When man began to speak

The origin of human language from the point of view of linguistic sicence. General linguistics. Ontogenesis of Language; antrhropology; human mind     

How death shapes life during development

The formation of an adult animal from a fertilized embryo involves the production and death of cells. Surprisingly, many cells are produced during development with an ultimate fate of death, and defects in programmed cell death can result in developmental abnormalities. Recent studies indicate that cells can die by many different mechanisms, and these differences have implications for proper animal development and disorders such as cancer and autoimmunity.     

How a complex life cycle can improve a parasite's sex life

How complex life cycles of parasites are maintained is still a fascinating and unresolved topic. Complex life cycles using three host species, free-living stages, asexual and sexual reproduction are widespread in parasitic helminths. For such life cycles, we propose here that maintaining a second intermediate host in the life cycle can be advantageous for the individual parasite to increase the intermixture of different clones and therefore decrease the risk of matings between genetically identical individuals in the definitive host. Using microsatellite markers, we show that clone mixing occurs from the first to the second intermediate host in natural populations of the eye-fluke Diplostomum pseudospathaceum. Most individuals released by the first intermediate host belonged to one clone. In contrast, the second intermediate host was infected with a diverse array of mostly unique parasite genotypes. The proposed advantage of increased parasite clone intermixture may be a novel selection pressure favouring the maintenance of complex life cycles.     

How the genome got a life span

In the space of little more than a decade, ideas of the human genome have shifted significantly, with the emergence of the notion that the genome of an individual changes with development, age, disease, environmental inputs, and time. This paper examines the emergence of the genome with a life span, one that experiences drift, instability, and mutability, and a host of other temporal changes. We argue that developments in chromatin biology have provided the basis for this genomic embodiment of experience and exposure. We analyze how time has come to matter for the genome through chromatin, providing analysis of examples in which the human life course is being explored as a set of material changes to chromatin. A genome with a life span aligns the molecular and the experiential in new ways, shifting ideas of life stages, their interrelation, and the temporality of health and disease.     

The Field Studies Council: how it all began

The Field Studies Council (or the Council for the Promotion of Field Studies as it was originally called) had its beginnings in the need for residential training in field studies directed by a London County Council schools inspector, Francis Butler. It was founded at a meeting held in the British Museum (Natural History) on 10 September 1943; Sir Arthur Tansley was the first President and Sir Maurice Yonge the first Chairman. The first centres were managed on a do-your-best basis when food was rationed and building materials almost unobtainable by a remarkable generation of Wardens, chronically starved of funds. The excitement and vision of the early days kept the Council alive, but its survival was repeatedly in doubt for the first decade of its existence.     

How optimal life history changes with the community size-spectrum

This paper derives optimal life histories for fishes or other animals in relation to the size spectrum of the ecological community in which they are both predators and prey. Assuming log-linear size-spectra and well known scaling laws for feeding and mortality, we first construct the energetics of the individual. From these we find, using dynamic programming, the optimal allocation of energy between growth and reproduction as well as the trade-off between offspring size and numbers. Optimal strategies were found to be strongly dependent on size spectrum slope. For steep size spectra (numbers declining rapidly with size), determinate growth was optimal and allocation to somatic growth increased rapidly with increasing slope. However, restricting reproduction to a fixed mating season changed optimal allocations to give indeterminate growth approximating a von Bertalanffy trajectory. The optimal offspring size was as small as possible given other restrictions such as newborn starvation mortality. For shallow size spectra, finite optimal maturity size required a decline in fitness for large size or age. All the results are compared with observed size spectra of fish communities to show their consistency and relevance.     

How Symbiodiniaceae meets the challenges of life during coral bleaching

Coral Reefs - Coral health depends on a fragile partnership between the coral hosts and the endosymbiotic dinoflagellate symbionts. Sequence-level omics techniques are revolutionizing many aspects...