Simon D Rundle

University of Plymouth | UoP · Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre

Understanding the links between development and evolution is one of the major challenges of biology. ‘Heterochronies’, evolutionary alterations in the timings of development are posited as a key mechanism of evolutionary change, but their quantification requires gross simplification of organismal development. Consequently, how changes in event timi...

Phenomics, high-dimensional organismal phenotyping, is advanced as a solution to quantifying complex developmental responses to elevated temperatures . 'Energy proxy traits' (EPTs) measure the phenotype as a spectrum of energy values across different temporal frequencies from pixel value fluctuations of video. Whilst they have proven effective in m...

Thermal performance curves (TPCs) provide a powerful framework to assess the evolution of thermal sensitivity in populations exposed to divergent selection regimes across latitude. However, there is a lack of consensus regarding the extent to which physiological adjustments that compensate for latitudinal temperature variation (metabolic cold adapt...

Little is known about distribution patterns of micrometazoan organisms at different spatial scales and the mechanisms driving these patterns across different environments. Here we explore the fine-scale structure of tardigrades in a high-elevation Polylepis forest in northern Ecuador. To investigate spatial patterns of tardigrade abundance, we coll...

Thermal stress is a potentially important selective agent in intertidal marine habitats, but the role that thermal tolerance might play in local adaptation across shore height has been underexplored. Northwest Spain is home to two morphologically distinct ecotypes of the periwinkle Littorina saxatilis, separated by shore height and subject to subst...

Background Energy proxy traits (EPTs) are a novel approach to high dimensional organismal phenotyping that quantify the spectrum of energy levels within different temporal frequencies associated with mean pixel value fluctuations from video. They offer significant potential in addressing the phenotyping bottleneck in biology and are effective at id...

There is growing evidence that maternal exposure to environmental stressors can alter offspring phenotype and increase fitness. Here, we investigate the relative and combined effects of maternal and developmental exposure to mild hypoxia (65% and 74% air saturation respectively) on the growth and development of embryos of the marine gastropod Litto...

Phenomics has the potential to facilitate significant advances in biology but requires the development of high-throughput technologies capable of generating and analysing high-dimensional data. There are significant challenges associated with building such technologies, not least those required for investigating dynamic processes such as embryonic...

The ability of organisms to respond to predation threat by exhibiting induced defenses is well documented, but studies on the potential mechanistic basis for such responses are scarce. Here, we examine the transcriptomic response to predator kairomones of two functionally distinct developmental stages in embryos of the aquatic snail Radix balthica:...

There is a resurgence of interest in using phenotypic plasticity, ‘the environmentally sensitive production of alternative phenotypes by given genotypes’, as a framework in the study of evolutionary biology. The term developmental plasticity describes a more specific strand of investigation dealing with how alterations to developmental processes an...

Supplementary material of Lucey et al. MEPS 2018 vol. 589

With both global surface temperatures and the incidence and intensity of extreme temperature events projected to increase, the assessment of species' sensitivities to chronic and acute changes in temperature has become crucial. Sensitivity predictions are based predominantly on adult responses, despite the fact that early life stages may be more vu...

Low-pH vent systems are ideal natural laboratories to study the consequences of long-term low-pH exposure on marine species and thus identify life-history traits associated with low-pH tolerance. This knowledge can help to inform predictions on which types of species may be less vulnerable in future ocean acidification (OA) scenarios. Accordingly,...

Curated by Astrid Schrader and Elizabeth Johnson

Molluscs are the second most species-rich phylum in the animal kingdom, yet only 11 genomes of this group have been published so far. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of the pulmonate freshwater snail Radix auricularia. Six whole genome shotgun libraries with different layouts were sequenced. The resulting assembly comprises 4,823 scaffol...

Molluscs are the second most species-rich phylum in the animal kingdom, yet only eleven genomes of this group have been published so far. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of the pulmonate freshwater snail Radix auricularia . Six whole genome shotgun libraries with different layouts were sequenced. The resulting assembly comprises 4,823 sc...

Physiological responses to temperature are known to be a major determinant of species distributions and can dictate the sensitivity of populations to global warming. In contrast, little is known about how other major global change drivers, such as ocean acidification (OA), will shape species distributions in the future. Here, by integrating populat...

Supplementary Figures, Supplementary Tables and Supplementary References

There is a current surge of research interest in the potential role of developmental plasticity in adaptation and evolution. Here we make a case that some of this research effort should explore the adaptive significance of heterokairy, a specific type of plasticity that describes environmentally driven, altered timing of development within a specie...

Ocean acidification (OA) is likely to exert selective pressure on natural popula- tions. Our ability to predict which marine species will adapt to OA and what underlies this adaptive potential is of high conservation and resource manage- ment priority. Using a naturally low-pH vent site in the Mediterranean Sea (Castello Aragonese, Ischia) mirrorin...

Physiological plasticity of early developmental stages is a key way by which organisms can survive and adapt to environmental change. We investigated developmental plasticity of aspects of the cardio-respiratory physiology of encapsulated embryos of a marine, gastropod Littorina obtusata surviving exposure to moderate hypoxia (pO2=8 kPa) and compar...

Ocean acidification (OA) is likely to exert selective pressure on natural populations. Our ability to predict which marine species will adapt to OA, and what underlies this adaptive potential, are of high conservation and resource management priority. Using a naturally low pH vent site in the Mediterranean Sea (Castello Aragonese, Ischia) mirroring...

In the near future, the marine environment is likely to be subjected to simultaneous increases in temperature and decreased pH. The potential effects of these changes on intertidal, meiofaunal assemblages were investigated using a mesocosm experiment. Artificial Substrate Units containing meiofauna from the extreme low intertidal zone were exposed...

Small, early life stages, such as zebrafish embryos are increasingly used to assess the biological effects of chemical compounds in vivo. However, behavioural screens of such organisms are challenging in terms of both data collection (culture techniques, drug delivery and imaging) and data evaluation (very large data sets), restricting the use of h...

The biology of induced defences in very early life history stages is poorly understood in freshwater invertebrates, but may be equally, if not more, important than later stages in influencing population dynamics and survival. Here, we investigated how exposure of embryos of the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis to predator kairomones altered traits asso...

ATRIA was an immersive sound installation that was the result of a dynamic, reflective dialogue between artist Deborah Robinson and biologist Simon Rundle during Robinson's residency within the Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre, Plymouth University. The work drew on theoretical ideas in developmental biology and the sociology of science an...

Sea level rise and an increased frequency and severity of storm surge events due to climate change are likely to increase the susceptibility of low lying coastal areas to seawater flooding. An integral part of any coastal management strategy throughout European countries is the “do nothing” scenario; this is the benchmark against which putative int...

Supra-tidal plant communities fulfil a vital role in coastal protection and conservation but despite an increased likelihood of salt-water inundation from storm surges, we understand remarkably little on how salinity affects habitats like coastal grasslands or their component species. We quantified the survival and growth of a common coastal grassl...

Intraspecific variation in developmental event timing is common and may be the raw material from which heterochronies (altered timing of developmental events between ancestors and descendants) arise. However, our understanding of how variance in intraspecific developmental event timing is distributed across different hierar- chical, biological leve...

Understanding the link between ontogeny (development) and phylogeny (evolution) remains a key aim of biology. Heterochrony, the altered timing of developmental events between ancestors and descendants, could be such a link although the processes responsible for producing heterochrony, widely viewed as an interspecific phenomenon, are still unclear....

Background Motion analysis is one of the tools available to biologists to extract biologically relevant information from image datasets and has been applied to a diverse range of organisms. The application of motion analysis during early development presents a challenge, as embryos often exhibit complex, subtle and diverse movement patterns. A meth...

Phenotypic plasticity is a mechanism by which organisms can alter their morphology, life history or behaviour in response to environmental change. Here, we investigate shell plasticity in the intertidal gastropod Littorina littorea in response to the ocean acidification and elevated temperature values predicted for 2100, focusing on shell traits kn...

Phenotypic plasticity is a mechanism by which organisms can alter their morphology, life history or behaviour in response to environmental change. Here, we investigate shell plasticity in the intertidal gastropod Littorina littorea in response to the ocean acidification and elevated temperature values predicted for 2100, focusing on shell traits kn...

The molluscan cardiovascular system typically incorporates a transient extracardiac structure, the larval heart, early in development, but the functional importance of this structure is unclear. We documented the ontogeny and regulatory ability of the larval heart in relation to two other circulatory structures, the true heart and the velum, in the...

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Heterochrony, altered developmental timing between ancestors and their descendents, has been proposed as a pervasive evolutionary feature and recent analytical approaches have confirmed its existence as an evolutionary pattern. Yet, the mechanistic basis for heterochrony remains unclear and, in particular, whether intraspecific variation in the tim...

Numerous studies indicate that the behavioral responses of prey to the presence of predators can have an important role in structuring assemblages through trait-mediated indirect interactions. Few studies, however, have addressed how relative susceptibility to predation influences such interactions. Here we examine the effect of chemical cues from...

The ability to learn and form long-term memory (LTM) can enhance an animal’s fitness, for example by allowing it to remember predators, food sources or conspecific interactions. Here we used the great pond snail, Lymnaea stagnalis, to assess whether variability among natural populations in memory-forming capabilities occurs on a microgeographical s...

The investigation of the altered timing of developmental events is key to understanding evolution. Most empirical investigations of event timing are biased towards studying morphological variation. Recent reviews, however, have attempted to marshal the evidence for the importance of altered timing of physiological events, focusing on such timing sh...

In the future, marine organisms will face the challenge of coping with multiple environmental changes associated with increased levels of atmospheric Pco2, such as ocean warming and acidification. To predict how organisms may or may not meet these challenges, an in-depth understanding of the physiological and biochemical mechanisms underpinning org...

In the future, marine organisms will face the challenge of coping with multiple environmental changes associated with increased levels of atmospheric Pco2, such as ocean warming and acidification. To predict how organisms may or may not meet these challenges, an in-depth understanding of the physiological and biochemical mechanisms underpinning org...

Heterochrony, differences in the timing of developmental events between descendent species and their ancestors, is a pervasive evolutionary pattern. However, the origins of such timing changes are still not resolved. Here we show, using sequence analysis, that exposure to predator cues altered the timing of onset of several developmental events in...

1. Predicted increases in the temperature of freshwaters is likely to affect how prey species respond to predators. We investigated how the predator avoidance behaviour of the freshwater pulmonate snail Lymnaea stagnalis is influenced by the temperature at which it was reared and that at which behavioural trials were carried out. 2. Crawl-out behav...

Climate change is predicted to increase sea level and cause saline intrusion of coastal freshwaters. This will have consequences for freshwater organisms inhabiting such areas; developmental phenotypic plasticity may facilitate the persistence of freshwater species under such scenarios of increased salinity. Here we investigated developmental plast...

In aquatic habitats prey often show maximum responsiveness to predators when they are exposed to kairomones and alarm cues in combination. As alarm cues can derive from heterospecific as well as conspecific animals, prey may need to fine tune their responses depending on the taxa with which they co-occur. We used juveniles of the freshwater gastrop...

Alarm substances elicit behavioural responses in a wide range of animals but effects on early embryonic development are virtually unknown. Here we investigated whether skin injury-induced alarm substances caused physiological responses in embryos produced by two Danio species (Danio rerio and Danio albolineatus). Both species showed more rapid phys...

Responses of freshwater organisms to environmental oxygen tensions (PO2) have focused on adult (i.e. late developmental) stages, yet responses of embryonic stages to changes in environmental PO2 must also have implications for organismal biology. Here we assess how the rotational behaviour of the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis changes during de...

The way in which an organism responds behaviourally to environmental stimuli may either be innate (i.e. expressed without the need for previous experience) or affected by prior experience; but the relative importance of these two mechanisms in controlling antipredator behaviour is, as yet, unclear. We investigated how the avoidance behaviour of juv...

Experimental measurements of the 18O/16O isotope fractionation between the biogenic aragonite of Viviparuscontectus (Gastropoda) and its host freshwater were undertaken to generate a species-specific thermometry equation. The temperature dependence of the fractionation factor and the relationship between Δδ18O (δ18Ocarb. – δ18Owater) and temperatur...

First introduced by Ernst Haeckel in the nineteenth century, the use of developmental sequences has recently seen a renaissance as part of the study of the evolutionary biology of embryos; here we review briefly the literature describing gastropod developmental sequences, appraising the extent to which it has contributed to this renaissance. Gastro...

We investigated the effect of CO(2) acidified sea water (S=35, 22 and 10(PSU)) on embryonic development of the intertidal amphipod Echinogammarus marinus (Leach). Low pH, but not low salinity (22(PSU)), resulted in a more protracted embryonic development in situ although the effect was only evident at low salinity. However reduced salinity, not pH,...

Alarm substances elicit behavioural responses in a wide range of animals but effects on early embryonic development are virtually unknown. Here we investigated whether skin injury-induced alarm substances caused physiological responses in embryos produced by two Danio species (Danio rerio and Danio albolineatus). Both species showed more rapid phys...

Estuaries receive large quantities of terrestrially derived organic material, yet the current view is that such terrestrial carbon is unimportant for temperate estuarine benthic trophic dynamics beyond microbial processing. This consensus, however, may derive from a lack of consideration in estuarine food web studies of taxa with evolutionary affin...

A high proportion of ponds are temporary in nature, although the biodiversity value of such sites is still poorly recognized. This work explores the plant and macroinvertebrate communities of 76 temporary and fluctuating water bodies in two regions of southern England (Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall and New Forest, Hampshire) that have retained high po...

Our understanding of the effects of ocean acidification on whole organism function is growing, but most current information is for adult stages of development. Here, we show the effects of reduced pH seawater (pH 7.6) on aspects of the development, physiology and behaviour of encap- sulated embryos of the marine intertidal gastropod Littorina obtus...

Our understanding of the effects of ocean acidification on whole organism function is growing, but most current information is for adult stages of development. Here, we show the effects of reduced pH seawater (pH 7.6) on aspects of the development, physiology and behaviour of encapsulated embryos of the marine intertidal gastropod Littorina obtusat...

Local adaptation to predation often occurs in populations experiencing stable predator regimes. Under such conditions, prey species may respond by fine-tuning their behavioural defences towards a local optimum, although it is often difficult to ascertain whether such local adaptation is due to selection on fixed traits, developmental plasticity tha...

INTRODUCTION Although only a fraction of 1% of the world's fresh water is found in streams and rivers at any instant, running waters are a very valuable human resource: many of the world's rivers have acted as magnets for human settlement and there are now very few river catchments that are unaffected by people in some way. Rivers contain a rich an...

Even though the fragility and vulnerability of subterranean ecosystems (caves, groundwater and hyporheic habitats) is widely acknowledged, the impacts of human disturbances have been poorly quantified when compared with surface waters. In particular, limited data exist regarding the impact of organic pollution upon aquatic cave invertebrate communi...

Ontogenetic shifts in diet provide a mechanism for maximising fitness throughout development and are common where predators exhibit large increases in size. In order to maximise their fitness throughout development, benthic feeding fish can show diet–shifts that centre on the transition from meiofaunal to macrofaunal prey. Here we assessed whether...