Self-driving labs (SDLs) leverage combinations of artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced computing to accelerate scientific discovery. The promise of this field has given rise to a rich ...community of passionate scientists, engineers, and social scientists, as evidenced by the development of the Acceleration Consortium and recent Accelerate Conference. Despite its strengths, this rapidly developing field presents numerous opportunities for growth, challenges to overcome, and potential risks of which to remain aware. This community perspective builds on a discourse instantiated during the first Accelerate Conference, and looks to the future of self-driving labs with a tempered optimism. Incorporating input from academia, government, and industry, we briefly describe the current status of self-driving labs, then turn our attention to barriers, opportunities, and a vision for what is possible. Our field is delivering solutions in technology and infrastructure, artificial intelligence and knowledge generation, and education and workforce development. In the spirit of community, we intend for this work to foster discussion and drive best practices as our field grows.
Self-driving labs (SDLs) leverage combinations of artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced computing to accelerate scientific discovery.
Self-driving labs (SDLs) leverage combinations of artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced computing to accelerate scientific discovery. The promise of this field has given rise to a rich ...community of passionate scientists, engineers, and social scientists, as evidenced by the development of the Acceleration Consortium and recent Accelerate Conference. Despite its strengths, this rapidly developing field presents numerous opportunities for growth, challenges to overcome, and potential risks of which to remain aware. This community perspective builds on a discourse instantiated during the first Accelerate Conference, and looks to the future of self-driving labs with a tempered optimism. Incorporating input from academia, government, and industry, we briefly describe the current status of self-driving labs, then turn our attention to barriers, opportunities, and a vision for what is possible. Our field is delivering solutions in technology and infrastructure, artificial intelligence and knowledge generation, and education and workforce development. In the spirit of community, we intend for this work to foster discussion and drive best practices as our field grows.
The evolution of social behaviour has puzzled biologists since Darwin. Since Hamilton's theoretical work in the 1960s it has been realized that social behaviour may evolve through the effects of ...kinship. By helping relatives, an individual may pass on its genes despite negative effects on its own reproduction. Leks are groups of males that females visit primarily to mate. The selective advantage for males to join such social groups has been given much recent attention, but no clear picture has yet emerged. Here we show, using microsatellite analysis, that males but not females of a lekking bird (the black grouse, Tetrao tetrix) are genetically structured at the lek level. We interpret this structuring to be the effects of strong natal philopatry in males. This has the consequence that males on any specific lek should be more related than expected by chance as indicated by our genetic data. Our results thus suggest that kin selection is a factor that needs to be considered in the evolution and maintenance of the lek mating system in black grouse and sheds new light on models of lek evolution.
'Good genes' models assume that females can use a signal such as mating effort to assess a male's lifetime fitness. Inferring long-term performance from short-term behavioural observations can be ...unreliable, and repeated sampling may be needed for more accurate assessment of males. Additionally, if sexual advertisement is viewed as a life-history trait subject to trade-offs, reliable comparison of mates should yield information on all life-history components rather than on one trait value in one season. We show that in the lekking black grouse (Tetrao tetrix), a male's success is best explained by assuming that females are informed of the past history of males up to the beginning of the study (eight years). Much of this extremely lasting 'memory' can be attributed to females observing long-term outcomes of male-male competition: current territory position is the only momentarily observable variable that has high power in predicting female choice, and it correlates to a male's past lekking effort on a cumulative lifetime scale. We conclude that females can use territory position as a signal that conveys information of a male's lifetime performance that combines lekking effort and longevity. Females may thus overcome the problem of male allocations varying in time, without the need to pay costs associated with repeated sampling.
Inbreeding depression and male fitness in black grouse Höglund, Jacob; Piertney, Stuart B; Alatalo, Rauno V ...
Proceedings - Royal Society. Biological sciences/Proceedings - Royal Society. Biological Sciences,
04/2002, Letnik:
269, Številka:
1492
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The male lifetime lekking performance was studied, and related to inbreeding-outbreeding in a wild population of black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in central Finland between 1989 and 1995. Inbreeding was ...measured as the mean heterozygosity and mean d2 of 15 microsatellite loci. We found a significantly positive relationship between mean d2 and lifetime copulation success (LCS), while the relationship between heterozygosity and LCS was close to significant. We also found that males that never obtained a lek territory had significantly lower mean heterozygosity than males that were observed on a territory at least during one mating season in their life. Furthermore, among males that were successful in obtaining a lek territory, LCS and mean d2 were highest for those males that held central territories. We suggest that inbred males have a disadvantage (or outbred males have an advantage) in the competition for territories that may explain the relationships with LCS and inbreeding. Furthermore, the fact that mean d2 was positively correlated with LCS whereas heterozygosity was not when we restricted the analysis to territorial males, suggests that mean d2 provides more information about levels of inbreeding-outbreeding than heterozygosity alone, and potentially highlights the effects of heterosis. To our knowledge, this is the first time that measures of inbreeding and lifetime fitness have been linked in a non-isolated population. This is important in establishing that the relationships found in previous studies are not artefacts of low gene flow created by limited dispersal but a general feature of wild vertebrate populations.
On black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) leks females prefer dominant, viable males that have managed to acquire relatively central territories. The immunocompetence hypothesis predicts that, because high ...levels of testosterone are costly to the immune system, male sexual traits that are controlled by testosterone are likely to serve as reliable indicators of male health. Indeed, testosterone concentrations of black grouse males were highly variable, and strongly correlated with male mating success. This is related to the fact that males with high testosterone levels had most central territories. However, the association of testostestorone level with male mating success was not solely related to centrality. Indeed, the particularly strong correlation suggests a possibility for an important role of the immunocompetence hypothesis in this lekking bird species.
We studied supra-orbital combs in lekking black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in relation to sexual selection at five leks in Finland 1991-1998 and four leks in Sweden 1992-1995. Comb size was estimated in ...two ways: by observing its natural size in the field at different behaviors (“observed comb size”), and by measuring the comb size from captured birds (“measured comb size”). The size of combs is highly variable, and individuals can change it within seconds. Males express their larger combs during display, as compared to other behaviors. Observed mean comb sizes were larger on leks with a higher number of males and a higher number of copulations. Measured and observed comb sizes and copulatory success did not significantly correlate when all males where analyzed, but a positive and significant relationship between observed comb size and copulatory success was found within males that achieved copulations. Measured comb length correlated positively with the amount of testosterone. While females were present on the lek, displaying and successful males showed the largest observed comb size. When we compared observed comb size during fighting between successful and unsuccessful males and correlated comb size of pairs of fighting males with their fighting activity, no significant differences in comb size were found. The result that comb size correlated significantly with an increase in testosterone level and that larger comb size, within successful males, predicted higher copulatory success suggests that combs may be a cue for females to assess male quality. The lack of a significant relationship between observed comb size and fighting behavior suggests that comb size either has minor importance in male-male signaling on the lek or that males may express similar-sized combs during fighting to avoid serious fights and thus risk of comb injuries.
Variation in female behaviour has only recently received attention in studies of sexual selection. It has been suggested that females may invest differentially in their offspring in relation to the ...quality of their mate. This may lead to females that mate with high-quality and/or attractive males laying larger clutches. Females may also differ in their ability to choose between males. For example, females in good physical condition may make better choices. If physical condition and clutch size are positively correlated, this hypothesis could also produce a relationship between male attractiveness and female clutch size. We found, in lekking black grouse,Tetrao tetrix, that females mated to the highest ranked males laid the largest clutches. Furthermore we found, regardless of female age, a positive relationship between a measure of female condition and male rank but not between female condition and her clutch size. In addition, females in good condition visited a larger number of different male territories, and old females produced the largest clutches. Our results suggest two mechanisms to explain our findings. First, females in good physical condition tend to mate with the top males, suggesting an assortative mating pattern. Second, females mating with the highest ranked males lay larger clutches as a consequence of their choice. In general, our result calls for caution in evaluating studies that look at the consequences of mate choice. It may be that differences in female quality produce effects that may be wrongly interpreted as male quality effects.
Lek Centre Attracts Black Grouse Females Hovi, Matti; Alatalo, Rauno V.; Höglund, Jacob ...
Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences,
12/1994, Letnik:
258, Številka:
1353
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In several lek mating systems, centrally located males enjoy higher mating success than peripheral males. The mechanism behind this pattern, however, has been controversial and a rigorous test of the ...different alternatives is missing. Here we report that in black grouse Tetrao tetrix, a lekking bird species, central males achieved many more copulations than males in the periphery. Generally, central territories were smaller than peripheral ones, and males were thus more clumped in the centre. A choice experiment in an aviary provided experimental support for females being attracted to densely clustered males, so that males in larger clusters have higher expected average mating success. Thus this mechanism, which was once the common belief for the lekking system but lately has been disregarded, is likely to provide the main explanation for the evolution of lekking in this species.
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