Seminar: “Contemporary parallel evolution of thermal performance and its fitness consequences: how acorn-dwelling ants remodel their physiology in response to city heat“
Guest Dr. Sarah Diamond will be speaking on widespread urban development over the last century has driven rapid evolutionary responses on contemporary timescales, presenting a unique opportunity to test the predictability and parallelism of evolutionary change. I examine urban evolution in an acorn-dwelling ant species, focusing on the urban heat island signal and the ant’s physiological responses to these altered urban temperature regimes. In a majority of cities, but not all, acorn ants have evolved higher heat tolerance, but lost their tolerance of cold temperatures. The shifts in tolerance appeared to be adaptive, as our analysis of the fitness consequences of warming revealed that while urban populations produced more sexual reproductives under warmer laboratory rearing temperatures, rural populations produced fewer. Patterns of natural selection on thermal tolerances supported our findings of fitness tradeoffs and local adaptation across urban and rural acorn ant populations, as selection on thermal tolerance acted in opposite directions between the warmest and coldest rearing temperatures. However, other traits including body size and metabolic rate exhibited less predictable responses to urbanization. These contrasting results highlight how cities can provide glimpses into the early stages of evolution that we might otherwise not see when exploring longer-term evolutionary change.
Friday, October 26, 2018 at 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Science & Engineering Building, 307
1414 Circle Dr, Knoxville, TN 37996
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FREE
- Department
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- Contact Name
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Karin Grindall
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8659743065
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