Recombination and loss of complementation: a more than two-fold cost for parthenogenesis

Certain types of asexual reproduction lead to loss of complementation, that is unmasking of recessive deleterious alleles. A theoretical measure of this loss is calculated for apomixis, automixis and endomitosis in the cases of diploidy and polyploidy. The effect of the consequent unmasking of deleterious recessive mutations on fitness is also calculated. Results show that, depending on the number of lethal equivalents and on the frequency of recombination, the cost produced by loss of complementation after few generations of asexual reproduction may be greater than the two-fold cost of meiosis. Maintaining complementation may, therefore, provide a general short-term advantage for sexual reproduction. Apomixis can replace sexual reproduction under a wide range of parameters only if it is associated with triploidy or tetraploidy, which is consistent with our knowledge of the distribution of apomixis.     

Defining protein expression in the urothelium: a problem of more than transitional interest

The transitional epithelium of the bladder, the urothelium, is a challenging tissue to study due to its fragility, complex cellular makeup, stratified composition, and intimate connections to both neural and connective tissue elements. With the increasing focus on the urothelium as a mechanosensory tissue with complex autocrine and paracrine signaling activities, there have arisen a number of unresolved controversies in the urothelial literature regarding whether certain important sensory and signaling proteins are expressed by the urothelium. Prominent examples of this include the transient receptor potential (TRP) family member TRPV1 and the purinergic receptor P2X(3). The problem is more than one of scientific bookkeeping since studies utilizing genetic models (primarily knockout mice) claim additional credibility for urothelial functions when phenotypes are discovered. Furthermore, both of the above-mentioned receptors are important therapeutic targets for various bladder disorders including inflammatory and neuropathic pain. The reasons for the confusion about urothelial expression are manifold, but they likely include low expression levels in some cases, poor specificity of antibodies (sometimes lacking adequate controls), the presence of nonurothelial cells resident within the urothelium, and the fact that the urothelium is particularly prone to aspecific adsorption of antibodies. In this review, we attempt to summarize some of the pitfalls with currently accepted practices in this regard, as well as to describe a set of guidelines which will improve the reliability of conclusions related to urothelial expression. It is hoped that this will be of value to investigators studying the urothelium, to those attempting to interpret conflicts in the literature, and hopefully also those charged with reviewing unpublished work. These recommendations will outline a set of "baseline" and "best practice" guidelines by which both researchers and reviewers will be able to evaluate the evidence presented.     

"Change yourself and the whole world will become kinder": Russian activists for reproductive health and the limits of claims making for women

This article views reproductive health activism as a fruitful site for analyzing the cultural logics through which legitimate claims for women's needs become expressed and circumscribed. It begins from the observation that in the United States and Britain, reproductive health has been a key arena for feminist political claims and struggles for women's rights, bodily integrity, access to health care, and demands for authority in relations with experts. These concerns and struggles have not, however, emerged in all postsocialist contexts, and new activism in Russia reveals strikingly different agendas. Innovative groups of health providers seeking to increase women's access to birth control methods and safe sex, home birth opportunities, and improved health services work outside of feminist perspectives and reject political paths for change. By examining the ideological inspirations, cultural logics, and political-economic constraints shaping the outreach work of Russian health practitioners, the article explains how and why health activism became a site for personal "spiritual" revival and the strengthening of nuclear families. It also explores how conditions following the collapse of socialism have further legitimized activists' rejection of political agendas for change.     

Biological and Cultural Anthropology of a Changing Tropical Forest: A Fruitful Collaboration across Subfields

In this article, we integrate approaches from biological and cultural anthropology to describe changing relationships between humans and animals in the Dzanga-Ndoki Park and Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Reserve (RDS), Central African Republic (CAR). Recent decades have seen a rapid proliferation of human activities, with striking tensions between logging and conservation economies. Our data suggest that certain animals and humans initially adapted successfully to these forest uses, and that local residents have crafted culturally rich new ways of living in the forest. However, our longitudinal data indicate animal declines and expanding frontiers of increasingly intensive human use. These trends are altering previous territorial arrangements and coming to undermine today's remarkably rich spectrum of human–animal encounters there. Our combined approach offers an alternative to increasingly distinct method and theory between anthropology's subfields. We sketch a research agenda for integrated anthropological attention to environmental change, especially to transformations in human–animal interactions and entanglements.     

Rice germline‐specific Argonaute MEL1 protein binds to phasiRNAs generated from more than 700 lincRNAs

Small RNAs that interact with Argonaute (AGO) proteins play central roles in RNA‐mediated silencing. MEIOSIS ARRESTED AT LEPTOTENE1 (MEL1), a rice AGO, has specific functions in the development of pre‐meiotic germ cells and the progression of meiosis. Here, we show that MEL1, which is located mostly in the cytoplasm of germ cells, associates preferentially with 21‐nucleotide phased small interfering RNAs (phasiRNAs) that bear a 5′‐terminal cytosine. Most phasiRNAs are derived from 1171 intergenic clusters distributed on all rice chromosomes. From these clusters, over 700 large intergenic, non‐coding RNAs (lincRNAs) that contain the consensus sequence complementary to miR2118 are transcribed specifically in inflorescences, and cleaved within the miR2118 site. Cleaved lincRNAs are processed via DICER‐LIKE4 (DCL4) protein, resulting in production of phasiRNAs. This study provides the evidence that the miR2118‐dependent and the DCL4‐dependent pathways are both required for biogenesis of 21‐nt phasiRNAs associated with germline‐specific MEL1 AGO in rice, and over 700 lincRNAs are key factors for induction of this biogenesis during reproductive‐specific stages.     

Brazilian public policies for reproductive health: family planning, abortion and prenatal care

This study is an ethical reflection on the formulation and application of public policies regarding reproductive health in Brazil. The Integral Assistance Program for Women's Health (PAISM) can be considered advanced for a country in development. Universal access for family planning is foreseen in the Brazilian legislation, but the services do not offer contraceptive methods for the population in a regular and consistent manner. Abortion is restricted by law to two cases: risk to the woman's life and rape. This reality favors the practice of unsafe abortion, which is the third largest cause of maternal death in Brazil. Legal abortion is regulated by the State and the procedure is performed in public health centers. However, there is resistance on the part of professionals to attend these women. Prenatal care is a priority strategy for promoting the quality of life of these women and of future generations. Nonetheless, it is still difficult for these women to access the prenatal care services and to have the required number of consultations. Moreover, managers and health professionals need to be made aware of the importance of implementing the actions indicated by the public policies in the area of sexual and reproductive health, favoring respect for autonomy in a context of personal freedom.     

Forest restoration is more than firing seeds from a drone

We are witnessing a rapid increase in news sending the message that drone seeding is a promising technological solution to implement forest restoration at large spatial scales. However, there are neither reports regarding success nor peer-reviewed studies to support these assertions. Once in the ground, the seeds and the seedlings and saplings that they generate have to face biotic and abiotic hazards that can strongly reduce regeneration potential. Successful forest restoration, therefore, cannot be achieved by simply dropping seeds from the air. We summarize some aspects to take into account before considering drone seeding as an efficient and widely applicable technology for forest restoration. A first step should be to increase the precision of drone seeding—contrary to the current massive firing of seeds—in order to concentrate the efforts in the best microsites for establishment and reduce the number of seeds needed and the cost of the whole operation.     

Costs of weaponry: Unarmed males sire more offspring than armed males in a male‐dimorphic mite

Morphological structures used as weapons in male–male competition are not only costly to develop but are also probably costly to maintain during adulthood. Therefore, having weapons could reduce the energy available for other fitness‐enhancing actions, such as post‐copulatory investment. We tested the hypothesis that armed males make lower post‐copulatory investments than unarmed males, and that this difference will be most pronounced under food‐limited conditions. We performed two experiments using the male‐dimorphic bulb mite Rhizoglyphus robini, in which males are either armed “fighters” or unarmed “scramblers.” Firstly, we tested whether fighters and scramblers differed in their reproductive output after being starved or fed for 1 or 2 weeks. Secondly, we measured the reproductive output of scramblers and fighters (starved or fed) after one, two or three consecutive matings. Scramblers sired more offspring than fighters after 1 week, but scramblers and fighters only sired a few offspring after 2 weeks. Scramblers also sired more offspring than fighters at the first mating, and males rarely sired offspring after consecutive matings. Contrary to our hypothesis, the fecundity of starved and fed males did not differ. The higher reproductive output of scramblers suggests that, regardless of nutritional state, scramblers make larger post‐copulatory investments than fighters. Alternatively, (cryptic) female choice generally favours scramblers. Why the morphs differed in their reproductive output is unclear. Neither morph performed well relatively late in life or after multiple matings. It remains to be investigated to what extent the apparent scrambler advantage contributes to the maintenance and evolution of male morph expression.     

High physiological demands in intensively raised pigs: impact on health and welfare

Genetic selection and better control of the environment of the pigs have resulted in increased production levels concerning both reproduction and growth. Such high performances imply high physiological demands that may deteriorate health and welfare. The aims of this paper are to review the physiological challenges that pigs are facing, to identify possible consequences on health and welfare, to propose ways of detecting and correcting problems whenever possible. At weaning, piglets are submitted to abrupt changes in food supply, housing and social environment. Behavioural changes and efficient adaptations of the digestive tract are critical for their health and welfare. Physiological demands to support these adaptations and risks of failure are inversely related to the age of the pigs. During fattening, modern pigs have high daily weight gain especially of lean tissue as well as elevated feed conversion rate. These high growth performances are suspected to favour stress and disease susceptibility, undesirable behaviours as well as leg weakness, but further experimental data are necessary to validate these effects and find their origin. In reproductive females, high prolificacy generates elevated foetal demands for nutrients and space that are not fully met as shown by an increased number of light piglets having difficulties to adapt successfully to the neonatal life. During lactation, sows with high milk production have high nutrient requirements leading to intense catabolism that may affect their health, welfare and future reproductive abilities.     

The health of a nation predicts their mate preferences: cross-cultural variation in women's preferences for masculinized male faces

Recent formulations of sexual selection theory emphasize how mate choice can be affected by environmental factors, such as predation risk and resource quality. Women vary greatly in the extent to which they prefer male masculinity and this variation is hypothesized to reflect differences in how women resolve the trade-off between the costs (e.g. low investment) and benefits (e.g. healthy offspring) associated with choosing a masculine partner. A strong prediction of this trade-off theory is that women''s masculinity preferences will be stronger in cultures where poor health is particularly harmful to survival. We investigated the relationship between women''s preferences for male facial masculinity and a health index derived from World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancies and the impact of communicable disease. Across 30 countries, masculinity preference increased as health decreased. This relationship was independent of cross-cultural differences in wealth or women''s mating strategies. These findings show non-arbitrary cross-cultural differences in facial attractiveness judgements and demonstrate the use of trade-off theory for investigating cross-cultural variation in women''s mate preferences.     

Vitamin C deficiency: more than just a nutritional disorder

Although vitamin C deficiency and scurvy are generally considered as pure nutritional disorders, only a minority of the vitamin C concentration is determined by food intake. In the presence of transition metals (iron and copper), the antiscorbutic factor shifts from an antioxidant to a pro-oxidant function. Haptoglobin (Hp) is a plasma α-2 glycoprotein characterized by 3 common phenotypes (Hp 1-1, Hp 2-1 and Hp 2-2). Its free hemoglobin (Hb)-binding capacity prevents Hb-driven oxidative damage. When the antioxidant capacity of Hp is insufficient, its role is taken over by hemopexin (heme-binding protein) and by vitamin C (free radical scavenger). The Hp 2-2 phenotype has a lower capacity to inhibit oxidation and vitamin C depletion. In this article, two consequences of this major finding are tackled. The Hp polymorphism is an important non-nutritional modifying factor in the pathogenesis of vitamin C deficiency and scurvy, which may explain the success of long-range human migration by the natural selection of some populations characterized by high Hp 1 allele frequencies. Moreover, we propose tailoring the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) values of vitamin C, taking into consideration the Hp phenotype dependency.     

De novo lipogenesis in the liver in health and disease: more than just a shunting yard for glucose

Hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) is the biochemical process of synthesising fatty acids from acetyl‐CoA subunits that are produced from a number of different pathways within the cell, most commonly carbohydrate catabolism. In addition to glucose which most commonly supplies carbon units for DNL, fructose is also a profoundly lipogenic substrate that can drive DNL, important when considering the increasing use of fructose in corn syrup as a sweetener. In the context of disease, DNL is thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease, a common condition often associated with the metabolic syndrome and consequent insulin resistance. Whether DNL plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance is yet to be fully elucidated, but it may be that the prevalent products of this synthetic process induce some aspect of hepatic insulin resistance.     

Much more than a ratio: multivariate selection on female bodies

Studies of the attractiveness of female bodies have focussed strongly on the waist, hips and bust, but sexual selection operates on whole phenotypes rather than the relative proportions of just two or three body parts. Here, we use body scanners to extract computer‐generated images of 96 Chinese women’s bodies with all traits unrelated to body shape removed. We first show that Chinese and Australian men and women rate the attractiveness of these bodies the same. We then statistically explore the roles of age, body weight and a range of length and girth measures on ratings of attractiveness. Last, we use nonlinear selection analysis, a statistical approach developed by evolutionary biologists to explore the interacting effects of suites of traits on fitness, to study how body traits interact to determine attractiveness. Established proxies of adiposity and reproductive value, including age, body mass index and waist‐to‐hip ratio, were all correlated with attractiveness. Nonlinear response surface methods using the original traits consistently outperform all of these indices and ratios, suggesting that indices of youth and abdominal adiposity tell only part of the story of body attractiveness. In particular, our findings draw attention to the importance of integration between abdominal measures, including the bust, and the length and girth of limbs. Our results provide the most comprehensive analysis to date of the effect of body shape and fat deposition on female attractiveness.     

Within the genome,long telomeres are more informative than short telomeres with respect to fitness components in a long‐lived seabird

Telomeres, DNA‐protein structures at chromosome ends, shorten with age, and telomere length has been linked to age‐related diseases and survival. In vitro studies revealed that the shortest telomeres trigger cell senescence, but whether the shortest telomeres are also the best biomarker of ageing is not known. We measured telomeres in erythrocytes of wild common terns Sterna hirundo using terminal restriction fragment analysis. This yields a distribution of telomere lengths for each sample, and we investigated how different telomere subpopulations (percentiles) varied in their relation to age and fitness proxies. Longer telomeres within a genome lost more base pairs with age and were better predictors of survival than shorter telomeres. Likewise, fitness proxies such as arrival date at the breeding grounds and reproductive success were best predicted by telomere length at the higher percentiles. Our finding that longer telomeres within a genome predict fitness components better than the shorter telomeres indicates that they are a more informative ageing biomarker. This finding contrasts with the fact that cell senescence is triggered by the shortest telomeres. We suggest that this paradox arises, because longer telomeres lose more base pairs per unit time and thus better reflect the various forms of stress that accelerate telomere shortening, and that telomeres primarily function as biomarker because their shortening reflects cumulative effects of various stressors rather than reflecting telomere‐induced cell senescence.