Symposium proposal | |
Organizer: | Yanhua Qu (Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) |
Co-organizer: | Lu Dong (Colleague of Life Science, Beijing Normal University) |
Asia has a great diversity of habitats, ranging from Arctic tundra to tropical forests, and including the highest mountains in the world. This is reflected in the region’s immense richness in birds. This habitat diversity in combination with climate change during the Pliocene and Pleistocene have been some of the main drivers of this this diversity. Recently, with the advance of new molecular and genomic tools, it has become possible to better understand the speciation and adaptation mechanisms underlying this extraordinarily high diversity. This symposium will focus on understanding the relationship between genomic change and the evolutionary forces promoting speciation in Asia. For example, how have mountain and island barriers promoted geographic isolation and speciation, and how have land bridges between isolated islands during glacial periods allowed for gene flow between previously separated genetic lineages. As genomic data become more easy to generate and methods are ever further refined, we are coming closer and closer to unraveling the mechanisms that have produced Asia’s extraordinary avian diversity. |
S22-1
Potential human forces in the green peafowl’s endangerment by genomic, climatic and anthropogenic evidence
Feng Dong1
1Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Both anthropogenic impacts and historical climate change could contribute to population decline and species extinction, but their relative importance is still unclear. Emerging approaches based on genomic, climatic and anthropogenic data provide a promising analytical framework to address this question. This study applied such an integrative approach to examine potential drivers for endangerment of the green peafowl (Pavo muticus). Several demographic reconstructions based on population genomes congruently retrieved a drastic population declination since the mid-Holocene. Furthermore, comparison between historical and modern genomes suggested genetic diversity decrease during the last 50 years. However, climate-based ecological niche models predicted stationary general range during these periods and imply little impact of climate change. Further analyses suggested that human disturbance intensities were negatively correlated with the green peafowl’s effective population sizes and significantly associated with its survival statuses (extirpation or persistence). Archaeological and historical records corroborate the critical role of humans, leaving the footprint of low genomic diversity and high inbreeding in the survival populations. This study sheds light on the potential deep-time effects of human disturbance on species endangerment and on the whole, offers immediately a multi-evidential approach in examining underlying forces for population declines.
S22-2
Conservation genomics in endangered waterbirds in The East Asian–Australasian Flyway
Yang Liu1
1School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
There are several endangered waterbird species along the East Asia-Australisia Flyway. Among them, Spoon-billed Sandpiper(Calidris pygmaea), Chinese Crested Tern (Thalasseus bernsteini), Baer’s Pochard (Aythya baeri) and Black-faced Spoonbill (Platalea minor) are the critically endangered representatives with a global population size ranging from only one hundred to several thousand individuals. Thus, conservation managements are urgently required to save these species from the brink of extinction. Habitat degradation and loss, human disturbance and hunting are conventionally considered to be the reasons for threatening their world populations. Conservation genomics, as a cutting-edge research tool for combining conservation biology and genetics, can assist uncovering potential mechanisms of endangered over evolutionary time scales. In my talk, I will presents new results of conservation genomics of some endangered waterbird species done in my lab. I try to show how conservation genomics provide comprehensive understandings of genetic diversity population structure, demographic history of endangered species. These knowledges provide valuable insights for the development conservation action plans and management.
S22-3
The evolution of courtship displays in Galliformes
Daiping Wang1
1 Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Species in Galliformes have elaborately ritual courtship displays, often including strutting, fluffing of tail or head feathers, and vocal sounds that serve as excellent examples of sexual selection. According to the male orientation to the female while either posturing or moving, these courtship displays of gallinaceous species can be classified into three categories: 1) ‘frontal displays’, 2) ‘lateral displays’, and 3) ‘both frontal and lateral displays’. In the category of ‘frontal displays’, the male faces the female with spreading the wings or tail, tends to do so symmetrically. On the other hand, ‘lateral displays’ often involve spreading wings and the tail in such an unsymmetrical way that the bird appears more significant when viewed from the side. As the third category, courtship displays of those species include elements of ‘both frontal and lateral displays’. Question regarding which category of displays is the ancestral trait and the evolutionary history of courtship displays in Galliformes remains unknown. Here, we collected and classified 131 species in terms of their courtship displays into these three categories listed above and carried out a large-scale comparative analysis to reveal the evolutionary history of this trait. We found that the ancestral state of courtship displays in this taxon involves both frontal and lateral behavioral elements (i.e., the category of ‘both frontal and lateral displays’). Further, estimates from ancestral trait reconstructions suggest transitions from ‘lateral displays’ to ‘frontal displays’ occurred much more compared the other way around (i.e., from ‘frontal displays’ to ‘lateral displays’). There were transitions that occurred from ‘both frontal and lateral displays’ to ‘lateral displays’ but not from ‘both frontal and lateral displays’ to ‘frontal displays’.
S22-4
Reassessing phylogeny and divergence dating provide new insights on the evolutionary history of chickens in Southeast Asia and Pacific
Cyrill John P. Godinez1,2, John King N. Layos1,3, Yoshio Yamamoto1, Monchai Duangjinda4, Lawrence M. Liao5, Masahide Nishibori1,2
1Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Graduate School of Integrated Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8528, Japan
2Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Food Science, Visayas State University, Visca, Baybay City, Leyte 6521, Philippines
3College of Agriculture and Forestry, Capiz State University, Burias, Mambusao, Capiz 5807, Philippines
4Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
5Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Graduate School of Integrated Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8528, Japan
2Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Food Science, Visayas State University, Visca, Baybay City, Leyte 6521, Philippines
3College of Agriculture and Forestry, Capiz State University, Burias, Mambusao, Capiz 5807, Philippines
4Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
5Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Graduate School of Integrated Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8528, Japan
The domestication of chickens has contributed various benefits to the sustenance and cultural development of mankind. The profound timings of their domestication have attracted wide interest in molecular phylogeny and phylogeography studies as it remains debatable up to today. Previous studies indicated that island Southeast Asia (SEA) sits as the region where specific Haplogroup D (Hap-D) mitochondrial lineage diversified, while most of the chicken populations in the mainland SEA observed to have diverse maternal lineages. However, population history and lineage-specific divergence time estimates of these populations in the aforesaid regions are not well studied. Here, we analyzed 339 complete mitochondrial DNA control region sequences sampled in the mainland SEA and 144 sequences represented island SEA and Oceania. One hundred twenty-seven haplotypes were newly identified and were distributed across major divergent haplogroups except Hap-C. Phylogenetic analyses based on maximum likelihood method and Bayesian inference revealed newfound divergent Hap-V2 sampled from the domestic chickens in Cambodia and Laos and red junglefowl from Thailand at the basal position. The diverse Hap-D composition suggested mainland SEA origin of Philippine red junglefowl having the same maternal lineages within Hap-D2 and Hap-D3. Also, significant posterior probability supported the Philippine-Pacific sub-clade, suggested a Philippine origin of Pacific chickens. Bayesian divergence time estimates revealed split time of Pacific chickens congruent to the increase of effective population size of Philippine chickens and corroborated the prehistoric human expansion events in the region. The newly identified Hap-V2 diverged later from the previously identified Hap-V classified by most red junglefowl species sampled from Thailand and Cambodia. Our results suggest a high level of genetic variability of these chicken populations in the region which demonstrates conservation significance.
S22-5
Genomic signatures of salt tolerance in the black-faced spoonbill (Platalea minor)
Chi-Cheng Chiu1, Shou-Hsein Li1, Ben-Yang Liao2, Cheng-te Yao3, Lu Dong4, Kui Lin4
1Department of Life Science, National Taiwan Normal University
2National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan
3Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute, Taiwan
4Beijing Normal University, China
2National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan
3Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute, Taiwan
4Beijing Normal University, China
Although ocean provides living organisms a vast space and many resources, only a few avian species live in marine environment because of its high osmolarity. So far, little is known about the genetic mechanism of avian salinity adaptation. The black-faced spoonbill (Platalea minor) is the only spoonbill species that exclusively live in the high salinity environment. To understand how this species adapted to high-salinity habitat, the genomic sequences of black-faced spoonbills, Eurasian spoonbills (P. leucorodia) and royal spoonbills (P. regia) were compared to identify coding and potential regulating regions that have been positively selected in the black-faced spoonbill lineage specifically. We found evidences to support totally 130 genes (48 coding and 82 potential regulating regions) had been subjected to positive selection on the black-faced spoonbill lineage. Using functional genomic data of model organisms, we found 5 of these candidate genes (A1CF, CACNA1H, GABRA3, CASR and CDH11) could be associated with urinary system and might be attribute to osmolarity regulation in the salty environment. Our results shed lights on the molecular bases underlying how salt tolerance evolved in waders.