Biology subjects

Daunt, F.

Publications and source records attributed to Daunt, F..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of partially migratory metapopulations in spatially and seasonally varying environments

Predicting population responses to environmental changes requires understanding interactions among environmentally induced phenotypic variation, selection, demography and genetic variation, and thereby predicting eco-evolutionary dynamics emerging across diverse temporal and spatial scales. Partially migratory metapopulations (PMMPs), featuring seasonal coexistence of resident and migrant individuals across multiple spatially distinct subpopulations, have clear potential for complex spatio-seasonal eco-evolutionary dynamics through impacts of selection on migration on spatial population dynamics, and feedbacks resulting from ongoing micro-evolution. However, the key genetic and environmental conditions that maintain migratory polymorphisms, and eco-evolutionary dynamics of PMMPs under stochastic environmental variation and strong seasonal perturbations, have not yet been resolved. Accordingly, we present a general individual-based model that tracks eco-evolutionary dynamics in PMMPs inhabiting spatially structured, seasonally varying landscapes, with migration formulated as a quantitative genetic threshold trait. Our simulations show that such genetic and landscape structures, which commonly occur in nature, can readily produce a variety of stable partially migratory systems given diverse regimes of spatio-seasonal environmental variation. Typically, partial migration is maintained whenever sites differ in non-breeding season suitability resulting from variation in density-dependence, causing ideal free non-breeding distributions where residents and migrants occur with frequencies that generate similar survival probabilities. Yet, stable partial migration can also arise without any fixed differences in non-breeding season density-dependence among sites, and even without density-dependence at all, through risk-spreading given sufficiently large stochastic environmental fluctuations among sites and years. Finally, we show that local non-breeding season mortality events, as could result from extreme climatic events, can generate eco-evolutionary dynamics that ripple out to affect breeding and non-breeding season space use of subpopulations throughout the PMMP, on both short and longer timeframes. Such effects result from spatially divergent selection on both the occurrence and destinations of migration. Our model thus shows how facultative seasonal migration can act as a key mediator of eco-evolutionary dynamics in spatially and seasonally structured environments, providing key steps towards predicting responses of natural partially migratory populations to ongoing changes in spatio-seasonal patterns of environmental variation.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2023

High pathogenicity avian influenza (H5N1) in Northern Gannets: Global spread, clinical signs, and demographic consequences

During 2021-22 High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI) killed thousands of wild birds across Europe and North America, suggesting a change in infection dynamics and a shift to new hosts, including seabirds. Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) appeared especially severely impacted, but limited understanding of how the virus spread across the metapopulation, or the demographic consequences of mass mortality limit our understanding of its severity. Accordingly, we collate information on HPAIV outbreaks across most North Atlantic gannet colonies and for the largest colony (Bass Rock, UK), provide impacts on population size, breeding success, adult survival, and preliminary results on serology. Unusually high numbers of dead gannets were first noted in Iceland during April 2022. Outbreaks in May occurred in many Scottish colonies, followed by colonies in Canada, Germany and Norway. By the end of June, outbreaks had occurred in five Canadian colonies and in the Channel Islands. Outbreaks in 12 UK and Ireland colonies appeared to follow a clockwise pattern with the last infected colonies recorded in late August/September. Unusually high mortality was recorded at 40 colonies (75% of global total colonies). Dead birds testing positive for HPAIV H5N1 were associated with 58% of these colonies. At Bass Rock, the number of occupied sites decreased by at least 71%, breeding success declined by [~]66% compared to the long-term UK mean and adult survival between 2021 and 2022 was 42% lower than the preceding 10-year average. Serological investigation detected antibodies specific to H5 in apparently healthy birds indicating that some gannets recover from HPAIV infection. Further, most of these recovered birds had black irises, suggestive of a phenotypic indicator of previous infection. Untangling the impacts of HPAIV infection from other key pressures faced by seabirds is key to establishing effective conservation strategies for threatened seabird populations, HPAIV being a novel and pandemic threat.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Components of micro-evolutionary and phenotypic change in seasonal migration versus residence in a wild population

Dissecting joint micro-evolutionary and plastic responses to environmental perturbations fundamentally requires quantifying interacting components of genetic and environmental variation underlying expression of key traits. This ambition is particularly challenging for phenotypically discrete traits where multiscale decompositions are required to handle non-linear transformations of underlying genetic and environmental variation into phenotypic variation, especially when effects have to be estimated from incomplete field observations. We devised a novel joint multistate capture-recapture and quantitative genetic animal model, and fitted this model to full-annual-cycle resighting data from partially migratory European shags (Gulosus aristotelis) to estimate key components of genetic, environmental and phenotypic variance in the ecologically critical discrete trait of seasonal migration versus residence. We demonstrate non-trivial additive genetic variance in latent liability for migration, resulting in estimated micro-evolutionary responses following two episodes of strong survival selection. Yet, underlying additive genetic effects interacted with substantial permanent individual and temporary environmental effects to generate complex non-additive effects, causing large intrinsic gene-by-environment interaction variance in phenotypic expression. Our findings reveal how temporal dynamics of seasonal migration result from combinations of instantaneous micro-evolution and within-individual phenotypic inertia, and highlight how plastic phenotypic variation could expose cryptic genetic variation underlying discrete traits to complex forms of selection.

evolutionary biology↗