Evolutionary lessons from drosophila melanogaster for colonization : how do history, selection and effective population size shape evolution?

Tese de doutoramento, Biologia (Biologia Evolutiva), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2018Understanding the factors that constrain adaptation, namely in a colonization scenario, has been a major topic in evolutionary biology and was the chief focus of this thesis. Using a highly-replicated experimental evolution design with well-characterized Drosophila melanogaster populations, we aimed to respond to several evolutionary questions relevant for the colonization of a new habitat. First, we showed that reduced effective population size (1) impaired the responses to directional selection, (2) increased between-population differentiation, and (3) shaped the signatures of history and chance, which were overrun by selection in larger populations. Second, we saw that interpopulation hybridization can have strong effects on a population’s subsequent evolution, especially under a sustained bottleneck. Most importantly, the outcome of hybridization is unpredictable, due to the complex genetic architecture of fitness-related traits and the multitude of interfering factors. This calls for caution on the use of hybridization in conservation management, especially in small, endangered populations. Third, we showed that evolutionary history is very important for a population’s subsequent evolution and fate, namely in a reverse colonization scenario. We additionally showed that the evolutionary patterns during reverse evolution are contingent to the trait under study. Finally, we presented the first, while crude, experimental test of the Hamiltonian wave of adaptation. We found that (1) small changes in diet can have significant effects on age-specific mortality but could not determine whether adaptation to a novel diet was greater at earlier than later ages, and (2) the age-specific decrease in differentiation between adapted and non-adapted populations, predicted by the Hamiltonian hypothesis, was not verified in our system. Despite the high replication and complex design of our experiments, many questions remain unanswered. Other studies involving genomic analysis of our populations, other traits, and diets will shed light on how history, selection, and effective population size shape evolution during colonization.A compreensão dos factores que limitam a adaptação, nomeadamente durante a colonização, é um tema importante em evolução, sendo o objectivo principal desta tese. Utilizando populações de Drosophila melanogaster bem caracterizadas, num estudo de evolução experimental altamente replicado, procurámos responder a questões evolutivas relevantes para a colonização de um novo habitat. Primeiro, mostrámos que a redução do efectivo populacional (1) diminuiu as respostas à selecção direccional, (2) aumentou a diferenciação interpopulacional e (3) modelou as assinaturas da história e do acaso, rapidamente superadas pela selecção em populações grandes. Segundo, vimos que a hibridação interpopulacional pode ter fortes efeitos na evolução das populações, especialmente sob Ne reduzido. Sobretudo, verificámos que as consequências da hibridação são imprevisíveis, pela complexa arquitectura genética das características da história da vida e multiplicidade de factores que intervêm na sua evolução. Como tal, alertamos para o uso da hibridização em programas de conservação, especialmente em populações pequenas e ameaçadas. Terceiro, mostrámos que a história evolutiva é fundamental para a subsequente evolução da população, nomeadamente num cenário de colonização reversa, e que os padrões evolutivos durante a evolução reversa são contingentes às características analisadas. Finalmente, apresentámos o primeiro, apesar de rudimentar, teste experimental da onda Hamiltoniana da adaptação. Vimos que (1) alterações pequenas na dieta das populações podem ter efeitos significativos na mortalidade específica de cada idade, mas não pudemos determinar se a adaptação à nova dieta era maior em idades mais precoces e (2) a diminuição da idade-específica na diferenciação entre populações adaptadas e não adaptadas, previstas pela hipótese Hamiltoniana, não foi verificada. Apesar da elevada replicação e do complexo design destas experiências, muitas questões permanecem sem resposta. Outros estudos envolvendo análise genómica, outras características e dietas, dar-nos-ão uma melhor compreensão de como a história, a selecção e o efectivo populacional modelam a evolução durante a colonização

Outcome-Based Education Experiences on Business Administration Courses

This study determined the Outcome-Based Experiences on Business Administration Courses. The study is Descriptive in nature. Survey questionnaire attached with a consent form and Convenience sampling were utilized in data gathering. For the Data treatment and analysis, frequency count, percentages and weighted mean were utilized.  The results of the study revealed that Business Administration students always have Outcome-Based Education experiences on their courses. Though there are factors possible for enhancement

MAAP Transition from ISO 9001:2015 to ISO 21001:2018 the new quality standard in education organization

Sustainable success has become an ever-more-important future goal in all industries but challenges arise from the advent of fourth industrial revolution and revisions of national and international regulations directly affect the shipping industry trickling down to the Maritime Education and Training Institutions (METI). Thus, a metamorphosis of standards for a maritime school like the Maritime Academy of Asia and the Pacific (MAAP) transitioning to a more tailor-fit Quality Standards is inevitable to manage the changes in educational organizations. ISO 21001:2018 has been published in oder to replace IWA 2:2007. This prompted the Academy to evolve from the traditional ISO 9001:2015 standard. This paper aims to discuss the STCW ’78 (as amended) requirements for Quality Standard System and how the new standard in educational and training organizations complies with it. The paper shall also serve as a resource and reference for those schools that are looking for standards that can attune their management systems gearing towards safer, cleaner, and excellent shipping by having a competent seafarer through a certified Educational Organization Management System. With the vision of the academy to be the leading institution of excellence in maritime and training the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, certification with the standard is indeed a milestone and breakthrough

Resilience and Vulnerability of Public Transportation Fare Systems: The Case of the City of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Resilience is the ability of a system to adapt, persist, and transform as a reaction to threats, which may be external or internal to the system, while vulnerability is the state of being susceptible to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental and social change and from the inability to adapt. Based on a study of the threats that can affect urban mobility, we identified a gap regarding the analysis of the levels of resilience and vulnerability in the face of subsidy threats that can severely affect developing countries. This article measures the level of resilience and vulnerability due to the absence of public transport fare subsidies. For this purpose, we developed an approach based on fuzzy logic and applied it in 33 administrative regions (ARs) of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We obtained four matrices of the levels of vulnerability and resilience of each of the regions as an origin and destination. The results show that areas nearest to the downtown region and those with high-capacity transportation available (commuter train and/or subway, systems with many transfer points) are more resilient, while a high level of vulnerability is associated with low income, negative socioeconomic indicators, and the predominance of road transportation to reach jobs. The contribution of this paper is the method applied to analyse the levels of vulnerability and resilience of public transport, which includes a threat that can cause a rupture that impacts routines and job accessibility in a region

Molecular Tilt on Monolayer-Protected Nanoparticles

The structure of the tilted phase of monolayer-protected nanoparticles is investigated by means of a simple Ginzburg-Landau model. The theory contains two dimensionless parameters representing the preferential tilt angle and the ratio (epsilon) between the energy cost due to spatial variations in the tilt of the coating molecules and that of the van der Waals interactions which favors uniform tilt. We analyze the model for both spherical and octahedral particles. On spherical particles, we find a transition from a tilted phase, at small (epsilon), to a phase where the molecules spontaneously align along the surface normal and tilt disappears. Octahedral particles have an additional phase at small characterized by the presence of six topological defects. These defective configurations provide preferred sites for the chemical functionalization of monolayer-protected nanoparticles via place-exchange reactions and their consequent linking to form molecules and\ud bulk materials

Mesoscopic structure conditions the emergence of cooperation on social networks

We study the evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma on two social networks obtained from actual relational data. We find very different cooperation levels on each of them that can not be easily understood in terms of global statistical properties of both networks. We claim that the result can be understood at the mesoscopic scale, by studying the community structure of the networks. We explain the dependence of the cooperation level on the temptation parameter in terms of the internal structure of the communities and their interconnections. We then test our results on community-structured, specifically designed artificial networks, finding perfect agreement with the observations in the real networks. Our results support the conclusion that studies of evolutionary games on model networks and their interpretation in terms of global properties may not be sufficient to study specific, real social systems. In addition, the community perspective may be helpful to interpret the origin and behavior of existing networks as well as to design structures that show resilient cooperative behavior.Comment: Largely improved version, includes an artificial network model that fully confirms the explanation of the results in terms of inter- and intra-community structur

Especificidade do parasitóide Apanteles militaris (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) em relação ao hospedeiro Mythimna unipuncta (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

IV Encontro Nacional de Protecção Integrada, 3–4 Outubro, 1997, Angra do Heroísmo, Açores.Apanteles militaris (Walsh) é o mais importante parasitóide larvar de Mythimna unipuncta (Haworth) em todas as ilhas dos Açores. Pretendendo-se saber do modo de actuação deste parasitóide larvícola, procedeu-se ao estudo semanal da sua abundância e à do seu hospedeiro natural. Numa tentativa de compreender onde se encontra este parasitóide durante o Invermo, realizámos ensaios de parasitismo, em condições controladas, utilizando como hospedeiro larvas de Noctua pronuba L., Peridroma saucia (Hb), Xestia c-nigrum (L.), Spodoptera litoralis B., Agrotis ipsilon (Hüf.), Heliothis armigera (Hb.), Sesamia nonagrioides (Lef.), Autographa gamma (L.) e Pieris brassicae azorensis Rebel. Estes Lepidópteros foram seleccionados por existirem nos biótopos que são ocupados por M. unipuncta, apresentarem uma densidade importante nas condições ambientais dos Açores ou por serem hospedeiros de parasitóides pertencentes ao mesmo género. Para além de M. unipuncta, apenas S. nonagrioides e A. gamma apresentaram uma percentagem muito reduzida de larvas efectivamente parasitadas, 10 e 12,5%, respectivamente. Assim, a população açoreana de A. militaris apresenta uma grande especificidade em relação ao seu hospedeiro natural

Travel patterns to employment in a border city Mexico – USA with geographic information systems : Mexicali

En este escrito se presenta la caracterización de la movilidad urbana del traslado hacia el empleo en una ciudad fronteriza de México con Estados Unidos: Mexicali, Baja California, a partir de una matriz origen-destino de viajes elaborada con información de fuentes oficiales y el uso de sistemas de información geográfica. Con el análisis territorial se realizó el cálculo de indicadores como distancias y tiempos de recorrido, combustible consumido y generación de gases efecto invernadero (GEI), información que puede resultar de utilidad para los tomadores de decisiones en el proceso de planeación urbana y ambiental.This paper presents the characterization of commuting in a border city of Mexico with the United States: Mexicali, Baja California, from an origin-destination matrix of trips which was elaborated with official sources and the use of geographic information systems. With the territorial analysis, other indicators were calculated such as distances and travel times, fuel consumption and generation of greenhouse gases (GHG), information that can be useful for decision-makers in the urban and environment planning process.Fil: Santos-Gómez, Ma. de los Ángeles. Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur (México)Fil: Leyva Camacho, Osvaldo. Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur (México