Insect personality: what can we learn from metamorphosis?

Ontogeny of animal personality is still an open question. Testing whether personality traits correlated with state variables (e.g.

Trace Element Concentrations in European Pond Turtles (Emys orbicularis) from Brenne Natural Park, France.

We assessed trace elements concentration in European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) from Brenne Natural Park (France). We sampled road-killed turtles (N = 46) to measure the concentrations of 4 non-essential (Ag, Cd, Hg, and Pb) and 10 essential (As, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Se, V, and Zn) elements in muscle, skin, liver and claws. Body size or sex did not influence the concentrations of most elements; except for Hg (liver, skin and claws) and Zn (muscle) which increased with body size.

Climate change and functional traits affect population dynamics of a long-lived seabird.

Recent studies unravelled the effect of climate changes on populations through their impact on functional traits and demographic rates in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, but such understanding in marine ecosystems remains incomplete. Here, we evaluate the impact of the combined effects of climate and functional traits on population dynamics of a long-lived migratory seabird breeding in the southern ocean: the black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris, BBA). We address the following prospective question: "Of all the changes in the climate and functional traits, which would produce the biggest impact on the BBA population growth rate?" We develop a structured matrix population model that includes the effect of climate and functional traits on the complete BBA life cycle.

Sex- and breeding stage-specific hormonal stress response of seabird parents.

Changes in corticosterone (CORT) and prolactin (PRL) levels are thought to provide complementary information on parental decisions in birds in the context of stressful situations. However, these endocrine mechanisms have yet to be fully elucidated, appearing to vary among avian species without any clear pattern. Here, we examined CORT and PRL stress responses in a small Arctic seabird, the little auk (Alle alle).

How many sightings to model rare marine species distributions.

Despite large efforts, datasets with few sightings are often available for rare species of marine megafauna that typically live at low densities. This paucity of data makes modelling the habitat of these taxa particularly challenging. We tested the predictive performance of different types of species distribution models fitted to decreasing numbers of sightings.

Demographic, endocrine and behavioral responses to mirex in the South polar skua.

Population consequences of chronic exposure to multiple pollutants at low environmental doses remain speculative, because of the lack of appropriate long-term monitoring surveys. This study integrates proximate and ultimate aspects of persistent organic pollutants (POP) burden in free-living vertebrates, by coupling hormonal and behavioral endpoints, life-history traits, and population dynamics. Blood samples (N=70) were collected in South polar skuas during two breeding periods, in 2003 and 2005, and individuals were annually monitored until 2011.

Seabird Tissues As Efficient Biomonitoring Tools for Hg Isotopic Investigations: Implications of Using Blood and Feathers from Chicks and Adults.

Blood and feathers are the two most targeted avian tissues for environmental biomonitoring studies, with mercury (Hg) concentration in blood and body feathers reflecting short and long-term Hg exposure, respectively. In this work, we investigated how Hg isotopic composition (e.g.

Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans.

The extent of increasing anthropogenic impacts on large marine vertebrates partly depends on the animals' movement patterns. Effective conservation requires identification of the key drivers of movement including intrinsic properties and extrinsic constraints associated with the dynamic nature of the environments the animals inhabit. However, the relative importance of intrinsic versus extrinsic factors remains elusive.

Processing of acceleration and dive data on-board satellite relay tags to investigate diving and foraging behaviour in free-ranging marine predators.

Biologging technologies are changing the way in which the marine environment is observed and monitored. However, because device retrieval is typically required to access the high-resolution data they collect, their use is generally restricted to those animals that predictably return to land. Data abstraction and transmission techniques aim to address this, although currently these are limited in scope and do not incorporate, for example, acceleration measurements which can quantify animal behaviours and movement patterns over fine-scales.

Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic.

Climate warming is rapidly altering marine ecosystems towards a more temperate state on the European side of the Arctic. However, this "Atlantification" has rarely been confirmed, as long-term datasets on Arctic marine organisms are scarce. We present a 19-year time series (1982-2016) of diet samples from black-legged kittiwakes as an indicator of the changes in a high Arctic marine ecosystem (Kongsfjorden, Svalbard).

Climatic influences on the breeding biology of the agile frog (Rana dalmatina).

Severe population declines of amphibians have been shown to be attributed to climate change. Nevertheless, the various mechanisms through which climate can influence population dynamics of amphibians remain to be assessed, notably to disentangle the relative synergetic or antagonistic influences of temperature and precipitations on specific life history stages. We investigated the impact of rainfall and temperature on the egg-clutch abundance in a population of agile frog (Rana dalmatina) during 29 years (1987-2016) on 14 breeding sites located in Brenne Natural Park, France.

SNP Discovery from Single and Multiplex Genome Assemblies of Non-model Organisms.

Population genetic studies of non-model organisms often rely on initial ascertainment of genetic markers from a single individual or a small pool of individuals. This initial screening has been a significant barrier to beginning population studies on non-model organisms (Aitken et al., Mol Ecol 13:1423-1431, 2004; Morin et al.

Progressive ontogenetic niche shift over the prolonged immaturity period of wandering albatrosses.

Very little is known about trophic ontogenetic changes over the prolonged immaturity period of long-lived, wide-ranging seabirds. By using blood and feather trophic tracers (δC and δN, and mercury, Hg), we studied age-related changes in feeding ecology during the immature phase of wandering albatrosses when they gradually change from a pure oceanic life to visits to their future breeding grounds. Immatures fed in subtropical waters at high trophic positions during moult.

Pan-Antarctic analysis aggregating spatial estimates of Adélie penguin abundance reveals robust dynamics despite stochastic noise.

Colonially-breeding seabirds have long served as indicator species for the health of the oceans on which they depend. Abundance and breeding data are repeatedly collected at fixed study sites in the hopes that changes in abundance and productivity may be useful for adaptive management of marine resources, but their suitability for this purpose is often unknown. To address this, we fit a Bayesian population dynamics model that includes process and observation error to all known Adélie penguin abundance data (1982-2015) in the Antarctic, covering >95% of their population globally.

Tracking trace elements into complex coral reef trophic networks.

The integration, accumulation and transfer of trace elements across the main tropic levels of many food webs are poorly documented. This is notably the case for the complex trophic webs of coral reef ecosystems. Our results show that in the south-west lagoon of New Caledonia both abiotic (i.

Interacting effects of unobserved heterogeneity and individual stochasticity in the life history of the southern fulmar.

Individuals are heterogeneous in many ways. Some of these differences are incorporated as individual states (e.g.

Contrasting effects of climate and population density over time and life stages in a long-lived seabird.

Although population responses to environmental variability have been extensively studied for many organisms, few studies have considered early-life stages owing to the inherent difficulties in tracking the fate of young individuals. However, young individuals are expected to be more sensitive to environmental stochasticity owing to their inexperience and lower competitive abilities. Thus, they are keys to understand demographic responses of an age-structured population to environmental variability.

High occurrence of jellyfish predation by black-browed and Campbell albatross identified by DNA metabarcoding.

Gelatinous zooplankton are a large component of the animal biomass in all marine environments, but are considered to be uncommon in the diet of most marine top predators. However, the diets of key predator groups like seabirds have conventionally been assessed from stomach content analyses, which cannot detect most gelatinous prey. As marine top predators are used to identify changes in the overall species composition of marine ecosystems, such biases in dietary assessment may impact our detection of important ecosystem regime shifts.

GPER1 in sand rat epididymis: Effects of seasonal variations, castration and efferent ducts ligation.

Estrogen plays a crucial role in regulating epididymal function and development. Estrogen signaling is mediated via two main receptors essentially involved in the genomic regulating pathway: ERα and ERβ. Recent studies revealed the contribution of a novel estrogen receptor involved in the non-genomic pathway: GPER1.

Does genetic structure reflect differences in non-breeding movements? A case study in small, highly mobile seabirds.

Background: In seabirds, the extent of population genetic and phylogeographic structure varies extensively among species. Genetic structure is lacking in some species, but present in others despite the absence of obvious physical barriers (landmarks), suggesting that other mechanisms restrict gene flow. It has been proposed that the extent of genetic structure in seabirds is best explained by relative overlap in non-breeding distributions of birds from different populations.

Evolvability meets biogeography: evolutionary potential decreases at high and low environmental favourability.

Understanding and forecasting the effects of environmental change on wild populations requires knowledge on a critical question: do populations have the ability to evolve in response to that change? However, our knowledge on how evolution works in wild conditions under different environmental circumstances is extremely limited. We investigated how environmental variation influences the evolutionary potential of phenotypic traits. We used published data to collect or calculate 135 estimates of evolvability of morphological traits of European wild bird populations.

From Antarctica to the subtropics: Contrasted geographical concentrations of selenium, mercury, and persistent organic pollutants in skua chicks (Catharacta spp.).

Seabirds integrate bioaccumulative contaminants via food intake and have revealed geographical trends of contamination in a variety of ecosystems. Pre-fledging seabird chicks are particularly interesting as bioindicators of chemical contamination, because concentrations in their tissues reflect primarily dietary sources from the local environment. Here we measured 14 trace elements and 18 persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in blood of chicks of skuas that breed in four sites encompassing a large latitudinal range within the southern Indian Ocean, from Antarctica (Adélie Land, south polar skua Catharacta maccormicki), through subantarctic areas (Crozet and Kerguelen Islands, brown skua C.

Contaminants and energy expenditure in an Arctic seabird: Organochlorine pesticides and perfluoroalkyl substances are associated with metabolic rate in a contrasted manner.

Basal metabolic rate (BMR), the minimal energetic cost of living in endotherms, is known to be influenced by thyroid hormones (THs) which are known to stimulate in vitro oxygen consumption of tissues in birds and mammals. Several environmental contaminants may act on energy expenditure through their thyroid hormone-disrupting properties. However, the effect of contaminants on BMR is still poorly documented for wildlife.