Ecological conditions alter cooperative behaviour and its costs in a chemically defended sawfly.

The evolution of cooperation and social behaviour is often studied in isolation from the ecology of organisms. Yet, the selective environment under which individuals evolve is much more complex in nature, consisting of ecological and abiotic interactions in addition to social ones. Here, we measured the life-history costs of cooperative chemical defence in a gregarious social herbivore, Diprion pini pine sawfly larvae, and how these costs vary under different ecological conditions. We ran a rearing experiment where we manipulated diet (resin content) and attack intensity by repeatedly harassing larvae to produce a chemical defence. We show that forcing individuals to allocate more to cooperative defence (high attack intensity) incurred a clear cost by decreasing individual survival and potency of chemical defence. Cooperative behaviour and the magnitude of its costs were further shaped by host plant quality. The number of individuals participating in group defence, immune responses and female growth decreased on a high resin diet under high attack intensity. We also found some benefits of cheating: non-defending males had higher growth rates across treatments. Taken together, these results suggest that ecological interactions can shape the adaptive value of cooperative behaviour and maintain variation in the frequency of cooperation and cheating.

Temporal allele frequency changes in large-effect loci reveal potential fishing impacts on salmon life-history diversity.

Fishing has the potential to influence the life-history traits of exploited populations. However, our understanding of how fisheries can induce evolutionary genetic changes remains incomplete. The discovery of large-effect loci linked with ecologically important life-history traits, such as age at maturity in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), provides an opportunity to study the impacts of temporally varying fishing pressures on these traits. A 93-year archive of fish scales from wild Atlantic salmon catches from the northern Baltic Sea region allowed us to monitor variation in adaptive genetic diversity linked with age at maturity of wild Atlantic salmon populations. The dataset consisted of samples from both commercial and recreational fisheries that target salmon on their spawning migration. Using a genotyping-by-sequencing approach (GT-seq), we discovered strong within-season allele frequency changes at the vgll3 locus linked with Atlantic salmon age at maturity: fishing in the early season preferentially targeted the vgll3 variant linked with older maturation. We also found within-season temporal variation in catch proportions of different wild Atlantic salmon subpopulations. Therefore, selective pressures of harvesting may vary depending on the seasonal timing of fishing, which has the potential to cause evolutionary changes in key life-history traits and their diversity. This knowledge can be used to guide fisheries management to reduce the effects of fishing practices on salmon life-history diversity. Thus, this study provides a tangible example of using genomic approaches to infer, monitor and help mitigate human impacts on adaptively important genetic variation in nature.

Production costs of biodiversity zones on field and forest margins: a case study in Finland.

This paper estimates and compares the costs incurred to a private landowner from establishing and managing 25-m wide biodiversity zones on field and forest margins in southern Finland. Crop and timber prices being at their long-term averages, current agricultural support paid and the real discount rate 3%, the average annual net costs per hectare of field and forest biodiversity zones were €30 ha(-1) and €108 ha(-1), respectively, the field zones being the less costly alternative in 95% of cases. This result is mainly due to the poor productivity of field cultivation relative to timber production under boreal climate conditions. In addition to soil quality, the initial stand structure affects the costs of both biodiversity zone types. It is less costly for a landowner to establish biodiversity zones in forests where no final felling is imminent but which already contain some tree volume. In field biodiversity zones, costs are slightly lower on fields where forest shading is great. Uneven-aged management practiced in forest biodiversity zones was found to lead to a 3-32% reduction in the net present value of forest land compared to conventional forest management. An increase in the real discount rate increases the relative efficiency of forest biodiversity zones.

Ancient and historical DNA in conservation policy.

Although genetic diversity has been recognized as a key component of biodiversity since the first Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1993, it has rarely been included in conservation policies and regulations. Even less appreciated is the role that ancient and historical DNA (aDNA and hDNA, respectively) could play in unlocking the temporal dimension of genetic diversity, allowing key conservation issues to be resolved, including setting baselines for intraspecies genetic diversity, estimating changes in effective population size (Ne), and identifying the genealogical continuity of populations. Here, we discuss how genetic information from ancient and historical specimens can play a central role in preserving biodiversity and highlight specific conservation policies that could incorporate such data to help countries meet their CBD obligations.