The spatiotemporal control of gene expression is crucial for the successful completion of animal development. The evolutionary constraints on development are particularly strong for the mid-embryonic stage when body segments are specified, as evidenced by a high degree of morphological and protein-coding gene conservation during this period--a phenomenon known as the developmental hourglass. Th...

Reproduction exacts a price in terms of decreased survival. Our analysis of the interplay between age-patterns of fecundity and mortality for individual female medflies (Ceratitis capitata) reveals that individual mortality is associated with the time dynamics of the egg-laying trajectory. We find, in a sample of 531 medflies, that each individual has a characteristic rate of decline in egg lay...

The target of rapamycin (TOR) pathway is a major nutrient-sensing pathway that, when genetically downregulated, increases life span in evolutionarily diverse organisms including mammals. The central component of this pathway, TOR kinase, is the target of the inhibitory drug rapamycin, a highly specific and well-described drug approved for human use. We show here that feeding rapamycin to adult ...

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While foraging theory predicts that predatory responses should be determined by the energy content and size of prey, it is becoming increasingly clear that carnivores regulate their intake of specific nutrients. We tested the hypothesis that prey nutrient composition and predator nutritional history affects foraging intensity, consumption, and prey selection by the wolf spider, Pardosa milvina....

Male mate choice has been reported in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, even though males of this species were previously thought to maximise their fitness by mating with all available females. To understand the evolution of male mate choice it is important to understand variation in male mating preferences. Two studies, using different stock populations and different methods, have report...

Natalia Siomava, Ernst A. Wimmer, Nico Posnien* 4 5 University Goettingen, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach-Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, Göttingen Center 6 for Molecular Biosciences (GZMB), Department of Developmental Biology, Ernst-Caspari-Haus, Justus-von7 Liebig-Weg 11, 37077 Göttingen, Germany 8 9 1 current address: Department of Anatomy, Howard University College of Medicine, Washingt...

Many species of tachinid flies are viewed as generalist parasitoids because what is apparently a single species of fly has been reared from many species of caterpillars. However, an ongoing inventory of the tachinid flies parasitizing thousands of species of caterpillars in Area de Conservación Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica, has encountered >400 species of specialist tachinids with only a...

Warmer and drier climatic conditions are projected for the 21st century; however, the role played by extreme climatic events on forest vulnerability is still little understood. For example, more severe droughts and heat waves could threaten quaternary relict tree refugia such as Circum-Mediterranean fir forests (CMFF). Using tree-ring data and a process-based model, we characterized the major c...

Current research on female colour polymorphism in Ischnura damselflies suggests that a balanced fitness trade-off between morphotypes contributes to the maintenance of polymorphism inside populations. The genetic inheritance system constitutes a key factor to understand morph fluctuation and fitness. Ischnura genei, an endemic species of some Mediterranean islands, has three female colour morph...