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885 results for “data strategy”
Data from: Effects of immune challenge on the oviposition strategy of a noctuid moth
Infections can have detrimental effects on the fitness of an animal. Reproducing females may therefore be sensitive to cues of infection and be able to adaptively change their oviposition strategy in the face of infection. As one possibility, females could make a terminal investment and shift reproductive effort from future to current reproduction as life expectancy decreases. We hypothesized that females of the noctuid moth Heliothis virescens make a terminal investment and adapt their oviposition timing as well as their oviposition site selectivity in response to an immune challenge. We indeed found that females that were challenged with the bacterial entomopathogen Serratia entomophila laid more eggs than control females one night after the challenge. Additionally, bacteria-challenged females were less discriminating between oviposition sites than control females. Whereas control females preferred undamaged over damaged plants, immune-challenged females did not differentiate between the two. These results indicate that terminal investment is part of the life history of H. virescens females. Moreover, our results suggest that the strategy of terminal investment in H. virescens oviposition represents a fitness trade-off for females: in the face of infection, an increase in oviposition rate enhances female fitness, whereas low oviposition site selectivity reduces female fitness.
Data from: Infanticide as a male reproductive strategy has a nutritive risk effect in brown bears
Behavioral strategies to reduce predation can incur costs (i.e. risk effects). A common strategy to avoid predation is spatiotemporal avoidance of predators, in which prey typically trade optimal resources for safety. Analogous with predator-prey theory, risk effects should also arise in species with sexually selected infanticide (SSI), in which females with dependent offspring avoid infanticidal males. In brown bears (Ursus arctos), SSI is common and explains spatiotemporal segregation among reproductive classes. Here, we show that females with cubs-of-the-year had lower quality diets than conspecifics during the SSI high-risk period, the mating season. After the mating season, their diets were of similar quality to diets of their conspecifics. Our results suggest a nutritive risk effect of SSI, in which females with cubs-of-the-year alter their resource selection and trade optimal resources for offspring safety. We suggest that risk effects can be widespread among species with SSI, and that these risk effects can add to the female costs of reproduction.
Data from: Transcriptomes of parents identify parenting strategies and sexual conflict in a subsocial beetle
Parenting in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides is complex and, unusually, the sex and number of parents that can be present is flexible. Such flexibility is expected to involve specialized behaviour by the two sexes under biparental conditions. Here, we show that offspring fare equally well regardless of the sex or number of parents present. Comparing transcriptomes, we find a largely overlapping set of differentially expressed genes in both uniparental and biparental females and in uniparental males including vitellogenin, associated with reproduction, and takeout, influencing sex-specific mating and feeding behaviour. Gene expression in biparental males is similar to that in non-caring states. Thus, being 'biparental' in N. vespilloides describes the family social organization rather than the number of directly parenting individuals. There was no specialization; instead, in biparental families, direct male parental care appears to be limited with female behaviour unchanged. This should lead to strong sexual conflict.
Data from: The strategy of psychopathy: primary psychopathic traits predict defection on low-value relationships
Recent evidence suggests that psychopathy is a trait continuum. This has unappreciated implications for understanding the selective advantage of psychopathic traits. Whereas clinical psychopathy is typically construed as a strategy of unconditional defection, subclinical psychopathy may promote strategic conditional defection, broadening the adaptive niche of psychopathy within human societies. To test this, we focus on a ubiquitous real-life source of conditional behaviour: the expected relational value of social partners, both in terms of their quality and the likely quantity of future interactions with them. We allow for conversational interaction among participants prior to their playing an unannounced, one-shot prisoner's dilemma game, which fosters naturalistic interpersonal evaluation and conditional behavior, while controlling punishment and reputation effects. Individuals scoring higher on Factor 1 (callous affect, interpersonal manipulation) of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale show two forms of conditional defection: one after being interrupted more frequently during the conversation, the other after failing to discover cues to future meetings with an interlocutor. Both interaction effects support the hypothesis that primary subclinical psychopathy potentiates defection on those with low expected relational value. These data clarify the function and form of psychopathic traits, while highlighting adaptive variation in human social strategies.
Data from: Modified HEPES one-pot synthetic strategy for gold nanostars
Gold nanostars are being utilized more regularly in the biosensing field. Despite their useful attributes, there is still a need to optimize aspects of the synthesis and stability. The seedless, synthetic method comprised of 4-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-piperazineethanesulfonic acid (HEPES) is a facile, rapid method, however, produces heteromorphic nanostars. The modification of a HEPES method resulted in a silver-assisted, seedless gold nanostar synthesis method. The nanostars resulting from this method were monodispersed, multi-branched and approximately 37nm + 2nm in diameter. It proved to be a repeatable method that produced homogenous and robust nanostars. Once functionalized with polyvinylpyrrolidone 10 000, the new nanostars were observed to be stable in various environments such as salt, ionic strength and cell culture medium. In conclusion, the addition of the silver nitrate improved the morphology of the reported HEPES nanostars for the purpose of nanobiosensor development.
Data from: Generalized movement strategies for constrained consumers: ignoring fitness can be adaptive
Movements made by real organisms---such as movements involved in dispersal, migration, and habitat selection---are expected to be suboptimal occasionally due to realistic constraints imposed by incomplete information, perceptual limitations, and stochasticity. Previous theory considering such constraints has shown that movements appropriately conditioned upon habitat or resource characteristics can balance out suboptimal components of movement and thereby lead organisms to ideal free distributions and fitness maxima, whereas movements conditioned upon fitness differentials cannot. These findings suggest a somewhat paradoxical hypothesis: even if organisms have information about their fitness, movement strategies that maximize fitness may be conditioned upon something other than fitness per se. We test this hypothesis by investigating the evolutionary stability of generalized, conditional movement strategies that vary in their use of information on fitness versus information on habitat characteristics. We show that when costs of sensory machinery are included, natural selection should favor movement strategies that completely ignore fitness information. Finally, we synthesize previous work by showing how several previous important theoretical results on adaptive movement strategies are united under our one general model.
Data from: Flexibility, variability and constraint in energy management strategies across vertebrate taxa revealed by long-term heart rate measurements
1) Animals are expected to be judicious in the use of the energy they gain due to the costs and limits associated with its intake. The management of energy expenditure (EE) exhibited by animals has previously been considered in terms of three patterns: the constrained, independent and performance patterns of energy management. These patterns can be interpreted by regressing daily EE against maintenance EE measured over extended periods. From the multiple studies on this topic, there is equivocal evidence about the existence of universal patterns in certain aspects of energy management. 2) The implicit assumption that animals exhibit specifically one of three discrete energy management patterns, and without variation, seems simplistic. We suggest that animals can exhibit gradations of different energy management patterns and that the exact pattern will fluctuate as their environmental context changes. 3) To investigate these ideas, and for possible large-scale patterns in energy management pattern, we analysed long-term heart rate data – a strong proxy for EE – across and within individuals in 16 species of birds, mammals, and fish. 4) Our analyses of 292 individuals representing 46 539 observation-days suggest that vertebrates typically exhibit predominantly the independent or performance energy patterns at the across-individual level, and that the pattern does not associate with taxonomic group. Within individuals, however, animals generally exhibit some degree of energy constraint. Together, these findings indicate that across diverse species, some individuals supply more energy to all aspects of their life than do others, however all individuals must trade-off deployment of their available energy between competing functions. This demonstrates that within-individual analyses are essential for interpretation of energy management patterns. 5) We also found that species do not necessarily exhibit a fixed energy management pattern but rather temporal variation in their energy management over the year. Animals' energy management exhibited stronger energy constraint during periods of higher EE, which typically coincided with clear and key life cycle events such as reproduction, suggesting an adaptive plasticity to respond to fluctuating energy demands.
Data from: QuLinePlus: extending plant breeding strategy and genetic model simulation to cross-pollinated populations – case studies in forage breeding
Plant breeders are supported by a range of tools that assist them to make decisions about the conduct or design of plant breeding programs. Simulations are a strategic tool that enable the breeder to integrate the multiple components of a breeding program into a number of proposed scenarios that are compared by a range of statistics measuring the efficiency of the proposed systems. A simulation study for the trait growth score compared two major strategies for breeding forage species, among half-sib family selection and among and within half-sib family selection. These scenarios highlighted new features of the QuLine program, now called QuLinePlus, incorporated to enable the software platform to be used to simulate breeding programs for cross pollinated species. Each strategy was compared across three levels of HS family mean heritability (0.1, 0.5 and 0.9), across three sizes of the initial parental population (10, 50, and 100), and across three genetic effects models (fully additive model, a mixture of additive, partial and over dominance model, and a mixture of partial dominance and over dominance model). Among and within half-sib selection performed better than among half-sib selection for all scenarios. The new tools introduced into QuLinePlus should serve to accurately compare among methods and provide direction on how to achieve specific goals in the improvement of plant breeding programs for cross breeding species.
Data from: Functional traits explain variation in plant life history strategies
Ecologists seek general explanations for the dramatic variation in species abundances in space and time. An increasingly popular solution is to predict species distributions, dynamics and responses to environmental change based on easily measured anatomical and morphological traits. Trait-based approaches assume that simple functional traits influence fitness and life history evolution, but rigorous tests of this assumption are lacking because they require quantitative information about the full life-cycles of many species representing different life histories. Here we link a global traits database with empirical matrix population models for 222 species and report strong relationships between functional traits and plant life histories. Species with large seeds, long-lived leaves, or dense wood have slow life histories, with mean fitness (i.e. population growth rates) more strongly influenced by survival than by growth or fecundity, compared to fast life history species with small seeds, short-lived leaves, or soft wood. In contrast to measures of demographic contributions to fitness based on whole life-cycles, analyses focused on raw demographic rates may underestimate the strength of association between traits and mean fitness. Our results help establish the physiological basis for plant life history evolution and show the potential for trait-based approaches in population dynamics.
Data from: Size-dependent ejaculation strategies and reproductive success in the yellow dung fly, Scathophaga stercoraria
Theory predicts that sperm competition will favour the production of larger ejaculates. However, because the benefits of greater reproductive investment are balanced by the costs of spermatogenesis, expenditure should depend on male physiology, mating rate and the relationship between additional investment and fertilization gains. In the yellow dung fly, Scathophagastercoraria, males adopt size-dependent alternative mating tactics that are associated with discrete ecological resources (foraging and oviposition substrates), although males switch between these environments throughout their lives. By copulating on foraging substrate (fruit or flowers), males can bypass intense mate competition that occurs at oviposition sites (cow dung), but as a consequence, must occupy a disfavoured mating role (i.e. face a greater risk that their ejaculate will be displaced from storage prior to fertilization). Small males often mate on foraging substrate, whereas large males mate in this environment only during feeding bouts. Optimal ejaculate expenditure should therefore depend on male size and their current mating role. By measuring copula duration (i.e. ejaculate expenditure) of natural matings and assigning paternity to resulting offspring, we confirmed that copulations on dung sire approximately three times as many offspring as those on foraging substrate. Furthermore, large males reduced copula duration on fruit, as predicted, since this strategy enables greater investment into high-payoff matings on dung. Conversely, small males copulated for shorter durations on dung than on foraging substrate, perhaps to minimize the risk of being displaced from copula by a rival. These patterns of ejaculate expenditure translated into greater offspring production for large males on dung and for small males on fruit. We discuss the possible proximate factors driving these size- and context-dependent patterns of ejaculate allocation by yellow dung fly males. Together, our findings shed light on the allocation strategies and reproductive consequences of alternative mating tactics.
Data from: Migration strategy affects avian influenza dynamics in mallards (Anas platyrhynchos)
Studies of pathogen transmission typically overlook that wildlife hosts can include both migrant and resident populations when attempting to model circulation. Through the application of stable isotopes in flight feathers, we estimated the migration strategy of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) - resident, intermediate-distance migrant or long-distance migrant, occurring on California wintering grounds. Our study demonstrates that mallards, a principal host of avian influenza virus (AIV) in nature, contribute differently to virus gene flow depending on migration strategy. No difference in AIV prevalence was detected between resident (9.6%), intermediate-distance (9.6%) and long-distance migrants (7.4%). Viral diversity among the three groups was also comparable, possibly owing to viral pool mixing when birds converge at wetlands during winter. These findings challenge the view that migratory animals are exposed to a higher number and diversity of pathogens. However, migrants and residents contributed differently to the virus gene pool at wintering wetlands. Migrants introduced virus from northern breeding grounds (Alaska and the NW Pacific Rim) into the wintering population, facilitating gene flow at continental scales, but circulation of imported virus appeared to be limited. In contrast, resident mallards acted as AIV reservoirs facilitating year-round circulation of limited subtypes (i.e. H5N2) at lower latitudes. This study supports a model of virus exchange in temperate regions driven by the convergence of wild birds with separate geographic origins and exposure histories.
Data from: Competing metabolic strategies in a multilevel selection model
The evolutionary mechanisms of energy efficiency have been addressed. One important question is to understand how the optimized usage of energy can be selected in an evolutionary process, especially when the immediate advantage of gathering efficient individuals in an energetic context is not clear. We propose a model of two competing metabolic strategies differing in their resource usage, an efficient strain which converts resource into energy at high efficiency but displays a low rate of resource consumption, and an inefficient strain which consumes resource at a high rate but at low yield. We explore the dynamics in both well-mixed and structured populations. The selection for optimized energy usage is measured by the likelihood that an efficient strain can invade a population of inefficient strains. It is found that the parameter space at which the efficient strain can thrive in structured populations is always broader than observed in well-mixed populations.
Data from: Hypodermic self-insemination as a reproductive assurance strategy
Self-fertilization occurs in a broad range of hermaphroditic plants and animals, and is often thought to evolve as a reproductive assurance strategy under ecological conditions that disfavour or prevent outcrossing. Nevertheless, selfing ability is far from ubiquitous among hermaphrodites, and may be constrained in taxa where the male and female gametes of the same individual cannot easily meet. Here, we report an extraordinary selfing mechanism in one such species, the free-living flatworm Macrostomum hystrix. To test the hypothesis that adaptations to hypodermic insemination of the mating partner under outcrossing also facilitate selfing, we experimentally manipulated the social environment of these transparent flatworms and then observed the spatial distribution of received sperm in vivo. We find that this distribution differs radically between conditions allowing or preventing outcrossing, implying that isolated individuals use their needle-like stylet (male copulatory organ) to inject own sperm into their anterior body region, including into their own head, from where they then apparently migrate to the site of (self-)fertilization. Conferring the ability to self could thus be an additional consequence of hypodermic insemination, a widespread fertilization mode that is especially prevalent among simultaneously hermaphroditic animals and probably evolves due to sexual conflict over the transfer and subsequent fate of sperm.
Data from: Disentangling population strategies of two cladocerans adapted to different ultraviolet regimes
Zooplankton have evolved several mechanisms to deal with environmental threats, such as ultraviolet radiation (UVR), and in order to identify strategies inherent to organisms exposed to different UVR environments, we here examine life-history traits of two lineages of Daphnia pulex. The lineages differed in the UVR dose they had received at their place of origin from extremely high UVR stress at high-altitude Bolivian lakes to low UVR stress near the sea level in temperate Sweden. Nine life-history variables of each lineage were analyzed in laboratory experiments in the presence and the absence of sub-lethal doses of UVR (UV-A band), and we identified trade-offs among variables through structural equation modeling (SEM). The UVR treatment was detrimental to almost all life-history variables of both lineages; however, the Daphnia historically exposed to higher doses of UVR (HighUV) showed a higher overall fecundity than those historically exposed to lower doses of UVR (LowUV). The total offspring and ephippia production, as well as the number of clutches and number of offspring at first reproduction, was directly affected by UVR in both lineages. Main differences between lineages involved indirect effects that affected offspring production as the age at first reproduction. We here show that organisms within the same species have developed different strategies as responses to UVR, although no increased physiological tolerance or plasticity was shown by the HighUV lineage. In addition to known tolerance strategies to UVR, including avoidance, prevention, or repairing of damages, we here propose a population strategy that includes early reproduction and high fertility, which we show compensated for the fitness loss imposed by UVR stress.
Data from: Accounting for uncertainty in the evolutionary timescale of green plants through clock-partitioning and fossil calibration strategies
Establishing an accurate evolutionary timescale for green plants (Viridiplantae) is essential to understanding their interaction and coevolution with the Earth's climate and the many organisms that rely on green plants. Despite being the focus of numerous studies, the timing of the origin of green plants and the divergence of major clades within this group remain highly controversial. Here, we infer the evolutionary timescale of green plants by analysing 81 protein-coding genes from 99 chloroplast genomes, using a core set of 21 fossil calibrations. We test the sensitivity of our divergence-time estimates to various components of Bayesian molecular dating, including the tree topology, clock models, clock-partitioning schemes, rate priors, and fossil calibrations. We find that the choice of clock model affects date estimation and that the independent-rates model provides a better fit to the data than the autocorrelated-rates model. Varying the rate prior and tree topology had little impact on age estimates, with far greater differences observed among calibration choices and clock-partitioning schemes. Our analyses yield date estimates ranging from the Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic for crown-group green plants, and from the Ediacaran to Middle Ordovician for crown-group land plants. We present divergence-time estimates of the major groups of green plants that take into account various sources of uncertainty. Our proposed timeline lays the foundation for further investigations into how green plants shaped the global climate and ecosystems, and how embryophytes became dominant in terrestrial environments.
Data from: Are extraversion and openness indicators of a slow life history strategy?
Theory and data generally concur that a slower Life History Strategy (LHS) is associated with higher Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Emotional Stability. Whether Extraversion and Openness are indicators of a slow LH, or whether they include both fast and slow LH components, remains unresolved. I addressed these questions in two studies: one of university students observed via periodic brief audio recordings during 72 hours of their daily lives, and the second a re-analysis of data from Block and Block's (2006) longitudinal study. In both studies, I operationalized LHS as the correlation between an individual's California Q-Sort (CAQ) profile and the slow Life History (SLH) CAQ template created by Sherman et al. (2013) and Dunkel et al. (2015). I calculated Five Factor Model dimension scores using McCrae et al's (1986) method. In both samples, individuals whose CAQ profile more closely resembled the SLH template were higher in Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability than those pursuing a faster LHS. Extraversion was unrelated to LHS, while Openness in the Block and Block data set was actually associated with a faster LHS. Analysis of individual CAQ items revealed some differences between the studies. Generally, Extraversion-loading items tapping excitement-seeking and self-dramatization, and Openness-loading items tapping nonconformity, were associated with a faster LHS. Participants in the audio recording study also completed a HEXACO personality inventory and the Arizona Life History Battery. LHS as measured by the ALHB was uncorrelated with LHS as measured by the CAQ. Controlling for Extraversion yielded a significant positive relationship between the two LHS measures, suggesting that their poor convergent validity resulted from differences in their coverage of Extraversion-related content.
Data from: Adaptive strategies in nocturnally migrating insects and songbirds: contrasting responses to wind
1. Animals that use flight as their mode of transportation must cope with the fact that their migration and orientation performance is strongly affected by the flow of the medium they are moving in, i.e. by the winds. Different strategies can be used to mitigate the negative effects and benefit from the positive effects of a moving flow. The strategies an animal can use will be constrained by the relationship between the speed of the flow and the speed of the animal's own propulsion in relation to the surrounding air. 2. Here we analyse entomological and ornithological radar data from north-western Europe to investigate how two different nocturnal migrant taxa, the noctuid moth Autographa gamma and songbirds, deal with wind by analysing variation in resulting flight directions in relation to the wind-dependent angle between the animal's heading and track direction. 3. Our results, from fixed locations along the migratory journey, reveal different global strategies used by moths and songbirds during their migratory journeys. As expected, nocturnally migrating moths experienced a greater degree of wind drift than nocturnally migrating songbirds, but both groups were more affected by wind in autumn than in spring. 4. The songbirds' strategies involve elements of both drift and compensation, providing some benefits from wind in combination with destination and time control. In contrast, moths expose themselves to a significantly higher degree of drift in order to obtain strong wind assistance, surpassing the songbirds in mean ground speed, at the cost of a comparatively lower spatiotemporal migratory precision. 5. Moths and songbirds show contrasting but adaptive responses to migrating through a moving flow, which are fine-tuned to the respective flight capabilities of each group in relation to the wind currents they travel within.
Data from: Evolution of pre-copulatory and post-copulatory strategies of inbreeding avoidance and associated polyandry
Inbreeding depression is widely hypothesised to drive adaptive evolution of pre-copulatory and post-copulatory mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance, which in turn are hypothesised to affect evolution of polyandry (i.e., female multiple mating). However, surprisingly little theory or modelling critically examines selection for pre-copulatory or post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance, or both strategies, given evolutionary constraints and direct costs, or examines how evolution of inbreeding avoidance strategies might feed back to affect evolution of polyandry. Selection for post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance, but not for pre-copulatory inbreeding avoidance, requires polyandry, while interactions between pre-copulatory and post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance might cause functional redundancy (i.e., 'degeneracy') potentially generating complex evolutionary dynamics among inbreeding strategies and polyandry. We used individual-based modelling to quantify evolution of interacting pre-copulatory and post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance and associated polyandry given strong inbreeding depression and different evolutionary constraints and direct costs. We found that evolution of post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance increased selection for initially rare polyandry, and that evolution of a costly inbreeding avoidance strategy became negligible over time given a lower cost alternative strategy. Further, fixed pre-copulatory inbreeding avoidance often completely precluded evolution of polyandry and hence post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance, but fixed post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance did not preclude evolution of pre-copulatory inbreeding avoidance. Evolution of inbreeding avoidance phenotypes and associated polyandry are therefore affected by evolutionary feedbacks and degeneracy. All else being equal, evolution of pre-copulatory inbreeding avoidance and resulting low polyandry is more likely when post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance is precluded or costly, and evolution of post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance greatly facilitates evolution of costly polyandry.
Data from: Fine-scale analysis of an assassin bug's behaviour: predatory strategies to bypass the sensory systems of prey
Some predators sidestep environments that render them conspicuous to the sensory systems of prey. However, these challenging environments are unavoidable for certain predators. Stenolemus giraffa is an assassin bug that feeds on web-building spiders; the web is the environment in which this predator finds its prey, but it also forms part of its preys' sophisticated sensory apparatus, blurring the distinction between environment and sensory systems. Stenolemus giraffa needs to break threads in the web that obstruct its path to the spiders, and such vibrations can alert the spiders. Using laser vibrometry, this study demonstrates how S. giraffa avoids alerting the spiders during its approach. When breaking threads, S. giraffa attenuates the vibrations produced by holding on to the loose ends of the broken thread and causing them to sag prior to release. In addition, S. giraffa releases the loose ends of a broken thread one at a time (after several seconds or minutes) and in this way spaces out the production of vibrations in time. Furthermore, S. giraffa was found to maximally reduce the amplitude of vibrations when breaking threads that are prone to produce louder vibrations. Finally, S. giraffa preferred to break threads in the presence of wind, suggesting that this araneophagic insect exploits environmental noise that temporarily impairs the spiders' ability to detect vibrations. The predatory behaviour of S. giraffa seems to be adaptated in intricate manner for bypassing the sophisticated sensory systems of web-building spiders. These findings illustrate how the physical characteristics of the environment, along with the sensory systems of prey can shape the predatory strategies of animals.
Data from: Conserving phylogenetic diversity can be a poor strategy for conserving functional diversity
For decades, academic biologists have advocated for making conservation decisions in light of evolutionary history. Specifically, they suggest that policy makers should prioritize conserving phylogenetically diverse assemblages. The most prominent argument is that conserving phylogenetic diversity (PD) will also conserve diversity in traits and features (functional diversity [FD]), which may be valuable for a number of reasons. The claim that PD-maximized ("maxPD") sets of taxa will also have high FD is often taken at face value and in cases where researchers have actually tested it, they have done so by measuring the phylogenetic signal in ecologically important functional traits. The rationale is that if traits closely mirror phylogeny, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will tend to maximize FD and if traits do not have phylogenetic structure, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will be no better at capturing FD than criteria that ignore PD. Here, we suggest that measuring the phylogenetic signal in traits is uninformative for evaluating the effectiveness of using PD in conservation. We evolve traits under several different models and, for the first time, directly compare the FD of a set of taxa that maximize PD to the FD of a random set of the same size. Under many common models of trait evolution and tree shapes, conserving the maxPD set of taxa will conserve more FD than conserving a random set of the same size. However, this result cannot be generalized to other classes of models. We find that under biologically plausible scenarios, using PD to select species can actually lead to less FD compared with a random set. Critically, this can occur even when there is phylogenetic signal in the traits. Predicting exactly when we expect using PD to be a good strategy for conserving FD is challenging, as it depends on complex interactions between tree shape and the assumptions of the evolutionary model. Nonetheless, if our goal is to maintain trait diversity, the fact that conserving taxa based on PD will not reliably conserve at least as much FD as choosing randomly raises serious concerns about the general utility of PD in conservation.
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These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.