Alien Vs Predator
Platt Wingo
A Predator spaceship appears, and its crew retrieves its fallen comrade. An elder Predator presents Lex with a spear as a gift as the spaceship departs. Lex walks over to a snowcat and leaves the area. On the Predator spaceship, Scar's body lies at rest when a Predalien chestburster erupts from his chest.
Before 20th Century Fox gave Alien vs. Predator the greenlight, Aliens writer/director James Cameron had been working on a story for a fifth Alien film. Alien director Ridley Scott had talked with Cameron, stating "I think it would be a lot of fun, but the most important thing is to get the story right."[9] In a 2002 interview, Scott's concept for a story was "to go back to where the alien creatures were first found and explain how they were created"; this project eventually became Scott's film Prometheus (2012). On learning that Fox intended to pursue Alien vs. Predator, Cameron believed the film would "kill the validity of the franchise" and ceased work on his story, "To me, that was Frankenstein Meets Werewolf. It was Universal just taking their assets and starting to play them off against each other...Milking it."[10] After viewing Alien vs. Predator, Cameron remarked that "it was actually pretty good. I think of the five Alien films, I'd rate it third. I actually liked it. I actually liked it a lot."[10] Conversely, Ridley Scott had no interest in the Alien vs. Predator films. When asked in May 2012 if he had watched them, Scott laughed, "No. I couldn't do that. I couldn't quite take that step."[11] Director Neill Blomkamp would eventually go on to pitch his sequel to Aliens.[12] However, Scott stated in 2017 that the project has been cancelled.[13]
Early reports claimed the story was about humans who tried to lure Predators with Alien eggs, although the idea was scrapped.[24] Influenced by the work of Erich von Däniken, Anderson researched von Däniken's theories on how he believed early civilizations were able to construct massive pyramids with the help of aliens, an idea long debunked and based on misinterpretations of Aztec mythology.[25] Anderson wove these ideas into Alien vs. Predator, describing a scenario in which Predators taught ancient humans to build pyramids and used Earth for rite of passage rituals every 100 years in which they would hunt Aliens. To explain how these ancient civilisations "disappeared without a trace", Anderson came up with the idea that the Predators, if overwhelmed by the Aliens, would use their self-destruct weapons to kill everything in the area.[25] H. P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness (1931) served as an inspiration for the film, and several elements of the Aliens vs. Predator comic series were included.[19][26] Anderson's initial script called for five Predators to appear in the film, although the number was later reduced to three.[25]
The crew tried to keep CGI use to a minimum, as Anderson said people in suits and puppets are scarier than CGI monsters as they are "there in the frame".[20] Roughly 70% of scenes were created using suits, puppets, and miniatures. The Alien queen was filmed using three variations: a 4.8-meter practical version, a 1.2-meter puppet, and a computer-generated version. The practical version required 12 puppeteers to operate,[19] and CGI tails were added to the Aliens and the queen as they were difficult to animate using puppetry.[30][36] The queen alien's inner-mouth was automated though, and was powered by a system of hydraulics. Anderson praised Alien director Ridley Scott's and Predator director John McTiernan's abilities at building suspense by not showing the creatures until late in the film, something Anderson wanted to accomplish with Alien vs. Predator. "Yes, we make you wait 45 minutes, but once it goes off, from there until the end of the movie, it's fucking relentless".[37]
Understanding and predicting how organisms respond to human-caused environmental changes has become a major concern in conservation biology. Here, we linked gene expression and phenotypic data to identify candidate genes underlying existing phenotypic trait differentiation under individual and combined environmental variables. For this purpose, we used the damselfly Ischnura elegans. Egg clutches from replicated high- (southern Sweden) and central-latitude (southern Poland) populations facing different degrees of seasonal time constraints were collected. Damselfly larvae were exposed to experimental treatments: current and mild warming temperatures crossed with the presence or absence of an invasive alien predator cue released by the spiny-cheek crayfish, Faxonius limosus, which is only present in Poland to date. We measured the following traits: larval development time, body size, mass and growth rate, and used the larvae for gene expression analysis by RNA-seq. Data were analysed using a multivariate approach.
We showed latitudinal differences in coping with mild warming and predator cues. When exposed to an increased temperature and a predator cue, central-latitude individuals had the shortest development and the fastest growth compared to high-latitude individuals. There was a general effect of predator cues regarding mass and growth rate reduction independent of latitude. Transcriptome analysis revealed that metabolic pathways related to larval anatomy and development tended to be upregulated in response to mild warming but only in fast-growing central-latitude individuals. Metabolic pathways linked to oxidative stress tended to be downregulated in response to a predator cue, especially in central-latitude individuals.
Different phenotypic and transcriptomic responses to environmental factors might be attributed to the variability in I. elegans life history strategies between the two latitudes caused by seasonal time constraints and to its coexistence with the invasive alien predator in nature. By providing insights into how organisms may respond to future anthropogenic changes, our results may be of particular interest in conservation biology.
The loading and cross-loading coefficients reported in Table 3 indicate the contribution of each phenotypic and environmental variable to each canonical correlation. For the first canonical correlation, developmental time and GRM for the phenotypic variables and latitude and temperature for the environmental variables contributed the most to the correlation. At 24 C and for the central latitude individuals, developmental time decreased and GRM increased. The second canonical correlation depicted a relationship between developmental time, mass and head width, and predator cue and latitude. In the presence of a predator cue and for central latitude individuals, mass and development time decreased, whereas head width increased. The last canonical correlation revealed that in the presence of a predator cue, both mass and GRM decreased.
For CCp2, we found 124 DEGs that were upregulated and 681 that were downregulated in individuals with shorter developmental times, lower mass and high values for head width. For CCe2, we found 252 upregulated DEGs and 928 downregulated DEGs in central-latitude individuals exposed to the predator cue. We found that 62 DEGs overlapped between the two sets of upregulated DEGs and 634 DEGs overlapped between the two sets of downregulated DEGs (Fig. 2B; Additional file 4: Table S4).
For CCp3, we found 550 upregulated DEGs and 682 downregulated DEGs in individuals with lower GRM and lower mass. For CCe3, we found 309 upregulated DEGs and 357 downregulated DEGs in individuals exposed to the predator cue. Between the two sets of upregulated DEGs, 58 DEGs overlapped, and between the two sets of downregulated DEGs, 278 DEGs overlapped (Additional file 5: Table S5).
Our results shed light on complex associations involving mild warming and invasive alien predator stress that differently affect the phenotype of high- and central-latitude individuals. Transcriptome analysis further revealed relevant metabolic pathways underlying these associations related to larval anatomy and development, reproduction or oxidative stress.
The last canonical correlation revealed that in the presence of a predator cue, both mass and GRM decreased, suggesting that a predator stress effect was shared by the different latitudes. For the effects of a predator cue on both mass and GRM, one explanation may be reduced foraging activity in the presence of a predator cue, as shown in other insect species [45]. However, no difference in food intake was reported in I. elegans when larvae were exposed to a predator [31]. Instead, the results pointed to differences in resource allocation. Another explanation may involve costs at the physiological level. There is evidence that predator stress alters the physiology and metabolism of insects [46] regarding fat content reduction [47], and may come at the cost of having a smaller size at emergence [48]. Despite the fact that the spiny-cheek crayfish has not yet been reported in high latitude sites, the mere presence of crayfish cues caused a short-term phenotypic response in I. elegans larvae. Indeed, our results suggest nonlethal effects of the invasive crayfish, especially when combined with increased temperature, for damselfly traits linked to fitness-mass and size reduction in high-latitude populations. This finding does not support recently published results based on meta-analysis where the authors stated that, on average, a couple of hundreds of generations are needed for prey to recognize nonnative predators [40]. However, previous prey experience with phylogenetically related predator species, here noble crayfish (Astacus astacus), might enable predator cue recognition. Our results may have implications for understanding the response of damselfly populations to the current spread of the spiny-cheek crayfish in Europe in general and in high-latitude habitats in particular.
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