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Not a one-way street: evolution shapes environment of connecticutlakes by 123wert sdfsf
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Not a one-way street: evolution shapes environment of connecticutlakes |
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Yale University researchers found a prime example of thisevolutionary feedback loop in a few lakes in Connecticut, wheredams built 300 years ago in Colonial times trapped a fish calledthe alewife. In a study published May 23 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Academy B , the Yale team describes how this event fundamentally changed thestructure of the alewife and, with it, the water flea that thealewife feeds upon and the food chain that supports them both. "People have long accepted that ecology shapes evolution, butit has been less clear how evolution can shape our ecology, and doso in a relatively short time frame," said David Post,professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author thepaper. "In this case, we see a cascade of evolution that waspropagated throughout the food web within the last threecenturies." And evidence can be seen in relative clarity of the state's lakesduring the spring.
Up and down the Atlantic coast, alewife swim to fresh water lakesto spawn every spring before returning to the ocean in the fall.They voraciously feed upon large plankton and the water fleasDaphnia, which are also main consumers of small plankton and algae.In these lakes, there is intense predation by alewives for Daphnia,which reproduce quickly and in huge numbers. These water fleasquickly consume the algae, which leave the waters of these lakesclear in the spring. However, in lakes created by the dams of Colonial settlers, thewater is much less clear in the spring. The Yale study explainswhy: Since the alewife cannot migrate, it must eat plankton yearround, year after year.
Evolution favored fish with smaller mouthsand a different gill structure, which make it easier for them tofeed upon small plankton common in lakes. These evolutionarychanges in the alewife also caused evolution in Daphnia, which nolonger need to reproduce quickly in massive numbers. As a result,these lakes are more cloudy because water fleas eat less algae. Here, evolutionary interactions between a predator and preydetermine the ecology of these lakes, note the researchers. "Natural selection favored survival of fish with smallermouths and gills with filters more closely spaced that helped themharvest the smaller plankton," said Matthew R.
Walsh,professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and lead author ofthe paper. "This, in turn, drove genetic changes in the ratesof population growth of Daphnia, and these two changes thendetermine amount of algae present in lakes." Post estimates these evolutionary changes in alewife probablyhappened within 50 to 100 years of the damming of the Connecticutlakes. Other Yale affiliated authors are John DeLong and Torrance Hanley. I am an expert from Sports & Entertainment, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as custom boxing gloves , expensive basketball shoes.
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