Relating tradable credits for biodiversity to sustainability criteria in a dynamic landscape

Tradable biodiversity credit systems provide flexible means to resolve conflicts between development and conservation land-use options for habitats occupied by threatened or endangered species. We describe an approach to incorporate the influence of habitat fragmentation into the conservation value of tradable credits. Habitat fragmentation decreases gene flow, increases rates of genetic drift and inbreeding, and increases probabilities of patch extinction. Importantly, tradable credit systems will change the level of fragmentation over time for small and/or declining populations. We apply landscape equivalency analysis (LEA), a generalizable, landscape-scale accounting system that assigns conservation value to habitat patches based on patch contributions to abundance and genetic variance at landscape scales. By evaluating habitat trades using two models that vary the relationship between dispersal behaviors and landscape patterns, we show that LEA provides a novel method for limiting access to habitat at the landscape-scale, recognizing that the appropriate amount of migration needed to supplement patch recruitment and to offset drift and inbreeding will vary as landscape pattern changes over time. We also found that decisions based on probabilities of persistence alone would ignore changes in migration, genetic drift, and patch extinction that result from habitat trades. The general principle of LEA is that habitat patches traded should make at least equivalent contributions to rates of recruitment and migration estimated at a landscape scale. Traditional approaches for assessing the “take” and “jeopardy” standards under the Endangered Species Act based on changes in abundance and probability of persistence may be inadequate to prevent trades that increase fragmentation.     

玉米F_2群体中偏分离RFLP标记在染色体上的分布及原因分析

研究了利用玉米85个 DNA 限制性片段长度多态性(RFLP)标记在玉米自交系7922与5003杂交 F2群体中的分离。结果表明,8.33%的标记显著或极显著地偏离了预期的孟德尔比例而表现偏分离,发现了2个偏分离的染色体热点,即第1染色体上的 umc128-umc107和第3染色体上的 asg24-asg48,其偏分离形成的主要原因是存在配子体选择。     

Conserved genetic basis of a quantitative plumage trait involved in mate choice

A key question in evolutionary genetics is whether shared genetic mechanisms underlie the independent evolution of similar phenotypes across phylogenetically divergent lineages. Here we show that in two classic examples of melanic plumage polymorphisms in birds, lesser snow geese (Anser c. caerulescens) and arctic skuas (Stercorarius parasiticus), melanism is perfectly associated with variation in the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) gene. In both species, the degree of melanism correlates with the number of copies of variant MC1R alleles. Phylogenetic reconstructions of variant MC1R alleles in geese and skuas show that melanism is a derived trait that evolved in the Pleistocene.