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Inferring microevolution from museum collections and resampling: lessons learned from Cepaea.

ABSTRACT: Natural history collections are an important and largely untapped source of long-term data on evolutionary changes in wild populations. Here, we utilize three large geo-referenced sets of samples of the common European land-snail Cepaea nemoralis stored in the collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. Resampling of these populations allowed us to gain insight into changes occurring over 95, 69, and 50 years. Cepaea nemoralis is polymorphic for the colour and banding of the shell; the mode of inheritance of these patterns is known, and the polymorphism is under both thermal and predatory selection. At two sites the general direction of changes was towards lighter shells (yellow and less heavily banded), which is consistent with predictions based on on-going climatic change. At one site no directional changes were detected. At all sites there were significant shifts in morph frequencies between years, and our study contributes to the recognition that short-term changes in the states of populations often exceed long-term trends. Our interpretation was limited by the few time points available in the studied collections. We therefore stress the need for natural history collections to routinely collect large samples of common species, to allow much more reliable hind-casting of evolutionary responses to environmental change.

SUBMITTER: Ozgo M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5661451 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Inferring microevolution from museum collections and resampling: lessons learned from Cepaea.

Ożgo Małgorzata M Liew Thor-Seng TS Webster Nicole B NB Schilthuizen Menno M

PeerJ 20171027

Natural history collections are an important and largely untapped source of long-term data on evolutionary changes in wild populations. Here, we utilize three large geo-referenced sets of samples of the common European land-snail Cepaea nemoralis stored in the collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. Resampling of these populations allowed us to gain insight into changes occurring over 95, 69, and 50 years. Cepaea nemoralis is polymorphic for the colo ...[more]

PMID: 29093997

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Project description:BackgroundThe previous species list of South African Mantodea, published in 1998, was largely compiled from the literature and did not incorporate data from the many insect museum collections available in the country. It is estimated that approximately 120 species of Mantodea occur in South Africa; however, since no historical museum records were previously incorporated, the current information is considered to be outdated and not a true reflection of the Mantodea fauna within this region. A checklist of species is an important benchmark for any insect group, especially in light of the worldwide declines of insect diversity reported over the last decade. Checklists that provide accurate information on insect diversity, especially for groups, such as the Mantodea which could be under threat and thus could provide important information that can be used in determining the threat status of species, as well as to aid in their conservation in general.New informationThis paper provides an updated checklist of the praying mantids (Insecta, Mantodea) species of South Africa. While 120 species were previously reported to occur in South Africa, this paper reports 157 species in 64 genera that represent eight different superfamilies, 14 families and 22 subfamilies. Additionally, five species are reported for the first time to occur in South Africa. This species list was generated from the approximately 4000 specimen records of which 3558 records reside within South Africa. The remaining 732 records represent 14 other African countries. Occurrence records from two citizen-science platforms (iNaturalist and Gbif.org), were also incorporated in this study, adding 1880 species records in South Africa. The low number of specimens in the national collections indicate that this group of insects is poorly collected and highlights the lack of knowledge about South Africa's mantid fauna, as well as a lack of taxonomic expertise as 1532 museum specimens remain unidentified to species level.

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Inferring microevolution from museum collections and resampling: lessons learned from Cepaea.

Publications

Inferring microevolution from museum collections and resampling: lessons learned from <i>Cepaea</i>.

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