The Impact of Scale,Recycling Boundary,and Type of Waste on Symbiosis and Recycling

Innovative waste recycling through industrial processes such as industrial and urban symbiosis has long been practiced and recently received much attention in the field of industrial ecology, with researchers making efforts to identify key contributing factors to successful industrial symbiosis. By analyzing 88 sample recycling projects in 23 eco‐towns in Japan, this article focuses on the factors of project scale, recycling boundary, and types of waste in relationship to environmental benefits and operational performance. The results showed that larger eco‐towns achieved more savings of virgin materials and higher stability in operation. Large‐scale projects tended to locate closer to the users of recycled products than did small‐scale projects. For treating similar types of waste, projects producing recycled products for special users (e.g., feedstock to a blast furnace for iron production) tended to locate closer to the users than those not producing for special users. The type of waste had a strong effect on the savings of virgin materials and recycling boundaries, while local factors had significant impacts on operational performance. The results also showed that agglomeration did not significantly contribute to the environmental benefits or operational performance of eco‐town projects. Another finding was that national agencies were helpful for facilitating cross‐prefecture transportation and long‐distance transaction of wastes. Implications of the findings are also discussed.     

越南原始森林粘细菌的分离与鉴定

为了探讨越南热带原始森林环境中可培养粘细菌的多样性,以原始森林的土壤、腐木及树皮样品为研究对象,采用大肠杆菌法和滤纸法从中分离纯化粘细菌,将形态鉴定与16S rRNA基因测序分析相结合,对分离到的纯培养物进行分类鉴定,确定其分类地位。结果显示,从越南16个土样和22个腐木、树皮样品中共分离到70株粘细菌,经纯化后获得了32株。这些菌株分属于6个属,分别是粘球菌属（Myxococcus）14株、珊瑚球菌属（Corallococcus）7株、侏囊菌属（Nanncystis）6株、蜂窝囊菌属（Melittangium）3株、原囊菌属（Archangium）1株、软骨霉状菌属（Chondromyces）1株。这表明粘细菌在越南原始森林环境中分布广泛,并存在较为罕见的粘细菌类群。     

Breeding Strategies in Females of the Parasitoid Wasp Spalangia endius: Effects of Mating Status and Size

Does the mating status or body size of a female parasitoid wasp affect her host size choice or propensity to burrow? In Spalangia endius, using smaller hosts appears to reduce a female's cost of parasitization but not her son's fitness. However, virgin females, which produce only sons, did not preferentially parasitize smaller hosts. Mated females also showed no host size preference. Mated females burrowed more than virgins in the presence of hosts, although not in their absence. Burrowing may reduce a mated female's harassment from males, and not burrowing may increase a virgin female's chance of mating because males avoid burrowing. Mating did not increase female longevity. Greater female size increased the offspring production of mated females burrowing for hosts but not in the absence of burrowing and not in virgin females. A female's size had no significant effect on whether her first drill attempt was on a large or a small host or on the duration of her successful drills.     

Effects of mating status on copulation investment by male bushcricket Gampsocleis gratiosa (Tettigoniidae, Orthoptera)

Male’s copulation investment, including spermatophore and sperm investment were very high in the Chinese bushcricket Gampsocleis gratiosa. The effects of mating status of both males and females on male’s copulation investment were examined in this study. The fresh weight of spermatophylax increased positively with the weight of males’ body. This indicated that the nutritional investment during copulation depended on male’s quality. Spermatophore investment showed insignificant differences in every copulation protocols. This finding supported the paternal investment hypothesis, that is, males contributed to their offspring with little attention to their partners. Sperm releasing per ejaculation varied significantly among the trials. Males decreased 54.19% sperm in second mating than in its first mating, demonsrated that males regarded the first mating highly, and were more prudent in subsequent mating. These males’ strategies may contribute to the viability of the offspring.     

The evolutionary dynamics of adaptive virginity,sex‐allocation,and altruistic helping in haplodiploid animals

In haplodiploids, females can produce sons from unfertilized eggs without mating. However, virgin reproduction is usually considered to be a result of a failure to mate, rather than an adaptation. Here, we build an analytical model for evolution of virgin reproduction, sex‐allocation, and altruistic female helping in haplodiploid taxa. We show that when mating is costly (e.g., when mating increases predation risk), virginity can evolve as an adaptive female reproductive strategy. Furthermore, adaptive virginity results in strongly divergent sex‐ratios in mated and virgin queen nests (“split sex ratios”), which promotes the evolution of altruistic helping by daughters in mated queen nests. However, when helpers evolve to be efficient and increase nest production significantly, virgin reproduction is selected against. Our results suggest that adaptive virginity could have been an important stepping stone on the pathway to eusociality in haplodiploids. We further show that virginity can be an adaptive reproductive strategy also in primitively social haplodiploids if workers bias the sex ratio toward females. By remaining virgin, queens are free to produce sons, the more valuable sex in a female‐biased population. Our work brings a new dimension to the studies linking reproductive strategies with social evolution.     

Factors influencing the onset of egglaying in a cecidomyiid fly

Abstract The timing of the onset of egglaying in the Hessian fly, Mayetiola destructor (Say), is influenced by several exogenous and endogenous factors. Mated females initiated egglaying 48 h earlier than virgins and laid 3–4 times more eggs before dying. The effects of mating on the onset of egglaying were further modified by several other factors whose effects were measured in hours rather than days. Increases in ambient temperatures experienced by mated females shortened the post-mating pre-ovipositional transition phase; however, the effects of temperature were not linear throughout the temperature range. Age of females at the time of mating also influenced the onset of egglaying. Females that mated 1 , 2 and 3 h after eclosion spent 190 , 160 and 120 min in the post-mating transition phase, respectively. Effects of age were also observed when females were mated over the three calling periods that comprise the 3-day lifespan of the adult female. Linear regressions of transition times on time of mating had similar slopes for first and second day post-eclosion females but were offset such that first-day females mated late in the morning had similar transition times to second-day females mated early in the morning. By the third day post-eclosion, transition times showed no significant changes when females were mated throughout the calling period. Possible mechanisms underlying the effects of mating, temperature, and female age on post-mating pre-oviposition transition times are discussed.     

Parthenogenesis in a whitetip reef shark Triaenodon obesus involves a reduction in ploidy

Genetic analysis of a female whitetip reef shark Triaenodon obesus and her stillborn pup, assumed to be of parthenogenetic origin, revealed that the pup was homozygous at all 24 nuclear‐encoded microsatellites assayed, consistent with the idea that diploidy in the pup had been restored via terminal fusion. Flow cytometric analysis, however, indicated that the genome size of the pup was no more than half that of the mother, and microscopy revealed that nuclear volume was c. 1·73 times larger in the mother than in the pup. Together these data suggest that the pup was genetically haploid, developing directly from an unfertilized egg; as far as is known, this is the first observation of a spontaneously produced haploid vertebrate.     

An accessory prefrontal cortex–thalamus circuit sculpts maternal behavior in virgin female mice

The ability to care for the young is innate and readily displayed by postpartum females after delivery to ensure offspring survival. Upon pup exposure, rodent virgin (nulliparous) females also develop parental behavior that over time becomes displayed at levels equivalent to parenting mothers. Although maternal behavior in postpartum females and the associated neurocircuits are well characterized, the neural mechanisms underlying the acquisition of maternal behavior without prior experience remain poorly understood. Here, we show that the development of maternal care behavior in response to first‐time pup exposure in virgin females is initiated by the activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). ACC activity is dependent on feedback excitation by Vglut2⁺/Galanin⁺ neurons of the centrolateral nucleus of the thalamus (CL), with their activity sufficient to display parenting behaviors. Accordingly, acute bidirectional chemogenetic manipulation of neuronal activity in the ACC facilitates or impairs the attainment of maternal behavior, exclusively in virgin females. These results reveal an ACC‐CL neurocircuit as an accessory loop in virgin females for the initiation of maternal care upon first‐time exposure to pups.