Fitness and feather wear in the Collared Flycatcher Ficedula albicollis

Individual variation in the degree of feather wear is potentially a useful marker of individual quality or fitness, but next to nothing is known about causes and fitness consequences of feather wear in birds. We studied the effects of sex, age, year and experimental manipulation of brood size on primary feather wear in Collared Flycatchers Ficedula albicollis , and related variation in degree of feather wear to differences in fitness (viz. recruitment, survival). At the end of the breeding period, females and young birds had more worn flight feathers than males and adult birds, and the sexual difference in the degree of feather wear was particularly pronounced in one of the two study years. Experimental reduction of brood size reduced the degree of primary feather wear, whereas experimental enlargement of brood size did not lead to increased feather wear. In both sexes, there was a clear tendency for very old (>5 years old) birds to have more worn feathers than middle aged birds. The individual differences in the degree of feather wear were not correlated with individual differences in recruitment rate of young, but survival probability to the next breeding season increased with increasing degree of feather wear.     

Future Climate Change Will Favour Non-Specialist Mammals in the (Sub)Arctics

Arctic and subarctic (i.e., [sub]arctic) ecosystems are predicted to be particularly susceptible to climate change. The area of tundra is expected to decrease and temperate climates will extend further north, affecting species inhabiting northern environments. Consequently, species at high latitudes should be especially susceptible to climate change, likely experiencing significant range contractions. Contrary to these expectations, our modelling of species distributions suggests that predicted climate change up to 2080 will favour most mammals presently inhabiting (sub)arctic Europe. Assuming full dispersal ability, most species will benefit from climate change, except for a few cold-climate specialists. However, most resident species will contract their ranges if they are not able to track their climatic niches, but no species is predicted to go extinct. If climate would change far beyond current predictions, however, species might disappear. The reason for the relative stability of mammalian presence might be that arctic regions have experienced large climatic shifts in the past, filtering out sensitive and range-restricted taxa. We also provide evidence that for most (sub)arctic mammals it is not climate change per se that will threaten them, but possible constraints on their dispersal ability and changes in community composition. Such impacts of future changes in species communities should receive more attention in literature.     

Hydrophilic carotenoids: facile syntheses of carotenoid oxime hydrochlorides as long-chain, highly unsaturated cationic (bola)amphiphiles

Stable cationic carotenoid aggregates — predominantly of the J-type — develop when the hydrochlorides of carotenoid aldoximes and ketoximes are exposed to water. The oxime hydrochlorides are obtained by simple syntheses from commercially available food color carotenoids. Bluish-purple, unstable transient compounds were observed during hydrochlorination performed at liquid nitrogen temperature.     

Enzyme conformational alterations detected by partition column chromatography

In this paper, we demonstrate the ability of liquid-liquid partition chromatography (LLPC) to detect conformational alterations occurring in well-characterized enzymes. The conformational changes induced in dehydrogenases such as alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), lactate dehydrogenases (LDH) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH) upon binding of ligand(s) were detectable by LLPC. The ligand-dependent equilibrium between two forms of citrate synthase (CS), glutamate-oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT), hexokinase (HK) and 3-phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) could also be demonstrated. Furthermore, different conformational forms of some of the apoenzymes could also be detected and separated by LLPC. The results obtained here are discussed in relation to those obtained by other methods.     

Phylogeny and species delimitation of North European Lumbricillus (Clitellata,Enchytraeidae)

The enchytraeid genus Lumbricillus comprises about 80 described species of clitellate worms, which are up to a few centimetres long, and they mostly inhabit the littoral zone of non‐tropical marine and brackish waters world‐wide. The phylogeny of this genus is poorly studied, but previous work has suggested that Lumbricillus is a non‐monophyletic group. In this study, species boundaries and the phylogeny of this genus is re‐assessed using more than 300 DNA‐barcoded specimens (using COI mtDNA), part of which was also sequenced for two additional mitochondrial and four nuclear molecular markers. Statistical and coalescent based applications were used for the delimitation of a total of 24 species, of which 20 were identified as belonging to 17 described morphospecies; one morphospecies was found to be a complex of four delimited species, and another four delimited species could not be matched with any described species. Furthermore, gene trees, concatenation and multispecies coalescent based species trees were estimated using Bayesian inference. The estimated phylogenies confirm a non‐monophyletic Lumbricillus as L. semifuscus is clearly excluded from the genus. Furthermore, the placement of a monophyletic clade consisting of L. arenarius, L. dubius, and an unidentified species varies between analyses; they are either found as the sister‐group to the genus Grania or as sister‐group to the remaining Lumbricillus, where the latter relationship is supported by the multispecies coalescent, which we consider as the most reliable method.     

Reversed trends in the benthic community structure in two confluent streams; one spring-fed,the other lake-fed

The community structure of two confluent streams in southern Sweden was investigated, one stream was spring-fed and the other lake-fed. There was a downstream decrease in the number of species present in the lake outlet stream, no such change being discernible in the spring-fed stream. Taking the sampling site nearest the source of the spring-fed stream as the reference point, there was a downstream increase in dissimilarity and this increase was maintained upstream from the confluence in the lake-fed stream. Apart from generalists, all functional feeding groups showed decreased numbers from the lake outlet to the confluence in the lake-fed stream. In the spring-fed stream, densities of functional groups increased downstream, with the exception of grazers and generalists. There were indications of more predictable changes along the lake-fed stream compared to the spring-fed one, which seemed more influenced by site-specific factors.     

Physiological and autonomic stress responses after prolonged sleep restriction and subsequent recovery sleep in healthy young men

Sleep and Biological Rhythms - Sleep restriction is increasingly common and associated with the development of health problems. We investigated how the neuroendocrine stress systems respond to...     

Two new bioluminescent <Emphasis Type="Italic">Henlea</Emphasis> from Siberia and lack of molecular support for <Emphasis Type="Italic">Hepatogaster</Emphasis> (Annelida,Clitellata, Enchytraeidae)

Two bioluminescent enchytraeids, Henlea petushkovi sp. n. and Henlea rodionovae sp. n., are described from the Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk regions in Eastern Siberia. These large potworms exhibit the typical light-production pattern reported repeatedly in the genus and recently elucidated by Russian researchers in its main biophysical and biochemical aspects. Morphology and DNA indicate that the two species are very closely related, but clearly divergent in the strength of the body wall (thick and opaque in H. petushkovi), structure of the prostomium (in H. rodionovae unprecedentedly wrinkled and mobile), brain shape (almost equilateral in H. petushkovi), size of coelomocytes (60–85 μm in H. petushkovi) and structure of intestinal diverticula (tulip-shaped in H. petushkovi, apple-shaped in H. rodionovae). Limited hybridization seems to occur between them, supported by a single case of conflict between COI and morphology, and a few intermediate morphotypes were noted in greenhouse populations. The new species are phylogenetically distant from all known congeners so far DNA-barcoded, even those that, like them, respond to the diagnosis of the putative subgenus Hepatogaster ?ejka, 1910 (multitubular gut diverticula in VIII, indented brain, dorsal blood vessel from IX, prominent spermathecal glands, and nephridia from 5/6). In fact, our phylogenetic analyses dismiss Hepatogaster as an artificial (polyphyletic) taxon. Issues related to the definition of H. nasuta (Eisen, 1878), H. ochracea (Eisen, 1878) and H. irkutensis Burov, 1929, three species originally described from Siberia, indicate that Henlea taxonomy is still in a state of flux, as regards not only species interrelationships but also species definitions.