Spatial transcriptional mapping of the human nephrogenic program

1. Download : Download high-res image (216KB)
2. Download : Download full-size image

     

Farms,pastures and woodlands: the fine‐scale distribution of Palearctic Culicoides spp. biting midges along an agro‐ecological gradient

The spatial epidemiology of Bluetongue virus (BTV) at the landscape level relates to the fine‐scale distribution and dispersal capacities of its vectors, midges belonging to the genus Culicoides Latreille (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae). Although many previous researches have carried out Culicoides sampling on farms, little is known of the fine‐scale distribution of Culicoides in the landscape immediately surrounding farms. The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of Culicoides populations at increasing distances from typical dairy farms in north‐west Europe, through the use of eight Onderstepoort‐type black‐light traps positioned along linear transects departing from farms, going through pastures and entering woodlands. A total of 16 902 Culicoides were collected in autumn 2008 and spring 2009. The majority were females, of which more than 97% were recognized as potential vectors. In pastures, we found decreasing numbers of female Culicoides as a function of the distance to the farm. This pattern was modelled by leptokurtic models, with parameters depending on season and species. By contrast, the low number of male Culicoides caught were homogeneously distributed along the transects. When transects entered woodlands, we found a higher abundance of Culicoides than expected considering the distance of the sampling sites to the farm, although this varied according to species.     

Cumulative bleaching undermines systemic resilience of the Great Barrier Reef

1. Download : Download high-res image (242KB)
2. Download : Download full-size image

     

Goldfish use the visual angle of a familiar landmark to locate a food source

Three goldfish were trained to search for food buried 20 cm from a perspex tower. In the absence of food, all fish still searched in the correct location, revealing that fish can use a landmark to locate food. Halving either the width or height of the landmark resulted in searches significantly closer to the tower, suggesting that fish determined their position relative to the landmark using its horizontal and vertical visual angles.     

Higher investment in flight morphology does not trade off with fecundity estimates in a poleward range‐expanding damselfly

1. Evolutionary increases in dispersal‐related traits are frequently documented during range expansions. Investment in flight‐related traits is energetically costly and a trade‐off with fecundity may be expected during range expansion. 2. However, in contrast to wing‐dimorphic species, this trade‐off is not general in wing‐monomorphic species. In the absence of a dispersal‐‐fecundity trade‐off, an increased investment in clutch size at the expansion front is expected possibly at a cost of reduced offspring size. 3. The study evaluated investment in female flight morphology and fecundity‐related traits (clutch size, hatchling size) and potential trade‐offs among these traits in replicated populations of the poleward range‐expanding damselfly Coenagrion scitulum. 4. Females at the expansion front had a higher relative thorax length, indicating an increased investment in flight; this can be explained by spatial sorting of dispersal ability or in situ natural selection at the expansion front. Edge females produced larger hatchlings, however, this pattern was totally driven by the population‐specific thermal larval regimes and could not be attributed to the range expansion per se. By contrast, clutch sizes did not differ between core and edge populations. There was no signal of a dispersal–fecundity trade‐off either for a trade‐off between clutch size and hatchling size. 5. These results indicate that evolution of a higher dispersal ability at the expansion front of C. scitulum does not trade off with investment in fecundity, hence a dispersal–fecundity trade‐off is unlikely to slow down range expansion of this species.     

基于文献计量的城市空间结构与生态环境关联性研究

以Web of Science核心合集中1999-2020年期间发表的城市空间结构与生态环境关联性的文献为研究样本，运用文献计量的方法，主要借助VOSviewer和Citespace软件，厘清该领域研究的主要特征与进展。研究结果表明：城市空间结构与生态环境关联性研究的文献总量上呈现波动上升的趋势，尤其在近五年的波动骤增态势十分显著，成为地理学、城乡规划学、环境与生态学等学科交叉融合研究的重要方向之一；研究内容主要聚焦于城市空间结构与大气环境的关联性机理，具体涉及温室气体排放、空气污染和城市热岛效应，同时水环境、土壤环境以及生物多样性等方面也越来越受到重视而逐步成为研究热点。未来可围绕构建两者关联性框架和评估体系、面向生态环境问题的城市空间结构优化设计、两者发展变化的模拟和预测等核心问题展开研究。     

Approximate Confidence Bounds for Ripley's Statistic for Random Points in a Square

Confidence envelopes for Ripley's L function for N random points in the unit square were obtained by simulation. The 90, 95 and 99th percentiles of 1000 simulations are given in tabular form for N in the range 10 to 350. Results for a number of choices of the maximum interpoint distance are reported.     

Characterizing and predicting species distributions across environments and scales: Argentine ant occurrences in the eye of the beholder

Aim Species distribution models (SDMs) or, more specifically, ecological niche models (ENMs) are a useful and rapidly proliferating tool in ecology and global change biology. ENMs attempt to capture associations between a species and its environment and are often used to draw biological inferences, to predict potential occurrences in unoccupied regions and to forecast future distributions under environmental change. The accuracy of ENMs, however, hinges critically on the quality of occurrence data. ENMs often use haphazardly collected data rather than data collected across the full spectrum of existing environmental conditions. Moreover, it remains unclear how processes affecting ENM predictions operate at different spatial scales. The scale (i.e. grain size) of analysis may be dictated more by the sampling regime than by biologically meaningful processes. The aim of our study is to jointly quantify how issues relating to region and scale affect ENM predictions using an economically important and ecologically damaging invasive species, the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile). Location California, USA. Methods We analysed the relationship between sampling sufficiency, regional differences in environmental parameter space and cell size of analysis and resampling environmental layers using two independently collected sets of presence/absence data. Differences in variable importance were determined using model averaging and logistic regression. Model accuracy was measured with area under the curve (AUC) and Cohen's kappa. Results We first demonstrate that insufficient sampling of environmental parameter space can cause large errors in predicted distributions and biological interpretation. Models performed best when they were parametrized with data that sufficiently sampled environmental parameter space. Second, we show that altering the spatial grain of analysis changes the relative importance of different environmental variables. These changes apparently result from how environmental constraints and the sampling distributions of environmental variables change with spatial grain. Conclusions These findings have clear relevance for biological inference. Taken together, our results illustrate potentially general limitations for ENMs, especially when such models are used to predict species occurrences in novel environments. We offer basic methodological and conceptual guidelines for appropriate sampling and scale matching.