The Influences of Environment, Mating Habitat, and Predation on Evolution of Pinniped Lactation Strategies

Seals have adapted their social systems and lactation strategies to marine environments that include open and ice-covered oceans, high and low productivity, extremes in seasonality, and ocean- and terrestrial-type predators. Different explanations for the variation in pinniped lactation systems have been proposed but tests of alternative hypotheses have not sufficiently accounted for phylogeny and body size. After controlling for this variation, I predicted that environment, mating habitat, and predation would yield a fuller explanation. Lactation traits, duration, pup growth rate, and fat content were significantly influenced by both body size and phylogeny, which together explained 20–69% of the variation. After controlling for this variation, initial results did not support the environment hypothesis, as no differences in lactation traits were found between species living in polar (≥60°N) versus equatorial (<60°N) environments. In contrast, seals that nurse in areas of Arctic sea ice contending with ice-hunting predators, such as polar bears, had relatively short lactation compared to species living in the Antarctic and more equatorial regions. Also, the availability of predator-free islands for terrestrial mating and parturition was related to a harem mating system, increased sexual size dimorphism (SSD), and slow juvenile growth rates, less fat in milk, and longer lactation. Using structural equation modeling, latitude and size of harems provided independent explanations for all three lactation traits. Thus, use of islands in ice-free waters, predation in Arctic ice-covered waters, and more milk fat in high-latitude seals together provided adequate explanations for the evolution of lactation diversity among pinnipeds.     

Can transposable element copy number distribution parameters be estimated from natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster?

The copy frequency distribution of a transposable element family in a Drosophila melanogaster natural population is generally characterised by the values of the Charlesworths' model parameters α and β (Charlesworth & Charlesworth, 1983). The estimation of these parameters is made using the observed distribution of the occupied sites in a population sample. Several results have been interpreted as due either to the influence of stochastic factors or to deterministic factors (transposition, excision, selection…). The accuracy of this method was tested by estimations performed on samples from simulated populations. The results show that with the sample size usually used for natural population studies, the confidence intervals are too large to reasonably deduce either the element copy number distribution or the values of transposition and excision rate and selective coefficients.     

The Study of the Hydraulic Conductivity of the Plasmodesmal Transport Channels by the Pulse NMR Method

Radial self-diffusion of water in the absorbing zone of the roots of winter wheat (Triticum aestivumL.) seedlings was studied by the pulse-gradient-spin-echo NMR method. At the fixed time of diffusion observation, the diffusion decay of proton spin-echo was nonexponential; however, it could be reliably separated into three exponential components differing in the self-diffusion coefficients (SDC) of water molecules. Our experimental data corroborate the modern concept of two transport channels in plant plasmodesmata, which connect cytoplasmic and vacuolar (endoplasmic) compartments of adjacent cells into the unified supracellular continuums. Two SDC obtained by the kinetic analysis of diffusion decay were shown to depend on the expected changes in the hydraulic conductivity of the two above-mentioned plasmodesmal channels. To elucidate the role of ATP-dependent actomyosin proteins in the regulation of the hydraulic conductivity of plasmodesmata, we followed the changes in the water SDC induced by treating the roots with cytochalasin B (5 M, 30 min), the inhibitor of actin polymerization; 2,3-butanedione monoxime (10 mM, 1 h), the inhibitor of myosin ATPase activity; and antimycin A (5 M, 1 h) and sodium azide (10 mM, 30 min), the inhibitors of energy generation. The data thus obtained provided the basis for elaborating a new methodological approach to simultaneously monitoring the functional state of both plasmodesmal channels without any wound effect impairing their functions.     

Internodal sodium channels ensure active processes under myelin manifesting in depolarizing afterpotentials

The current opinion about processes in myelinated axon is that action potential saltatorially propagates between nodes of Ranvier and passively charges internodal axolemma thus causing depolarizing afterpotentials (DAP). Demyelination blocks the conduction that gives additional argument in favor of hypothesis that internode is not able to be activated by the existing internodal sodium channels. The results of our modeling study shows that, when periaxonal space is sufficiently narrow, saltatorial action potential is able to activate internodes. Low density of internodal sodium channels is sufficient to generate active internodal waves that slowly propagate from nodes towards corresponding midinternodes where they collide. The periaxonal width that stops internodal wave propagation (about 400 nm) is significantly larger than the highest value of the physiological range for this parameter (30 nm). Internodal activation is directly manifested as transmembrane internodal potential or as a full-sized action potential in periaxonal space where it can hardly be detected, and only as a small deflection in intracellular space. However, changes in the periaxonal potential cause transmyelin currents that lead to significant DAP. The shape and amplitude of DAP depends on myelin parameters and densities of internodal channels. Several technical parameters affect the results of calculations. Internodal spatial segmentation has to be sufficiently fine (at most 20 microm) for the model to be able to simulate internodal activation. We employ 338 internodal segments as compared with up to 21 used in previous models. Ionic accumulation together with related diffusive and electrical processes alter the calculated DAP amplitude. Inclusion of these processes in calculations demands such increase in the total number of segments that the numerical methods used up to now become unapplicable. To overcome the problem, an iterative implicit approach is proposed. It reduces a matrix of general type in multi-cable models to tridiagonal one and accelerates calculations considerably.     

Degradation of agarophytic red algal cell wall components by new crude enzyme preparations

Several new crude enzyme preparations were isolated from a marine association of the agarolytic bacterium Cytophaga diffluens and the infusorium Uronema marinum, an axenic culture of Cytophaga diffluens, some species of land micro- and macromycetes adapted to assimilate red algal biomass and from the marine mollusc Littorina littorea. Fungal and mollusc enzyme preparations were shown to have cellulase, xylanase, protease and agarase activities. Fungal agarase activity was revealed only after 3–4 passages of the culture on the medium containing algal biomass. Enzyme preparations from the association and the pure bacterial culture growing on the medium with bactoagar as the sole carbon source contained only agarase activity. The maximum specific agarase activity was found in a preparation from the marine association. The preparations obtained can be used for isolating protoplasts and single cells from red seaweed thalli. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.