Abstract: Natal dispersal is a key life history trait for the evolution and adaptation of wild populations. Although its evolution has repeatedly been related to the social and environmental context faced by individuals, parentoffspring regressions have also highlighted a possible heritable component. In this study, we explore heritability of natal dispersal, at the scale of the sub-Antarctic Possession Island, for a large-scale foraging seabird, the Wandering albatross Diomedea exulans, exploiting a pedigree spanning over four decades and a maximum of four generations. The comparison of three different methods shows that heritability on the liability scale can vary drastically depending on the type of model (heritability from 6% to 86%), with a notable underestimation by restricted maximum likelihood animal models (6%) compared to Bayesian animal models (36%). In all cases, however, our results point to significant additive genetic variance in the individual propensity to disperse, after controlling for substantial effects of sex and natal colony. These results reveal promising evolutionary potential for short-scale natal dispersal, which could play a critical role for the long-term persistence of this species on the long run.

Abstract: By definition, parasitic organisms are strongly dependant on their hosts, and for a great majority, this dependence includes host-to-host transmission. Constraints imposed by the host's spatial distribution and demography, in combination with those of the parasite, can lead to a metapopulation structure, where parasite populations are highly stochastic (i.e. prone to frequent extinctions and re-colonizations) and where drift becomes a major force shaping standing genetic variation. This, in turn, will directly affect the observed population structure, along with the ability of the parasite to adapt (or co-adapt) to its host. However, only a specific consideration of temporal dynamics can reveal the extent to which drift shapes parasite population structure; this is rarely taken into account in population genetic studies of parasitic organisms. The study by Bruyndonckx et al. in this issue of Molecular Ecology does just this and, in doing so, illustrates how a comparison of host-parasite co-structures in light of temporal dynamics can be particularly informative for understanding the ecological and evolutionary constraints imposed by the host. More specifically, the authors examine spatial and temporal population genetic data of a parasitic mite Spinturnix bechsteini that exclusively exploits the Bechstein's bat Myotis bechsteinii and consider these data in relation to host-parasite life histories and the population structure of the host.

Abstract: The high Arctic has the world's simplest terrestrial vertebrate predatorprey community, with the collared lemming being the single main prey of four predators, the snowy owl, the Arctic fox, the long-tailed skua, and the stoat. Using a 20-year-long time series of population densities for the five species and a dynamic model that has been previously parameterized for northeast Greenland, we analyzed the population and community level consequences of the ongoing and predicted climate change. Species' responses to climate change are complex, because in addition to the direct effects of climate change, which vary depending on species' life histories, species are also affected indirectly due to, e.g., predatorprey interactions. The lemmingpredator community exemplifies these complications, yet a robust conclusion emerges from our modeling: in practically all likely scenarios of how climate change may influence the demography of the species, climate change increases the length of the lemming population cycle and decreases the maximum population densities. The latter change in particular is detrimental to the populations of the predators, which are adapted to make use of the years of the greatest prey abundance. Therefore, climate change will indirectly reduce the predators' reproductive success and population densities, and may ultimately lead to local extinction of some of the predator species. Based on these results, we conclude that the recent anomalous observations about lack of cyclic lemming dynamics in eastern Greenland may well be the first signs of a severe impact of climate change on the lemmingpredator communities in Greenland and elsewhere in the high Arctic.

Abstract: Shear wave splitting is perhaps the most unambiguous signature of the effect of anisotropic materials on the propagation of seismic waves. It has been used extensively to study anisotropy in the Earth, at global scales from the inner core to the tectonics of the uppermost mantle and crust, and at smaller scales for imaging deformation in hydrocarbon reservoirs. Well-established techniques exist for measuring shear wave splitting in a single (three-component) seismogram and more recently these have been extended to treat shear wave splitting in a tomographic fashion: determining non-uniform anisotropic models using large data sets of splitting measurements. Here, I propose an extension to a recent shear wave splitting tomography methodology which incorporates the data analysis into the inversion itself. This methodology uses a non-linear neighbourhood algorithm inversion to explore the parameter space defined by an anisotropic model consisting of a number of uniform domains. Each candidate model is assessed by applying the splitting it predicts to the entire data set. This approach is computationally expensive, but is highly amenable to parallelization. I apply the methodology to three simple synthetic cases to demonstrate the utility of the method. Finally, I apply the approach to the problem of inferring two-layer anisotropy from SKS splitting, which is a commonly attempted problem in global seismology. This uses data from the seismic station EKTN, where two-layer splitting has been previously inferred. This highlights some of the inherent trade-offs with such studies, and emphasizes the need to incorporate extra information to resolve these. This method is applicable to shear wave anisotropy analysis in a broad range of settings from global to reservoir scale.

Abstract: Volcanic passive margins (VPMs) are characterized by large volumes of melt emplaced within the lithosphere during break-up processes. Several data and a recently proposed conceptual model of volcanic margin development suggest that VPMs are fed from localized crustal zones of magma storage, underlying large polygenetic volcanoes localized above diapir-like instabilities of the asthenosphere. We investigated the magma flow pattern within the coast-parallel dyke swarm of the East Greenland VPM, which is the only outcropping VPM, over a distance of 125 km. The 44 sampled dykes are representative of the successive families of intrusions. Igneous petrofabrics are constrained by the measurements of the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility. The magnetic fabrics are of medium to low anisotropy (P' < 1.08) and show moderately oblate ellipsoids (T > 0) . Flow-related fabrics are recorded in 75 per cent of the sampled dykes. We infer the flow directions from the imbrication geometry of the magnetic foliation planes at the dyke margins, and check the results by measuring the preferred orientation of plagioclase in thin sections cut in the magnetic principal planes. Due to probable fabric superposition, the magnetic lineation represents the zone axis for the distribution of magnetic foliation plane. We obtained 23 reliable flow directions that are predominantly horizontal and directed away from identified crustal reservoirs. This flow pattern supports the proposed model of VPM growth, and emphasizes the localized nature of the magma sources in the mantle. The entire flood basalt sequence appears to have been fed by a restricted number of crustal reservoirs and associated dyke swarms.