The impacts of environmental warming on Odonata: a review

Climate change brings with it unprecedented rates of increase in environmental temperature, which will have major consequences for the earth's flora and fauna. The Odonata represent a taxon that has many strong links to this abiotic factor due to its tropical evolutionary history and adaptations to temperate climates. Temperature is known to affect odonate physiology including life-history traits such as developmental rate, phenology and seasonal regulation as well as immune function and the production of pigment for thermoregulation. A range of behaviours are likely to be affected which will, in turn, influence other parts of the aquatic ecosystem, primarily through trophic interactions. Temperature may influence changes in geographical distributions, through a shifting of species' fundamental niches, changes in the distribution of suitable habitat and variation in the dispersal ability of species. Finally, such a rapid change in the environment results in a strong selective pressure towards adaptation to cope and the inevitable loss of some populations and, potentially, species. Where data are lacking for odonates, studies on other invertebrate groups will be considered. Finally, directions for research are suggested, particularly laboratory studies that investigate underlying causes of climate-driven macroecological patterns

Range Expansion Drives Dispersal Evolution In An Equatorial Three-Species Symbiosis

A-09-14International audienceBackground Recurrent climatic oscillations have produced dramatic changes in species distributions. This process has been proposed to be a major evolutionary force, shaping many life history traits of species, and to govern global patterns of biodiversity at different scales. During range expansions selection may favor the evolution of higher dispersal, and symbiotic interactions may be affected. It has been argued that a weakness of climate fluctuation-driven range dynamics at equatorial latitudes has facilitated the persistence there of more specialized species and interactions. However, how much the biology and ecology of species is changed by range dynamics has seldom been investigated, particularly in equatorial regions. Methodology/Principal Findings We studied a three-species symbiosis endemic to coastal equatorial rainforests in Cameroon, where the impact of range dynamics is supposed to be limited, comprised of two species-specific obligate mutualists –an ant-plant and its protective ant– and a species-specific ant parasite of this mutualism. We combined analyses of within-species genetic diversity and of phenotypic variation in a transect at the southern range limit of this ant-plant system. All three species present congruent genetic signatures of recent gradual southward expansion, a result compatible with available regional paleoclimatic data. As predicted, this expansion has been accompanied by the evolution of more dispersive traits in the two ant species. In contrast, we detected no evidence of change in lifetime reproductive strategy in the tree, nor in its investment in food resources provided to its symbiotic ants. Conclusions/Significance Despite the decreasing investment in protective workers and the increasing investment in dispersing females by both the mutualistic and the parasitic ant species, there was no evidence of destabilization of the symbiosis at the colonization front. To our knowledge, we provide here the first evidence at equatorial latitudes that biological traits associated with dispersal are affected by the range expansion dynamics of a set of interacting species

Higgs and neutrino sector, EDM and epsilon_K in a spontaneously CP and R-parity breaking supersymmetric model

We construct an extension of the supersymmetric standard model where both CP symmetry and R-parity are spontaneously broken. We study the electroweak symmetry breaking sector of the model and find minima consistent with the experimental bounds on Higgs boson masses. Neutrino masses and mixing angles are generated through both seesaw and bilinear R-parity violation. We show that the hierarchical mass pattern is obtained, and mixings are consistent with measured values. Due to the spontaneous CP and R-parity violation, the neutrino sector is CP violating, and we calculate the corresponding phase. We further restrict the parameter space to agree with the limits on the electric dipole moment of the neutron. Finally, we study the CP violation parameter epsilon_K in the kaon system and show that we obtain results consistent with the experimental value.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, submitted to EPJ

Alternative life-histories in a socially polymorphic ant

Social organisms vary greatly in the number of breeders per group; yet, the causes and consequences of this variation remain poorly known. Here, we show that variation in social structure is tightly linked with changes in several fundamental life-history traits within one population of ants. Multiple-queen colonies of Formica selysi were much more populous than single-queen ones. They also occurred in areas of higher nest density, had longer colony lifespan, produced smaller queens that presumably disperse less, and invested less in reproductive individuals relative to workers. These multiple changes in life histories are consistent with a shift in the mode of colony foundation and the degree of philopatry of queens. They may also provide various fitness benefits to members of multiple-queen colonies and are likely to play a central role in the evolution and maintenance of polymorphic social structures