Comparative analysis of the ligninolytic potential of basidiomycetes belonging to different taxonomic and ecological groups

Screening of the ligninolytic activity of basidiomycetes from the Komarov Botanical Institute Basidiomycetes Culture Collection (LE-BIN), Russian Academy of Sciences, belonging to different taxonomic and ecological groups was performed. The patterns of the position of taxa of active producers of ligninolytic enzymes in the modern system of fungi were identified. Cluster analysis showed that the group of fungi with the greatest ligninolytic and degradation potential includes representatives of the families Pleurotaceae, Polyporaceae, and Phanerochaetaceae, which perform the first stages of wood decomposition. As a result, species of interest for the further study of their oxidative potential and use in biotechnology were selected.     

Activity of proteinases in fish of different ecological groups and their potential food items

The paper cites evidence on the activity of casein- and hemoglobinlytical proteinases of mucosa of the digestive tract of nine species of freshwater bony fish differing in their pattern of feeding, as well as in the whole organism of their potential prey. It was demonstrated that the ratio of proteinase activity with respect to casein and hemoglobin in the intestine mucosa of consumers and in the whole organism of their food items is different. In mucosa of fish intestine, the activity of caseinlytic proteinases is higher than the activity of hemoglobinlytic proteinases. In the whole organism of juvenile fish and invertebrates, on the other hand, the activity of hemoglobinlytic proteinases is higher.     

On the dynamics of rodent social groups

A prevailing view is that animal social groups are largely determined by natal philopatry. However, other processes can influence the dynamics of social groups, including emigration of individuals that join pre-existing groups. Given that fitness consequences of living in a group may vary depending on how groups changes, the extent to which alternative mechanisms drive social dynamics is an important theme to the evolution of sociality. We considered the available literature on social rodents to examine (i) whether the available evidence supports single versus multiple mechanisms, (ii) how strongly evidence supports a major importance of natal philopatry, and (iii) whether mechanisms of group formation are linked to the reproductive strategy across species. While natal philopatry is considered the major process behind group dynamics in 26% of species examined, studies on 74% of species indicate two or more mechanisms take place simultaneously. Natal philopatry is considered a primary mechanism in communal (56%) and singular breeders (70%), but less so in solitary breeders (18%). Thus, the tenet that natal philopatry is the main process driving group dynamics in rodents may be premature, and studies aimed at examining the importance of alternative mechanisms are justified.     

Stability of social status rankings of female cynomolgus monkeys,of varying reproductive condition,in different social groups

In order test the hypothesis that adult female macaques display a tendency to attain a certain level of social status independent of the social situation, the social status rankings of 41 wild-caught adult female Macaca fascicularis were determined in different social groups. About one-third of the females were intact and housed with vasectomized males. About one-third of the females were ovariectomized and housed with intact males, and the remaining females were intact and housed with intact males in order to allow pregnancy to occur. Within each of these experimental groups, females were housed in social groups of 4–6 females and 1 male, and the constituency of these groups was changed every 3 months for 22 months. Thus, females lived in eight different social groups. The correlations between the social status rankings of individual females while living in different social groups were positive and significant. The majority of the females were either stable dominants or stable subordinates in 75% of the groups in which they lived, which was a significant proportion of the study population. The stability of social status rankings was higher in the ovariectomized than in the pregnant and intact groups; however, this was not a significant difference. In the context of the results of previous studies, these findings suggest that the social status of an individual is the result of both the immediate social environment and some inherent characteristic(s) of the individual that promotes the likelihood that under most social circumstances an individual will display a predictable level of social status.     

Altered aggression in different sized groups of crayfish supports a dynamic social behaviour model

Living in groups with conspecifics can increase an animal's fitness in the wild. A social environment may also be imposed by commercial farming industries. One important measure of competition and group dynamics is the level of aggressive interaction. This can also influence the level of damage or injury in cultured populations, a commercial issue at point of sale. There is considerable research into this issue in commercial species such as pigs, cattle and chickens but less is known about aquatic communal species such as decapod crustaceans. Here we manipulated group size in the freshwater crayfish Cherax destructor, a species that forms social groups in the wild and one that is also commercially farmed. Aggressive behaviour was scored during 1 h of observation in replicates of groups of 4, 16 and 36 animals to analyse 11 variables of fight dynamics that ensued. The number of fights per crayfish (4.0 ± 0.8 to 1.9 ± 0.2 fights, P = 0.017) and the time each crayfish was involved in a fight (113.9 ± 32.6 to 21.6 ± 2.6 s, P = 0.011) decreased as group size increased. Conversely, the number of failed tailflips elicited per crayfish increased from 0 to 0.08 ± 0.03 tailflips in the largest groups (P = 0.011). Together, the data suggest that despite C. destructor's different biology and habitat, compared to prior work that manipulates group size, the crayfish adjusts its fighting strategy when social circumstances change. Theory has proposed aggressive behaviour could change in groups of animals and our data indicates that this applies more broadly across species and more dynamically than previously demonstrated.     

Spread of social information and dynamics of social transmission within Drosophila groups

Understanding how behavioral diversity arises and is maintained is central to evolutionary biology. Genetically based inheritance has been a predominant research focus of the last century; however, nongenetic inheritance, such as social transmission, has become a topic of increasing interest [1]. How social information impacts behavior depends on the balance between information gathered directly through personal experience versus that gleaned through social interactions and on the diffusion of this information within groups [2, 3]. We investigate how female Drosophila melanogaster use social information under seminatural conditions and whether this information can spread and be maintained within a group, a prerequisite for establishing behavioral transmission [4]. We show that oviposition site choice is heavily influenced by previous social interactions. Naive observer flies develop a preference for the same egg-laying medium as experienced demonstrator flies conditioned to avoid one of two equally rewarding media. Surprisingly, oviposition site preference was socially transmitted from demonstrators to observers even when they interacted in a cage with only unflavored, pure agar medium, and even when the observer flies had previous personal experience with both rewarding media. Our findings shed light on the diffusion process of social information within groups, on its maintenance, and ultimately, on the roots of behavioral local adaptation.     

Pride,personality, and the evolutionary foundations of human social status

Based on evolutionary logic, Henrich and Gil-White [Evolution and Human Behavior, 22(3), 165–196] distinguished between two routes to attaining social status in human societies: dominance, based on intimidation, and prestige, based on the possession of skills or expertise. Independently, emotion researchers Tracy and Robins [Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(3), 506–525] demonstrated two distinct forms of pride: hubristic and authentic. Bridging these two lines of research, this paper examines whether hubristic and authentic pride, respectively, may be part of the affective-motivational suite of psychological adaptations underpinning the status-obtaining strategies of dominance and prestige. Support for this hypothesis emerged from two studies employing self-reports (Study 1), and self-and peer-reports of group members on collegiate athletic teams (Study 2). Results from both studies showed that hubristic pride is associated with dominance, whereas authentic pride is associated with prestige. Moreover, the two facets of pride are part of a larger suite of distinctive psychological traits uniquely associated with dominance or prestige. Specifically, dominance is positively associated with traits such as narcissism, aggression, and disagreeableness, whereas prestige is positively associated with traits such as genuine self-esteem, agreeableness, conscientiousness, achievement, advice-giving, and prosociality. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for our understanding of the evolutionary origins of pride and social status, and the interrelations among emotion, personality, and status attainment.     

Analysis of anger expression style--continuous anger and personality types of professional soccer players

The purpose of this study was to analyse the anger expression styles, the continuous anger and personality types of players who play football in the professional league. The research group consisted of 133 soccer players who are playing in sports teams in the Turkish Super League: Ankara Sport Club, Gen?lerbirli?i Sports Club and Hacettepe Sports Club in the first league, Turk Telekom sports in the second league, and Ke?i?ren Gücü Sports and Ankarademir Sports playing in the third league in the 2008-2009 football season. The Eysenck personality inventory was modified to Turkish by Bayar in 1983, having been developed by Eysenck and Eysenck in 1975 and the continuous anger-anger style scale (SOTO) was modified to Turkish by Ozer in 1994. The state trait anger scale (STAS) was originally developed by Spielberger in 1983. All these were used on soccer players participating in the study to determine the continuous anger and anger styles in this study. In the interpretation of data, a meaningfulness of p < 0.05, was applied by using regression analysis, the Kruskal Wallis Test, the one-way variance analysis (ANOVA) test and the Tukey test to find the differences among the groups. The SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) programme was used to find the accounted values and to evaluate the data. According to the results of this study, regarding the education level variable, while there was a meaningful difference between the continuous anger sub-dimension and anger control sub-dimension than continuous anger-anger expression styles, no significant difference was found among personality type sub-dimensions (psychoticism, extrovert, neurotic, false). In addition, a significant relationship was found between psychoticism, extrovert, neurotic, and lie sub-dimensions and the personality type sub-dimensions of professional players' constant anger-anger expression styles.     

Thermal constraints on growth,stoichiometry and lipid content of different groups of microalgae with bioenergy potential

Temperature has a range of effects on population demographic rates and physiology of microalgae for potential bioenergy application. The changes in microalgal growth, stoichiometry and cellular lipid contents of 14 different microalgae species with high bioenergy potentials in response to different temperature between 10 and 35 °C were investigated. For most of the chosen microalgae, the specific growth rate increased with temperature over most of the range. On the other hand, the biomass density of most of the selected species declined with temperature at stationary phase. Certain cyanobacteria failed to grow below 20 °C, while eukaryotes had a wider temperature range. Lipid content, by contrast, showed different responses to temperature among the 14 species. Nine of the species showed a positive response with increased temperature, while others showed neural or unimodal response. Cellular C:N and C:P ratios were mostly unimodally related to temperature. Some eukaryotic species showed the lowest total lipid contents but the highest C:N and C:P ratios, the fastest growth, and the highest biomass density at their stationary phases. The results indicated that the responses of the life history and cellular stoichiometry to temperature were more consistent across microalgae than that of total lipid content.     

Body form and nutritional status among adult males of different social groups in Orissa and Bihar States in India

This paper aims to carry out a biological investigation of the body form and nutritional status of the major social groups of Orissa and Bihar States in India. For this, Cormic Index (CI) and Body Mass Index (BMI) have been computed using data on height, sitting height and weight, taken from adult males of age 18-62 years of various ethnic groups in these two states. The subjects have been classified on the basis of chronic energy deficiency (CED). It is found that a substantial proportion of the people with CED are in the grade II and grade III categories. ANOVA, t-tests, correlation and regression were carried out separately. The results reveal that in Orissa, Scheduled Tribes are shorter, lighter and have lowest mean values of BMI and Cormic Index compared to other groups, but in Bihar, though the Scheduled Tribes are shorter, Scheduled Castes are lower in weight and have the lowest mean values of BMI. There are significant differences in BMI as well as in CI between Scheduled Tribes of Orissa and Bihar. Scheduled Castes and Tribes of Bihar have the highest percentage of CED with 64.71% and 57.45%, respectively. Muslims of Bihar are also affected (52.95%), but overall prevalence of CED is lower in Orissa (49.11%) than in Bihar (54.62%). BMI and CI are highly correlated for each of the social groups in Bihar and Orissa.     

Features of a protein component of the endotoxin from Yersinia pseudotuberculosis

The protein moiety of endotoxin from Yersinia pseudotuberculosis was found to consist of two polypeptides with apparent molecular masses 40 and 14.5 kDa (4:1 w/w). The major protein (40 kDa) was isolated from the endotoxin pretreated with sodium deoxy cholate by gel chromatography on the Sephadex G-200 column. Comparative study of this protein and oligomeric form of porin from the outer membrane of Y. pseudotuberculosis using SDS--PAGE, velocity sedimentation, lipid bilayer experiments, chemical and serological analyses revealed their identity. The deoxycholate treatment of the endotoxin does not affect complexes of the major protein and LPS.     

Evolution of trust and trustworthiness: social awareness favours personality differences

Interest in the evolution and maintenance of personality is burgeoning. Individuals of diverse animal species differ in their aggressiveness, fearfulness, sociability and activity. Strong trade-offs, mutation-selection balance, spatio-temporal fluctuations in selection, frequency dependence and good-genes mate choice are invoked to explain heritable personality variation, yet for continuous behavioural traits, it remains unclear which selective force is likely to maintain distinct polymorphisms. Using a model of trust and cooperation, we show how allowing individuals to monitor each other's cooperative tendencies, at a cost, can select for heritable polymorphisms in trustworthiness. This variation, in turn, favours costly 'social awareness' in some individuals. Feedback of this sort can explain the individual differences in trust and trustworthiness so often documented by economists in experimental public goods games across a range of cultures. Our work adds to growing evidence that evolutionary game theorists can no longer afford to ignore the importance of real world inter-individual variation in their models.     

A social network analysis of primate groups

Primate social systems are difficult to characterize, and existing classification schemes have been criticized for being overly simplifying, formulated only on a verbal level or partly inconsistent. Social network analysis comprises a collection of analytical tools rooted in the framework of graph theory that were developed to study human social interaction patterns. More recently these techniques have been successfully applied to examine animal societies. Primate social systems differ from those of humans in both size and density, requiring an approach that puts more emphasis on the quality of relationships. Here, we discuss a set of network measures that are useful to describe primate social organization and we present the results of a network analysis of 70 groups from 30 different species. For this purpose we concentrated on structural measures on the group level, describing the distribution of interaction patterns, centrality, and group structuring. We found considerable variability in those measures, reflecting the high degree of diversity of primate social organizations. By characterizing primate groups in terms of their network metrics we can draw a much finer picture of their internal structure that might be useful for species comparisons as well as the interpretation of social behavior.