In: Frontiers in Genetics, 2013, vol. 4, p. -
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In: Frontiers in Genetics, 2013, vol. 4, p. -
An animal’s survival strongly depends on its ability to maintain homeostasis in response to the changing quality of its external and internal environment. This is achieved through intracellular and intercellular communication within and among different tissues. One of the organ systems that plays a major role in this communication and the maintenance of homeostasis is the nervous system....
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In: Oikos, 2005, vol. 110, no. 1, p. 55-66
Detailed studies on mammals and birds have shown that the effects of climate variation on population dynamics often depend on population composition, because weather affects different subsets of a population differently. It is presently unknown whether this is also true for ectothermic animals such as reptiles. Here we show such an interaction between weather and demography for an ectothermic...
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In: Scientific Reports, 2018, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 2030
In response to adverse environmental conditions many organisms from nematodes to mammals deploy a dormancy strategy, causing states of developmental or reproductive arrest that enhance somatic maintenance and survival ability at the expense of growth or reproduction. Dormancy regulation has been studied in C. elegans and in several insects, but how neurosensory mechanisms act to relay ...
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In: Aging, 2009, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 38-48
Calorie Restriction (CR) is a well established method of extending life span in a variety of organisms. In the fruit fly D. melanogaster, CR is mediated at least in part by activation of dSir2. In mammalian systems, one of the critical targets of Sir2 is the tumor suppressor p53. This deacetylation of p53 by Sir2 leads to inhibition of p53's transcriptional activity. We have recently shown...
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In: Integrative and Comparative Biology, 2006, vol. 46, no. 6, p. 655-661
Metamorphosis (Gr. meta- “change” + morphe “form”) as a biological process is generally attributed to a subset of animals: most famously insects and amphibians, but some fish and many marine invertebrates as well. We held a symposium at the 2006 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) annual meeting in Orlando, FL (USA) to discuss metamorphosis in a comparative context....
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In: BioEssays, 2006, no. 28, p. 868-873
Whether evolutionary change can occur by genetic assimilation, or more generally by genetic accommodation, remains controversial. Here we examine some of the experimental evidence for both phenomena. Several experiments in Drosophila suggest that assimilation is possible, and a new paper1 shows that a color polyphenism in the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta, can evolve by genetic ...
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In: Nature Education Knowledge, 2010, vol. 1, no. 12, p. 1-6
This case study highlights the general issues raised earlier. First, that maximum lifespan is not an easily obtainable metric. Specifically, it is unambiguous in the sense that once the last animal dies, it is most definitely dead. But to estimate the variance in maximum lifespan, many replicate populations would need to be followed for each treatment group (with each replicate providing a single...
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In: Animal behaviour, 2008, vol. 75, no. 1, p. 71-77
Recent studies on birds show that two steroid hormones, testosterone and corticosterone, stimulate nestling begging and growth. Here, we seek to investigate whether juvenile hormone, a major regulatory insect hormone, has similar effects on larval begging and growth in insects. To this end, we experimentally elevated larval juvenile hormone levels by topical application of methoprene, a potent...
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In: Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2018, vol. 31, no. 9, p. 1354–1364
Chromosomal inversions often contribute to local adaptation across latitudinal clines, but the underlying selective mechanisms remain poorly understood. We and others have previously shown that a clinal inversion polymorphism in Drosophila melanogaster, In(3R)Payne, underpins body size clines along the North American and Australian east coasts. Here, we ask whether this polymorphism also...
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