Search results for "Animal"
showing 10 items of 22159 documents
Behavioural, ecological, and evolutionary aspects of diversity in frog colour patterns
2016
The role of colours and colour patterns in behavioural ecology has been extensively studied in a variety of contexts and taxa, while almost overlooked in many others. For decades anurans have been the focus of research on acoustic signalling due to the prominence of vocalisations in their communication. Much less attention has been paid to the enormous diversity of colours, colour patterns, and other types of putative visual signals exhibited by frogs. With the exception of some anecdotal observations and studies, the link between colour patterns and the behavioural and evolutionary ecology of anurans had not been addressed until approximately two decades ago. Since then, there has been eve…
Pace-of-life in a social insect: behavioral syndromes in ants shift along a climatic gradient
2017
Lay SummaryLinks between behavioral traits can shift with the local climate. We show that behavioral associations with temperature not only occur across, but also within populations. At warmer sites ant colonies increased their exploration and foraging activity, but were less aggressive. Moreover, at these warmer sites, more positive links were found between behaviors within populations compared to colder sites, where more negative links prevailed. Our study suggests that associations between behaviors shift along climatic gradients.
Crop density rather than ruderal plants explains the response of ancient segetal weeds
2018
AbstractThe influence of ruderal species and crop density on ancient segetal weeds was examined. The experiment was carried out on experimental plots with three different sewing densities of winter triticale. Weeding of ruderal taxa was applied on half of the plots to explore the relation between segetal and ruderal weeds. Variation in species composition by environmental variables was analysed by running Redundancy Analysis (RDA) combined with performing forward selection and variation partitioning for “weeding” and “crop density” as explanatory variables. Additionally, the effect of crop density and weeding was tested separately for segetal and ruderal species along the seasons with the u…
How do cuticular hydrocarbons evolve? Physiological constraints and climatic and biotic selection pressures act on a complex functional trait
2017
Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) cover the cuticles of virtually all insects, serving as a waterproofing agent and as a communication signal. The causes for the high CHC variation between species, and the factors influencing CHC profiles, are scarcely understood. Here, we compare CHC profiles of ant species from seven biogeographic regions, searching for physiological constraints and for climatic and biotic selection pressures. Molecule length constrained CHC composition: long-chain profiles contained fewer linear alkanes, but more hydrocarbons with disruptive features in the molecule. This is probably owing to selection on the physiology to build a semi-fluid cuticular layer, which is necessa…
Variation in the immune state of Gammarus pulex (Crustacea, Amphipoda) according to temperature: are extreme temperatures a stress?
2017
9 pages; International audience; Temperature is known to impact host-parasite interactions in various ways. Such effects are often regarded as the consequence of the increased metabolism of parasites with increasing temperature. However, the effect of temperature on hosts' immune system could also be a determinant. Here we assessed the influence of temperature on the immunocompetence of the crustacean amphipod Gammarus pulex. Amphipods play a key ecological role in freshwater ecosystems that can be altered by several parasites. We investigated the consequences of three weeks of acclimatization at four temperatures (from 9 °C to 17 °C) on different immunological parameters. Temperature influ…
Potential risk evaluation for unintended entry of genetically modified plant Propagating material in Europe through import of seeds and animal feed –…
2019
Significant attention has been drawn to the adventitious and technically unavoidable presence of genetically modified (GM) organisms in the food and feed imported into the European Union (EU), while the potential presence of GM seeds in material for cultivation is less studied. Here we report a study from an EU member state, Latvia, during years 2017–2018 regarding monitoring for the presence of GM seeds in certified seed and animal feed material. Eighty-two and 28 samples of seeds intended for cultivation were analyzed in 2017 and 2018, respectively. One soybean sample contained MON40-3-2 soybean seeds (0.09 ± 0.01%) and one maize sample contained MON810 maize seeds (0.08 ± 0.01%). In addi…
A new genus for the eastern dwarf galagos (Primates: Galagidae).
2017
13 pages; International audience; The family Galagidae (African galagos or bushbabies) comprises five genera: EuoticusGray, 1872; GalagoGeoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1796; GalagoidesSmith, 1833; OtolemurCoquerel, 1859; and SciurocheirusGray, 1872, none of which is regarded as monotypic, but some (Euoticus and Otolemur) certainly qualify as oligotypic. We argue for the recognition of a sixth genus, if the taxonomy is to reflect galagid evolution accurately. Genetic evidence has consistently demonstrated that the taxa currently referred to the genus Galagoides are not monophyletic but form two clades (a western and an eastern clade) that do not share an exclusive common ancestor; we review 20 years…
Medicinal mushrooms: Valuable biological resources of high exploitation potential
2017
Higher Basidiomycetes and Ascomycetes mushrooms possess various immunological and anticancer properties. They also offer important health benefits and exhibit a broad spectrum of pharmacological activities including antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, cytotoxic, immunomodulating, anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, antiallergic, antidepressive, antihyperlipidemic, antidiabetic, digestive, hepatoprotective, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, osteoprotective, and hypotensive activities. This minireview summarizes the perspectives, recent advances, and major challenges of medicinal mushrooms with reference to their nutraceutical properties and dietary value, the production of mushroom biomass …
Cryptic diversity within three South American whip spider species (Arachnida, Amblypygi)
2020
4 pages; International audience; Cryptic diversity (CD), the presence of highly divergent phylogenetic lineages within closed morphological species, has been documented for many taxa. Great arachnid orders such as Araneae or Scorpiones are well studied and many cases of CD have been described therein; to date, however, related research on smaller arachnid orders, such as whip spiders (Amblypygi), remains lacking. In the current study, we investigated CD based on cytochrome oxidase 1 (COI) in three nominal species of the genus Heterophrynus (H. alces, H. batesii, and H. longicornis), represented by 65 specimens. The sequences were compared using three different methods. All three species sho…
Ocean acidification at a coastal CO2 vent induces expression of stress-related transcripts and transposable elements in the sea anemone Anemonia viri…
2019
Published version, available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210358 Ocean acidification threatens to disrupt interactions between organisms throughout marine ecosystems. The diversity of reef-building organisms decreases as seawater CO2 increases along natural gradients, yet soft-bodied animals, such as sea anemones, are often resilient. We sequenced the polyA-enriched transcriptome of adult sea anemone Anemonia viridis and its dinoflagellate symbiont sampled along a natural CO2 gradient in Italy to assess stress levels in these organisms. We found that about 1.4% of the anemone transcripts, but only ~0.5% of the Symbiodinium sp. transcripts were differentially expressed. Processe…