Browsing by Subject "Birds"
Now showing items 21-40 of 56
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Eco-evolutionary feedbacks in community and ecosystem ecology: interactions between the ecological theatre and the evolutionary play.
(Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 2009-06-12)Interactions between natural selection and environmental change are well recognized and sit at the core of ecology and evolutionary biology. Reciprocal interactions between ecology and evolution, eco-evolutionary feedbacks, ... -
Elevational ranges of birds on a tropical montane gradient lag behind warming temperatures.
(PloS one, 2011-01)<h4>Background</h4>Species may respond to a warming climate by moving to higher latitudes or elevations. Shifts in geographic ranges are common responses in temperate regions. For the tropics, latitudinal temperature gradients ... -
Elevational Ranges of Montane Birds and Deforestation in the Western Andes of Colombia.
(PloS one, 2015-01)Deforestation causes habitat loss, fragmentation, degradation, and can ultimately cause extinction of the remnant species. Tropical montane birds face these threats with the added natural vulnerability of narrower elevational ... -
Environmental fate and effects of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) proteins from transgenic crops: a review.
(Journal of agricultural and food chemistry, 2005-06)This paper reviews the scientific literature addressing the environmental fate and nontarget effects of the Cry protein toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), specifically resulting from their expression in transgenic ... -
Evidence for a single loss of mineralized teeth in the common avian ancestor.
(Science, 2014-12-12)Edentulism, the absence of teeth, has evolved convergently among vertebrates, including birds, turtles, and several lineages of mammals. Instead of teeth, modern birds (Neornithes) use a horny beak (rhamphotheca) and a muscular ... -
Evidence for GC-biased gene conversion as a driver of between-lineage differences in avian base composition.
(Genome Biol, 2014)BACKGROUND: While effective population size (Ne) and life history traits such as generation time are known to impact substitution rates, their potential effects on base composition evolution are less well understood. GC ... -
Feather development genes and associated regulatory innovation predate the origin of Dinosauria.
(Molecular biology and evolution, 2015-01)The evolution of avian feathers has recently been illuminated by fossils and the identification of genes involved in feather patterning and morphogenesis. However, molecular studies have focused mainly on protein-coding ... -
FoxP2 expression in avian vocal learners and non-learners.
(J Neurosci, 2004-03-31)Most vertebrates communicate acoustically, but few, among them humans, dolphins and whales, bats, and three orders of birds, learn this trait. FOXP2 is the first gene linked to human speech and has been the target of positive ... -
Gene loss, adaptive evolution and the co-evolution of plumage coloration genes with opsins in birds.
(BMC Genomics, 2015-10-06)BACKGROUND: The wide range of complex photic systems observed in birds exemplifies one of their key evolutionary adaptions, a well-developed visual system. However, genomic approaches have yet to be used to disentangle the ... -
Genomic signatures of near-extinction and rebirth of the crested ibis and other endangered bird species
(GENOME BIOLOGY, 2014)BACKGROUND: Nearly one-quarter of all avian species is either threatened or nearly threatened. Of these, 73 species are currently being rescued from going extinct in wildlife sanctuaries. One of the previously most ... -
Global view of the functional molecular organization of the avian cerebrum: mirror images and functional columns.
(J Comp Neurol, 2013-11)Based on quantitative cluster analyses of 52 constitutively expressed or behaviorally regulated genes in 23 brain regions, we present a global view of telencephalic organization of birds. The patterns of constitutively expressed ... -
Hosts of avian brood parasites have evolved egg signatures with elevated information content.
(Proc Biol Sci, 2015-07-07)Hosts of brood-parasitic birds must distinguish their own eggs from parasitic mimics, or pay the cost of mistakenly raising a foreign chick. Egg discrimination is easier when different host females of the same species each ... -
How to protect half of Earth to ensure it protects sufficient biodiversity.
(Science advances, 2018-08-29)It is theoretically possible to protect large fractions of species in relatively small regions. For plants, 85% of species occur entirely within just over a third of the Earth's land surface, carefully optimized to maximize ... -
Incorporating explicit geospatial data shows more species at risk of extinction than the current Red List.
(Science advances, 2016-11-09)The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List classifies species according to their risk of extinction, informing global to local conservation decisions. Unfortunately, important geospatial data do not ... -
Low frequency of paleoviral infiltration across the avian phylogeny.
(Genome Biol, 2014)BACKGROUND: Mammalian genomes commonly harbor endogenous viral elements. Due to a lack of comparable genome-scale sequence data, far less is known about endogenous viral elements in avian species, even though their small ... -
Molecular mapping of movement-associated areas in the avian brain: a motor theory for vocal learning origin.
(PLoS One, 2008-03-12)Vocal learning is a critical behavioral substrate for spoken human language. It is a rare trait found in three distantly related groups of birds-songbirds, hummingbirds, and parrots. These avian groups have remarkably similar ... -
Motor-driven gene expression.
(Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 1997-04-15)There is increased neuronal firing in the high vocal center (a motor nucleus) and other song nuclei of canaries, Serinus canaria, and zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, whenever these songbirds sing or hear song. These ... -
Of mice, birds, and men: the mouse ultrasonic song system has some features similar to humans and song-learning birds.
(PLoS One, 2012)Humans and song-learning birds communicate acoustically using learned vocalizations. The characteristic features of this social communication behavior include vocal control by forebrain motor areas, a direct cortical projection ... -
Olfactory Receptor Subgenomes Linked with Broad Ecological Adaptations in Sauropsida.
(Mol Biol Evol, 2015-11)Olfactory receptors (ORs) govern a prime sensory function. Extant birds have distinct olfactory abilities, but the molecular mechanisms underlining diversification and specialization remain mostly unknown. We explored OR ... -
Phylogenomic analyses data of the avian phylogenomics project.
(Gigascience, 2015)BACKGROUND: Determining the evolutionary relationships among the major lineages of extant birds has been one of the biggest challenges in systematic biology. To address this challenge, we assembled or collected the genomes ...
