Search results for "Adaptive"
showing 10 items of 792 documents
Adaptive radiation along a thermal gradient: preliminary results of habitat use and respiration rate divergence among whitefish morphs.
2014
Adaptive radiation is considered an important mechanism for the development of new species, but very little is known about the role of thermal adaptation during this process. Such adaptation should be especially important in poikilothermic animals that are often subjected to pronounced seasonal temperature variation that directly affects metabolic function. We conducted a preliminary study of individual lifetime thermal habitat use and respiration rates of four whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus (L.)) morphs (two pelagic, one littoral and one profundal) using stable carbon and oxygen isotope values of otolith carbonate. These morphs, two of which utilized pelagic habitats, one littoral and one …
What do we need to know about speciation?
2011
Speciation has been a major focus of evolutionary biology research in recent years, with many important advances. However, some of the traditional organising principles of the subject area no longer provide a satisfactory framework, such as the classification of speciation mechanisms by geographical context into allopatric, parapatric and sympatry classes. Therefore, we have asked where speciation research should be directed in the coming years. Here, we present a distillation of questions about the mechanisms of speciation, the genetic basis of speciation and the relationship between speciation and diversity. Our list of topics is not exhaustive; rather we aim to promote discussion on rese…
Host immune response to Cryptosporidium parvum infection
2010
Species of the genus Cryptosporidium are protozoan parasites (Apicomplexa) that cause gastroenteritis in animals and humans. Of these Cryptosporidium parvum and Cryptosporidium hominis are the major causative agents of human cryptosporidiosis. Whereas infection is self-limiting in the immunocompetent hosts, immunocompromised individuals develop a chronic, life-threatening disease. As specific therapeutic or preventive interventions are not yet available, better understanding of the immune response to the parasite is required. This minireview briefly summarizes the factors involved in the innate and acquired immune response in this pathogen-host interaction with an emphasis on more recent da…
Paleoecology: An Adequate Window on the Past?
2014
Starting from Ernst Haeckel’s famous definition of ecology, our review considers the premises and the meaning of paleoecological research. Unlike current ecology, paleoecology has to pay more attention when dealing with ‘‘facts’’: the concept of uniformitarianism is presented and demonstrates the importance of philosophical constructs for scientific work. The middle‐range theory attempts to filter out false conclusions. Abiotic factors have had a strong influence on adaptive evolution; volcanism, tectonism, and climate are exemplified. Subsequently we discuss the biotic viewpoint with regard to aspects of fossil findings and in this context taphonomy, stratigraphic research, and interaction…
Dentinal microcracks after root canal instrumentation using instruments manufactured with different NiTi alloys and the SAF system: A systematic revi…
2021
Aim: The aim of this systematic analysis was to assess the prevalence of dentinal microcracks at various levels (3, 6, and 9 mm from the apex) after using instruments made with conventional, R-Phase, and M-Wire NiTi alloys and the SAF system. Materials and Methods: Electronic searches were conducted in the databases Embase, Cochrane Library, Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science. To arrange search methods, “MeSH” terms and/or keywords typically associated with the subject were paired with the Boolean operators “AND” and “OR.” Additional searches were conducted on the websites of four separate endodontic journals. After reading the titles and excluding duplicates, 1000 of the 1343 documents ori…
Cost-driven framework for progressive compression of textured meshes
2019
International audience; Recent advances in digitization of geometry and radiometry generate in routine massive amounts of surface meshes with texture or color attributes. This large amount of data can be compressed using a progressive approach which provides at decoding low complexity levels of details (LoDs) that are continuously refined until retrieving the original model. The goal of such a progressive mesh compression algorithm is to improve the overall quality of the transmission for the user, by optimizing the rate-distortion trade-off. In this paper, we introduce a novel meaningful measure for the cost of a progressive transmission of a textured mesh by observing that the rate-distor…
Sensor Fusion Combining 3-D and 2-D for Depth Data Enhancement
2012
Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras are known to be cost-efficient 3-D sensing systems capable of providing full scene depth information at a high frame rate. Among many other advantages, ToF cameras are able to provide distance information regardless of the illumination conditions and with no texture dependency, which makes them very suitable for computer vision and robotic applications where reliable distance measurements are required. However, the resolution of the given depth maps is far below the resolution given by standard 2-D video cameras which, indeed, restricts the use of ToF cameras in real applications such as those for safety and surveillance. In this thesis, we therefore investigate…
Predicting gully occurrence at watershed scale: Comparing topographic indices and multivariate statistical models
2020
In this study, the ability of five topographic indices to predict the gully trajectories observed in two adjacent watersheds located in Sicily (Italy) was evaluated. Two of these indices, named MSPI and MTWI, as far as we know, have never been employed to this aim. They were obtained by multiplying the stream power index (SPI) and the topographic wetness index (TWI), respectively, by the convergence index (CI). The predictive ability of the topographic indices was measured by using both cut-off independent (AUC: area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) and dependent statistics (Cohen's kappa index κ, sensitivity, specificity). These statistics were calculated also for 100 MAR…
Lipid and fatty acid variations inCiona intestinalis ovary after tri-n-butyltin(IV)chloride exposure
2005
Reduction of total lipids (TL) content and significant variations of triglyceride (TG) and phospholipid (PL) fractions were observed as a consequence of exposure of Ciona intestinalis ovaries to tributyltin chloride (TBTCL) solutions. In particular, an evident TG decrease and a PL increase were observed, which probably provoked an increment in membrane fluidity, because of the high concentration of long chain fatty acids and, as a consequence, PL. This could be a cell adaptive standing mechanism towards the pollutants, as observed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Also the increase in the content of the polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), important in the synthesis of compounds such as prostagla…
Release of dendritic cells from cognate CD4 + T-cell recognition results in impaired peripheral tolerance and fatal cytotoxic T-cell mediated autoimm…
2012
Resting dendritic cells (DCs) induce tolerance of peripheral T cells that have escaped thymic negative selection and thus contribute significantly to protection against autoimmunity. We recently showed that CD4 + Foxp3 + regulatory T cells (Tregs) are important for maintaining the steady-state phenotype of DCs and their tolerizing capacity in vivo. We now provide evidence that DC activation in the absence of Tregs is a direct consequence of missing DC–Treg interactions rather than being secondary to generalized autoimmunity in Treg-less mice. We show that DCs that lack MHC class II and thus cannot make cognate interactions with CD4 + T cells are completely unable to induce peripheral CD8 +…