Find research datasets worth reusing

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Species-specific effects of thermal stress on the expression of genetic variation across a diverse group of plant and animal taxa under experimental conditions

Assessing the genetic adaptive potential of populations and species is essential for better understanding evolutionary processes. However, the expression of genetic variation may depend on environmental conditions, which may speed up or slow down evolutionary responses. Thus, the same selection pressure may lead to different responses. Against this background, we here investigate the effects of thermal stress on genetic variation, mainly under controlled laboratory conditions. We estimated additive genetic variance (VA), narrow-sense heritability (h2), and the coefficient of genetic variation (CVA) under both benign control and stressful thermal conditions. We included six species spanning a diverse range of plant and animal taxa and a total of 25 morphological and life-history traits. Our results show that (1) thermal stress reduced fitness components, (2) the majority of traits showed significant genetic variation, and that (3) thermal stress affected the expression of genetic variation (VA, h2 or CVA) in only one third of the cases (25 of 75 analyses, mostly in one clonal species). Moreover, effects were highly species-specific, with genetic variation increasing in 11 and decreasing in 14 cases under stress. Our results hence indicate that thermal stress does not generally affect the expression of genetic variation under laboratory conditions but, nevertheless, increases or decreases genetic variation in specific cases. Consequently, predicting the rate of genetic adaptation might not be generally complicated by environmental variation, but requires a careful case-by-case consideration.

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Data from: Lower elevation animal species do not tend to be better competitors than their upper elevation relatives

Abstract Aim: What factors set species' range edges? One general hypothesis, often attributed to Darwin and MacArthur, is that interspecific competition prevents species from inhabiting the warmest portions along geographic gradients (i.e., low latitudes or low elevations). A prediction arising from this Darwin-MacArthur hypothesis is that lower elevation species are better competitors than related upper elevation species. An alternative prediction is that upper elevation taxa will tend to be better competitors because they will tend to be larger (Bergmann's rule). Here, I test these opposing predictions. Location: Global. Time period: 1971 – 2019. Major taxa studied: Birds, mammals, amphibians, fishes. Methods: I conducted a meta-analysis of studies that have measured pairwise behavioral aggression between species-pairs of closely related animals where the two species inhabit divergent elevational distributions. Results: I found that (1) interspecific aggression appears to be a reliable indicator of interspecific competition; (2) elevational position was not consistently linked to interspecific aggression—while lower elevation songbird species in the tropics showed stronger interspecific aggression in response to playback experiments, upper elevation species showed stronger interspecific aggression in direct observations of interspecific aggression across a range of taxa and latitudes; (3) body size was a good predictor of pairwise interspecific aggression and (4) there was limited evidence for Bergmann's rule. Main conclusions: My results do not support the longstanding prediction that lower elevation animals are generally better competitors than their upper elevation relatives. Instead, patterns of interspecific aggression are linked to body size, with larger animals showing more aggression towards smaller relatives than vice versa. Hence, a trait—body size—that is idiosyncratically related to elevational position appear to determine the outcome of pairwise behavioral interactions. Last, I consider these results in the context of the hypothesis that behavioral interactions may impact rates of upslope range shifts associated with recent warming.

opencc-by-4.0Aug 2020View details →

Datasets of the study: "Describing variability in pig genes involved in coronavirus infections: towards a One Health perspective in conservation of animal genetic resources"

Dataset description Sequencing data (*.bam files) of four pig genes (ACE2, ANPEP, DPP4 and TMPRSS2) that can serve as receptors or protease for priming the infection of coronaviruses. The datasets are related to 22 European pig breeds and wild boars (Alentejana, AL; Apulo-Calabrese, AC; Basque, BA; Bísara, BI; Black Slavonian, BS; Casertana, CA; Cinta Senese, CS; Gascon, GA; Kr&scaron;kopolje, KR; Lithuanian Indigenous Wattle, LIW; Lithuanian White Old Type, LWOT; Majorcan Black, MB; Mora Romagnola, MR; Moravka, MO; Nero Siciliano, NS; Sarda, SA; Schwäbisch-Hällisches Schwein, SHS; Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa, SBMA; Turopolje, TU; Italian Duroc, IDU; Italian Large White, ILW; Italian Landrace, ILA; Wild Boar, WB). This work took advantage of a study design developed within the Horizon 2020 TREASURE project. Each folder contains *.bam files and the related indexes *.bai. The name of the investigated breed and gene is part of the file name (e.g. ILW.ACE2.bam identifies the sequencing data related to the ACE2 gene in the Italian Large White pig breed). Details of sequencing and the bioinformatic pipeline are below reported. Sequencing data A total of 22 DNA pools were constructed from the European pig breeds and one DNA pool was constructed from European wild boars, including in each pool 30 or 35 individual DNA samples pooled at equimolar concentration. For the 22 DNA pools, libraries were prepared and fed into an Illumina HiSeq X Ten sequencer for paired-end sequencing, obtaining 150 bp length reads. The wild boar DNA pool was sequenced from 250 bp fragment libraries, with 100 bp long paired-end reads, on the BGISeq 500 platform, following the provider’s procedures. Data processing Reads that were obtained from the sequenced libraries were cleaned by removing adapter sequences and filtering out sequences presenting more than 10% unknown bases (N) and/or containing low-quality bases (Q ≤ 5) over 50% of the total sequenced bases. Then, filtered high-quality reads were mapped on the latest version of the Sus scrofa reference genome (Sscrofa11.1; https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/all/GCF/000/003/025/GCF_000003025.6_Sscrofa11.1/GCF_000003025.6_Sscrofa11.1_genomic.fna.gz) using the BWA-MEM algorithm v.0.7.17 and the parameters for paired-end data. Picard v.2.1.1 (https://broadinstitute.github.io/picard/) was used to remove duplicated reads. Whole sequence data are available in the EMBL-EBI European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) repository (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena), under the study accession PRJEB36830.  Reads covering the four genes (ACE2: NC_010461.5:12094853-12156275; ANPEP: NC_010449.5:55346083-55378881; DPP4: NC_010457.5:68655849-68748818; TMPRSS2: NC_010455.5:204871561-204907561) were extracted with samtools v.1.7 and exported as aligned, sorted and indexed *.bam files. Gene length includes UTRs and flanking regions of 5 kbp upstream [flanking (5’-UTR)] and downstream [flanking (3’-UTR)].

opennotspecifiedNov 2019View details →

FIGURE 1 in How should we treat autopolyploid and parthenogenetic animals taxonomically?

FIGURE 1. Schematic comparison of maximum body size and maximum egg number per clutch between gonochoristic Procambarus fallax and its autotriploid and parthenogenetic descendant Procambarus virginalis (drawing of P. fallax modified after Hobbs, 1989).

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Non-continuous reproductive phenology of animal-dispersed species in young forest restoration plantings

Tree species that produce resources for fauna are recommended for forest restoration plantings to attract pollinators and seed dispersers; however, information regarding the flowering and fruiting of these species during early growth stages is scarce. We evaluated the reproductive phenology of animal-dispersed tree species widely used in Atlantic Forest restoration. We marked 16 animal-dispersed tree species in 3- to 8-year-old forest restoration plantings in Itu-São Paulo, southeast Brazil. We noted the age of the first reproductive event, flowering and fruiting seasonality, percentage of trees that reached reproductive stages, and intensity of bud, flower, and fruit production for each species. Flowering and fruiting are seasonal for most species; only two, Cecropia pachystachya and Ficus guaranitica, exhibited continuous flowering and fruiting throughout the year; we also identified Schinus terebinthifolia and Dendropanax cuneatus fruiting in the dry season during resource scarcity. Therefore, we recommend all as framework species, that is, species that are animal-dispersed with early flowering and fruiting potential, for forest restoration. Further, we recommend identifying and planting similar animal-dispersed tree species that produce fruits constantly or in the dry season to maximize fauna resource availability throughout the year in tropical forest restoration plantings.

opencc-zeroSep 2020View details →

Data from: Surviving drought: a framework for understanding animal responses to small rain events in the arid-zone

Large rain events drive dramatic resource pulses and the complex pulse-reserve dynamics of arid ecosystem changes between high-rain years and drought. However, arid-zone animal responses to short-term changes in climate are unknown, particularly smaller rain events that briefly interrupt longer-term drought. Using arthropods as model animals, we determined the effects of a small rain event on arthropod abundance in western NSW, Australia during a longer-term shift towards drought. Arthropod abundance decreased over two years, but captures of ten out of fifteen ordinal groups increased dramatically after the small rain event (<40mm). The magnitude of increases ranged from 10.4 million% (collembolans) to 81% (spiders). After three months, most groups returned to pre-rain abundance. However, small soil-dwelling beetles, mites, spiders, and collembolans retained high abundances despite the onset of winter temperatures and lack of subsequent rain. As predicted by pulse-reserve models, most arid-zone arthropod populations declined during drought. However, small rain events may play a role in buffering some groups from declines during longer-term drought or other xenobiotic influences. We outline the framework for a new model of animal responses to environmental conditions in the arid zone, as some species clearly benefit from rain inputs that do not dramatically influence primary productivity.

opencc-zeroSep 2020View details →

Seek and learn: automated identification of microevents in animal behaviour using envelopes of acceleration data and machine learning

1. Animal-borne accelerometers have been used across more than 120 species to infer biologically significant information such as energy expenditure and broad behavioural categories. While the accelerometer's high sensitivity to movement and fast response times present the unprecedented opportunity to resolve fine-scale behaviour, leveraging this opportunity will require overcoming the challenge of developing general, automated methods to analyse the nonstationary signals generated by nonlinear processes governing erratic, impulsive movement characteristic of fine-scale behaviour. 2. We address this issue by conceptualising fine-scale behaviour in terms of characteristic microevents: impulsive movements producing brief (<1 s) shock signals in accelerometer data. We propose a 'seek-and-learn' approach: a novel microevent detection step first locates where shock signals occur ('seek') by searching for peaks in envelopes of acceleration data. Robust machine learning ('learn') employing meaningful features then separates microevents. We showcase the application of our method on tri-axial accelerometer data collected on ten free-living meerkats (Suricata suricatta) for four fine-scale foraging behaviours – searching for digging sites, one-armed digging, two-armed digging, and head jerks during prey ingestion. Annotated videos served as groundtruth, and performance was benchmarked against that of a variety of classical machine-learning approaches. 3. Microevent identification (μEvId) with eight features in a three-node hierarchical classification scheme employing logistic regression at each node achieved a mean overall accuracy of >85% during leave-one-individual-out cross-validation, and exceeded that of the best classical machine learning approach by 9%. μEvId was found to be robust not only to inter-individual variation but also to large changes in model parameters. 4. Our results show that microevents can be modelled as impulse responses of the animal body-and-sensor system. The microevent detection step retains only informative regions of the signal, which results in the selection of discriminative features that reflect biomechanical differences between microevents. Moving-window-based classical machine learning approaches lack this prefiltering step, and were found to be suboptimal for capturing the nonstationary dynamics of the recorded signals. The general, automated technique of μEvId, together with existing models that can identify broad behavioural categories, provides future studies with a powerful toolkit to exploit the full potential of accelerometers for animal behaviour recognition.

opencc-zeroSep 2020View details →

Social rank modulates how environmental quality influences cooperation and conflict within animal societies

Although dominance hierarchies occur in most societies, our understanding of how these power structures influence individual investment in cooperative and competitive behaviors remains elusive. Both conflict and cooperation in animal societies are often environmentally-regulated, yet how individuals alter their cooperative and competitive investments as environmental quality changes remains unclear. Using game theoretic modeling, we predict that individuals of all ranks will invest more in cooperation and less in social conflict in harsh environments than individuals of the same ranks in benign environments. Counterintuitively, low ranking subordinates should increase their investment in cooperation proportionally more than high ranking dominants, suggesting that subordinates contribute relatively more when facing environmental challenges. We then test and confirm these predictions experimentally using the Asian burying beetle Nicrophorus nepalensis. Ultimately, we demonstrate how social rank modulates the relationships between environmental quality and cooperative and competitive behaviours, a topic crucial for understanding the evolution of complex societies.

The clinical impact of high-profile animal-based research reported in the UK national press: a detailed discussion of articles from 1995, and full search results from the Nexis database

Objectives: We evaluated animal-based biomedical 'breakthroughs' reported in the UK national press in 1995 (25 years prior to the conclusion of this study). Based on evidence of over-speculative reporting of biomedical research in other areas (e.g. press releases and scientific papers), we specifically examined animal research in the media, asking, "In a given year, what proportion of animal research 'breakthroughs' published in the UK national press had translated, more than 20 years later, to approved interventions?" Methods: We searched the Nexis media database (LexisNexis.com) for animal-based biomedical reports in the UK national press. The only restrictions were that the intervention should be specific, such as a named drug, gene, biomedical pathway, to facilitate follow-up, and that there should be claims of some clinical promise. Main Outcome Measures: Were any interventions approved for human use? If so, when and by which agency? If not, why, and how far did development proceed? Were any other, directly related interventions approved? Did any of the reports over-state human relevance? Results: Over-speculation and exaggeration of human relevance was evident in all the articles examined. Of 27 unique published 'breakthroughs', only one had clearly resulted in human benefit. Twenty were classified as failures, three were inconclusive, and three were partially successful. Conclusions: The results of animal-based pre-clinical research studies are commonly over-stated in media reports, to prematurely imply often-imminent 'breakthroughs' relevant to human medicine.

Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors

<blockquote> 1. Ecologists quantify animal diets using direct and indirect methods, including analysis of faeces, pellets, prey items and gut contents. For stable isotope analyses of diet, Bayesian stable isotope mixing models (BSIMMs) are increasingly used to infer the relative importance of food sources to consumers. Although a powerful approach, it has been hard to test BSIMM performance for wild animals because precise, direct dietary data are difficult to collect. 2. We evaluated the performance of BSIMMs in quantifying animal diets when using δ13C and δ15N stable isotope ratios from the feathers and red blood cells of common buzzard Buteo buteo chicks. We analysed mixing model outcomes with various trophic discrimination factors (TDFs), with and without informative priors, and compared these to direct observations of prey provisioned to chicks by adults at nests, using remote cameras. 3. Although BSIMMs with different TDFs varied markedly in their performance, the statistical package SIDER generated TDFs for both feathers and blood that resulted in model outputs that accorded well with direct observations of prey provisioning. Using feather TDFs derived from captive peregrines Falco peregrinus resulted in estimates of diet composition that were also similar to provisioned prey, though blood TDFs from the same study performed poorly. The inclusion of informative priors, based on conventional analysis of pellet and prey remains, markedly reduced model performance. 4. BSIMMs can provide accurate assessments of diet in wild animals. TDF estimates from the SIDER package performed well. The inclusion of informative priors from conventional methods in Bayesian mixing models can transfer biases into model outcomes, leading to erroneous results. </blockquote>

Multiscale heart image data for: Multiscale cardiac imaging spanning the whole heart and its internal cellular architecture in a small animal model

Cardiac pumping depends on the morphological structure of the heart, but also on its sub-cellular (ultrastructural) architecture, which enables cardiac contraction. In cases of congenital heart defects, localized ultrastructural disruptions that increase the risk of heart failure are only starting to be discovered. This is in part due to a lack of technologies that can image the three dimensional (3D) heart structure, assessing malformations; and its ultrastructure, assessing disruptions. We present here a multiscale, correlative imaging procedure that achieves high-resolution images of the whole heart, using 3D micro-computed tomography (micro-CT); and its ultrastructure, using 3D scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We achieved uniform fixation and staining of the whole heart, without losing ultrastructural preservation on the same sample, enabling correlative multiscale imaging. Our approach enables multiscale studies in models of congenital heart disease and beyond.

Data from - Ecological insights from three decades of animal movement tracking across a changing Arctic

We provide here the data used in analysis of 3 test cases, presented in the manuscript "Ecological insights from three decades of animal movement tracking across a changing Arctic". We utilized the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a growing collection of 201 standardized terrestrial and marine animal tracking studies from 1991–present. The AAMA supports public data discovery, preserves fundamental baseline data for the future, and facilitates efficient, collaborative data analysis. With three AAMA-based case studies, we document climatic influences on the migration phenology of eagles, geographic differences in adaptive response of caribou reproductive phenology to climate change, and species-specific changes in terrestrial mammal movement rates in response to increasing temperature.

opencc-zeroNov 2020View details →

A novel method for detecting extra-home range movements (EHRMs) by animals and recommendations for future EHRM studies

Infrequent, long-distance animal movements outside of typical home range areas provide useful insights into resource acquisition, gene flow, and disease transmission within the fields of conservation and wildlife management, yet understanding of these movements is still limited across taxa. To detect these extra-home range movements (EHRMs) in spatial relocation datasets, most previous studies compare relocation points against fixed spatial and temporal bounds, typified by seasonal home ranges (referred to here as the "Fixed-Period" method). However, utilizing home ranges modelled over fixed time periods to detect EHRMs within those periods likely results in many EHRMs going undocumented, particularly when an animal's space use changes within that period of time. To address this, we propose a novel, "Moving-Window" method of detecting EHRMs through an iterative process, comparing each day's relocation data to the preceding period of space use only. We compared the number and characteristics of EHRM detections by both the Moving-Window and Fixed-Period methods using GPS relocations from 33 white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Alabama, USA. The Moving-Window method detected 1.5 times as many EHRMs as the Fixed-Period method and identified 120 unique movements that were undetected by the Fixed-Period method, including some movements that extended nearly 5 km outside of home range boundaries. Additionally, we utilized our EHRM dataset to highlight and evaluate potential sources of variation in EHRM summary statistics stemming from differences in definition criteria among previous EHRM literature. We found that this spectrum of criteria identified between 15.6% and 100.0% of the EHRMs within our dataset. We conclude that variability in terminology and definition criteria previously used for EHRM detection hinders useful comparisons between studies. The Moving-Window approach to EHRM detection introduced here, along with proposed methodology guidelines for future EHRM studies, should allow researchers to better investigate and understand these behaviors across a variety of taxa.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2020View details →

Number of bovine animals tested by age group, reporting country and target group, 2019

The tables contain the number of bovine animals tested by age group, reporting country and target group, 2019

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2020View details →

Annexes to the European Union Summary Report on Antimicrobial Resistance in zoonotic and indicator bacteria from humans, animals and food in 2017/2018

Version 2 - changes as compared to version 1 The following revisions were applied to the file EUSR AMR2018_Annexes A-F.docx in the section Annex F: - in Table 6B, pages 119-120, the footnotes (e) to (p) were re-attributed in the table, so as to match the table footnotes; - in Table 31 on page 123,  'LA' was replaced with 'HA' for Belgium data in the column titled 'LA, CA or HA'. Light formatting has been applied on pages 121 and 122, Tables 7a and 7b, changed from portrait to landscape orientation, as well as to footers and headers that were made consistent throughout the document. --------- Version 1  All tables produced for the European Union Summary Report on Antimicrobial Resistance in Zoonotic and Indicator Bacteria from Humans, Animals and Food in 2018 : - Campylobacter - E. coli - MRSA -Salmonella - ESBL Annexes A to F are also included.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2020View details →

The Buzsaki Lab Databank - Public electrophysiological datasets from awake animals

The Buzsaki Lab is proud to present a large selection of experimental data available for public access: <a href="https://buzsakilab.com/wp/database/">https://buzsakilab.com/wp/database/</a>. We publicly share more than a thousand sessions (about 40TB of raw and spike- and LFP-processed data) via our public data repository. The datasets are from freely moving rodents and include sleep-task-sleep sessions (3 to 24 hrs continuous recording sessions) in various brain structures, including metadata. We are happy to assist you in using the data. Our goal is that by sharing these data, other users can provide new insights, extend, contradict, or clarify our conclusions. The databank contains electrophysiological recordings performed in freely moving rats and mice collected by investigators in the Buzsaki Lab over several years (a subset from head-fixed mice). Sessions have been collected with extracellular electrodes using high-channel-count silicon probes, with spike sorted single units, and intracellular and juxtacellular combined with extracellular electrodes. Several sessions include physiologically and optogenetically identified units. The sessions have been collected from various brain region pairs: the hippocampus, thalamus, amygdala, post-subiculum, septal region, and the entorhinal cortex, and various neocortical regions. In most behavioral tasks, the animals performed spatial behaviors (linear mazes and open fields), preceded and followed by long sleep sessions. Brain state classification is provided. Getting started The top menu “Databank” serves as a navigational menu to the databank. The metadata describing the experiments is stored in a relational database which means that there are many entry points for exploring the data. The databank is organized by projects, animal subjects, and sessions. Accessing and downloading the datasets We share the data through two services: our public <a href="https://app.globus.org/file-manager?origin_id=558c54fe-cc41-11e8-8c6a-0a1d4c5c824a&origin_path=%2F">Globus.org endpoint</a> and our webshare: <a href="https://buzsakilab.nyumc.org/datasets/">buzsakilab.nyumc.org</a>. A subset of the datasets is also available at <a href="https://buzsakilab.com/wp/resources/datasets/">CRCNS.org</a>. If you have an interest in a dataset that is not listed or is lacking information, please contact us. We pledge to make our data available immediately after publication. Support For support, please use our <a href="https://groups.google.com/g/buzsaki-databank">Buzsaki Databank google group</a>. If you have an interest in a dataset that is not listed or is lacking information, please send us a request. Feel free to contact us, if you need more details on a given dataset or if a dataset is missing.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PTR-TOF-MS) as a tool for studying animal volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions

1. Chemical sensing in vertebrates is crucial in their lives, and efforts are undertaken towards deciphering their chemical language. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a group of chemicals believed to play an essential role in a wide variety of animal interactions. Therefore, understanding what animals sense themselves and untangling the ecological role of their volatile cues can be accomplished by analysing VOC emissions. A Proton-Transfer Reaction Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS) is an instrument that measures VOCs in real-time in an air sample. Since this technique acts as a hyper-sensitive 'nose' it has a similar potential in deciphering the chemical language of vertebrates. 2. Here, we validate the use of PTR-TOF-MS as a tool to measure VOCs from vertebrates, which in turn will help resolve vertebrate interactions through VOCs. The instrument monitors and records the full spectrum of VOCs emitted by an individual with a high accuracy and low detection limit, including transient VOC emissions. We propose and test diverse measuring configurations that allow for measurement of VOC emissions from different vertebrates and their exudates: full body, specific parts of the body, urine and femoral pores. In addition, we test configurations for sudden and short-lasting processes as VOCs emitted during adder skin shedding as well as the emissions of skin secretions upon mechanical and physiological stimulation in amphibia. Our configurations work in tandem with Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) to allow compound structure verification. 3. We discuss the configurations and methodologies used and conclude with recommendations for further studies, such as the choice of chamber size and flow. We also report the results of the measurements on vertebrates —that are novel to science— and discuss their ecological meaning. 4. We argue that PTR-TOF-MS has a high potential to resolve important unanswered questions in vertebrate chemical ecology with great adaptability to a wide range of experimental setups. If combined with a structure verification tool, such as GC-MS, the creative deployment of PTR-TOF-MS in various future study designs will lead to the identification of ecologically relevant VOCs.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Aquatic animals promote antibiotic resistance gene dissemination in water via conjugation: role of different regions within the zebra fish intestinal tract, and impact on fish intestinal microbiota

The aqueous environment is one of many reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Fish, as important aquatic animals which possess ideal intestinal niches for bacteria to grow and multiply, may ingest antibiotic resistance bacteria from aqueous environment. The fish gut would be a suitable environment for conjugal gene transfer including those encoding antibiotic resistance. However, little is known in relation to the impact of ingested ARGs or antibiotic resistance bacteria (ARB) on gut microbiota. Here, we applied the cultivation method, qPCR, nuclear molecular genetic marker and 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing technologies to develop a plasmid-mediated ARG transfer model of zebrafish. Furthermore, we aimed to investigate the dissemination of ARGs in microbial communities of zebrafish guts after donors carrying self-transferring plasmids that encode ARGs were introduced in aquaria. On average, 15% of faecal bacteria obtained ARGs through RP4-mediated conjugal transfer. The hindgut was the most important intestinal region supporting ARG dissemination, with concentrations of donor and transconjugant cells almost 25 times higher than those of other intestinal segments. Furthermore, in the hindgut where conjugal transfer occurred most actively, there was remarkable upregulation of the mRNA expression of the RP4 plasmid regulatory genes, trbBp and trfAp. Exogenous bacteria seem to alter bacterial communities by increasing Escherichia and Bacteroides species, while decreasing Aeromonas compared with control groups. We identified the composition of transconjugants and abundance of both cultivable and uncultivable bacteria (the latter accounted for 90.4%–97.2% of total transconjugants). Our study suggests that aquatic animal guts contribute to the spread of ARGs in water environments.

opencc-zeroDec 2015View details →

Data from: Corridors restore animal-mediated pollination in fragmented tropical forest landscapes

Tropical biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions have become heavily eroded through habitat loss. Animal-mediated pollination is required in >94% of higher tropical plant species and 75% of the world´s leading food crops, but it remains unclear if corridors avert deforestation-driven pollination breakdown in fragmented tropical landscapes. Here, we used manipulative resource experiments and field observations to show that corridors functionally connect neotropical forest fragments for forest-associated hummingbirds and increase pollen transfer. Further, corridors boosted forest-associated pollinator availability in fragments by 14.3 times compared to unconnected equivalents, increasing overall pollination success. Plants in patches without corridors showed pollination rates equal to bagged control flowers, indicating pollination failure in isolated fragments. This indicates, for the first time, that corridors benefit tropical forest ecosystems beyond boosting local species richness, by functionally connecting mutualistic network partners. We conclude that small-scale adjustments to landscape configuration safeguard native pollinators and associated pollination services in tropical forest landscapes.