Physical enrichment research for captive fish: Time to focus on the DETAILS

Growing research effort has shown that physical enrichment (PE) can improve fish welfare and research validity. However, the inclusion of PE does not always result in positive effects and conflicting findings have highlighted the many nuances involved. Effects are known to depend on species and life stage tested, but effects may also vary with differences in the specific items used as enrichment between and within studies. Reporting fine-scale characteristics of items used as enrichment in studies may help to reveal these factors. We conducted a survey of PE-focused studies published in the last 5 years to examine the current state of methodological reporting. The survey results suggest that some aspects of enrichment are not adequately detailed. For example, the amount and dimensions of objects used as enrichment were frequently omitted. Similarly, the ecological relevance, or other justification, for enrichment items was frequently not made explicit. Focusing on ecologically relevant aspects of PE and increasing the level of detail reported in studies may benefit future work and we propose a framework with the acronym DETAILS ( D imensions, E cological rationale, T iming of enrichment, A mount, I nputs, L ighting and S ocial environment). We outline the potential importance of each of the elements of this framework with the hope it may aid in the level of reporting and standardization across studies, ultimately aiding the search for more beneficial types of PE and the development of our understanding and ability to improve the welfare of captive fish and promote more biologically relevant behaviour.     

树冠结构对典型阔叶红松林生产力的影响

阔叶红松(Pinus koraiensis)林是东北东部山区的地带性森林植被, 阐明其生产力的影响因素, 对于理解温带森林生产力维持机制具有重要意义。该研究依托小兴安岭典型阔叶红松林9 hm²动态监测样地, 基于2005和2015年的30 m × 30 m样方内所有胸径>6.5 cm的木本植物的调查数据, 计算各样方的树冠结构复杂性、物种多样性和林分胸高断面积, 结合各样方的地形和土壤理化性质数据, 拟合结构方程模型, 定量分析影响典型阔叶红松林生产力的直接和间接因素。研究结果显示: 树冠结构复杂性和物种多样性与生产力显著正相关, 且树冠结构复杂性对生产力的影响显著高于物种多样性; 树冠结构复杂性对生产力的作用分为树冠垂直分层和树冠可塑性, 其中树冠垂直分层是树冠结构复杂性影响阔叶红松林生产力的主要因素, 而树冠可塑性无显著影响; 林分胸高断面积与生产力显著正相关, 其解释权重仅次于树冠结构复杂性, 树冠结构复杂性与物种多样性均通过影响林分胸高断面积对阔叶红松林生产力产生间接影响; 考虑不同树冠结构复杂性时, 坡度和土壤全磷含量代表的环境因素在调节生产力上发挥的作用存在差异, 移除树冠垂直分层的作用后两者与生产力呈显著的负相关关系。综上可知, 在典型阔叶红松林中, 树冠结构复杂性比物种多样性更有效地解释了生产力的变化, 同时不可忽视其他生物和非生物因素对生产力的作用。     

Third‐way neoliberalism and conditional cash transfers: The paradoxes of empowerment,participation and self‐help among poor Uruguayan women

The Latin American literature on Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) welfare programs has typically involved the quantitative evaluation of social and economic impact, with fewer studies addressing the qualitative and gendered impacts of CCTs. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in poor squatter settlement communities in Uruguay, this article explores the everyday social realities of poor single mothers who have been disconnected from their kinship networks and must rely on CCT payments for survival. I locate these women's experiences within the third‐way neoliberal discourses of ‘empowerment’, ‘participation’ and ‘self‐help’ espoused by the state, and the various structural conditions, including crime, violence and unequal gender relations, that impact negatively on women's abilities to comply with their social and civic duties. I argue that rather than producing responsible and empowered subjects, Uruguay's recent CCT welfare program has paradoxically limited some women's participation in civic and public life and reproduced their dependent relations with men.     

Mx1‐Cre mediated Rgs12 conditional knockout mice exhibit increased bone mass phenotype

Regulators of G‐protein Signaling (Rgs) proteins are the members of a multigene family of GTPase‐accelerating proteins (GAP) for the Galpha subunit of heterotrimeric G‐proteins. Rgs proteins play critical roles in the regulation of G protein couple receptor (GPCR) signaling in normal physiology and human diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, and inflammation. Rgs12 is the largest protein of the Rgs protein family. Some in vitro studies have demonstrated that Rgs12 plays a critical role in regulating cell differentiation and migration; however its function and mechanism in vivo is largely unknown. Here, we generated a floxed Rgs12 allele (Rgs12^flox/flox) in which the exon 2, containing both PDZ and PTB_PID domains of Rgs12, was flanked with two loxp sites. By using the inducible Mx1‐cre and Poly I:C system to specifically delete Rgs12 at postnatal 10 days in interferon‐responsive cells including monocyte and macrophage cells, we found that Rgs12 mutant mice had growth retardation with the phenotype of increased bone mass. We further found that deletion of Rgs12 reduced osteoclast numbers and had no significant effect on osteoblast formation. Thus, Rgs12^flox/flox conditional mice provide a valuable tool for in vivo analysis of Rgs12 function and mechanism through time‐ and cell‐specific deletion of Rgs12. genesis 51:201–209, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Speciation rates are correlated with changes in plumage color complexity in the largest family of songbirds

Although evolutionary theory predicts an association between the evolution of elaborate ornamentation and speciation, empirical evidence for links between speciation and ornament evolution has been mixed. In birds, the evolution of increasingly complex and colorful plumage may promote speciation by introducing prezygotic mating barriers. However, overall changes in color complexity, including both increases and decreases, may also promote speciation by altering the sexual signals that mediate reproductive choices. Here, we examine the relationship between complex plumage and speciation rates in the largest family of songbirds, the tanagers (Thraupidae). First, we test whether species with more complex plumage coloration are associated with higher speciation rates and find no correlation. We then test whether rates of male or female plumage color complexity evolution are correlated with speciation rates. We find that elevated rates of plumage complexity evolution are associated with higher speciation rates, regardless of sex and whether species are evolving more complex or less complex ornamentation. These results extend to whole-plumage color complexity and regions important in signaling (crown and throat) but not nonsignaling regions (back and wingtip). Our results suggest that the extent of change in plumage traits, rather than overall values of plumage complexity, may play a role in speciation.     

Good student questions in inquiry learning

Acquisition of scientific reasoning is one of the big challenges in education. A popular educational strategy advocated for acquiring deep knowledge is inquiry-based learning, which is driven by emerging ‘good questions’. This study will address the question: ‘Which design features allow learners to refine questions while preserving student ownership of the inquiry process?’ This design-based research has been conducted over several years with advanced high-school biology classes. The results confirm the central role of question elaboration as an interactive process that leads from vague to complex and adequate. To make this happen, the inquiry process must extend over a long time, learners and teachers should share a knowledge improvement goal, and text produced by students should be structured by question–answer pairs addressing a single concept using authentic resources. Further features are discussion with peers, teacher feedback with respect to answer elaboration and conceptual differentiation, and finally, teacher guidance that should fade out in successive inquiry cycles to ensure student responsibility.     

On the limitations of standard statistical modeling in biological systems: A full Bayesian approach for biology

One of the most important scientific challenges today is the quantitative and predictive understanding of biological function. Classical mathematical and computational approaches have been enormously successful in modeling inert matter, but they may be inadequate to address inherent features of biological systems. We address the conceptual and methodological obstacles that lie in the inverse problem in biological systems modeling. We introduce a full Bayesian approach (FBA), a theoretical framework to study biological function, in which probability distributions are conditional on biophysical information that physically resides in the biological system that is studied by the scientist.     

Sequence and hydropathy profile analysis of two classes of secondary transporters

A structural class in the MemGen classification of membrane proteins is a set of evolutionary related proteins sharing a similar global fold. A structural class contains both closely related pairs of proteins for which homology is clear from sequence comparison and very distantly related pairs, for which it is not possible to establish homology based on sequence similarity alone. In the latter case the evolutionary link is based on hydropathy profile analysis. Here, we use these evolutionary related sets of proteins to analyze the relationship between E-values in BLAST searches, sequence similarities in multiple sequence alignments and structural similarities in hydropathy profile analyses. Two structural classes of secondary transporters termed ST[3], which includes the Ion Transporter (IT) superfamily and ST[4], which includes the DAACS family (TC# 2.A.23) were extracted from the NCBI protein database. ST[3] contains 2051 unique sequences distributed over 32 families and 59 subfamilies. ST[4] is a smaller class containing 399 unique sequences distributed over 2 families and 7 subfamilies. One subfamily in ST[4] contains a new class of binding protein dependent secondary transporters. Comparison of the averaged hydropathy profiles of the subfamilies in ST[3] and ST[4] revealed that the two classes represent different folds. Divergence of the sequences in ST[4] is much smaller than observed in ST[3], suggesting different constraints on the proteins during evolution. Analysis of the correlation between the evolutionary relationship of pairs of proteins in a class and the BLAST E-value revealed that: (i) the BLAST algorithm is unable to pick up the majority of the links between proteins in structural class ST[3], (ii) ‘low complexity filtering’ and ‘composition based statistics’ improve the specificity, but strongly reduce the sensitivity of BLAST searches for distantly related proteins, indicating that these filters are too stringent for the proteins analyzed, and (iii) the E-value cut-off, which may be used to evaluate evolutionary significance of a hit in a BLAST search is very different for the two structural classes of membrane proteins.     

VOCAL REPERTOIRE OF WILD BREEDING ORANGE-WINGED PARROTS AMAZONA AMAZONICA IN AMAZONIA

ABSTRACT

The vocal repertoire of Amazona amazonica during its breeding season has been recorded from wild individuals in Santa Bárbara do Pará, Pará State, Brazil. At individual nests, we continuously recorded vocalizations and behaviour for four hours in the early morning and three hours in the late afternoon, three times a week throughout the breeding season. We identified nine vocalizations that we classified in three behavioural categories: (1) Flight call—emitted when parrots arrive in the nest area; (2) Perched contact calls—two different vocalizations, one of them related to feeding, were emitted when the pair was perched in the nest area and interacted socially between themselves or with other individuals; (3) Aggressive calls—emitted when birds were in a dangerous situation, i.e. alarm (three types of calls), agonistic contact and distress calls (two types of call). The Orange-winged Parrot is a highly social species and the complexity of its social interactions is reflected in the diversity of its vocal repertoire.