Program, Abstracts, List of Poster 2009
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Eseb Def:Layout 1 30/07/09 10:21 Pagina 1 European Society for Evolutionary Biology ORAL PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS AND LIST OF POSTERS 12th Congress, Turin, Italy, 24 -29 August 2009 Eseb Def:Layout 1 30/07/09 10:21 Pagina 2 PRINT: FIORDO S.R.L. GALLIATE (NO) THE 2009 ESEB LOGO WAS KINDLY DESIGNED BY GIULIO PALMIERI 2 Eseb Def:Layout 1 30/07/09 10:21 Pagina 3 Symposia 1. Evolutionary systems biology 9 2. From the selfish gene to species extinction: levels of selection in evolution 19 3. Are “good genes” theories of sexual selection finally sinking into the sunset? 29 4. The evolution of threshold, inducible and polyphenic traits 41 5. Diversity of host-microbe symbioses 51 6. The evolution of conflict and cooperation: when theory meets data 61 7. Evolutionary applications: a symposium sponsored by Wiley - Blackwell Publishing 77 8. Male-female coevolution - from molecules to species 95 9. On the origins of novelty in development and evolution: from cryptic genetic variation 111 to genetic accommodation 10. Ecological genetics in the genomics era 123 11. The phenotype-fitness map re-visited: agents of selection and the importance of ecology 137 in evolutionary studies 12. The genetic consequences of reproductive modes: insights from asexual species 157 13. Evolution of time-keeping mechanisms 167 14. Selection in subdivided populations 175 15. Evolutionary transcriptomics 191 16. Recent advances in macroevolutionary approaches to evolutionary studies 201 17. Integrating ecology with parasite evolution 213 18. Frontiers in speciation research: proximal and causal mechanisms of behavioural 229 divergence 19. Genetic trade-offs in fitness-traits: theory, evidence and implications 243 20. Selective forces shaping transitions to social life 255 21. Intralocus sexual conflicts: detection, resolution and consequences 265 22. Inbreeding depression: from gene expression to population viability 273 23. Ecological consequences of polyploidy in plants and animals 281 24. Functional analysis of natural variation 289 25. Recent advances in kin selection 301 26. Post-genomic approaches to host-parasite evolution 309 27. Early evolution 317 28. Pollinator-mediated selection in floral evolution 323 29. Evolution of shape: linking micro- and macroevolution 331 30. Hybrid speciation 341 31. The evolution of development across the species boundary 351 3 Eseb Def:Layout 1 30/07/09 10:21 Pagina 4 Plenary Lectures Location: Aula Magna 1. Tuesday August 25 Hanna Kokko, University of Helsinky, Finland “From individuals to populations... and back” 2. Wednesday August 26 Massimo Pigliucci, Stony Brook University, New York, United States “Is there a coming new evolutionary synthesis?” 3. Thursday August 27 Ian Tattersall, American Museum of Natural History, New York, United States “Human evolution and the human biological future” 4. Friday August 28 Cristina Vieira, CNRS, Université Lyon 1, France “Transposable elements and genome evolution” 5. Saturday August 29 John N. Thompson, University of California at Santa Cruz, United States “Coevolution on our rapidly changing earth” JOHN MAYNARD SMITH PRIZE LECTURE Wednesday August 26 Tanja Schwander, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada “Evolution of genetic caste determination in social insects” 4 Eseb Def:Layout 1 30/07/09 10:21 Pagina 5 Keynote FROM INDIVIDUALS TO POPULATIONS... AND BACK Hanna Kokko 1,2, Michael Jennions 2, Andrés López-Sepulcre 3, Ken Norris 4, Daniel J. Rankin 5, Katja U. Heubel 1 1University of Helsinki, Laboratory of Ecological and Evolutionary Dynamics, Helsinki, Finland 2Australian National University, School of Botany & Zoology, Canberra, Australia 3University of California, Department of Biology, Riverside, United States 4University of Reading, Centre for Agri-Environmental Research, Reading, United Kingdom 5University of Zürich, Institute of Biochemistry, Zürich, Switzerland [email protected] This ESEB conference hosts a total of nine symposia that mention the word ‘ecology’ in their title or topic description, and this figure probably rises further when all their abstracts are taken into account. Nevertheless, I will argue that ecology is all too often ignored, or treated in a superficial way, when explaining evolutionary phenomena, and that this can lead to misleading arguments or conclusions. I will discuss three case studies — one theoretical, and two empirical — where proper understanding of evolutionary ecology either sheds new light on old questions or raises new exciting issues. The key theme is that if we consider selectively important traits they should show up in the life history of a population, thus evolutionary change is probably reflected in population dynamics too. Changed dynamics in turn can select for different behaviours or life-history traits (ecogenetic feedback). As my first example I will consider sex roles and parental care evolution, where recent theoretical work has highlighted that old explanations may have been jumping to conclusions too quickly, and evolving population- wide sex ratios may have more explanatory power than previously thought. Thereafter, I will discuss competition for breeding sites in an endangered bird species (the Seychelles magpie robin) and show that individual-level selection may promote behaviours that are detrimental enough for species- level survival that they should be taken into account in conservation management. My final example is an extreme case of ‘unintelligent design’: a gynogenetic, asexual fish, the Amazon molly. This species reproduces asexually (and hence produces no males) but still requires sperm to trigger embryogenesis. As a consequence, it can only live in sympatry with sexual ‘host’ species, which it however tends to replace ecologically, thus promoting its own local extinction. This leads to very complicated dynamics that eventually raises an intriguing question from the host species point of view: can mate choice ever be group selected? 5 Eseb Def:Layout 1 30/07/09 10:21 Pagina 6 Keynote IS THERE A COMING NEW EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS? Massimo Pigliucci 1 1Stony Brook University, Department of Ecology & Evolution, New York, United States [email protected] Modern evolutionary biology began with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. Since then, two major reassessments of the theory have taken place: the neo-Darwinian turn at the end of the 19th century (which definitely excluded Lamarckism), and the Modern Synthesis of the 1930s and ‘40s (which reconciled Mendelism, statistical genetics and Darwinism). For years now scholars have been hinting at the necessity of a new Extended Synthesis, building on the conceptual framework laid out during the middle of the 20th century while incorporating new empirical findings and theoretical advances that have occurred since. In this talk I sketch how the Extended Synthesis is beginning to shape, with contributions from fields such as evo- devo, genomics, ecology and complexity theory, and with the incorporation of new concepts like phenotypic plasticity, modularity and evolvability. There is much intellectual ferment in the field, and this is an exciting time to be an evolutionary biologist! HUMAN EVOLUTION AND THE HUMAN BIOLOGICAL FUTURE Ian Tattersall 1 1American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology, New York City, United States [email protected] Major innovations in hominid biology and culture have been highly sporadic, conflicting with the received notion that human evolution, and particularly the attainment of the unique human symbolic mind, was essentially a matter of long-term, generation-by generation burnishing by natural selection. Natural selection can only operate on entire integrated individuals, and brain size increase in human evolution may well reflect the preferential success of larger-brained species in a diverse hominid family rather than generation-by-generation augmentation of intelligence in a single central lineage. This makes it both necessary and possible to suggest a more plausible mechanism than simple selective pressure for the unprecedented transition of Homo sapiens from a nonsymbolic and nonlinguistic precursor condition to its unprecedented cognitive status today: a mechanism involving both exaptation and emergence, the process whereby a new and unanticipated level of complexity may be achieved through a random coincidence of acquisitions. Not only does this change our view of the past, but it also has implications for the human biological future. 6 Eseb Def:Layout 1 30/07/09 10:21 Pagina 7 Keynote TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS AND GENOME EVOLUTION Cristina Vieira 1 1Université Lyon 1, CNRS, Lyon, France [email protected] We learned recently that the human genome is very poor in genes, with almost the same number as in fly. What is still more surprising is that most of our genetic material is considered as junk. How is it possible to spend so much energy to maintain this system? Maybe this “junk DNA” is in fact important, in different ways, to the genome evolution of species and populations? Transposable elements (TEs), which were initially called “jumping genes”, belong to the class of non-genic DNA. These DNA sequences have the ability to jump (to transpose) inside genomes and represent an important part of these genomes. Although Barbara McClintock discovered them in the ’50, it is only now that we are beginning to understand their effects. We know that they have a major role on gene regulation and on the stability of the chromatin (DNA and proteins). Moreover, since they