Bone is a specialized connective tissue, most prominently characterized by its mineralized organic matrix that imparts the physical properties that allow bone tissue to resist load, to support functional organs, and to protect highly sensitive body parts. Bone loss and bone damage may occur as a result of genetic conditions, infectious diseases, tumours, and trauma. Bone healing and repair, inv…
1. Research addressing the role of epigenetics in a diversity of experimental and natural systems is rapidly accumulating. Diverse methods have been developed to study epigenetic states, including bisulphite sequencing and AFLP-based approaches. However, existing methods are sometimes difficult to apply to non-traditional model organisms that lack genomic resources (bisulphite sequencing), a…
We provide a detailed anatomical description of the skull of the fossil minute boas Messelophis variatus Baszio, 2004 and Messelophis ermannorum Schaal & Baszio, 2004 from the Middle Eocene Messel Formation (Germany), as well as a cladistic analysis to infer their phylogenetic relationships. Reanalysis of new and known specimens of both species demonstrates previously unrecognized anatomical…
Despite the complexity of nature, most comparative studies of phenotypic evolution consider selective pressures in isolation. When competing pressures operate on the same system, it is commonly expected that trade-offs will occur that will limit the evolution of phenotypic diversity, however, it is possible that interactions among selective pressures may promote diversity instead. We explored t…
Adaptive radiations are major contributors to species diversity. Although the underlying mechanisms of adaptive radiations,specialization and trade-offs, are relatively well understood, the tempo and repeatability of adaptive radiations remain elusive. Ecological specialization can occur through the expansion into novel niches or through partitioning of an existing niche. To test how the mode o…
The opisthotonic (‘dead bird’) posture encountered in non-avialan dinosaurs and other fossilized archosaurs is characterized by extreme dorsal neck retraction and tail protraction. Extant birds have been used to study this and attention has focused on the neck (because modern avians lack a long, freely articulated series of caudal vertebrae). The opisthotonic posture has been largely discus…
1. Capture–recapture studies are often conducted on populations that are stratified by space, time or other factors. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian spatial capture–recapture (SCR) modelling framework for stratified populations – when sampling occurs within multiple distinct spatial and temporal strata. 2. We describe a hierarchical model that integrates distinct models for both t…
Objectives: Little is known about cannabis use in hunter-gatherers. Therefore, we investigated cannabis use in the Aka, a population of foragers of the Congo Basin. Because cannabis contains anthelminthic compounds, and the Aka have a high prevalence of helminthiasis, we also tested the hypothesis that cannabis use might be an unconscious form of self-medication against helminths. Methods: W…
Abstract—Essential proteins are vital for an organism’s viability under a variety of conditions. There are many experimental and computational methods developed to identify essential proteins. Computational prediction of essential proteins based on the global protein-protein interaction (PPI) network is severely restricted because of the insufficiency of the PPI data, but fortunately the ge…
Objectives: We conduct a revaluation of the Thornhill and Fincher research project on parasites using finelyresolved geographic data on parasite prevalence, individual-level sociocultural data, and multilevel Bayesian modeling. In contrast to the evolutionary psychological mechanisms linking parasites to human behavior and cultural characteristics proposed by Thornhill and Fincher, we offer a…
The closely related Camponotus renggeri and Camponotus rufipes (subgenus Myrmothrix) often live in sympatry in the Brazilian ‘cerrado’ savannah, and are distinguished by nuances in their blackish body colour and by the colour of the legs. Variation in morphological characters, however, makes species separation difficult and it has been suggested that the two species should be merged into…
The Permian and Triassic were key time intervals in the history of life on Earth. Both periods are marked by a series of biotic crises including the most catastrophic of such events, the end-Permian mass extinction, which eventually led to a major turnover from typical Palaeozoic faunas and floras to those that are emblematic for the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Here we review patterns in Permian–T…
Neodryinus typhlocybae (Hymenoptera:Dryinidae) is a natural enemy of the planthopper Metcalfa pruinosa, which was introduced from North America into Europe and has become established in various regions as a pest species. Vibrational signals play a crucial role in the communication of M. pruinosa, which appears to be exploited by N. typhlocybae. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy have…
Arable weeds are one of the most endangered species groups in Europe. Modern agriculture and intensive land-use management are the main causes of their dramatic decline. However, besides the changes in land use, climate change may further challenge the adaptability of arable weeds. Therefore, we investigated the response pattern of arable weeds to different water potential and temperature regim…
1. Statistical approaches for testing hypotheses of heterogeneity in fitness functions are needed to accommodate studies of phenotypic selection with repeated sampling across study units, populations or years. In this study, we tested directly for among-population variation in complex fitness functions and demonstrate a new approach for locating the region of the trait distribution where var…
Mediterranean-type streams are characterized by great seasonal and annual variation in flow. We studied the biology of the freshwater mussel Unio tumidiformis in such a stream, the Vasc~ao River in southern Portugal, during a period of great interannual variation in hydrology. We studied growth patterns of the mussels between 2002–2008, and the reproductive cycle between 2005–2006. Life-his…
Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations (e[CO2]) are presumed to have a significant impact on plant growth and yield and also on mineral nutrient composition, and therefore, on nutritional quality of crops and vegetables. To assess the relevance of these effects in future agroecosystems it is important to understand how e[CO2] interacts with other environmental factors. In the present study, we e…
The evolution of the middle ear from the cynodont craniomandibular bones is one of the key mammalian innovations, and the mechanics underlying this anatomical transformation represents an intriguing paradox. Because the jaw joint of nonmammalian cynodonts was functionally coupled to the inner ear, auditory performance would favor low joint reaction forces. However, this could not be achieved at…
In recent years, the Intermountain West (IM West), consisting of the mountains, basins, and plateaus lying between the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada on the west and the Rocky Mountains on the east, has changed dramatically. What was once a vast open area with barely enough population to qualify for statehood is still open and vast, but sparse settlements have metastasized into cities …
Yet another cell and molecular biology book? At the very least, you would think that if I was going to write a textbook, I should write one in an area that really needs one instead of a subject that already has multiple excellent and definitive books. So, why write this book, then? First, it’s a course that I have enjoyed teaching for many years, so I am very familiar with what a student …
Concrete examples help to understand complex systems. In this report, the key point is to illustrate the basic mechanisms and properties of neocybernetic system models. Good visualizations are certainly needed. It is biological systems, or living systems, that are perhaps the most characteristic examples of cybernetic systems. This intuition is extended here to natural systems in general —…
The evolution of the middle ear from the cynodont craniomandibular bones is one of the key mammalian innovations, and the mechanics underlying this anatomical transformation represents an intriguing paradox. Because the jaw joint of nonmammalian cynodonts was functionally coupled to the inner ear, auditory performance would favor low joint reaction forces. However, this could not be achieved at…
The evolution of the middle ear from the cynodont craniomandibular bones is one of the key mammalian innovations, and the mechanics underlying this anatomical transformation represents an intriguing paradox. Because the jaw joint of nonmammalian cynodonts was functionally coupled to the inner ear, auditory performance would favor low joint reaction forces. However, this could not be achieved at…
1. In the face of natural complexities and multicollinearity, model selection and predictions using multiple regression may be ambiguous and risky. Confounding effects of predictors often cloud researchers’ assessment and interpretation of the single best ‘magicmodel’. The shortcomings of stepwise regression have been extensively described in statistical literature, yet it is still widely…
Alternative energy sources have become a hot topic in recent years. The supply of fossil fuel, which provides about 95 percent of total energy demand today, will eventually run out in a few decades. By contrast, biomass and biofuel have the potential to become one of the major global primary energy source along with other alternate energy sources in the years to come. A wide variety of biomass …
Objectives: The association between blood levels of hemoglobin (B-hgb) and blood pressure (BP) has been widely investigated in Caucasians and Asians but there is a paucity of data in rural black Africans. The objective was to investigate the association between B-hgb and BP in a rural black African population. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in three districts in Kenya (Bondo, K…
Time-calibrated phylogenies that contain only living species have been widely used to study the dynamics of speciation and extinction. Concerns about the reliability of phylogenetic extinction estimates were raised by Rabosky (2010), where I suggested that unaccommodated heterogeneity in speciation rate could lead to positively biased extinction estimates. In a recent article,Beaulieu and O’M…
Ecologists frequently use a supertree method to generate phylogenies in ecological studies. However, the robustness of research results based on phylogenies generated with a supertree method has not been well evaluated. Here, we use the angiosperm tree flora of North America as a model system to test the robustness of phylogenies generated with a supertree method for studies on the relations…
Fothergilla (Hamamelidaceae) consists of Fothergilla gardenii (4x) from the coastal plains of the southeastern USA, F. major (6x) from the piedmont and mountains of the same region, and a few allopatric diploid populations of unknown taxonomic status. The objective of this study was to explore the relationships of the polyploid species with the diploid plants. Genotyping by sequencing (GBS) …
The topics of succession and post-disturbance ecosystem recovery have a long and convoluted history. There is extensive redundancy within this body of theory, which has resulted in confusion, and the links among theories have not been adequately drawn. This review aims to distil the unique ideas from the array of theory related to ecosystem change in response to disturbance. This will help to r…
The year 2014 marked the 25th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research. In the 50 yr since the first International Conference on Arabidopsis Research, held in 1965 in G€ottingen,Germany, > 54 000 papers that mention Arabidopsis thaliana in the title, abstract or keywords have been published.Wepresent herein a citational network analysis of these papers, and touch on some of the import…
In the last decade, taxonomic studies have drastically increased the number of species known to inhabit the Arabian deserts. While ongoing phylogenetic studies continue to identify new species and high levels of intraspecific genetic diversity, few studies have yet explored the biogeographic patterns in this arid region using an integrative approach. In the present work, we apply different phyl…
1. Predicting space use patterns of animals from their interactions with the environment is fundamental for understanding the effect of habitat changes on ecosystem functioning. Recent attempts to address this problem have sought to unify resource selection analysis,where animal space use is derived from available habitat quality, andmechanistic movement models, where detailedmovement proces…
Prerequisites for conservation planning are inventories of species, which are often recognised and described using morphological clues (The House of Lords 2003; The Royal Society 2003; Mace 2004). However, taxa identification using morphological criteria may be challenging, especially in simple organisms that present few discriminant synapomorphies and high phenotypic plasticity, such as cni…
Amniote vertebrates, the group consisting of mammals and reptiles including birds, possess various mechanisms of sex determination. Under environmental sex determination (ESD), the sex of individuals depends on the environmental conditions occurring during their development and therefore there are no sexual differences present in their genotypes. Alternatively, through the mode of genotypic …
The 1.5 Gbp/2C genome of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) has been sequenced. A strategy was established for dealing with the challenges imposed by the sequencing of such a large, complex and highly heterozygous genome by a whole-genome shotgun (WGS) approach, without the use of costly and time-consuming methods, such as fosmid or BAC clone-based hierarchical sequencing methods. The sequencin…
We defined the somatic environment in which female germinal cells develop, and performed ultrastructural analyses of various somatic cell types, with particular reference to muscle cells and follicle cells, that reside within the ovary at different stages of oogenesis. Our findings show that ovarian wall of the crayfish is composed of long muscle cells, blood cells, blood vessels and hemal s…
Plant sexual systems can be affected by various environmental factors, and thus show a range of morphological differences. The associations between plant sexual systems and morphology are unique, for example, the subnival belt of the Hengduan Mountains has harsh climatic conditions, but hosts remarkable biodiversity. However, these associations have received surprisingly little attention. We…
1. Current developments of diversity measures that consider that species are not equivalent, concentrate on how functionally or phylogenetically (dis)similar species are from each other (interspecific components). To assess the biodiversity of a community, few of the developed measures include intraspecific components, that is to say components that concern only the current features of the in…
Debates about how coevolution of sexual traits and preferences might promote evolutionary diversification have permeated speciation research for over a century. Recent work demonstrates that the expression of such traits can be sensitive to variation in the social environment. Here, we examined social flexibility in a sexually selected male trait—cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles—in the …
Objective: Here we evaluate morphological integration patterns and magnitudes in different skull regions to detect if shifts in morphological integration are correlated to the appearance of more processed (softer) diets. Methods: To do so, three transitional populations were analyzed, including samples from groups that inhabited the same geographical region and for which the evidence shows t…
Evolutionary theory for expenditure on gonads attracted little attention until studies in the past 3–4 decades of allocation to male and female function in hermaphrodites, and of relative testes size (RTS) in animals with separate sexes. RTS appears to have varied enormously over evolutionary time, from extremely high (over 40%) in some broadcast spawners to less than 1% in some taxa with co…
1. Functional diversity (FD) is an important concept for studies of both ecosystem processes and community assembly, so it is important to understand the behaviour of common metrics used to express it. 2. Data from an existing study of the relationship between FD and environmental drivers were used to simulate the impact of a progressive failure to measure the traits of all the species prese…
By combining high-throughput sequencing with target enrichment (‘hybridization capture’), researchers are able to obtain molecular data from genomic regions of interest for projects that are otherwise constrained by sample quality (e.g. degraded and contamination-rich samples) or a lack of a priori sequence information (e.g. studies on nonmodel species). Despite the use of hybridization …
The ever-increasing number of studies that address the origin and evolution of Euarthropoda – whose extant representatives include chelicerates, myriapods, crustaceans and hexapods – are gradually reaching a consensus with regard to the overall phylogenetic relationships of some of the earliest representatives of this phylum. The stem-lineage of Euarthropoda includes numerous forms that r…
1. Radiotelemetry and satellite-based telemetry approaches are essential to describe the behaviour and biology of animals. This is especially true for bats, whose small size and cryptic lifestylesmake themchallenging to study. However, only a handful of studies have evaluated how transmitter mass and the attachment method affect bat behaviour or health, and none have assessed the development…
Recent studies have demonstrated adaptive evolutionary responses to climate change, but little is known about how these responses may influence ecological interactions with other organisms, including natural enemies.We used a resurrection experiment in the greenhouse to examine the effect of evolutionary responses to drought on the susceptibility of Brassica rapa plants to a fungal pathogen, Al…
1. Telomeres play a fundamental role in the protection of chromosomal DNA and in the regulation of cellular senescence. Recent work in human epidemiology and evolutionary ecology suggests adult telomere length (TL) may reflect past physiological stress and predict subsequent morbidity and mortality, independent of chronological age. 2. Several differentmethods have been developed to measure…
Nearctic taxa, which jointly colonized Eurasia and the Maghreb during the Miocene. The strict trophic relationships occurring between the glossiphoniid parasite leech Placobdella costata and its host, the emydid Emys orbicularis, make them a prime example of host–parasite cophylogenetic evolution. In the light of the discovery of the Sicilian cryptic endemic species Emys trinacris, which is t…
Cavitated secretory trichomes are characterized by a short or absent stalk that is connected to a secretory hollow head. They are rare structures in angiosperms; in Fabaceae, they have been recorded in only seven genera, including Bauhinia s.s. Because B. curvula and B. rufa exhibit glands that are responsible for attracting pollinators to flowers, this study aimed to test whether the cavita…