Mediterranean Fruit Fly leks: factors affecting male location

1. The mating system of Mediterranean Fruit Flies ( Ceratitis capitata , Diptera: Tephritidae) is based on male leks which form within the canopies of certain trees. In this study the following hypotheses are tested: (a) fly location depends on microclimate and illumination and (b) larger and heavier males occupy preferred locations in leks. Accordingly, systematic quantitative observations of diel three-dimensional (3-D) locations of lekking C. capitata males were performed in field and field cage studies.
2. Fly locations were found to vary significantly during the activity hours.
3. Medflies were generally found calling from highest and most exterior locations during early morning and late afternoon hours. During the hottest hours (1200–1500) flies occupied lower locations within the tree canopy, and interior locations from 1000 to 1500.
4. Fly location (from 1000 to 1700) was correlated with the azimuth of the sun. However, the mean azimuth range of fly location was limited to 85° (59·45°–143·94°).
5. Both in the field and in the field cage the temperature, relative humidity and light intensity beneath the leaves on which the males perched were closer to the microclimate beneath fully shaded leaves than to microclimates beneath leaves exposed to direct sunlight.
6. It is concluded that male medflies occupy locations which confer suitable microclimates for calling and copulating, and suitable 3-D locations within the canopy which provide protection from predators, wind, direct sunlight and water loss.     

三肽囊素(bursin)的鸡、鸭免疫器官组织学定位特征分析(简报)

三肽囊素(bursin)是法氏囊组织提取物中一种非常重要的活性因子,由Audhya T.等在1986年首次报道。近十几年,有关三肽囊素的研究取得了较大的进展,涉及对三肽囊素的生物学活性、组织学定位、功能机制及其应用前景。本研究分别探索了三肽囊素在鸡、鸭免疫器官中的定位,并对其特征进行分析,以期更深入理解三肽囊素的存在及其生物学意义。鸡用近交系(CB系),由12、14及20日龄胚、新生雏、1—9周龄鸡,采集法氏囊、法氏囊T细胞区、胸腺、哈德氏腺、脾脏及骨髓。鸭用北京鸭,由新生     

Frozen tissue can provide reproducible proteomic results of subcellular fractionation

Differential detergent fractionation (DDF) is frequently used to partition fresh cells and tissues into distinct compartments. We have tested whether DDF can reproducibly extract and fractionate cellular protein components from frozen tissues. Frozen kidneys were sequentially extracted with three different buffer systems. Analysis of the three fractions with liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) identified 1693 proteins, some of which were common to all fractions and others of which were unique to specific fractions. Normalized spectral index (SI_N) values obtained from these data were compared to evaluate both the reproducibility of the method and the efficiency of enrichment. SI_N values between replicate fractions demonstrated a high correlation, confirming the reproducibility of the method. Correlation coefficients across the three fractions were significantly lower than those for the replicates, supporting the capability of DDF to differentially fractionate proteins into separate compartments. Subcellular annotation of the proteins identified in each fraction demonstrated a significant enrichment of cytoplasmic, cell membrane, and nuclear proteins in the three respective buffer system fractions. We conclude that DDF can be applied to frozen tissue to generate reproducible proteome coverage discriminating subcellular compartments. This demonstrates the feasibility of analyzing cellular compartment-specific proteins in archived tissue samples with the simple DDF method.     

Field test of an automated radio‐telemetry system: tracking local space use of aerial insectivores

Documenting local space use of birds that move rapidly, but are too small to carry GPS tags, such as swallows and swifts, can be challenging. For these species, tracking methods such as manual radio‐telemetry and visual observation are either inadequate or labor‐ and time‐intensive. Another option is use of an automated telemetry system, but equipment for such systems can be costly when many receivers are used. Our objective, therefore, was to determine if an automated radio‐telemetry system, consisting of just two receivers, could provide an alternative to manual tracking for gathering data on local space use of six individuals of three species of aerial insectivores, including one Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota), one Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe), and four Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica). We established automated radio‐telemetry systems at three sites near the city of Peterborough in eastern Ontario, Canada, from May to August 2015. We evaluated the location error of our two‐receiver system using data from moving and stationary test transmitters at known locations, and used telemetry data from the aerial insectivores as a test of the system's ability to track rapidly moving birds under field conditions. Median location error was ~250 m for automated telemetry test locations after filtering. More than 90% of estimated locations had large location errors and were removed from analysis, including all locations > 1 km from receiver stations. Our automated telemetry receivers recorded 17,634 detections of the six radio‐tagged birds. However, filtering removed an average of 89% of bird location estimates, leaving only the Cliff Swallow with enough locations for analysis of space use. Our results demonstrate that a minimal automated radio‐telemetry system can be used to assess local space use by small, highly mobile birds, but the resolution of the data collected using only two receiver stations was coarse and had a limited range. To improve both location accuracy and increase the percentage of usable location estimates collected, we suggest that, in future studies, investigators use receivers that simultaneously record signals detected by all antennas, and use of a minimum of three receiver stations with more antennas at each station.     

Landscape Resources for the Territorial Nymphalid Butterfly Inachis io: Microsite Landform Selection and Behavioral Responses to Environmental Conditions

We investigate the use of landforms at different scales by males of the territorial nymphalid butterfly Inachis io (Linnaeus, 1758) under different weather conditions. They are known to use landforms at two different scales including macroscale, such as valley sides, tops of slopes and wood edges, and mini-landforms, such as molehills produced by the burrowing animal Talpa europaea Linnaeus (Linnaeus, 1758). Here, we demonstrate that they exploit microscale features on the molehills. The butterfly shifts its position in the landscape in relation to changing conditions by flying, and at the microscale, by walking. The links between thermoregulatory behavior and site selection indicate that perches are adopted to maintain body heat in the cool spring conditions when territories are established. Mini-landforms such as the molehills are adopted for their potential shelter and warmth in relation to ambient conditions; microsite selection typically includes warm niches on molehills, such as sunny slopes, sheltered margins and depressions. Shelter is adopted regardless of reduced visibility for territorial males. The importance of non-consumable (mate location) resources at different spatial scales is discussed in the context of habitat and the matrix.     

Behavioral response of termites to tunnel surface irregularity

Subterranean termites construct underground tunnels, tens to hundreds of meters in length, in order to search for and transport resources. Diverse soil conditions surrounding the tunnels, such as soil pores and differing moisture concentrations, may cause different sized- and shaped-irregularities in the tunnels. To understand how individual termites respond to the irregularities, the present study monitored the movement of termites, Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki, in artificially excavated tunnels with rectangular irregularities of varying sizes in two-dimensional sand substrates. Termites tunneled at some of the irregularities and not at the others. The tunneling or non-tunneling behavior resulted from four different responses. The non-tunneling response may result from a behavioral adaptation that allows termites to avoid wasting energy that may be used in foraging.     

Recognition of Host Plant Volatiles by Pheidole minutula Mayr (Myrmicinae), an Amazonian Ant-Plant Specialist

In the tropics, several ant species are obligate inhabitants of leaf pouches and other specialized structures in plants known as myrmecophytes. However, the cues used by ant queens to locate suitable host-plants following dispersal remain poorly understood. Here we tested the hypothesis that Pheidole minutula queens use volatiles to distinguish their host Maieta guianensis (Melastomataceae) from other sympatric myrmecophytes. To do so, we used a Y-tube olfactometer to quantify the preference for volatiles of different plant species. Our results indicate that P. minutula queens discriminate the chemical volatiles produced by its host-plant from those of other sympatric ant-plant species. However, queens failed to distinguish the volatiles of Maieta from those of the ant-plant Tococa bullifera (Melastomataceae), with which P. minutula is not mutualistically associated. Nevertheless, a strong preference for Maieta over Tococa was observed during a subsequent bioassay, where the ants had physical contact with a domatium of each plant species. These results suggest that additional, short distance mechanisms are also necessary for host discrimination. Overall, our findings suggest that the high degree of compartmentalization observed in symbiotic ant–plant relationships is achieved, at least in part, by the relatively high degree of specificity in host selection displayed by foundress queens.     

The effects of interpolation error and location quality on animal track reconstruction

The Global Positioning System (GPS) gives precise estimates of location. However, the investigation of animal movement and behavior often requires interpolation to examine events between such fixes. We obtained 6,288 GPS locations from an electronic tag deployed for 170 d on an adult male gray seal ( Halichoerus grypus ) that ranged freely off the east coast of Scotland, and interpolated between subsamples of these data to investigate the growth of uncertainty within the intervals between observations. Average uncertainty over the path increased linearly as the interval between interpolating locations increased, reaching 12 km in longitude and 6 km in latitude at 2-d separation. The decrease in precision caused by duty-cycling, only collecting data in part of the day, was demonstrated. Adding noise to the GPS locations to simulate data from the ARGOS satellite system had little effect on the total errors for observations separated by more than 12 h. While the rate of growth in interpolation error is likely to vary between species, these results suggest that frequent, and preferably evenly spaced, location fixes are required to take full advantage of the precision of GPS data in the reconstruction of animal tracks.     

Novel strategies to mine alcoholism-related haplotypes and genes by combining existing knowledge framework

High-throughout single nucleotide polymorphism detection technology and the existing knowledge provide strong support for mining the disease-related haplotypes and genes. In this study, first, we apply four kinds of haplotype identification methods (Confidence Intervals, Four Gamete Tests, Solid Spine of LD and fusing method of haplotype block) into high-throughout SNP genotype data to identify blocks, then use cluster analysis to verify the effectiveness of the four methods, and select the alcoholism-related SNP haplotypes through risk analysis. Second, we establish a mapping from haplotypes to alcoholism-related genes. Third, we inquire NCBI SNP and gene databases to locate the blocks and identify the candidate genes. In the end, we make gene function annotation by KEGG, Biocarta, and GO database. We find 159 haplotype blocks, which relate to the alcoholism most possibly on chromosome 1∼22, including 227 haplotypes, of which 102 SNP haplotypes may increase the risk of alcoholism. We get 121 alcoholism-related genes and verify their reliability by the functional annotation of biology. In a word, we not only can handle the SNP data easily, but also can locate the disease-related genes precisely by combining our novel strategies of mining alcoholism-related haplotypes and genes with existing knowledge framework. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 30570424, 60601010 and 30600367), the National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China, (Grant No.2007AA02Z329), the Key Science and Technology Program of Heilongjiang Province(Grant No.GB03C602-4), Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (Grant No. F2008-02), Youth Science Foundation of Harbin Medical University (Grant No. 060045) and Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province Education Department (Grant Nos. 11531113 and 1152hq28).