Jamie C Weir

The University of Edinburgh | UoE · Institute of Evolutionary Biology

We present a genome assembly from an individual female Maniola jurtina (the meadow brown; Arthropoda; Insecta; Lepidoptera; Nymphalidae). The genome sequence is 402 megabases in span. The complete assembly is scaffolded into 30 chromosomal pseudomolecules, with the W and Z sex chromosome assembled. Gene annotation of this assembly on Ensembl has id...

Understanding the mechanisms which actively maintain phenotypic variation in natural populations is an important consideration in evolutionary biology. Many cryptic prey species which rely upon avoiding visual detection by predators are also highly polymorphic, seemingly contradicting our expectation that selection would drive such a population tow...

Climate warming has caused the seasonal timing of many components of ecological food chains to advance. In the context of trophic interactions, the match–mismatch hypothesis postulates that differential shifts can lead to phenological asynchrony with negative impacts for consumers. However, at present there has been no consistent analysis of the li...

Climate warming has caused the seasonal timing of many components of ecological food chains to advance (Thackeray et al. 2010, 2016). In the context of trophic interactions the match-mismatch hypothesis (MMH) postulates that differential shifts can lead to phenological asynchrony with negative impacts for consumers (Cushing 1990). However, it is st...

Phenotypic polymorphism in cryptic species is widespread. This may evolve in response to search image use by predators exerting negative frequency‐dependent selection on intraspecific colour morphs, “apostatic selection”. Evidence exists to indicate search image formation by predators and apostatic selection operating on wild prey populations, thou...

This report describes the carabid beetles recorded across a three week period of pitfall trapping at the Woodland Trust property of Glen Finglas, West Perthshire (VC87), in September and October 2012. Traps were set in transects through five different habitats: a grassland, oak woodland, birch woodland, heathland, and a stream-side. In total, 64 sp...

Paradoxically, many species which rely upon crypsis to avoid predation also display considerable colour polymorphism. It has been argued that this has evolved in response to the use of "searching images" by foraging predators. Searching images result from a predator encountering a prey item and undergoing a process of learning, recalling the appear...

A small series of temperature experiments conducted on Argynnis aglaja pupae are described. Specimens were exposed to warm (~25oC), cold (~5oC) and alternating warm and cold temperatures. Pupal mortality rates under each temperature treatment are given, and the colouration of the resulting imagines is described and figured. It is tentatively conclu...

The validity of naming and describing intraspecific taxa, and the subsequent grouping of such named entities into distinct taxonomic categories, is briefly considered and evaluated. The intraspecific taxonomic categories of aberration, variety, form, race and sub-species are defined and examples given as to their usage. The naming of unique mutants...