Editorial: Polar Genomics in a Changing World.

Polar regions play critical roles in the function of the Earth's climate system, many of which are underpinned by their endemic biota [...

The genetic consequences of captive breeding, environmental change and human exploitation in the endangered peninsular pronghorn.

Endangered species with small population sizes are susceptible to genetic erosion, which can be detrimental to long-term persistence. Consequently, monitoring and mitigating the loss of genetic diversity are essential for conservation. The Peninsular pronghorn (Antilocapra americana peninsularis) is an endangered pronghorn subspecies that is almost entirely held in captivity.

Chemical patterns of colony membership and mother-offspring similarity in Antarctic fur seals are reproducible.

Replication studies are essential for evaluating the validity of previous research findings. However, it has proven challenging to reproduce the results of ecological and evolutionary studies, partly because of the complexity and lability of many of the phenomena being investigated, but also due to small sample sizes, low statistical power and publication bias. Additionally, replication is often considered too difficult in field settings where many factors are beyond the investigator's control and where spatial and temporal dependencies may be strong.

Heterozygosity at neutral and immune loci is not associated with neonatal mortality due to microbial infection in Antarctic fur seals.

Numerous studies have reported correlations between the heterozygosity of genetic markers and fitness. These heterozygosity-fitness correlations (HFCs) play a central role in evolutionary and conservation biology, yet their mechanistic basis remains open to debate. For example, fitness associations have been widely reported at both neutral and functional loci, yet few studies have directly compared the two, making it difficult to gauge the relative contributions of genome-wide inbreeding and specific functional genes to fitness.

Extremely low Plasmodium prevalence in wild plovers and coursers from Cape Verde and Madagascar.

Background: Relatively little is known about the prevalence of blood parasites in shorebirds, especially those breeding in the tropics. The prevalence of blood parasites of the genera Plasmodium, Haemoproteus and Leucocytozoon was assessed in blood samples from Kentish plovers and cream-coloured coursers in Cape Verde, and samples of Kittlitz's plovers, Madagascar plovers and white-fronted plovers in Madagascar.

Results: Only two of these samples were positive for Plasmodium: a Kittlitz's plover was infected by a generalist lineage of Plasmodium that has already been reported in Europe and Africa, while in a white-fronted plover direct sequencing revealed a previously un-described Plasmodium lineage.

Offspring Hormones Reflect the Maternal Prenatal Social Environment: Potential for Foetal Programming?

Females of many species adaptively program their offspring to predictable environmental conditions, a process that is often mediated by hormones. Laboratory studies have shown, for instance, that social density affects levels of maternal cortisol and testosterone, leading to fitness-relevant changes in offspring physiology and behaviour. However, the effects of social density remain poorly understood in natural populations due to the difficulty of disentangling confounding influences such as climatic variation and food availability.

De novo assembly of the dual transcriptomes of a polymorphic raptor species and its malarial parasite.

Background: Studies of non-model species are important for understanding the molecular processes underpinning phenotypic variation under natural ecological conditions. The common buzzard (Buteo buteo; Aves: Accipitriformes) is a widespread and common Eurasian raptor with three distinct plumage morphs that differ in several fitness-related traits, including parasite infestation. To provide a genomic resource for plumage polymorphic birds in general and to search for candidate genes relating to fitness, we generated a transcriptome from a single dead buzzard specimen plus easily accessible, minimally invasive samples from live chicks.

Climate change selects for heterozygosity in a declining fur seal population.

Global environmental change is expected to alter selection pressures in many biological systems, but the long-term molecular and life history data required to quantify changes in selection are rare. An unusual opportunity is afforded by three decades of individual-based data collected from a declining population of Antarctic fur seals in the South Atlantic. Here, climate change has reduced prey availability and caused a significant decline in seal birth weight.