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The Natural History Museum is an international leader in the study of the natural world. Our science describes the diversity of nature, promotes an understanding of its past, and supports the anticipation and management of the impact of human activity on the environment.
The Museum's repository provides free access to publications produced by more than 300 scientists working here. Researchers at the Museum study a diverse range of issues, including threats to Earth's biodiversity, the maintenance of delicate ecosystems, environmental pollution and disease. The accessible repository showcases this broad research output.
The repository was launched in 2016 with an initially modest number of journal publications in its database. It now includes book chapters and blogs from Museum scientists.
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Limited Niche Change After Dispersal From Africa by Leopards (Panthera pardus) Hundreds of Thousands of Years AgoABSTRACT Aim The leopard (Panthera pardus) is a generalist species inhabiting Africa and Asia, reflecting dispersal from an ancestral African range. When dispersal events occur, they can entail ecological differentiation and local adaptation. This study compares the bioclimatic niches of African and Asian leopard subspecies, to investigate whether they retained their ancestral ecology during dispersal from Africa, or adapted to novel conditions and shifted niche. Location Africa and Eurasia. Methods We assembled a database of leopard presences from public resources and associated them with bioclimatic variables to identify which are relevant in predicting the species' distribution. We constructed a species distribution model and compared distributions predicted from models based on presences from all subspecies, versus models built only using African leopard records. Finally, we used multivariate analysis to visualise the niche occupied by each subspecies in climate space, and calculated overlaps to assess ecological differentiation. Results The species distribution model trained only on African occurrences predicted most of the Asian range, but not the extension into more extreme environments such as the colder areas inhabited by several Northern Asian subspecies, and seasonal and rugged areas inhabited by Persian leopards. Niche overlaps suggest that Asian subspecies mostly retained their ancestral niche, but in some cases started to use climatic conditions that are not found in Africa. The Persian leopard is the only subspecies for which this expansion represents most of its current niche. Main Conclusions Despite some expansion into high altitude, seasonal environments in Northern Asian populations, the results suggest generally limited adaptation to novel climates after dispersal from Africa and little ecological differentiation among Asian leopard populations. This finding complements recent genetic studies that suggest limited genetic differentiation among Asian leopards. Resolving the relationships between taxonomy and biological differentiation is important due to its relevance for the conservation of the species.
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A multi-model approach to the spatial and temporal characterization of the African Humid PeriodDuring the last c. 20,000 years, African climates experienced temperature shifts related to the last period of global deglaciation and moisture availability changes that defined what has become known as the African Humid Period (AHP) c. 14,800–5500 years ago. However, spatio-temporal variations in climate, and the mechanisms behind them, across Africa remain poorly defined and debated. Here, we first characterize climatic change across tropical Africa (15°N to 15°S) over the last c. 20,000 years based on two independent site-specific modelling approaches at nine locations, using: (i) probability-based reconstructions based on pollen data from nine previously published pollen records, and (ii) climate simulation-based reconstructions based on mechanistic models of the Earth system. Trends in past climate change per site were found to be similar between the two modelling approaches; however, estimates of precipitation were higher in the pollen-based reconstructions when compared with those from the mechanistic model. Given the overall similarity between the two modelling approaches at the sites, we then used the mechanistic model to produce maps of past climate across Africa at 1000-year time slices. Interrogation of the model supports previous suggestions that the AHP in the west was driven by increasing precipitation (c. 13,000 years ago). In the eastern and southern portions of the study region, the AHP signal is more complex, likely driven by the interplay between different climate mechanisms; with the onset of the wettest AHP conditions in eastern Africa not commencing until c. 9000 years ago.
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Detection of locally adapted genomic regions in wild rice (Oryza rufipogon) using environmental association analysisAbstract Oryza rufipogon is the wild progenitor of cultivated rice Oryza sativa and exhibits high levels of genetic diversity across its distribution, making it a useful resource for the identification of abiotic stress–tolerant varieties and genes that could limit future climate-changed–induced yield losses. To investigate local adaptation in O. rufipogon, we analyzed single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data from a panel of 286 samples located across a diverse range of climates. Environmental association analysis (EAA), a genome-wide association study (GWAS)-based method, was used and revealed 15 regions of the genome significantly associated with various climate factors. Genes within these environmentally associated regions have putative functions in abiotic stress response, phytohormone signaling, and the control of flowering time. This provides an insight into potential local adaptation in O. rufipogon and reveals possible locally adaptive genes that may provide opportunities for breeding novel rice varieties with climate change–resilient phenotypes.
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Comparative transcriptomics and gene expression divergence associated with homoploid hybrid speciation in ArgyranthemumAbstract Ecological isolation is increasingly thought to play an important role in speciation, especially for the origin and reproductive isolation of homoploid hybrid species. However, the extent to which divergent and/or transgressive gene expression changes are involved in speciation is not well studied. In this study, we employ comparative transcriptomics to investigate gene expression changes associated with the origin and evolution of two homoploid hybrid plant species, Argyranthemum sundingii and A. lemsii (Asteraceae). As there is no standard methodology for comparative transcriptomics, we examined five different pipelines for data assembly and analysing gene expression across the four species (two hybrid and two parental). We note biases and problems with all pipelines, and the approach used affected the biological interpretation of the data. Using the approach that we found to be optimal, we identify transcripts showing DE between the parental taxa and between the homoploid hybrid species and their parents; in several cases, putative functions of these DE transcripts have a plausible role in ecological adaptation and could be the cause or consequence of ecological speciation. Although independently derived, the homoploid hybrid species have converged on similar expression phenotypes, likely due to adaptation to similar habitats.
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Mastering the difficulties presented by the peculiarities of island life. A commentary on: ‘Reconstruction of the spatio-temporal diversification and ecological niche evolution of Helianthemum (Cistaceae) in the Canary Islands using genotyping-by-sequence data’This article comments on: Rafael G. Albaladejo, Sara Martín-Hernanz, J. Alfredo Reyes-Betancort, Arnoldo Santos-Guerra, María Olangua-Corral and Abelardo Aparicio Reconstruction of the spatio-temporal diversification and ecological niche evolution of Helianthemum (Cistaceae) in the Canary Islands using genotyping-by-sequencing data, Annals of Botany, Volume 127, Issue 5, 16 April 2021, Pages 597–611, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaa090
