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Effects of physical impairments on fitness correlates of the white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus.

ABSTRACT: Physical impairments are widely assumed to reduce the viability of individual animals, but their impacts on individuals within natural populations of vertebrates are rarely quantified. By monitoring wild populations of white-footed mice over 26 years, we assessed whether missing or deformed limbs, tail or eyes influenced the survival, body mass, movement and ectoparasite burden of their bearers. Of the 27 244 individuals monitored, 543 (2%) had visible physical impairments. Persistence times (survival) were similar between mice with and without impairments. Mice with eye and tail impairments had 5% and 6% greater mass, respectively, than unimpaired mice. Mice with tail impairments had larger home ranges than did unimpaired mice. Burdens of black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) were higher among mice with tail and limb impairments while burdens of bot fly larvae (Cuterebra) were higher among mice with cataracts compared to mice without impairments. Our findings do not support the presupposition that physical impairments reduce viability in their bearers and are inconsistent with the devaluation of impaired individuals that pervaded early thinking in evolutionary biology.

SUBMITTER: Rubino FI

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8564606 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Severe fragmentation is a typical fate of native remnant habitats in cities, and urban wildlife with limited dispersal ability are predicted to lose genetic variation in isolated urban patches. However, little information exists on the characteristics of urban green spaces required to conserve genetic variation. In this study, we examine whether isolation in New York City (NYC) parks results in genetic bottlenecks in white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus), and test the hypotheses that park size and time since isolation are associated with genetic variability using nonlinear regression and information-theoretic model selection. White-footed mice have previously been documented to exhibit male-biased dispersal, which may create disparities in genetic variation between males and females in urban parks. We use genotypes of 18 neutral microsatellite data and four different statistical tests to assess this prediction. Given that sex-biased dispersal may create disparities between population genetic patterns inferred from bi- vs. uni-parentally inherited markers, we also sequenced a 324 bp segment of the mitochondrial D-loop for independent inferences of historical demography in urban P. leucopus. We report that isolation in urban parks does not necessarily result in genetic bottlenecks; only three out of 14 populations in NYC parks exhibited a signature of a recent bottleneck at 18 neutral microsatellite loci. Mouse populations in larger urban parks, or parks that have been isolated for shorter periods of time, also do not generally contain greater genetic variation than populations in smaller parks. These results suggest that even small networks of green spaces may be sufficient to maintain the evolutionary potential of native species with certain characteristics. We also found that isolation in urban parks results in weak to nonexistent sex-biased dispersal in a species known to exhibit male-biased dispersal in less fragmented environments. In contrast to nuclear loci, mitochondrial D-loop haplotypes exhibited a mutational pattern of demographic expansion after a recent bottleneck or selective sweep. Estimates of the timing of this expansion suggest that it occurred concurrent with urbanization of NYC over the last few dozens to hundreds of years. Given the general non-neutrality of mtDNA in many systems and evidence of selection on related coding sequences in urban P. leucopus, we argue that the P. leucopus mitochondrial genome experienced recent negative selection against haplotypes not favored in isolated urban parks. In general, rapid adaptive evolution driven by urbanization, global climate change, and other human-caused factors is underappreciated by evolutionary biologists, but many more cases will likely be documented in the near future.

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Effects of physical impairments on fitness correlates of the white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus.

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