genes are lost in each generation. Paradoxically, although neo-W females have no close male relatives and are thereby forced to outbreed, MK restricts gene flow between subspecies and may thus promote speciation. The neo-W chromosome originated in the Nairobi region around 2.2 k years ago and subsequently spread throughout the Rift contact zone in some 26 k generations, possibly assisted by not having any competing brothers. Our work on the neo-W chromosome, the spread of Spiroplasma and possible speciation is ongoing

Stepwise evolution of a butterfly supergene via duplication and inversion.

This is the final version. Available from the Royal Society via the DOI in this record. Data accessibility Sequencing reads and assemblies are available at the European Nucleotide Archive project (see the electronic supplementary material, table S1 for accession numbers [48]). Assemblies are available in the European Nucleotide Archive project accession PRJEB52180. Additional data files are available from the Dryad Digital Repository: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xwdbrv1g0 [49], including genome assemblies and annotations, repeat library and windowed repeat content, whole-genome alignments, VCF and genotype files, window-based diversity and divergence measures and read depth, sequence alignments for genes and phylogenetic trees. Scripts for assembly polishing, the analysis of repeat content, genome annotation and phylogenetic tree construction are available at https://github.com/RishiDeKayne/Danaus_supergene_structure. Scripts for genome alignment and synteny block inference, ancestry painting and divergence analyses, and read depth and copy number analyses are available at https://github.com/simonhmartin/Danaus_supergene_structure.Supergenes maintain adaptive clusters of alleles in the face of genetic mixing. Although usually attributed to inversions, supergenes can be complex, and reconstructing the precise processes that led to recombination suppression and their timing is challenging. We investigated the origin of the BC supergene, which controls variation in warning coloration in the African monarch butterfly, Danaus chrysippus. By generating chromosome-scale assemblies for all three alleles, we identified multiple structural differences. Most strikingly, we find that a region of more than 1 million bp underwent several segmental duplications at least 7.5 Ma. The resulting duplicated fragments appear to have triggered four inversions in surrounding parts of the chromosome, resulting in stepwise growth of the region of suppressed recombination. Phylogenies for the inversions are incongruent with the species tree and suggest that structural polymorphisms have persisted for at least 4.1 Myr. In addition to the role of duplications in triggering inversions, our results suggest a previously undescribed mechanism of recombination suppression through independent losses of divergent duplicated tracts. Overall, our findings add support for a stepwise model of supergene evolution involving a variety of structural changes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Genomic architecture of supergenes: causes and evolutionary consequences'.Royal SocietyRoyal SocietySwiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)National Geographic Societ