The census of heronries, 1960–61

Capsule Eleonora's Falcons wintering in Madagascar selected degraded humid forests and cultivated areas close to pristine humid forest.

Aims To identify the habitat preferences of Eleonora's Falcon Falco eleonorae on their wintering grounds in Madagascar, and to use this information to gain insights into the conservation priorities of this species.

Methods A total of 11 Eleonora's Falcons were captured in Spain in 2007 and 2008 and equipped with solar-powered satellite transmitters. We obtained information on five complete wintering events for three birds, two of them tracked for two consecutive years. Data were analyzed using geographic information system-based cartography.

Results The analyses showed a preference for degraded humid forests and cultivated lands within areas where pristine humid forests were the most abundant habitat type.

Conclusions Eleonora's Falcons could be taking advantage from a spill-over edge effect of their insect prey into cultivated and more open areas close to humid forests. However, the importance of humid forests for Eleonora's Falcons seems to be high. The current loss of this habitat in Madagascar is a cause for concern with respect to the conservation of this long-distance migratory falcon species.     

The Spread of Dengue in an Endemic Urban Milieu–The Case of Delhi,India

Background

Dengue is a major international public health concern, one of the most important arthropod-borne diseases. More than 3.5 billion people are at risk of dengue infection and there are an estimated 390 million dengue infections annually. This prolific increase has been connected to societal changes such as population growth and increasing urbanization generating intense agglomeration leading to proliferation of synanthropic mosquito species. Quantifying the spatio-temporal epidemiology of dengue in large cities within the context of a Geographic Information System is a first step in the identification of socio-economic risk factors.

Methodology/Principal Findings

This Project has been approved by the ethical committee of Institut Pasteur. Data has been anonymized and de-identified prior to geolocalisation and analysis. A GIS was developed for Delhi, enabling typological characterization of the urban environment. Dengue cases identified in the Delhi surveillance system from 2008 to 2010 were collated, localised and embedded within this GIS. The spatio-temporal distribution of dengue cases and extent of clustering were analyzed. Increasing distance from the forest in Delhi reduced the risk of occurrence of a dengue case. Proximity to a hospital did not increase risk of a notified dengue case. Overall, there was high heterogeneity in incidence rate within areas with the same socio-economical profiles and substantial inter-annual variability. Dengue affected the poorest areas with high density of humans, but rich areas were also found to be infected, potentially because of their central location with respect to the daily mobility network of Delhi. Dengue cases were highly clustered in space and there was a strong relationship between the time of introduction of the virus and subsequent cluster size. At a larger scale, earlier introduction predicted the total number of cases.

Conclusions/Significance

DENV epidemiology within Delhi has a forest fire signature. The stochastic nature of this invasion process likely smothers any detectable socio-economic risk factors. However, the significant finding that the size of the dengue case cluster depends on the timing of its emergence emphasizes the need for early case detection and implementation of effective mosquito control. A better understanding of the role of population mobility in contributing to dengue risk could also help focus control on areas at particular risk of dengue virus importation.     

The making of ethology: The association for the Study of Animal Behaviour, 1936–1986

The paper reviews the history of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour in its 50th anniversary year. Having discussed the founding of the Institute for the Study of Animal Behaviour in 1936, the paper establishes its principal aims, follows its fortunes before and during the war, traces its role in the expansion and institutionalization of ethology in Britainbetween 1945 and 1950, and summarizes its transformation into a flourishing scientific society in the 1950s and 1960s. It is concluded that the history of the Association is, to a striking extent, a microcosm of the making of ethology as a successful scientific discipline.     

The problem of natural antibodies, 1894–1905

As we have seen, natural antibodies first emerged as an experimental phenomenon without a plausible theoretical explanation. They were originally denied the status of antibody; then, adjustments to the side-chain theory transformed them from a curiosity into a foundation of the theory. However, in accommodating natural antibodies, Ehrlich had opened several holes in his mechanism of antibody formation.Thus, by 1905, natural antibodies were clearly established as problematic. From the practical standpoint, it seemed unwise to maintain an identity between normal and immune antibodies, given the therapeutic differences in their avidity. With the decline of Ehrlich's theory of antibody formation and the spread of Landsteiner's hapten technique for the production of antibodies against artificial antigens after World War I, the theoretical possibility of their existence as other than anomaly seemed more remote than ever. However, outside the theory and despite clinical considerations, natural antibodies remained a perplexing experimental phenomenon.⁴⁹     

The Evolution of the idea of homeostasis: Determinism,stochastics, and chaos–self-organization

Homeostasis is a basic concept in investigating all living systems. Homeostasis and life are synonyms to a certain extent. The concept of homeostasis has been studied and developed for more than 150 years; however, only the 21st century brought us close to understanding homeostasis as a state of a biosystem and a continuous process. The chaos and self-organization theory (CSOT) proves that the conventional views based on determinism (functional analysis) or stochastics (when stochastic uncertainty or certainty occurs) cannot describe homeostasis as defined by W.B. Cannon and his followers. The new CSOT shows a clear boundary between determinism, stochastics (and deterministic chaos), and third-type systems, which have five special properties (principles of self-organization) and can be described in terms of quasiattractors. Kinematics is understood as the motion of quasi-attractors in the phase spaces of states. Complexity is introduced as the rate of evolution of complex biological systems, differing from the definition by Prigogine–Glansdorff. At the same time, concepts of uncertainty of the first and second types and an analog of the Heisenberg calculus are introduced for complexity. According to these concepts, complex biosystems are transferred from the area of traditional science to a new area of the theory of chaos and self-organization.     

The Proboscis Armature of Turbellaria-Kalyptorhynchia,a Derivative of the Basement Lamina?

The fine structure analysis of the proboscis teeth in the genus Carcharodorhynchus Meixner and of the proboscis hooks in the genus Diascorhynchus Meixner revealed that these structures are not derived from local cuticularizations of the epidermis, but rather are closely associated with the basement lamina of the proboscis sheath epithelium. In Diascorhynchus the hooks are specializations within the basement lamina enclosing the proboscis. The proboscis teeth in Carcharodorhynchus seem to be either an intracellular differentiation within the modified proboscis sheath epithelium or, as in Diascorhynchus , a derivative of the basement lamina. The latter is supported by the finding of similar, dermal teeth clearly derived from the basement lamina in the body wall of several species of the genus Carcharodorhynchus. It appears from this study that most "cutic-ular" differentiations of the body wall in Turbellaria are either derivatives of the basement lamina or of the cytoplasm of the epidermis cells. These considerations are discussed in the light of possible evolutionary pathways leading from a ciliated epidermis (e.g. free-living acoelomates) to a cuticularized hypodermis (e.g. Aschelmimhes and Articulata).     

The reverse transport of DA, what physiological significance?

It is well established that midbrain dopamine neurons innervating the striatum, release their neurotransmitter through an exocytotic process triggered by the neural firing and involving a transient calcium entry in the terminals. Long ago, it had been proposed, however, that another mechanism of release could co-exist with classical exocytosis, involving the reverse-transport of the cytosolic amine by the carrier, ordinarily responsible for uptake function. This atypical mode of release could be evoked directly at the preterminal level by multiple environmental endogenous factors involving transient alterations of the sodium gradient. It cannot be excluded that this mode of release participates in the firing-induced release. In contrast with the classical exocytosis of a preformed DA pool, the reverse-transport of DA requires simultaneous alterations of intraterminal amine metabolism including synthesis and displacement from storage compartment. The concept of a reverse-transport of dopamine is coming from the observations that releasing substances, such as amphetamine-related molecules, actually induce this type of transport. A large set of arguments advocates that reverse-transport plays a role in the maintenance of basal extracellular DA concentration in striatum. It was also often evoked in physiopathological situations including ischemia, neurodegenerative processes, etc. The most recent studies suggest that this release could occur mainly outside the synapses, and thus could constitute a major feature in the paracrine transmission, sometimes evoked for DA.     

The language of systematics,and the philosophy of ‘total evidence’

This contribution analyses the primacy of classification over generalization, and the philosophy of total evidence that emerges from the relation of homology to character statements. Primary conjectures of homology are basic character statements, i.e. statements that predicate properties of organisms, properties that are instantiated by those organisms and/or their parts. Secondary conjectures of homology are embedded in a second‐level (metalinguistic) discourse that turns on the coherence or incoherence of those basic character statements relative to a hierarchy. The coherence or incoherence of character statements is a logical relation between statements, not a causal (historical) relation between organisms. The choice of the hypothesis of relationships that is supported by the largest set of coherent basic character statements is based on the empirical presupposition that the properties referred to by the set of coherent character statements are grounded in causally efficacious relations of inheritance and ontogeny, and co‐instantiated because they are inherited through common ancestry (Hennig's auxiliary principle). Unless that empirical presupposition is causally grounded, phylogeny reconstruction is of an inherently probabilistic nature, whether under parsimony or other models of analysis. The causal grounding of a coherent set of character statements typically seeks a link between character statements and causally efficacious generative mechanisms for morphological characters (as is defeasibly indicated by topology and connectivity), or secondary structure information for molecular characters.     

The offspring of irradiated parents, are they stable?

Mutation induction in directly exposed cells is currently regarded as the main component of the genetic risk of ionising radiation for humans. However, recent studies showing that exposure to ionising radiation results in elevated mutation rates detectable in the non-irradiated progeny of exposed cells challenge the existing paradigm in radiation biology. This review describes some recent data on radiation-induced genomic instability in vitro and mainly focuses on the in vivo phenomenon of transgenerational instability, where elevated mutation rates are detected in the non-exposed offspring of irradiated parents. The possible mechanisms and implications of transgenerational instability are also discussed.     

The ethics of functional genomics: same, same, but different?

Respect for human life--a notion of worth uniting all members of the human race--constitutes a sense of anthropocentrism that has long been the justification for the enrollment of animals in experimentation executed to develop therapies to alleviate human suffering. Currently, however, advances in functional genomics are causing a qualitative transformation of the rationale for medical research performed on animals. The notion of human distinctness is being fundamentally challenged when gene sequences similar to those found in humans are identified in different species. In this Opinion article, we would like to highlight an inherent tension brought about by the current developments in functional genomics: a tension between the scientific and the ethical status of gene sequences. Is it reasonable to argue that they are the same for all practical purposes but different in ethical status?