Search results for " behavior"
showing 10 items of 11374 documents
Red-list of Italian bryophytes. 1. Liverworts and hornworts
2023
The objective of this study is to provide an updated conservation status of all liverworts and hornworts in the Italian territory, evaluated according to IUCN's Guidelines for Application of IUCN Red List Criteria at Regional Level. Overall, 27.4% of taxa assessed in this study are assigned to a risk category and, therefore, considered threatened in Italy. Four liverworts are considered as Extinct, two liverworts and one hornwort Possibly Extinct at regional level. Moreover, a further 9.8% are assessed as Near Threatened, 10.8% as Data Deficient and 49.7% as Least Concern. Most threats are co-occurring, indicating that many taxa are subjected to a set of correlated adverse processes. The ma…
Genome-wide mapping of signatures of selection using a high-density array identified candidate genes for growth traits and local adaptation in chicke…
2023
Abstract Background Availability of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping arrays and progress in statistical analyses have allowed the identification of genomic regions and genes under selection in chicken. In this study, SNP data from the 600 K Affymetrix chicken array were used to detect signatures of selection in 23 local Italian chicken populations. The populations were categorized into four groups for comparative analysis based on live weight (heavy vs light) and geographical area (Northern vs Southern Italy). Putative signatures of selection were investigated by combining three extended haplotype homozygosity (EHH) statistical approaches to quantify excess of haplotype homoz…
Developments in the evolutionary theory of social interactions
2016
Altruistic behaviour, which benefits others but harms the actor, can evolve when copies of the underlying genes are transmitted to future generations by related beneficiaries. While we know that the mechanism of ‘kin selection’ answers to how altruism can evolve, the answers to why and when it can evolve are still obscure. The first aim of this thesis is to shed light to the evolution of altruism by identifying factors that facilitate or promote it. I find that the conditions under which altruism can evolve follow surprisingly simple principles that are independent of the taxon-specific traits such as fecundity. Further, by analysing the unique aspects of haplodiploid sex determination syst…
Experimental evolution of evolutionary potential in fluctuating environments
2023
Variation is the raw material for evolution. Evolutionary potential is determined by the amount of genetic variation, but evolution can also alter the visibility of genetic variation to natural selection. Fluctuating environments are suggested to maintain genetic variation but they can also affect environmental variance, and thus, the visibility of genetic variation to natural selection. However, experimental studies testing these ideas are relatively scarce. In order to determine differences in evolutionary potential we quantified variance attributable to population, genotype and environment for populations of the bacterium Serratia marcescens. These populations had been experimentally evo…
Host filtering, not competitive exclusion, may be the main driver of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community assembly under high phosphorus
2023
A major goal in ecology is understanding the factors which determine the diversity and distribution of organisms. The outcome of the symbiotic relationship between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi is strongly influenced by soil phosphorus (P) availability. Despite this knowledge, there is still much to uncover about how soil P status can shape the taxonomic and phylogenetic assembly of root-colonising AM fungi. Additionally, there is a paucity of understanding about the implications of these changes for the outcome of the AM symbiosis in terms of plant growth, nutrient status and defence traits. We conducted a factorial pot experiment where sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) was grown un…
A Spotlight on the Role of Radiomics and Machine-Learning Applications in the Management of Intracranial Meningiomas: A New Perspective in Neuro-Onco…
2022
Background: In recent decades, the application of machine learning technologies to medical imaging has opened up new perspectives in neuro-oncology, in the so-called radiomics field. Radiomics offer new insight into glioma, aiding in clinical decision-making and patients’ prognosis evaluation. Although meningiomas represent the most common primary CNS tumor and the majority of them are benign and slow-growing tumors, a minor part of them show a more aggressive behavior with an increased proliferation rate and a tendency to recur. Therefore, their treatment may represent a challenge. Methods: According to PRISMA guidelines, a systematic literature review was performed. We included selected a…
Analysis of the effects of magnetic field on the induced stress in drilled plates
2013
Abstract A drilled plate of ferromagnetic material suitably coupled by coils of enameled copper wire fed by a DC power supply to 30 V is considered in this paper. It is analyzed with finite element and later experiments are performed to validate the obtained results. After polishing the plate, two strain gauges for measuring the deformation along the x axis and along the z axis are installed. The values of strain are 5 μm/m in z direction and −2 μm/m in x direction. The experimental–numerical comparison shows that the laboratory results are lower than numerical, while signs and orders of magnitude are the same. It is concluded that the results of the FEM analysis can be considered acceptabl…
Spoken-Word Segmentation and Dyslexia
2002
We used magnetoencephalography to elucidate the cortical activation associated with the segmentation of spoken words in nonreading-impaired and dyslexic adults. The subjects listened to binaurally presented sentences where the sentence-ending words were either semantically appropriate or inappropriate to the preceding sentence context. Half of the inappropriate final words shared two or three initial phonemes with the highly expected semantically appropriate words. Two temporally and functionally distinct response patterns were detected in the superior temporal lobe. The first response peaked at approximately 100 msec in the supratemporal plane and showed no sensitivity to the semantic appr…
Automatic Processing of Changes in Facial Emotions in Dysphoria: A Magnetoencephalography Study
2018
It is not known to what extent the automatic encoding and change detection of peripherally presented facial emotion is altered in dysphoria. The negative bias in automatic face processing in particular has rarely been studied. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record automatic brain responses to happy and sad faces in dysphoric (Beck’s Depression Inventory ≥ 13) and control participants. Stimuli were presented in a passive oddball condition, which allowed potential negative bias in dysphoria at different stages of face processing (M100, M170, and M300) and alterations of change detection (visual mismatch negativity, vMMN) to be investigated. The magnetic counterpart of the vMMN was el…
Predicting valuable forest habitats using an indicator species for biodiversity
2020
Intensive management of boreal forests impairs forest biodiversity and species of old-growth forest. Effective measures to support biodiversity require detection of locations valuable for conservation. We applied species distribution models (SDMs) to a species of mature forest, the northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis, goshawk), that is often associated with hotspots of forest biodiversity. We located optimal sites for the goshawk on a landscape scale, assessed their state under intensified logging operations and identified characteristics of goshawks' nesting sites in boreal forests. Optimal sites for the goshawk covered only 3.4% of the boreal landscape and were mostly located outside pro…