Genetic divergence analysis of the Common Barn Owl Tyto alba (Scopoli, 1769) and the Short-eared Owl Asio flammeus (Pontoppidan, 1763) from southern Chile using COI sequence.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Colihueque N
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4669940 | biostudies-literature | 2015
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:New genomic tools open doors to study ecology, evolution, and population genomics of wild animals. For the Barn owl species complex, a cosmopolitan nocturnal raptor, a very fragmented draft genome was assembled for the American species (Tyto furcata pratincola) (Jarvis et al. 2014). To improve the genome, we assembled de novo Illumina and Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) long reads sequences of its European counterpart (Tyto alba alba). This genome assembly of 1.219 Gbp comprises 21,509 scaffolds and results in a N50 of 4,615,526 bp. BUSCO (Universal Single-Copy Orthologs) analysis revealed an assembly completeness of 94.8% with only 1.8% of the genes missing out of 4,915 avian orthologs searched, a proportion similar to that found in the genomes of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) or the collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis). By mapping the reads of the female American barn owl to the male European barn owl reads, we detected several structural variants and identified 70 Mbp of the Z chromosome. The barn owl scaffolds were further mapped to the chromosomes of the zebra finch. In addition, the completeness of the European barn owl genome is demonstrated with 94 of 128 proteins missing in the chicken genome retrieved in the European barn owl transcripts. This improved genome will help future barn owl population genomic investigations.
| S-EPMC7069322 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Barn owls are effective hunters of small rodents. One hunting technique is a leap from the ground followed by a brief flight and a plummeting 'strike' onto an acoustically targeted - and potentially entirely hidden - prey. We used forceplate measurements to derive kinetics of the leap and strike. Leaping performance was similar to reported values for guinea fowl. This is likely achieved despite the owl's considerably smaller size because of its relatively long legs and use of wing upstroke. Strikes appear deliberately forceful: impulses could have been spread over larger periods during greater deflections of the centre of mass, as observed in leaping and an alighting landing measurement. The strike, despite forces around 150 times that of a mouse body weight, is not thought to be crucial to the kill; rather, forceful strikes may function primarily to enable rapid penetration of leaf litter or snow cover, allowing grasping of hidden prey.
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Project description:Natal dispersal affects many processes such as population dynamics. So far, most studies have examined the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that determine the distance between the place of birth and of first breeding. In contrast, few researchers followed the first steps of dispersal soon after fledging. To study this gap, we radio-tracked 95 barn owl nestlings (Tyto alba) to locate their diurnal roost sites from the fledging stage until December. This was used to test whether the age of nest departure, post-fledging movements and dispersal distance were related to melanin-based coloration, which is correlated to fitness-related traits, as well as to corticosterone, a hormone that mediates a number of life history trade-offs and the physiological and behavioural responses to stressful situations. We found that the artificial administration of corticosterone delayed the age when juveniles left their parental home-range in females but not in males. During the first few months after fledging, longer dispersal distances were reached by females compared to males, by individuals marked with larger black feather spots compared to individuals with smaller spots, by larger individuals and by those experimentally treated with corticosterone. We conclude that the onset and magnitude of dispersal is sensitive to the stress hormone corticosterone, melanin-based coloration and body size.
| S-EPMC8423310 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Islands, and the particular organisms that populate them, have long fascinated biologists. Due to their isolation, islands offer unique opportunities to study the effect of neutral and adaptive mechanisms in determining genomic and phenotypical divergence. In the Canary Islands, an archipelago rich in endemics, the barn owl (Tyto alba), present in all the islands, is thought to have diverged into a subspecies (T. a. gracilirostris) on the eastern ones, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. Taking advantage of 40 whole-genomes and modern population genomics tools, we provide the first look at the origin and genetic makeup of barn owls of this archipelago. We show that the Canaries hold diverse, long-standing and monophyletic populations with a neat distinction of gene pools from the different islands. Using a new method, less sensitive to structure than classical FST, to detect regions involved in local adaptation to insular environments, we identified a haplotype-like region likely under selection in all Canaries individuals and genes in this region suggest morphological adaptations to insularity. In the eastern islands, where the subspecies is present, genomic traces of selection pinpoint signs of adapted body proportions and blood pressure, consistent with the smaller size of this population living in a hot arid climate. In turn, genomic regions under selection in the western barn owls from Tenerife showed an enrichment in genes linked to hypoxia, a potential response to inhabiting a small island with a marked altitudinal gradient. Our results illustrate the interplay of neutral and adaptive forces in shaping divergence and early onset speciation.
| S-EPMC9613907 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:When sound arrives at the eardrum it has already been filtered by the body, head, and outer ear. This process is mathematically described by the head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), which are characteristic for the spatial position of a sound source and for the individual ear. HRTFs in the barn owl (Tyto alba) are also shaped by the facial ruff, a specialization that alters interaural time differences (ITD), interaural intensity differences (ILD), and the frequency spectrum of the incoming sound to improve sound localization. Here we created novel stimuli to simulate the removal of the barn owl's ruff in a virtual acoustic environment, thus creating a situation similar to passive listening in other animals, and used these stimuli in behavioral tests. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:HRTFs were recorded from an owl before and after removal of the ruff feathers. Normal and ruff-removed conditions were created by filtering broadband noise with the HRTFs. Under normal virtual conditions, no differences in azimuthal head-turning behavior between individualized and non-individualized HRTFs were observed. The owls were able to respond differently to stimuli from the back than to stimuli from the front having the same ITD. By contrast, such a discrimination was not possible after the virtual removal of the ruff. Elevational head-turn angles were (slightly) smaller with non-individualized than with individualized HRTFs. The removal of the ruff resulted in a large decrease in elevational head-turning amplitudes. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:The facial ruff a) improves azimuthal sound localization by increasing the ITD range and b) improves elevational sound localization in the frontal field by introducing a shift of iso-ILD lines out of the midsagittal plane, which causes ILDs to increase with increasing stimulus elevation. The changes at the behavioral level could be related to the changes in the binaural physical parameters that occurred after the virtual removal of the ruff. These data provide new insights into the function of external hearing structures and open up the possibility to apply the results on autonomous agents, creation of virtual auditory environments for humans, or in hearing aids.
| S-EPMC2766829 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Genetic evaluation using animal models or pedigree-based models generally assume only autosomal inheritance. Bayesian animal models provide a flexible framework for genetic evaluation, and we show how the model readily can accommodate situations where the trait of interest is influenced by both autosomal and sex-linked inheritance. This allows for simultaneous calculation of autosomal and sex-chromosomal additive genetic effects. Inferences were performed using integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA), a nonsampling-based Bayesian inference methodology. We provide a detailed description of how to calculate the inverse of the X- or Z-chromosomal additive genetic relationship matrix, needed for inference. The case study of eumelanic spot diameter in a Swiss barn owl (Tyto alba) population shows that this trait is substantially influenced by variation in genes on the Z-chromosome ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]). Further, a simulation study for this study system shows that the animal model accounting for both autosomal and sex-chromosome-linked inheritance is identifiable, that is, the two effects can be distinguished, and provides accurate inference on the variance components.
| S-EPMC4063458 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Many nocturnal avian species, such as Strigiformes, Caprimulgiformes and Apterygiformes, have sensitive vibrotactile bristles on their upper bill, especially on their rictus. The anatomy of these bristles can vary, especially in terms of sensitivity (Herbst corpuscle number), bristle length and bristle number. This variation is thought to be associated with foraging - such that diurnal, open foragers have smaller and less-sensitive bristles. Here, we describe bristle morphology and follicle anatomy in the western barn owl (Tyto alba) for the first time, using both live and roadkill wild owls. We show that T. alba have both narial and rictal bristles that are likely to be vibrotactile, since they have Herbst corpuscles around their follicles. We observed more numerous (~8) and longer bristles (~16 mm) on the nares of T. alba, than on the rictal region (~4 and ~13 mm respectively). However, the narial bristle follicles contained fewer Herbst corpuscles in their surroundings (~5) than the rictal bristles (~7); indicating that bristle length is not indicative of sensitivity. As well as bristle length and number varying between different facial regions, they also varied between individuals, although the cause of this variation remains unclear. Despite this variation, the gross anatomy of facial bristle follicles appears to be conserved between nocturnal Strigiformes, Caprimulgiformes and Apterygiformes. Understanding more about how T. alba use their bristles would, therefore, give us greater insights into the function of avian bristles in general.
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Project description:Voles are the most common vertebrate pests in European agriculture. Identifying their distribution and abundance patterns provides valuable information for future management. Barn Owl diet analysis is one of the optimum methods used to record small mammal distribution patterns on large spatial scales. From 2003 to 2005, a total of 10,065 Barn Owl pellets were collected and analyzed from 31 breeding sites in the largest agroecosystem in Greece, the Thessaly plains. A total of 29,061 prey items were identified, offering deep insight into small mammal distribution, specifically voles. Four discrete vole species (Harting's vole Microtus hartingi, East European vole Microtus levis, Thomas's pine vole Microtus thomasi, and Grey dwarf hamster Cricetulus migratorius) comprised 40.5% (11,770 vole prey items) of the total Barn Owl prey intake. The presence and abundance of the voles varied according to underlying environmental gradients, with soil texture and type playing a major role. M. levis showed no significant attachments to gradients, other than a mild increase in Mollisol soils. It was syntopic in all sites with M. hartingi, which was the dominant and most abundant small mammal species, preferring non-arable cultivated land, natural grasslands, set-aside fields, and fallow land. M. thomasi was strictly present in western Thessaly and strongly associated with a sandy-clay soil texture and Alfisol soils. C. migratorius was the least represented vole (162 items), exclusively present in eastern Thessaly and demonstrating a stronger association with cereals, Mollisol soils, and an argillaceous-clay soil texture. This is the first study in Greece at such a large spatial scale, offering insights for pest rodents' distribution in intensive agroecosystems and their response to environmental gradients including soil parameters.
| S-EPMC9865515 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The climate fluctuations of the Quaternary shaped the movement of species in and out of glacial refugia. In Europe, the majority of species followed one of the described traditional postglacial recolonization routes from the southern peninsulas towards the north. Like most organisms, barn owls are assumed to have colonized the British Isles by crossing over Doggerland, a land bridge that connected Britain to northern Europe. However, while they are dark rufous in northern Europe, barn owls in the British Isles are conspicuously white, a contrast that could suggest selective forces are at play on the islands. Yet, our analysis of known candidate genes involved in coloration found no signature of selection. Instead, using whole genome sequences and species distribution modelling, we found that owls colonised the British Isles soon after the last glaciation, directly from a white coloured refugium in the Iberian Peninsula, before colonising northern Europe. They would have followed a hitherto unknown post-glacial colonization route to the Isles over a westwards path of suitable habitat in now submerged land in the Bay of Biscay, thus not crossing Doggerland. As such, they inherited the white colour of their Iberian founders and maintained it through low gene flow with the mainland that prevents the import of rufous alleles. Thus, we contend that neutral processes probably explain this contrasting white colour compared to continental owls. With the barn owl being a top predator, we expect future research will show this unanticipated route was used by other species from its paleo community.
| S-EPMC9298239 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Barn owls, like primates, have frontally oriented eyes, which allow for a large binocular overlap. While owls have similar binocular vision and visual-search strategies as primates, it is less clear whether reflexive visual behavior also resembles that of primates or is more similar to that of closer related, but lateral-eyed bird species. Test cases are visual responses driven by wide-field movement: the optokinetic, optocollic, and optomotor responses, mediated by eye, head and body movements, respectively. Adult primates have a so-called symmetric horizontal response: they show the same following behavior, if the stimulus, presented to one eye only, moves in the nasal-to-temporal direction or in the temporal-to-nasal direction. By contrast, lateral-eyed birds have an asymmetric response, responding better to temporal-to-nasal movement than to nasal-to-temporal movement. We show here that the horizontal optocollic response of adult barn owls is less asymmetric than that in the chicken for all velocities tested. Moreover, the response is symmetric for low velocities (< 20 deg/s), and similar to that of primates. The response becomes moderately asymmetric for middle-range velocities (20-40 deg/s). A definitive statement for the complex situation for higher velocities (> 40 deg/s) is not possible.
| S-EPMC8934767 | biostudies-literature