Reversal of response to artificial selection on body size in a wild passerine

Abstract

Preface -If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.Sir Isaac Newton (1676) I am thankful for the opportunity to become deeply immersed in the fascinating world of biology, it has been challenging, rewarding and periodically exhausting. The work of this thesis build on the effort of several people in study systems spanning two decades. They deserve many thanks for the dedication and careful collection of high quality data. I would also like to thank all the local people at the islands along the coast of Helgeland for the hospitality and friendliness experienced during all my fieldwork, it has been unprecedented.During the days in the office, out in the field and in the lab, I have been lucky to be surrounded by a lot of great colleagues and friends. Thanks for the most welcomed distractions and good laughs, and thanks for the helpful, interesting and inspiring talks and discussions. Special thanks go to all my good colleagues in both the house sparrow and moose project. I have enjoyed working with you all.At last I want to thank my friends, parents and family, your presence and support means a lot to me. Most of all I want to thank my dearest Eva Sofie for being loving, caring and supportive, and our two sons, William and Sebastian, for bringing so much joy into our lives. You three are most important of all.

A genome‐wide linkage map for the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) provides insights into the evolutionary history of the avian genome

“…The LD estimates for Leka and Vega are overall higher compared to the other populations considering their effective population sizes. It is possible that this is a result of selection experiments for body size that were carried out on Leka and Vega during the years 2002–2005 (Kvalnes et al, ). Strong selection is expected to increase LD (De La Vega et al, ).…”

“…Due to the isolated nature of the populations (Hagen et al, 2013), these samples constitute four different pedigrees. The pedigrees were constructed using individual microsatellite genotypes and knowledge of which individuals were potential mothers and fathers of offspring produced in different years in the program cervus 3.0 (Kalinowski, Taper, & Marshall, 2007); for details see Billing et al (2012) and Kvalnes et al (2017). Additionally, we used samples collected from the islands of Gjaerøy (N = 89), Indre Kvarøy (N = 94), Myken (N = 52) and Nesøy (N = 36).…”

Inferences of genetic architecture of bill morphology in house sparrow using a high‐density SNP array point to a polygenic basis

“…This was done to allow individual identification and give information on, for example, age at subsequent captures. Phenotypic measurements taken by different fieldworkers were adjusted to T.H.R measurements by adding mean differences when found significant ( p < 0.05) using paired t tests (Kvalnes et al., ). To give a single value for each individual, measurements of adult birds (second calendar year [2CY] and older) were adjusted to May in 2CY using a linear mixed effects model with age, age 2 and month as fixed factors, random intercepts for year, cohort and ID number, and a random slope for the effect of age within ID number to account for any between‐individual variation.…”

“…To give a single value for each individual, measurements of adult birds (second calendar year [2CY] and older) were adjusted to May in 2CY using a linear mixed effects model with age, age 2 and month as fixed factors, random intercepts for year, cohort and ID number, and a random slope for the effect of age within ID number to account for any between‐individual variation. If age and month effects were significant ( p < 0.05) in likelihood ratio tests, predicted values from the model were used to adjust measurements to May in 2CY before calculation of mean phenotypic values (Kvalnes et al., ). Unless otherwise stated, all statistical analyses were performed using r version 3.3.3 (R Core Team, ).…”

Characterizing morphological (co)variation using structural equation models: Body size, allometric relationships and evolvability in a house sparrow metapopulation

“…measurements by adding mean differences when found significant ( P < 0.05) using paired t ‐tests on a set of approximately 30 individual birds measured independently by the fieldworker and T.H.R (Kvalnes et al. ). All birds in the current study were adult males ( n = 1867) or females ( n = 1876) measured between 1994 and 2014.…”