Biomedical subjects

Peter Arcese

Publications and source records attributed to Peter Arcese.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Long-term maternal effect on offspring immune response in song sparrows Melospiza melodia.

Knowledge of the causes of variation in host immunity to parasitic infection and the time-scales over which variation persists, is integral to predicting the evolutionary and epidemiological consequences of host-parasite interactions. It is clear that offspring immunity can be influenced by parental immune experience, for example, reflecting transfer of antibodies from mothers to young offspring. However, it is less clear whether such parental effects persist or have functional consequences over longer time-scales, linking a parent's previous immune experience to future immune responsiveness in fully grown offspring. We used free-living song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) to quantify long-term effects of parental immune experience on offspring immune response. We experimentally vaccinated parents with a novel antigen and tested whether parental vaccination influenced the humoral antibody response mounted by fully grown offspring hatched the following year. Parental vaccination did not influence offspring baseline antibody titres. However, offspring of vaccinated mothers mounted substantially stronger antibody responses than offspring of unvaccinated mothers. Antibody responses did not differ between offspring of vaccinated and unvaccinated fathers. These data demonstrate substantial long-term effects of maternal immune experience on the humoral immune response of fully grown offspring in free-living birds.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Effective enforcement in a conservation area.

Wildlife within protected areas is under increasing threat from bushmeat and illegal trophy trades, and many argue that enforcement within protected areas is not sufficient to protect wildlife. We examined 50 years of records from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and calculated the history of illegal harvest and enforcement by park authorities. We show that a precipitous decline in enforcement in 1977 resulted in a large increase in poaching and decline of many species. Conversely, expanded budgets and antipoaching patrols since the mid-1980s have greatly reduced poaching and allowed populations of buffalo, elephants, and rhinoceros to rebuild.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Intrinsic parent-offspring correlation in inbreeding level in a song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) population open to immigration.

The extent to which offspring resemble their parents in genotype and phenotype underpins patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation, selection, and evolution in natural populations. Genetic and phenotypic resemblance can clearly result from additive genetic variance and can be shaped by nongenetic parental and common environmental influences. In contrast, there is no straightforward expectation that inbreeding coefficient (f), a nonadditive component of genetic "quality," should be correlated across parents and offspring in sexually reproducing species or consequently cause resemblance across generations. Here, we report a significant parent f-offspring f correlation within a free-living pedigreed population of song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) on Mandarte Island, Canada. Across 15 years, relatively inbred parents had relatively inbred offspring on average. We show that rather than requiring nonrandom pairing with respect to f and kinship, parent f-offspring f correlations arise as an intrinsic consequence of random pairing within Mandarte's open population, where immigrants interbreed with Mandarte-hatched natives. However, on Mandarte, parent f-offspring f correlations may have been exacerbated because relatively inbred individuals paired with more closely related mates than expected by chance. Such intrinsic parent f-offspring f correlations have major implications for the understanding of resemblance, selection, and evolution in natural populations.

Animal Migration↗

PubMed2005

Hamilton and Zuk meet heterozygosity? Song repertoire size indicates inbreeding and immunity in song sparrows (Melospiza melodia).

Hamilton and Zuk's influential hypothesis of parasite-mediated sexual selection proposes that exaggerated secondary sexual ornaments indicate a male's addictive genetic immunity to parasites. However, genetic correlated of ornaments and immunity have rarely been explicitly identified. Evidence supporting Hamilton and Zuk's hypothesis has instead been gathered by looking for positive phenotypic correlations between ornamentation and immunity; such correlations are assumed to reflect causal, addictive relationships between these traits. We show that in a song sparrows, Melospiza melodia, male's song repertoire size, a secondary sexual trait, increased with his cell-mediated immune response (CMI) to an experimental challenge. However, this phenotypic correlation could be explained because both repertoire size and CMI declined with a male's inbreeding level. Repertoire size therefore primarily indicated a male's relative heterozygosity, a non-addictive genetic predictor of immunity. Caution may therefore be required when interpreting phenotypic correlations as support for Hamilton and Zuk's addictive model of sexual selection. However, our results suggest that female song sparrows choosing with large repertoires would on average acquire more outbred and therefore more heterozygous mates. Such genetic dominance effects on ornamentation are likely to influence evolutionary trajectories of female choice, and should be explicitly incorporated into genetic models of sexual selection.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

Fitness correlates of song repertoire size in free-living song sparrows (Melospiza melodia).

Models of sexual selection propose that exaggerated secondary sexual ornaments indicate a male's own fitness and the fitness of his offspring. These hypotheses have rarely been thoroughly tested in free-living individuals because overall fitness, as opposed to fitness components, is difficult to measure. We used 20 years of data from song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) inhabiting Mandarte Island, British Columbia, Canada, to test whether a male's song repertoire size, a secondary sexual trait, predicted overall measures of male or offspring fitness. Males with larger song repertoires contributed more independent and recruited offspring, and independent and recruited grandoffspring, to Mandarte's population. This was because these males lived longer and reared a greater proportion of hatched chicks to independence from parental care, not because females mated to males with larger repertoires laid or hatched more eggs. Furthermore, independent offspring of males with larger repertoires were more likely to recruit and then to leave more grandoffspring than were offspring of males with small repertoires. Although we cannot distinguish whether observed fitness variation reflected genetic or environmental effects on males or their offspring, these data suggest that female song sparrows would gain immediate and intergenerational fitness benefits by pairing with males with large song repertoires.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Bushmeat hunting, wildlife declines, and fish supply in West Africa.

The multibillion-dollar trade in bushmeat is among the most immediate threats to the persistence of tropical vertebrates, but our understanding of its underlying drivers and effects on human welfare is limited by a lack of empirical data. We used 30 years of data from Ghana to link mammal declines to the bushmeat trade and to spatial and temporal changes in the availability of fish. We show that years of poor fish supply coincided with increased hunting in nature reserves and sharp declines in biomass of 41 wildlife species. Local market data provide evidence of a direct link between fish supply and subsequent bushmeat demand in villages and show bushmeat's role as a dietary staple in the region. Our results emphasize the urgent need to develop cheap protein alternatives to bushmeat and to improve fisheries management by foreign and domestic fleets to avert extinctions of tropical wildlife.

Agriculture↗

PubMed2003

Inbreeding depresses immune response in song sparrows (Melospiza melodia): direct and inter-generational effects.

A thorough knowledge of relationships between host genotype and immunity to parasitic infection is required to understand parasite-mediated mechanisms of genetic and population change. It has been suggested that immunity may decline with inbreeding. However, the relationship between inbreeding level and a host's response to a novel immune challenge has not been investigated in a natural population. We used the pedigreed population of song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) inhabiting Mandarte Island, Canada, to test the hypothesis that a sparrow's cell-mediated immune response (CMI) to an experimental challenge would decline with individual or parental inbreeding. CMI in 6-day-old chicks declined significantly with their mother's coefficient of inbreeding, demonstrating an inter-generational effect of maternal inbreeding on offspring immunity. In fledged juveniles and adult sparrows, CMI declined markedly with an individual's own coefficient of inbreeding, but not its mother's. This relationship was consistent across seasons, and was not attributable solely to heterosis in offspring of immigrant breeders. CMI also declined with age and increased with body condition in adult sparrows, but inbreeding explained 37% of the total variation. We emphasize the implications of this dramatic inbreeding depression in cell-mediated immunity for theories of parasite-mediated evolution and the susceptibility of small, inbred populations.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

El Niño drives timing of breeding but not population growth in the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia).

Increasing evidence suggests that climate change affects the timing of breeding in birds, but there is less evidence to show how such changes affect the population dynamics of birds overall. Over the past 43 years, song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) on Mandarte Island, British Columbia, Canada have not shown an advance in breeding date in response to global warming. However, this population did show considerable annual variation in timing of breeding correlated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Birds bred earlier in warmer El Niño years and later in colder La Niña years. Early breeding strongly increased reproductive output. However, annual variation in timing of breeding had little effect on population growth, perhaps because the population is strongly regulated by the rate of recruitment by juveniles. The juvenile recruitment rate declined with increasing population density but showed little response to climate. These findings suggest that populations will vary in response to climate change depending on how climate affects the demographic parameters that contribute most to population growth.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Protected areas as biodiversity benchmarks for human impact: agriculture and the Serengeti avifauna.

Protected areas as biodiversity benchmarks allow a separation of the direct effects of human impact on biodiversity loss from those of other environmental changes. We illustrate the use of ecological baselines with a case from the Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania. We document a substantial but previously unnoted loss of bird diversity in agriculture detected by reference to the immediately adjacent native vegetation in Serengeti. The abundance of species found in agriculture was only 28% of that for the same species in native savannah. Insectivorous species feeding in the grass layer or in trees were the most reduced. Some 50% of both insectivorous and granivorous species were not recorded in agriculture, with ground-feeding and tree species most affected. Grass-layer insect abundance and diversity was much reduced in agriculture, consistent with the loss of insectivorous birds. These results indicate that many species of birds will become confined to protected areas over time. We need to determine whether existing protected areas are sufficiently large to maintain viable populations of insectivorous birds likely to become confined to them. This study highlights the essential nature of baseline areas for assessing causes of change in human-dominated systems and for developing innovative strategies to restore biodiversity.

Agriculture↗

PubMed2002

Heterosis and outbreeding depression in descendants of natural immigrants to an inbred population of song sparrows (Melospiza melodia).

We studied heterosis and outbreeding depression among immigrants and their descendants in a population of song sparrows on Mandarte Island, Canada. Using data spanning 19 generations, we compared survival, seasonal reproductive success, and lifetime reproductive success of immigrants, natives (birds with resident-hatched parents and grandparents), and their offspring (F1s, birds with an immigrant and a native parent, and F2s, birds with an immigrant grandparent and resident-hatched grandparent in each of their maternal and paternal lines). Lifetime reproductive success of immigrants was no worse than that of natives, but other measures of performance differed in several ways. Immigrant females laid later and showed a tendency to lay fewer clutches, but had relatively high success raising offspring per egg produced. The few immigrant males survived well but were less likely to breed than native males of the same age that were alive in the same year. Female F1s laid earlier than expected based on the average for immigrant and native females, and adult male F1s were more likely to breed than expected based on the average for immigrant and native males. The performance differences between immigrant and native females and between F1s and the average of immigrants and natives are consistent with the hypothesis that immigrants were disadvantaged by a lack of site experience and that immigrant offspring benefited from heterosis. However, we could not exclude the possibility that immigrants had a different strategy for optimizing reproductive success or that they experienced ecological compensation for life-history parameters. For example, the offspring of immigrants may have survived well because immigrants laid later and produced fewer clutches, thereby raising offspring during a period of milder climatic conditions. Although sample sizes were small, we found large performance differences between F1s and F2s, which suggested that either heterosis was associated with epistasis in F1s, that F2s experienced outbreeding depression, or that both phenomena occurred. These findings indicate that the performance of dispersers may be affected more by fine-scale genetic differentiation than previously assumed in this and comparable systems.

Animals↗