4
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Does stress mess with rodents’ heads? Influence of habitat amount and genetic factors in mandible fluctuating asymmetry in South American water rats ( Nectomys squamipes, Sigmodontinae) from Brazilian Atlantic rainforest remnants

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Loss of developmental stability can lead to deviations from bilateral symmetry (i.e. Fluctuating Asymmetry ‐ FA), and is thought to be caused by environmental and genetic factors associated with habitat loss and stress. Therefore, levels of FA might be a valuable tool to monitor wild populations if FA serves as an indicator of exposure to stress due to impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation. In studies examining FA and habitat fragmentation, FA levels are often explained by loss of genetic variation, though few studies have addressed FA’s use as indicator of environmental impact. Here, we investigated whether habitat loss, genetic variation, and/or inbreeding affect the developmental instability in Brazilian Atlantic forest populations of a Neotropical water rat ( Nectomys squamipes). We sampled individuals from eight sites within Atlantic forest remnants with different amounts of available forest habitat and assessed FA levels with geometric morphometric techniques using adult mandibles. We used observed heterozygosity (H o) and inbreeding coefficient (F is), from seven microsatellite markers, as a proxy of genetic variation at individual and population levels. Populations were not significantly different for shape or size FA levels. Furthermore, interindividual variation in both shape and size FA levels and interpopulational differences in size FA levels were best explained by chance. However, habitat amount was negatively associated with both interpopulational variance and average shape FA levels. This association was stronger in populations living in areas with <28% of forest cover, which presented higher variance and higher average FA, suggesting that Nectomys squamipes might have a tolerance threshold to small availability of habitat. Our work is one of the first to use FA to address environmental stress caused by habitat loss in small mammal populations from a Neotropical biome. We suggest that shape FA might serve as a conservation tool to monitor human impact on natural animal populations.

          Abstract

          We used geometric morphometric data to asses whether fluctuating asymmetry (FA) on mandibles of Neotropical water rats ( Nectomys squamipes) from eight sites within Brazilian Atlantic forest remnants would be related to habitat amount, genetic diversity, and/or inbreeding on individual and populational level. FA might be a valuable tool to monitor wild populations, as it might serve as an indicator of exposure to stress due to impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation. We used observed heterozygosity and inbreeding coefficient from seven microsatellite markers, as a proxy of genetic variation. We found that habitat availability rather than genetic or biological factors was negatively associated with both inter‐populational variance and average shape FA levels, which are higher in populations living in areas with <28% of habitat available. It suggests that water rats might have a tolerance threshold to small availability of habitat. We propose that shape FA might serve as a conservation tool to monitor human impact on natural animal populations.

          Related collections

          Most cited references122

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Arlequin suite ver 3.5: a new series of programs to perform population genetics analyses under Linux and Windows.

          We present here a new version of the Arlequin program available under three different forms: a Windows graphical version (Winarl35), a console version of Arlequin (arlecore), and a specific console version to compute summary statistics (arlsumstat). The command-line versions run under both Linux and Windows. The main innovations of the new version include enhanced outputs in XML format, the possibility to embed graphics displaying computation results directly into output files, and the implementation of a new method to detect loci under selection from genome scans. Command-line versions are designed to handle large series of files, and arlsumstat can be used to generate summary statistics from simulated data sets within an Approximate Bayesian Computation framework. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            genepop'007: a complete re-implementation of the genepop software for Windows and Linux.

            This note summarizes developments of the genepop software since its first description in 1995, and in particular those new to version 4.0: an extended input format, several estimators of neighbourhood size under isolation by distance, new estimators and confidence intervals for null allele frequency, and less important extensions to previous options. genepop now runs under Linux as well as under Windows, and can be entirely controlled by batch calls. © 2007 The Author.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: found
              Is Open Access

              Habitat fragmentation and its lasting impact on Earth’s ecosystems

              Urgent need for conservation and restoration measures to improve landscape connectivity.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                lsm1@williams.edu
                Journal
                Ecol Evol
                Ecol Evol
                10.1002/(ISSN)2045-7758
                ECE3
                Ecology and Evolution
                John Wiley and Sons Inc. (Hoboken )
                2045-7758
                02 May 2021
                June 2021
                : 11
                : 11 ( doiID: 10.1002/ece3.v11.11 )
                : 7080-7092
                Affiliations
                [ 1 ] Programa de Pós‐Graduação em Ciências Ambientais e Conservação PPGCiAC ‐ Instituto de Biodiversidade e Sustentabilidade NUPEM Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Macaé Brazil
                [ 2 ] Instituto de Biodiversidade e Sustentabilidade NUPEM Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Macaé Brazil
                [ 3 ] Department of Biology Williams College Williamstown MA USA
                [ 4 ] Setor de Mastozoologia Departamento de Vertebrados Museu Nacional Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro Brazil
                [ 5 ] Museu de História Natural do Ceará Prof. Dias da Rocha Centro de Ciências da Saúde Universidade Estadual do Ceará Ceará Brazil
                Author notes
                [*] [* ] Correspondence

                Luana S. Maroja, Department of Biology, Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA.

                Email: lsm1@ 123456williams.edu

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2619-1573
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4185-4312
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7287-9435
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4923-2334
                Article
                ECE37557
                10.1002/ece3.7557
                8207160
                34141277
                473d3232-8c4d-4779-a692-34ea49a4020c
                © 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

                This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 23 March 2021
                : 27 January 2021
                : 26 March 2021
                Page count
                Figures: 6, Tables: 6, Pages: 13, Words: 10593
                Funding
                Funded by: FAPERJ , open-funder-registry 10.13039/501100004586;
                Award ID: 010.001469/2019
                Funded by: CNPq , open-funder-registry 10.13039/501100003593;
                Award ID: 441927/2020‐3
                Categories
                Original Research
                Original Research
                Custom metadata
                2.0
                June 2021
                Converter:WILEY_ML3GV2_TO_JATSPMC version:6.0.2 mode:remove_FC converted:16.06.2021

                Evolutionary Biology
                developmental changes,habitat availability,human impacts,rodents
                Evolutionary Biology
                developmental changes, habitat availability, human impacts, rodents

                Comments

                Comment on this article