John H. Graham- Ph.D.
- Professor Emeritus at Berry College
John H. Graham
- Ph.D.
- Professor Emeritus at Berry College
About
105
Publications
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Introduction
I am interested in random developmental noise, as measured by fluctuating asymmetry. I have also done significant work on the community ecology of ants, species diversity of fishes and ants, and the dynamics of hybridization and hybrid zones in fishes (Enneacanthus and Onchyrhynchus), birds (Colaptes), and sagebrush (Artemisia).
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 1978 - May 1980
August 1989 - present
January 1988 - July 1989
Education
September 1978 - June 1986
Publications
Publications (105)
The simple leaves of deciduous forest trees in temperate zones have more irregular and asymmetric shapes than comparable non-deciduous leaves of trees in the tropics and subtropics. These shapes manifest as the irregular lobes and sinuses of temperate species of Quercus and Acer, as well as the greater bilateral asymmetry of Ulmaceae and Betulaceae...
In this special issue of Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, we present a series of mini-reviews of some of the most exciting research involving the concept of symmetry. This research spans the biological sciences from proteins to ecosystems. The reviews examine protein and floral symmetry, primate brain and behavioral asymmetries, geometric morphome...
Random developmental variation, or developmental noise, contributes to total phenotypic variation in the human species. Despite exhortations to examine it, especially with respect to human behavior and intelligence, there has been little research specifically devoted to doing so. Random developmental variation can be estimated in studies of fluctua...
Biotic and abiotic stressors are known to modify the morphology of forest trees. Nevertheless, there is little information on the effects of tree decline on leaf and fruit morphology of oaks. To understand morphological adaptations of Persian oak (Quercus brantii Lindl.) to oak decline, we compared leaves and fruit from healthy and declining Persia...
Phenotypic variation arises from genetic and environmental variation, as well as random aspects of development. The genetic (nature) and environmental (nurture) components of this variation have been appreciated since at least 1900. The random developmental component (noise) has taken longer for quantitative geneticists to appreciate. Here, I sketc...
Best practices in studies of developmental instability, as measured by fluctuating asymmetry, have developed over the past 60 years. Unfortunately, they are haphazardly applied in many of the papers submitted for review. Most often, research designs suffer from lack of randomization, inadequate replication, poor attention to size scaling, lack of a...
Drought affects avian communities in complex ways. We used our own and citizen science-generated reproductive data acquired through The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s NestWatch Program, combined with drought and vegetation indices obtained from governmental agencies, to determine drought effects on Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis L.) reproduction acr...
Drought affects avian communities in complex ways. We used our own and citizen science-generated reproductive data acquired through The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's NestWatch Program, combined with drought and vegetation indices obtained from governmental agencies, to determine drought effects on Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis L.) reproduction acr...
Fluctuating asymmetry, the random deviation from perfect symmetry, is a widely used population-level index of developmental instability, developmental noise, and robustness. It reflects a population’s state of adaptation and genomic coadaptation. Here, we review the literature on fluctuating asymmetry of human populations. The most widely used bila...
Unlike landmark methods for estimating object asymmetry, continuous symmetry measures (CSM) can be used to measure the symmetry distance (ds) of inconsistent objects, such as plant leaves. Inconsistent objects have no homologous landmarks, no consistent topology, no quantitative consistency, and sometimes no matching points. When CSM is used in con...
Dermatoglyphics, ridge constellations on the hands and feet, are permanently formed by the second trimester of pregnancy. Consequently, they are considered “fossilized” evidence of a specific prenatal period. A high frequency of dermatoglyphic anomalies, or a high rate of dermatoglyphic asymmetry (discordance), is an indication of developmental ins...
Historically, medical concerns about the deleterious effects of closely inbred marriages have focused on the risk posed by recessive Mendelian disease, with much less attention to developmental instability. We studied the effects of inbreeding (first-cousin marriage) on growth and fluctuating asymmetry of 200 full-term infants (101 inbred and 99 ou...
Background:
Distributed robustness is thought to influence the buffering of random phenotypic variation through the scale-free topology of gene regulatory, metabolic, and protein-protein interaction networks. If this hypothesis is true, then the phenotypic response to the perturbation of particular nodes in such a network should be proportional to...
Errata in the original article on the double Pareto-lognormal distribution by Reed.
(DOCX)
Ecological indicators provide early warning of adverse environmental change, helping land managers adaptively manage their resources while minimizing costly remediation. In 1999 and 2000, we studied two such indicators, growth and developmental instability, of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) influenced by mechanized infantry training at Fort Benning...
Developmental instability of shelled gastropods is measured as deviations from a perfect equiangular (logarithmic) spiral. We studied six species of gastropods at 'Evolution Canyons I and II' in Carmel and the Galilee Mountains, Israel, respectively. The xeric, south-facing, 'African' slopes and the mesic, north-facing, 'European' slopes have drama...
![Figure 5. Mean size of colonies of soil microfungi. E [( x i l 2 1)/ l ],](profile/Eviatar-Nevo/publication/224812040/figure/fig5/AS:302574415695877@1449150770569/Mean-size-of-colonies-of-soil-microfungi-E-x-i-l-2-1-l_Q320.jpg)
Fluctuating asymmetry is a contentious indicator of stress in populations of animals and plants. Nevertheless, it is a measure of developmental noise, typically obtained by measuring asymmetry across an individual organism's left-right axis of symmetry. These individual, signed asymmetries are symmetrically distributed around a mean of zero. Fluctu...
Hybridization of cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkii with nonindigenous rainbow trout O. mykiss contributes to the decline of cutthroat trout subspecies throughout their native range. Introgression by rainbow trout can swamp the gene pools of cutthroat trout populations, especially if there is little selection against hybrids. We used rainbow trou...
Is fluctuating asymmetry a reliable indicator of a population's state of adaptation? Does it respond in a predictable way to stress? How is it best employed by evolutionary biologists? To answer these questions, we studied leaf asymmetry of twelve species of vascular plants growing under contrasting microclimates on the opposing slopes of ‘Evolutio...
Functional relationships involving species richness may be unimodal, monotonically increasing, monotonically decreasing, bimodal, multimodal, U-shaped, or with no discernable pattern. The unimodal relationships are the most interesting because they suggest dynamic, nonequilibrium community processes. For that reason, they are also contentious. In t...
Fluctuating asymmetry consists of random deviations from perfect symmetry in populations of organisms. It is a measure of developmental noise, which reflects a population’s average state of adaptation and coadaptation. Moreover, it increases under both environmental and genetic stress, though responses are often inconsistent. Researchers base studi...
Ants are used as indicators of environmental change in disturbed landscapes, often without adequate understanding of their response to disturbance. Ant communities in the southeastern United States displayed a hump-backed species richness curve against an index of landscape disturbance. Forty sites at Fort Benning, in west-central Georgia, covered...
Military training, soil texture, and ground cover influence ant communities at Fort Benning, a military installation in west-central Georgia. We sampled 81,237 ground-dwelling ants (47 species in 20 genera) with pitfall traps at 40 sites on a continuum from nearly pristine forest to highly disturbed training areas. We also measured 15 environmental...
Three widely used methods of estimating fluctuating asymmetry may yield serious overestimates if directional asymmetry is present. When two sides of a bilateral trait grow at different rates, then the asymmetry variance (Var[l-r]) increases with size, even when developmental noise is nil. But the residual variance around a population's mean develop...
Military training, soil texture, and ground cover influence ant communities at Fort Benning, a military installation in west-central Georgia. We sampled 81,237 ground-dwelling ants (47 species in 20 genera) with pitfall traps at 40 sites on a continuum from nearly pristine forest to highly disturbed training areas. We also measured 15 environmental...
We have studied reciprocal transplant gardens involving the hybrid zone between basin and mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) in Salt Creek Canyon, Utah, for 9 years. Previously, we showed that the parental taxa and hybrids had superior reproductive and vegetative performance in their native garden. These earlier data supported the Bounde...
We studied Cnidoscolus stimulosus and Ipomoea pandurata, two common herbs of the Fall Line Sandhills to assess their potential as ecosystem level stress indicators. We focused on plants because they are among the most persistent organisms in terrestrial ecosystems. We used developmental instability as an indicator of plant population stress. Develo...
We examined net photosynthesis, transpiration, stomatal conductance, and leaf fluctuating asymmetry on two species (Rhus copallinum and Ipomoea pandurata) as indicators of stress at nine sites across a gradient of soil disturbance at Fort Benning, Georgia. There were three sites for each of three disturbance levels. Physical habitat disturbance was...
We examined habitat disturbance, species richness, equitability, and abundance of ants in the Fall-Line Sandhills, at Fort Benning, Georgia. We collected ants with pitfall traps, sweep nets, and by searching tree trunks. Disturbed areas were used for military training; tracked and wheeled vehicles damaged vegetation and soils. Highly disturbed site...
Developmental instability, as assessed by leaf fluctuating asymmetry and stem internode allometry, was examined at nine sites, representing three levels of disturbance, over multiple years. Site selection was based on land-use disturbance classes related to training of mechanized infantry and other land management activities at Fort Benning, Georgi...
We used developmental instability, water potential, and variable fluorescence to determine if populations of winged sumac (Rhus copallinum) were being negatively effected by military training disturbance. We established nine sites that represented a land-use disturbance gradient with three impact levels (low, medium, and high), the effects mostly d...
Multiplicative error accounts for much of the size-scaling and leptokurtosis in fluctuating asymmetry. It arises when growth involves the addition of tissue to that which is already present. Such errors are lognormally distributed. The distribution of the difference between two lognormal variates is leptokurtic. If those two variates are correlated...
Fear lives among Everest’s mighty ice-fluted faces and howls across its razor-sharp crags. Gnawing at reason and enslaving minds, it has killed many and defeated countless others. But in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stared into its dark eye and did not waver. On May 29, they pushed spent bodies and aching lungs past the achievable to pur...
Fear lives among Everest’s mighty ice-fluted faces and howls across its razor-sharp crags. Gnawing at reason and enslaving minds, it has killed many and defeated countless others. But in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stared into its dark eye and did not waver. On May 29, they pushed spent bodies and aching lungs past the achievable to pur...
Fear lives among Everest’s mighty ice-fluted faces and howls across its razor-sharp crags. Gnawing at reason and enslaving minds, it has killed many and defeated countless others. But in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stared into its dark eye and did not waver. On May 29, they pushed spent bodies and aching lungs past the achievable to pur...
Fear lives among Everest’s mighty ice-fluted faces and howls across its razor-sharp crags. Gnawing at reason and enslaving minds, it has killed many and defeated countless others. But in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stared into its dark eye and did not waver. On May 29, they pushed spent bodies and aching lungs past the achievable to pur...
Fear lives among Everest’s mighty ice-fluted faces and howls across its razor-sharp crags. Gnawing at reason and enslaving minds, it has killed many and defeated countless others. But in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stared into its dark eye and did not waver. On May 29, they pushed spent bodies and aching lungs past the achievable to pur...
Fluctuating asymmetry measures random deviations from bilateral symmetry, and thus estimates developmental instability, the loss of ability by an organism to regulate its development. There have been few rigorous tests of this proposition. Regulation of bilateral symmetry must involve either feedback between the sides or independent reg-ulation tow...
Several species of gall-forming insects specialize on big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), a species that shows much clinal and subspecific variation throughout its geographic range. Two of those subspecies, basin big sagebrush (A. t. ssp. tridentata) and mountain big sagebrush (A. t. ssp. vaseyana), form a narrow hybrid zone at Salt Creek, Utah....
Magnetic fields (60 Hz) of 1.5 and 80 microT caused a significant reduction in the weight of Drosophila melanogaster. Moreover, fruit flies in an 80 microT field showed lower developmental stability than either those in a 0 or 1.5 microT field. Developmental instability was measured by fluctuating asymmetry and frequency of phenodeviants. More of t...
Basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. tridentata) and mountain big sagebrush (A. t. ssp. vaseyana) hybrid-ize in a narrow zone near Salt Creek, Utah. Reciprocal transplant experiments in this hybrid zone demonstrate that hybrids are more fit than either parental subspecies, but only in the hybrid zone. Do hybrids experience greater, or les...
Developmental instability is often assessed using deviations from perfect bilateral symmetry. Here, we review the literature describing previous studies, suggest mechanisms that may account for both the generation and disruption of bilateral symmetry, and examine the influence of electromagnetic fields on the asymmetry of soybean leaves. Leaves fro...
Plants are ideal organisms for studying genotypic and environmental influences on developmental stability. Because they may have numerous leaves, flowers, and stems, one can study variation in developmental stability in a single individual. Moreover, one often has sufficient degrees of freedom to test for differences in devel- opmental stability am...
Parental and hybrid populations of big sagebrush in Salt Creek Canyon, Utah, show clinal variation in terpene composition across a hybrid zone. Terpenes differ between seasons, subspecies (including hybrids), individual plants, and leaves from vegetative branches and inflorescences on the same plant. While hybrids were intermediate for most common...
Neo-Darwinian theory is highly successful at explaining the emergence of adaptive traits over successive generations. However, there are reasons to doubt its efficacy in explaining the observed, impressively detailed adaptive responses of organisms to day-to-day changes in their surroundings. Also, the theory lacks a clear mechanism to account for...
According to the biological species concept, the rein- forcement of premating reproductive isolating mechanisms is due to reduced fitness of hybrids, thus hybridization may play a central role in speciation. On the other hand, hybridization is also a potent source of genetic variation that can be passed from one taxon to another, provided that hybr...
The big sagebrush hybrid zone at Salt Creek, Utah, occupies an ecotone between two plant communities on the lower slopes of Mount Nebo. Nevertheless, the ecotone containing the hybrid zone is not simply intermediate to that of the parental zones. Soils in the hybrid zone are distinct, and exhibit more spatial heterogeneity than do soils in the pare...
Three widely used methods of estimating fluctuating asymmetry may yield serious overestimates if directional asymmetry is present. When two sides of a bilateral trait grow at different rates, then the asymmetry variance (Var[l-r]) increases with size, even when developmental noise is nil. But the residual variance around a population's mean develop...
Three widely used methods of estimating fluctuating asymmetry may yield serious overestimates if directional asymmetry is present. When two sides of a bilateral trait grow at different rates, then the asymmetry variance (Var[l−r]) increases with size, even when developmental noise is nil. But the residual variance around a population's mean develop...
Respiration and stem water potential (Psi) were examined in parental and hybrid big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. tridentata and Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. vaseyana (Rydb.) Beetle) grown in common gardens within each parental zone and in the hybrid zone. Plants were sampled in July, August, and September, i.e., immediately before,...
Respiration and stem water potential ( psi ) were examined in parental and hybrid big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. tridentata and Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. vaseyana (Rydb.) Beetle) grown in common gardens within each parental zone and in the hybrid zone. Plants were sampled in July, August, and September, i.e., immediately befor...
We studied soils of the big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) hybrid zone at two locations in Utah. The elemental composition, depth, and pH of soil in the basin and mountain big sagebrush habitats differed significantly from each other and from the hybrid zone soil. The hybrid zone soil is not just a simple blend of the two parental habitat soils....
Respiration and stem water potential (ψ) were examined in parental and hybrid big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. tridentata and Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. vaseyana (Rydb.) Beetle) grown in common gardens within each parental zone and in the hybrid zone. Plants were sampled in July, August, and September, i.e., immediately before, d...
Does endogenous or exogenous selection stabilize the big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)
hybrid zone? After two years of study, our reciprocal transplant experiments showed
significant genotype by environment interactions for a number of fitness components,
including germination, growth, and reproduction. Hybrids were the most fit within the hy...
Does endogenous or exogenous selection stabilize the big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) hybrid zone? After two years of study, our reciprocal transplant experiments showed significant genotype by environment interactions for a number of fitness components, including germination, growth, and reproduction. Hybrids were the most fit within the hybri...
Ecologically important parameters such as species di versity, productivity, survivorship or fecundity are often used as indicators of a population's or community's well being (or, con versely, stress). However, ecological indicators are lagging indica tors of stress, documenting problems that have already occurred. Here we advocate the use of de...
Stable hybrid zones are believed to occur because gene dispersal is opposed by selection, but the nature of this selection remains unclear. The dynamic equilibrium model postulates that hybridization disrupts coadapted gene complexes, leading to alterations in development and subsequent hybrid unfitness. Alternatively, the bounded hybrid superiorit...
Stable hybrid zones are believed to occur because gene dispersal is opposed by selection, but the nature of this selection remains unclear. The dynamic equilibrium model postulates that hybridization disrupts coadapted gene complexes, leading to alterations in development and subsequent hybrid unfitness. Alternatively, the bounded hybrid superiorit...
The dynamic equilibrium hypothesis proposes that hybrid zones are stabilized by a balance between dispersal and selection against hybrids. A key prediction of this hypothesis is that hybrids should have lower fitness than either parental taxon, regardless of habitat. Hybrid big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. tridentata x ssp. vaseyana) in two...
The dynamic equilibrium hypothesis proposes that hybrid zones are stabilized by a balance between dispersal and selection against hybrids. A key prediction of this hypothesis is that hybrids should have lower fitness than either parental taxon, regardless of habitat. Hybrid big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. tridentata × ssp. vaseyana) in two...
Hybrid big sagebrush ( ssp. x ssp. vaseyana) in two narrow hybrid zones do show greatly decreased recruitment.
Background: Distributed robustness is thought to influence the buffering of random phenotypic variation through the scale-free topology of gene regulatory, metabolic, and protein-protein interaction networks. If this hypothesis is true, then the phenotypic response to the perturbation of particular nodes in such a network should be proportional to...
Fish communities in acidic lakes of New Jersey have fewer species than do those in more alkaline lakes of comparable size. This conclusion is based on a multiple regression analysis of published data on fish communities, area, and pH in 85 lakes. Some interesting patterns emerge, however, when species are partitioned into introduced and native spec...
: Fluctuating asymmetry has been proposed as a general and sensitive indicator of developmental instability. Although there have been many field studies of fluctuating asymmetry in populations exposed to toxic chemicals, there have been few laboratory studies. To test the hypothesis that stress from toxic chemicals causes an increase in fluctuating...
: Developmental stability refers to the ability of a developing organism to produce a consistent phenotype in a given environment. It provides a simple, reliable method of detecting stressed populations and monitoring their recovery. The most common measure of developmental instability, fluctuating asymmetry, assesses minor deviations from perfect...
Fluctuating asymmetry is the most commonly used measure of developmental instability. Some authors have claimed that antisymmetry
and directional asymmetry may have a significant genetic basis, thereby rendering these forms of asymmetry useless for studies
of developmental instability. Using a modified Rashevsky-Turing reaction-diffusion model of m...
The nonlinear, complex nature of biosynthesis magnifies the impacts of small, random perturbations on organism growth, leading
to distortions in adaptive allometries and, in particular, to fluctuating asymmetry. These distortions can be partly checked
by cell-cell and inter-body part feedback during growth and development, though the latter mechani...
Plant developmental stability has received little attention in the past three or four decades. Here we review differences
in plant and animal development, and discuss the advantages of using plants as experimental subjects in exploring developmental
stability. We argue that any type of developmental invariant may be used to assess developmental sta...
Developmental stability can be a sensitive indicator of the physiological state of individuals in natural populations. As such, it has potential as an indicator of stress, and is inexpensive and easily measured. Moreover, it can be estimated from museum specimens or from tree cores that span the time period of the disturbance. Thus, one can identif...
Fluctuating asymmetry is the most commonly used measure of developmental instability. Some authors have claimed that antisymmetry and directional asymmetry may have a significant genetic basis, thereby rendering these forms of asymmetry useless for studies of developmental instability. Using a modified Rashevsky-Turing reaction-diffusion model of m...
Description
28 papers in this state-of-the-art publication present regulatory concerns, basic research, risk and hazard assessment, and methods development in environmental toxicology.
Sections include:
• Ecological Risk Assessment Under TSCA
• Evaluating Ecological Impacts at the Population and Community Levels
• Biomarkers
• Marine Toxicity Test...
Introduction to "Developmental Stability in Natural Populations."
Developmental stability in natural populations depends upon a balance between heterozygosity and coadaptation. Because populations in hybrid zones show both increased heterozygosity and disrupted gene complexes, they may show either increased or decreased developmental stability. In most hybrid zones, however, the hybrids are less developmentally s...
Hybridization between Artemisia tridentata ssp. tridentata and A. t. ssp. vaseyana occurs in a narrow elevational zone along the west face and canyons of the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Two sites in central Utah (Orem and Salt Creek) were examined. The parental taxa differ in anatomy, morphology, flavonoid and coumarin content, as well as various gr...
The northern flicker is a common woodpecker that inhabits open woodlands throughout North America. A narrow hybrid zone occurs along the range boundaries between the eastern yellow-shafted and western red-shafted subspecies. Mitochon- drial DNA (mtDNA) was isolated from 20 1 flickers from 27 locales, primarily along two transects that cross the hyb...
Hybridization between Artemisia tridentata ssp. tridentata and A. t. ssp. vaseyana occurs in a narrow elevational zone along the west face and canyons of the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Two sites in central Utah (Orem and Salt Creek) were examined. The parental taxa differ in anatomy, morphology, flavonoid and coumarin content, as well as various gr...
Niche relationships of fishes can be inferred from dietary analysis. Individual fish and their prey can be ordered along an underlying continuum that has ecological relevance, The specific arrangement is a function of the predator's behavior and the prey's spatial distribution. This distribution of prey eaten by predators conforms to the underlying...
Female pumpkinseed X green sunfish hybrids from Hall's Pond, Connecticut, were backcrossed to male pumpkinseed and male green sunfish. Offspring from these crosses are triploid and starch-gel electrophoresls shows they carry a double dose of the maternal genome. Thus, the female hybrids must produce unreduced, diploid eggs that are subsequently fer...
Using fluctuating bilateral asymmetry as a measure of developmental stability, we tested the hypothesis that genomic coadaptation mediates developmental stability in natural populations. Hybrid populations were more asymmetrical than populations of the parental species, and ranks of overall developmental instability were positively correlated with...
Questions
Question (1)
My students and I are counting several bristle tracts in Drosophila melanogaster: sternopleurals, orbitals, ocellars, frontals, and scutellars. We’ve done this in the past and we’re trying to improve our technique. One of the problems we have is that if the flies are anaesthetized with Fly Nap, or something similar, they will continue to twitch, which makes counting difficult at high power. If the flies are killed beforehand, by either an overdose or freezing, they begin losing water immediately. As the flies shrivel, counting becomes more difficult. We’ve tried suspending a few flies in 50% glycerol and they lose fluid too. We use a rough surface to orient the fly, so as to look down on the ocellars, frontals, and orbitals. The flies usually have to be moved frequently to see a bristle tract from a different angle. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.
