Latest Articles
-
Evolutionary Biology
Extrinsic mortality and senescence: a guide for the perplexed
10.24072/pcjournal.253 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 3 (2023), article no. e29.
Get full text PDFDo environments or species traits that lower the mortality of individuals create selection for delaying senescence? Reading the literature creates an impression that mathematically oriented biologists cannot agree on the validity of George Williams' prediction (who claimed 'yes'). The abundance of models and opinions may bewilder those that are new to the field. Here we provide heuristics as well as simple models that outline when the Williams prediction holds, why there is a ‘null model’ where extrinsic mortality does not change the evolution of senescence at all, and why it is also possible to expect the opposite of William’s prediction, where increased extrinsic mortality favours slower senescence. We hope to offer intuition by quantifying how much delaying the ‘placement’ of an offspring into the population reduces its expected contribution to the gene pool of the future. Our first example shows why sometimes increased extrinsic mortality has no effect (the null result), and why density dependence can change that. Thereafter, a model with ten different choices for population regulation shows that high extrinsic mortality favours fast life histories (Williams) if increasing density harms the production of juveniles or their chances to recruit into the population. If instead increasing density harms the survival of older individuals in a population, then high extrinsic mortality favours slow life histories (anti-Williams). We discuss the possibility that empirically found Williams-like patterns provide indirect evidence for population regulation operating via harming the production or fitness prospects of juveniles, as opposed to the survival of established breeders.
-
Genomics
MacSyFinder v2: Improved modelling and search engine to identify molecular systems in genomes
10.24072/pcjournal.250 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 3 (2023), article no. e28.
Get full text PDFComplex cellular functions are usually encoded by a set of genes in one or a few organized genetic loci in microbial genomes. Macromolecular System Finder (MacSyFinder) is a program that uses these properties to model and then annotate cellular functions in microbial genomes. This is done by integrating the identification of each individual gene at the level of the molecular system. We hereby present a major release of MacSyFinder (version 2) coded in Python 3. The code was improved and rationalized to facilitate future maintainability. Several new features were added to allow more flexible modelling of the systems. We introduce a more intuitive and comprehensive search engine to identify all the best candidate systems and sub-optimal ones that respect the models’ constraints. We also introduce the novel macsydata companion tool that enables the easy installation and broad distribution of the models developed for MacSyFinder (macsy-models) from GitHub repositories. Finally, we have updated and improved MacSyFinder popular models: TXSScan to identify protein secretion systems, TFFscan to identify type IV filaments, CONJscan to identify conjugative systems, and CasFinder to identify CRISPR associated proteins. MacSyFinder and the updated models are available at: https://github.com/gem-pasteur/macsyfinder and https://github.com/macsy-models.
-
Genomics
Performance and limitations of linkage-disequilibrium-based methods for inferring the genomic landscape of recombination and detecting hotspots: a simulation study
10.24072/pcjournal.254 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 3 (2023), article no. e27.
Get full text PDFKnowledge of recombination rate variation along the genome provides important insights into genome and phenotypic evolution. Population genomic approaches offer an attractive way to infer the population-scaled recombination rate ρ=4Ner using the linkage disequilibrium information contained in DNA sequence polymorphism data. Such methods have been used in a broad range of plant and animal species to build genome-wide recombination maps. However, the reliability of these inferences has only been assessed under a restrictive set of conditions. Here, we evaluate the ability of one of the most widely used coalescent-based programs, LDhelmet, to infer a genomic landscape of recombination with the biological characteristics of a human-like landscape including hotspots. Using simulations, we specifically assessed the impact of methodological (sample size, phasing errors, block penalty) and evolutionary parameters (effective population size (Ne), demographic history, mutation to recombination rate ratio) on inferred map quality. We report reasonably good correlations between simulated and inferred landscapes, but point to limitations when it comes to detecting recombination hotspots. False positive and false negative hotspots considerably confound fine-scale patterns of inferred recombination under a wide range of conditions, particularly when Ne is small and the mutation/recombination rate ratio is low, to the extent that maps inferred from populations sharing the same recombination landscape appear uncorrelated. We thus address a message of caution for the users of these approaches, at least for genomes with complex recombination landscapes such as in humans.
-
Ecology
Best organic farming expansion scenarios for pest control: a modeling approach
10.24072/pcjournal.251 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 3 (2023), article no. e26.
Get full text PDFOrganic Farming (OF) has been expanding recently in response to growing consumer demand and as a response to environmental concerns. The area under OF is expected to further increase in the future. The effect of OF expansion on pest densities in organic and conventional crops remains difficult to predict because OF expansion impacts Conservation Biological Control (CBC), which depends on the surrounding landscape (i.e. both the crop mosaic and semi-natural habitats). In order to understand and forecast how pests and their biological control may vary during OF expansion, we modeled the effect of spatial changes in farming practices on population dynamics of a pest and its natural enemy. We investigated the impact on pest density and on predator to pest ratio of three contrasted scenarios aiming at 50% organic fields through the progressive conversion of conventional fields. Scenarios were 1) conversion of Isolated conventional fields first (IP), 2) conversion of conventional fields within Groups of conventional fields first (GP), and 3) Random conversion of conventional field (RD). We coupled a neutral spatially explicit landscape model to a predator-prey model to simulate pest dynamics in interaction with natural enemy predators. The three OF expansion scenarios were applied to nine landscape contexts differing in their proportion and fragmentation of semi-natural habitat. We further investigated if the ranking of scenarios was robust to pest control methods in OF fields and pest and predator dispersal abilities. We found that organic farming expansion affected more predator densities than pest densities for most combinations of landscape contexts and OF expansion scenarios. The impact of OF expansion on final pest and predator densities was also stronger in organic than conventional fields and in landscapes with large proportions of highly fragmented semi-natural habitats. Based on pest densities and the predator to pest ratio, our results suggest that a progressive organic conversion with a focus on isolated conventional fields (scenario IP) could help promote CBC. Careful landscape planning of OF expansion appeared most necessary when pest management was substantially less efficient in organic than in conventional crops, and in landscapes with low proportion of semi-natural habitats.
Follow us
contact@peercommunityjournal.orgRSS feed
Follow us on Twitter
People
Sections
- Animal Science
- Archaeology
- Neuroscience
- Ecology
- Ecotoxicology & Environmental Chemistry
- Evolutionary Biology
- Forest & Wood Sciences
- Genomics
- Health & Movement Sciences
- Infections
- Mathematical & Computational Biology
- Microbiology
- Network Science
- Paleontology
- Registered Reports
- Zoology
Membership
Indexed by
Supporters
View all supporters
Image Credits
The network image was drawn by Martin Grandjean: A force-based network visualization CC BY-SA