The role of Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) in the spread of avian influenza: genomics, population genetics, and flyways

Birds, in particular poultry and ducks, are a source of many infectious diseases, such as those caused by influenza viruses. These viruses are a threat not only to the birds themselves but also to poultry farming and human health, as forms that can infect humans are known to have evolved. It is believed that migratory birds in general play an important role in the global spread of avian influenza (AI). However, it is still debated how large this role precisely is and whether other modes of spread may be more important. The mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) is the world’s most abundant and well-studied waterfowl species. Besides being an important game and agricultural species, it is also a flagship species in wetland conservation and restoration. Waterfowl (Anseriformes: Anatidae) and especially ducks currently are the focal bird group in long distance dispersal of Avian Influenza in the wild, and the mallard has been identified as the most likely species to transport this virus. In my thesis I report aspects of the biology of this important host species of AI by molecular ecological means. As molecular marker system I established a genome-wide set of more than 100,000 SNPs of which I developed a subset of 384 SNPs into an assay to genotype about 1,000 ducks. This subset was employed to study the evolutionary history and speciation processes in the Anas genus. Further investigations into the world-wide mallard population structure on a species level were based not only on this set of 384 SNPs but also on mitochondrial DNA sequences. Last but not last, I investigated an option of AI sampling and detection from duck faeces by technology that is safe from a biohazard perspective, and solves transportation issues related to cold chains. The main results of my thesis include the development of a generally applicable improved analysis pipeline to develop genome-wide SNP sets for non-model organisms. Further, my results show that, from a migration system perspective, mallard flyways/populations can hardly be delineated from a biological point of view. Detailed phylogenetic, population genetic and coalescent analyses of a data set of samples spanning the whole northern hemisphere leads me to conclude that the only firm population boundaries that I can draw are between Eurasia and North America, within which panmixia is almost achieved. Mallards’ and other Anas-ducks’ whole continental to global distribution brings them together in sympatry. I can show that a combination of sympatric distribution, conflicting genetically determined and learned mate recognition mechanisms, and genomic compatibility between species helps to explain the long-standing puzzle of waterfowl hybridisation and introgression of genes from one duck species into another. Besides obvious management implications I propose that this fact can be part of the explanation why ducks are so well adaptable and successful, as well as why they show extraordinary abilities to withstand AI infections, or its consequences for health status. </p

Countermanding saccades in humans

AbstractWe used a countermanding paradigm to investigate the relationship between conflicting cues for controlling human saccades. Subjects made a saccade to a target appearing suddenly in the periphery; but on some trials, after a delay, a stop-signal was presented that instructed subjects to inhibit the saccade. As we increased this delay, subjects increasingly failed to inhibit the movement. From measurements of this relationship, and of saccadic latency in control trials, we estimated the average time needed to inhibit the saccade (the stop-signal reaction time or SSRT). SSRTs were similar across subjects, between 125 and 145 ms, and did not vary with target luminance. We then investigated a race model in which the target initiates a response preparation signal rising linearly with a rate varying randomly from trial to trial, and racing against a similarly rising signal initiated by the cue to inhibit the saccade. The first process to cross a trigger threshold determines whether the saccade is initiated or not. In Monte Carlo simulations, this model correctly predicted the probability of successful saccade inhibition as a function of the stop-signal delay, and also the statistical distributions of saccadic latency during trials in which a stop-signal was presented but the subject failed to inhibit the saccade. These findings provide a comparison to results previously described in the monkey, and show that a simple race model with a linear rise to threshold may underlie behavioural performance in tasks of this kind

Saccadic eye movements while reading music

AbstractSubjects' eye movements were measured whilst they read and performed lines of music consisting of rhythmic information only, in conventional musical notation. The relationship between the spatial pattern of the notes displayed and of the fixations made in reading them is stochastic, and similar to that in ordinary reading, but with a tendency to fixate salient details of the notation such as notes and barlines rather than the spaces in between. Shorter notes are less likely to be fixated than longer ones, and this is determined by their performance length rather than their visual appearance. Despite the timing constraints imposed by the music, the time of execution of individual saccades appears to be entirely unrelated to the time of the execution of elements of the performance itself. However, as the tempo of performance of a given piece of music is increased, the average time between saccades decreases but their mean amplitude increases. These observations suggest a new model of the oculomotor and perceptual processes involved, in which criterion of accuracy, the scan ending when this criterion cannot be reached, and this end-point determining the position of the next fixation. It is proposed that the fullness of the buffer between the perceptual and motor processes determines the strictness of the criterion which is adopted, and hence the amplitude and timing of the eye movements

Identifying hybridizing taxa within the Daphnia longispina species complex: a comparison of genetic methods and phenotypic approaches

Daphnia galeata Sars, D. longispina O. F. Muller and D. cucullata Sars (Crustacea: Cladocera) are closely related species which often produce interspecific hybrids in natural populations. Several marker systems are available for taxon determination in this hybridizing complex, but their performance and reliability has not been systematically assessed. We compared results from identifications by three molecular methods. More than 1,200 individuals from 10 localities in the Czech Republic were identified as parental species or hybrids by allozyme electrophoresis and the analysis of the restriction fragment length polymorphism of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS-RFLP); over 440 of them were additionally analyzed and identified by 12 microsatellite loci. Identification by microsatellite markers corresponded well with allozyme analyses. However, consistent discrepancies between ITS-RFLP and other markers were observed in two out of 10 studied localities. Although some marker discrepancies may have been caused by occasional recent introgression, consistent deviations between ITS-RFLP and other markers suggest a long-term maintenance of introgressed alleles. These results warn against its use as a sole identification method in field studies. Additionally, we quantitatively evaluated the discriminatory power of geometric morphometric (elliptic Fourier) analysis of body shapes based on photos of over 1,300 individuals pre-classified by allozyme markers. Furthermore, a randomly selected subset of 240 individuals was independently determined from photos by several experts. Despite a tendency for morphological divergence among parental Daphnia species, some taxa (especially D. galeata, D. longispina, and their hybrids) substantially overlapped in their body shapes. This was reflected in different determination success for particular species and hybrids in discriminant analysis based on shape data as well as from photograph

Saccadic countermanding: a comparison of central and peripheral stop signals

AbstractWe compared the effectiveness of central and peripheral targets in a saccadic countermanding task. Stop-signal reaction times (SSRTs) do not differ significantly for central and peripheral stop signals. Further, when central and peripheral stop signals are presented together, SSRTs behave as expected of independent processes in parallel. A linear rise-to-threshold race model (LATER) with independent go and stop processes describes the behavioural data successfully, predicting not only the latency distribution of saccades that escaped inhibition, but also the probability of successful countermanding. Central and peripheral stop signals appear to act independently and with equal effectiveness

Evolutionary selection of expectations in positive and negative feedback markets

An economic environment is a feedback system, where dynamics of aggregate variables depend on individual expectations and also shape them. The type of feedback mechanism is crucial for the aggregate outcome. Experiments with human subjects (Heemeijer et al, 2009) have shown that price converges to the fundamental level in the negative feedback environment but fails to do so under positive feedback. We present an explanation of these experimental results by means of a model of evolutionary switching between heuristics. Active heuristics are chosen endogenously, on the basis of their past performance. Under negative feedback an adaptive heuristic dominates explaining fast price convergence, whereas under positive feedback a trend-following heuristic dominates resulting in persistent price deviation and oscillations