Advanced Topics in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology :: Syntheses

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What are Syntheses?

During this course, each student is expected to turn in 7 syntheses, covering the range of topics that we explore (see schedule).

1. Structure (per Topic):
   1. One summary sentence that summarizes a key concept from a particular Topic.
   2. One-sentence example per peer-reviewed paper that we read in class that supports the summary sentence. If there are no peer-reviewed papers assigned to a particular topic, replace with an external peer-reviewed paper (that you find yourself).
   3. One-sentence example from an external peer-reviewed paper (that you find yourself) that supports the summary sentence.
   4. Two sentences that detail the implications of these observations/statements.
2. Rules:
   1. Strict adherence to the structure defined above is mandatory.
   2. Sentences should be grammatically correct, clear, and concise. Because there are so few sentences for each topic, each one has to be well-constructed and focused.
   3. You must include a Literature Cited section at the bottom of each Synthesis. Use the format detailed by the journal Evolution
   4. Turn in Syntheses in PDF form in Canvas before class on the due date
   5. If the assignment covers two topics, follow the above structure for each topic individually (as illustrated below)…

What is the point of Syntheses?

Synthesizing concepts and ideas in short and concise statements is incredibly important when writing a scientific paper. A paper – where you are presumably communicating a new idea, concept, data, or theory – must be built on a framework that places your contribution in the context of a larger problem or set of problems that scientists are interested in solving. To do this, we must summarize and synthesize prior work to motivate our own contributions, and we generally must do this in as few words as possible while still maintaining clarity (this is particularly true if we are trying to publish our work in a high-impact journal with strict page limits). Therein lies the goal of these Syntheses assignments: to train your writing style to be clear, concise, and powerful in communicating the essence of a paper. This is harder than you think! To quote Mark Twain: I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. Spend time on these syntheses - it takes a lot of practice to extract the most important messages of a paper and articulate these messages into a small number of words and phrases, but it will pay off when you sit down and pen the Introduction to your submission to Science, Nature, PNAS, or whichever journal you plan to send your killer paper.

Examples of Syntheses

• Topic 1: The rate of proliferation of a particular trait in a population is determined by a complex interplay of extrinsic (environmental) and intrinsic (biological) variables
  • Example 1: Carroll and Boyd (1992; Evolution) showed that different populations of soapberry bugs rapidly adapted to divergently shaped fruits of recently introduced non-native host plants over a period of ca. 50 years; high genetic variance and relative isolation among soapberry bug populations allowed for such high rates of differential selective shifts.
  • Example 2: Stochastic environmental perturbations rapidly shifted Galapagos finch populations towards larger (for hard nuts) or smaller (for smaller seeds) beak sizes over a period of 30 years (Grant & Grant, 2002; Science).
  • Implications: The rate of evolution from one phenotype towards another can change the relationship between an organism and it’s environment. Differential rates of evolution in response to different variables in a community of organisms can similarly alter the relationships between them, turning community ecology into a dynamic system through time.
• Topic 2: The magnitude of selection for particular traits or groups of traits may differ across the spatial (or temporal) range of a population.
  • Example 1: The controlled selection of genetically understood phenotypic traits such as ‘anther size’ or ‘filament length’ in plants (Brassica and Raphanus resp.; reviewed in Conner 2003; Ecology) can provide insight into the genetic underpinnings of selection at experimentally-controlled strengths, therefore establishing ability to change under natural circumstances.
  • Example 2: Although density dependence regulates most of population dynamics, natural selection of traits that influence fecundity or a species’ performance can have an influence on population growth rate, and may become strong regulating forces in an organism’s population size (Saccheri & Hanski 2006; TREE), feeding back into the initial conditions of a population.
  • Implications: Understanding how particular phenotypes are able to change under different selective forces allows us to understand the limits of an organism’s ability to cope in different conditions. This knowledge may afford insight in predicting possible directions of selection given certain initial conditions, and may be applicable in conservation situations.
• Literature Cited
  • Use the guidelines from the journal Evolution for your Literature Cited section.