Patricia G. Parker - US grants

A Comparative Study of Manakins at Leks:
Consequences for Variance in Mating Success and Population Genetics

Bette A. Loiselle, John G. Blake, and Patricia G. Parker

Abstract

This project investigates the relationship between spatial structure, genetic relatedness and reproductive skew in a set of closely related species of manakins (Aves: Pipridae) that exhibit lekking behavior in Neotropical wet forests. Lekking behavior, which occurs in many animal taxa, is characterized by a aggregation of males displaying for females in traditional locations and a lack of association between males and females after copulation. Females visit leks only to breed and rear their young elsewhere without assistance from the male. Lekking behavior often results in large reproductive variance (skew) among males because usually only one or a few males at the lek sites successfully copulate with females. Manakins represent a model system to investigate reproductive skew because (1) birds are common inhabitants of understory of tropical wet forests, (2) six closely related species occur in the same geographic location and thus experience similar environments, and (3) species differ in lek organization (e.g., number of males and distance among males at leks) and lekking behavior, characters key for predicting reproductive skew and analyzing population genetic consequences of lek mating systems. Considerable theory regarding reproductive skew has emerged, but there yet exist few empirical tests. Understanding the factors that influence reproductive skew is essential to understand the evolution of lekking behavior, a mating system that has evolved in a number of taxa and that has received a great deal of attention in theoretical and empirical literature. Measures of reproductive skew in lekking species are often based on observations of copulations at the lek. Yet, paternity analyses using molecular genetic data have revealed that for a number of bird species observations may provide misleading results about paternity. In the proposed study, observational data at leks are combined with direct measures of individual male success and reproductive skew through paternity analyses of offspring found at nests. This research will be the first to compare lekking behavior and its genetic consequences among a set of closely related species that occur in the same forest but that vary in lek organization and spatial structure. Such an approach should contribute substantially to our understanding of the evolution of lek mating system. The proposed research also effectively combines the ecological, behavioral, and molecular genetic expertise of the principal investigators and provides an avenue for new collaborative research that will enhance research programs of each senior investigator. Field and laboratory components of the research program will provide key opportunities for students from both the home institution and from Ecuadorean universities to gain research experience. Several Ecuadorean and UM-St. Louis students are expected to expand on aspects of the proposed project as part of their thesis or dissertation research. Travel expenses in Ecuador incurred by UM-St. Louis students and faculty will be supported by the NSF OFfice of International Science and Engineering.

Intellectual Merit: Measuring and analyzing seed dissemination into the environment is considered a major limitation in seed dispersal and plant recruitment studies. To date, seed shadows have been based on data collected from radio-tracked animals or from seed traps. In the former method, seed shadows are probalistic as dissemination is based on average gut passage times and distance moved during some time period, but data do not provide a means to evaluate species-specific differences in animal-generated seed shadows. In the latter case, seed rain provides a direct measure of seed arrival into microenvironments, although the contribution of different animal dispersers is not possible to discern. Dissecting out individual ecological roles of animal dispersers is necessary to understand the evolutionary impacts of seed dispersers on plant demography. This SGER proposal investigates a new method for directly measuring species-specific seed dissemination by birds using molecular markers and fecal samples. Fresh bird droppings that contain seeds are readily found in forest environments or collected in seed traps. In this exploratory research project we will collect fecal samples containing seeds from known species of birds (i.e., captured birds) and conduct genetic analyses on the bird dropping to get a "species signal". This preliminary work is necessary to test the ability of detecting microsatellite markers from bird droppings. Without sufficient evidence that this novel technique will function, any proposal relying
on this method to examine interspecific differences in seed dispersal function by birds is unlikely to be successful. If successful, this technique could revolutionize our studies on seed-dispersal efficiency in tropical lowland forests as it would provide a means to directly study seed dissemination into microenvironments that differ in seed and seedling establishment conditions. The application of this novel technique would allow us, for the first time, to develop the critical link between seed disperser behavior and plant demography, and thus, provide the key empirical data to determine the influence of animals on plant demography.
Broader Impact: The proposed research effectively combines the ecological,
behavioral, and molecular genetic expertise of the principal investigators and provides an avenue for new collaborative research that will enhance research programs of each senior investigator. If we can successfully develop the methods to obtain species signals using molecular genetic data from bird fecal samples, this method will likely become adopted by many researchers and applied to a wide range of ecological, population, and behavioral studies. Field and laboratory components of the research program will also provide key opportunities for a student from UM-St. Louis and from Latin America to gain research experience.

This U.S.-Ecuador award will support the dissertation research of Noah K. Whiteman, University of Missouri, Saint Louis, under the direction of Dr. Patricia G. Parker. Their project will enhance an existing and growing collaboration among scientists and students from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Charles Darwin Research Station in Ecuador and Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador. They will investigate native and introduced avian pathogens in Galapagos birds, specifically, host-parasite evolution in the Galapagos hawk and its native insectine parasites.

This project has conservation implications because parasites are important regulators of host populations, and both lice and hippoboscid flies are avian disease vectors. Understanding the basic biology of this system will aid in the management of the Galapagos National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Ecuadorians will be trained with the necessary tools for establishing a permanent disease-monitoring program in the Galapagos Islands.

Title of Project: Missouri Science Teaching and Education Partnerships (MO-STEP) (Track1).
Institution: University of Missouri-St. Louis.
PI and Co-PIs: Patricia Parker (PI), Charles Granger, Bette Loiselle, Patrick Osborne.
Number of fellows per year: Ten graduate fellows, five undergraduate fellows.
School District Partners: Florissant-Ferguson, Normandy, Maplewood-Richmond Heights,
Pattonville, Wellston.
Target audience of the project: Grades 9-12.
Setting: Urban.
NSF supported disciplines involved: Biology, Science Education

Background: The Missouri Science Teaching and Education Partnerships (MO-STEP) combines the academic strengths of the Department of Biology, the International Center for Tropical Ecology and the pedagogical background of the Science Education Program at UM-St. Louis in a tightly-coupled collaboration with five urban high schools located near the University and with conservation-focused organizations within St. Louis.

Intellectual merit: The intellectual merit of MO-STEP lies in provision of current information and practical, cutting-edge applications that link ecology, conservation biology and molecular genetics. Through close ties with the Missouri Botanical Garden, Saint Louis Zoo, Forest Park Forever and the St. Louis Aquacenter, MO-STEP facilitates opportunities for field trips and summer internships that provide hands-on experience in systematics, ecology and biodiversity conservation. MO-STEP is grounded in two concepts: (1) good teaching requires a sound discipline knowledge base and (2) good teaching strategies are critical to teaching and learning.

Broader impacts: MO-STEP facilitates the professional development of a collaborative team of university and high school faculty working to improve science education at grades 9 though 16. Three historic barriers to school-university partnerships are (1) unwillingness of high school faculty to seek information from university faculty; (2) university faculty's lack of understanding of the needs of high school science teachers; and (3) low prestige of science education as career choice in science graduate programs. MO-STEP replaces this culture with close professional associations that encourage long-term partnerships. Strong support of high school science instruction encourages high school faculty to continue the collaborative relationship while expanding graduate career opportunities. The Biology Graduate Program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis has successfully recruited students from diverse cultural backgrounds and the program is well positioned to increase participation of under-represented groups. The schools targeted for participation include a high percentage of students from groups currently underrepresented in STEM fields This project is receiving partial support from the Directorate for Biological Sciences.

0501012
Blake

This dissertation enhancement proposal supports Dr. John G. Blake and Ms. Cintia Cornelius, University of Missouri-Saint Louis, to work with Dr. Pablo A. Marquet at the Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago, Chile on the genetic and demographic consequences of human-driven landscape changes on birds. The goal of their project is to evaluate the relative importance of habitat deterioration and habitat fragmentation in limiting forest bird populations in a fragmented landscape in southern South American temperate rainforests. The two bird species they will use as model systems, Aphrastura spinicauda (Furnariidae) and Scelorchilus rubecula (Rhinocryptidae) are prevalent in this location and differ in several life-history traits. This will provide two contrasting cases of several possible life-history strategies in this forest.

This study will provide an important contribution to the theoretical framework of habitat fragmentation and will have a direct impact on management plans in the south-temperate rainforest region. Southern South American rainforests are highly threatened and internationally recognized to be of high priority for conservation due to their insular characteristic with high endemism and restricted geographical ranges of most plant and animal species.