Although there are many examples of contemporary directional selection, evidence for responses to selection that match predictions are often missing in quantitative genetic studies of wild populations. This is despite the presence of genetic variation and selection pressures – theoretical prerequisites for the response to selection. This conundrum can be explained by statistical issues with accurate parameter estimation, and by biological mechanisms that interfere with the response to selection. These biological mechanisms can accelerate or constrain this response. These mechanisms are generally studied independently but might act simultaneously. We therefore integrated these mechanisms to explore their potential combined effect. This has implications for explaining the apparent evolutionary stasis of wild populations and the conservation of wildlife.

An increasing number of results in sentence and discourse processing demonstrate that comprehension relies on rich pragmatic knowledge about real-world events, and that incoming words incrementally activate such knowledge. If so, then even outside of any larger context, nouns should activate knowledge of the generalized events that they denote or typically play a role in. We used short stimulus onset asynchrony priming to demonstrate that (1) event nouns prime people (saleshopper) and objects (trip-luggage) commonly found at those events; (2) location nouns prime people/animals (hospital-doctor) and objects (barn-hay) commonly found at those locations; and (3) instrument nouns prime things on which those instruments are commonly used (key-door), but not the types of people who tend to use them (hose-gardener). The priming effects are not due to normative word association. On our account, facilitation results from event knowledge relating primes and targets. This has much in common with computational models like LSA or BEAGLE in which one word primes another if they frequently occur in similar contexts. LSA predicts priming for all six experiments, whereas BEAGLE correctly predicted that priming should not occur for the instrument-people relation but should occur for the other five. We conclude that event-based relations are encoded in semantic memory and computed as part of word meaning, and have a strong influence on language comprehension.What information do comprehenders use as they read and understand words and sentences? As a variety of results in sentence and discourse processing demonstrate, a crucial part of this information is knowledge of common events or situations in the world (Altmann, 1999;Altmann & Kamide, 1999;Camblin, Gordon, & Swaab, 2007;Hess, Foss, & Carroll, 1995;MacDonald, 1994;McKoon & Ratcliff, 2005;Vu, Kellas, Petersen, & Metcalf, 2003). But although such information is known to be important at the sentence level, it is rarely addressed at the level of individual words. Priming studies investigating word meaning tend to focus instead on semantic relatedness, often narrowly defined as the relationship between members of the same category, such as horse and cow (Fischler, 1977;Lupker, 1984;Shelton & Martin, 1992), or on a broader set of associative relations, generally determined through a normative word association task. With the notable exception of Moss, Ostrin, Tyler, and Marslen-Wilson (1995), very few investigations into the organization of semantic memory have addressed the role of event-or situation-based relations.This appears to be a crucial gap in the literature, because in order to understand the influence of event knowledge on comprehension, we must also understand what information is made available when specific words (or classes of words) are encountered. One fruitful method for investigating this issue is semantic priming. In this article, we present a set of priming studies Address correspondence concerning this article to: Mary Hare, Department of Psychology, Bowl...

Non-genetic influences on phenotypic traits can affect our interpretation of genetic variance and the evolutionary potential of populations to respond to selection, with consequences for our ability to predict the outcomes of selection. Long-term population surveys and experiments have shown that quantitative genetic estimates are influenced by nongenetic effects, including shared environmental effects, epigenetic effects, and social interactions. Recent developments to the “animal model” of quantitative genetics can now allow us to calculate precise individual-based measures of non-genetic phenotypic variance. These models can be applied to a much broader range of contexts and data types than used previously, with the potential to greatly expand our understanding of nongenetic effects on evolutionary potential. Here, we provide the first practical guide for researchers interested in distinguishing between genetic and nongenetic causes of phenotypic variation in the animal model. The methods use matrices describing individual similarity in nongenetic effects, analogous to the additive genetic relatedness matrix. In a simulation of various phenotypic traits, accounting for environmental, epigenetic, or cultural resemblance between individuals reduced estimates of additive genetic variance, changing the interpretation of evolutionary potential. These variances were estimable for both direct and parental nongenetic variances. Our tutorial outlines an easy way to account for these effects in both wild and experimental populations. These models have the potential to add to our understanding of the effects of genetic and nongenetic effects on evolutionary potential. This should be of interest both to those studying heritability, and those who wish to understand nongenetic variance.

There is abundant evidence in many taxa for positive directional selection on body size, and yet little evidence for microevolutionary change. In many species, variation in body size is partly determined by the actions of parents, so a proposed explanation for stasis is the presence of a negative genetic correlation between direct and parental effects. Consequently, selecting genes for increased body size would result in a correlated decline in parental effects, reducing body size in the following generation. We show that these arguments implicitly assume that parental care is cost free, and that including a cost alters the predicted genetic architectures needed to explain stasis. Using a large cross-fostered population of blue tits, we estimate direct selection on parental effects for body mass, and show it is negative. Negative selection is consistent with a cost to parental care, mainly acting through a reduction in current fecundity rather than survival. Under these conditions, evolutionary stasis is possible for moderately negative genetic correlations between direct and parental effects. This is in contrast to the implausibly extreme correlations needed when care is assumed to be cost-free. Thus, we highlight the importance of accounting correctly for complete selection acting on traits across generations.

Context. Aerial poisoning using sodium fluoroacetate (1080) is an important but controversial technique used for large-scale control of brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) and other pests in New Zealand. The technique reliably produces near total kills of possums and rats, provided that many tens of baits (and therefore many tens of individually lethal doses) are sown for each target animal present.Aim. The aim of this study was to further refine aerial 1080 poisoning by determining the effect of prefeeding, sowing rate, and sowing pattern on effectiveness.Methods. Eighteen experimental treatments comprising all possible combinations of three sowing rates (1, 2, and 5 kg/ha of bait), three frequencies of non-toxic prefeed (0, 1, and 2) and two sowing patterns (parallel and cross-hatched) were applied to each of two forested areas. Treatment effectiveness was assessed from changes in the rate of interference recorded on baited cards for three species: possum, ship rat (Rattus rattus) and mouse (Mus musculus).Key results. Outcomes were highly variable, ranging from increases in pest activity to near total reductions. Possum reductions were highest where one or two prefeeds were used, and at the higher sowing rates (2 or 5 kg/ha), but with some interactions between these factors. For rats, two prefeeds resulted in the highest reductions but sowing rate had no effect. For mice, post-poisoning indices were often high, indicating low effectiveness.Conclusions. Some treatments were highly effective so poor kills were unlikely to have resulted from pests not encountering bait, or the bait being unpalatable. Rather they appeared to reflect sub-lethal poisoning either as a result of low acceptance (as a result of a lack of familiarity and/or satiation) or bait fragmentation. We infer that for possum and rats prefeeding helps reduce this risk of sub-lethal poisoning not only by increasing familiarity, but also (in conjunction with high sowing rates) by increasing the bait encounter rate, particularly for possums.Implications. There is scope to further reduce the amount of toxic bait sown and the cost of poisoning, without compromising efficacy, by fine-tuning the balance between prefeeding and sowing rate based on which species are being targeted and, for possums, reducing bait fragmentation.

Summary1. Invasive herbivores can have large negative impacts on natural ecosystems. Management of invasive populations often requires frequent, broadscale, expensive control, which must be justified by demonstrating progress in achieving conservation objectives. This study evaluates benefits of regular extensive control of an invasive herbivore and develops an alternative strategy based on damage thresholds. 2. We carried out replicated experimental management of brushtail possums, Trichosurus vulpecula, in three areas of native forest in New Zealand. Each area included a site that had extensive possum control for 10 years, prior to and during the 5-year study, and a paired site with no control. We measured indices of possum browse on c.2400 possum 'preferred' and c.1200 'non-preferred' trees, and an index of possum abundance, at the beginning and end of the experiment. 3. Extensive control was effective in reducing possum browse on preferred tree species. Reductions in browse led to increased foliage cover and decreased probability of tree mortality. The probability of browse on an individual tree decreased with increasing amounts of possum-preferred foliage on nearby trees but increased with tree size and with increasing levels of browse on nearby trees. At one site where possum control ceased prematurely, foliage cover decreased, reducing benefits from earlier control. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our study provides evidence that sustained, extensive control of invasive herbivores can result in significant conservation benefits to susceptible tree species, and that both impacts and benefits can be measured using data typically collected in herbivore impact studies. Furthermore, it shows how local factors such as forest composition can influence the impact of herbivory, how this can be included in large-scale assessments of the benefits of pest control and how site-and species-specific damage thresholds can be derived for improving pest management.

Simply by modifying bait distribution patterns, spatial aggregation can be used to maintain the high encounter rate of pests with 1080 bait that is necessary for operational efficacy, while reducing current toxin usage by up to 80%. Aggregated bait delivery could have relevance for other mammalian pest control scenarios internationally.

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