Objective: The aim of this study was to calculate the economic losses during an outbreak of Simulium (Wilhelmia) spp. in the Cappadocia Region of Turkey.
Methods: The economic costs associated with a 2006-2007 outbreak of Simulium (Wilhelmia) spp.
The advent of genome-wide RNA interference (RNAi)-based screens puts us in the position to identify genes for all functions human cells carry out. However, for many functions, assay complexity and cost make genome-scale knockdown experiments impossible. Methods to predict genes required for cell functions are therefore needed to focus RNAi screens from the whole genome on the most likely candidates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe population genetic structure of Simulium tani was inferred from mitochondria-encoded sequences of cytochrome c oxidase subunits I (COI) and II (COII) along an elevational gradient in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. A statistical parsimony network of 71 individuals revealed 71 haplotypes in the COI gene and 43 haplotypes in the COII gene; the concatenated sequences of the COI and COII genes revealed 71 haplotypes. High levels of genetic diversity but low levels of genetic differentiation were observed among populations of S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFluid-feeding Lepidoptera use an elongated proboscis, conventionally modeled as a drinking straw, to feed from pools and films of liquid. Using the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus (Linnaeus), we show that the inherent structural features of the lepidopteran proboscis contradict the basic assumptions of the drinking-straw model. By experimentally characterizing permeability and flow in the proboscis, we show that tapering of the food canal in the drinking region increases resistance, significantly hindering the flow of fluid.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBlack flies in the Seybouse River Basin in northeastern Algeria were sampled at 31 sites along the main river and its tributaries across all seasons from 2011 to 2013. Eight nominal species and species complexes in three genera were identified among more than 31,000 specimens. Urosimulium faurei (Bernard, Grenier & Bailly-Choumara), Simulium (Eusimulium) mellah Giudicelli & Bouzidi, and Simulium (Nevermania) lundstromi (Enderlein) were recorded for the first time in northeastern Algeria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcetic acid bacteria (AAB) play an important role during cocoa fermentation, as their main product, acetate, is a major driver for the development of the desired cocoa flavors. Here, we investigated the specialized metabolism of these bacteria under cocoa pulp fermentation-simulating conditions. A carefully designed combination of parallel 13C isotope labeling experiments allowed the elucidation of intracellular fluxes in the complex environment of cocoa pulp, when lactate and ethanol were included as primary substrates among undefined ingredients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe asymmetric unit of the title compound, C13H10N2O2, contains two crystallographically independent mol-ecules (A and B). The indazole ring systems are approximately planar [maximum deviations = 0.0037 (15) and -0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Crystallogr Sect E Struct Rep Online
April 2014
In the title compound, C22H18Cl2N2O, the indazole ring system is approximately planar [maximum deviation = 0.031 (2) Å], its mean plane is oriented at 3.17 (4) and 19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman alterations to nutrient cycles and herbivore communities are affecting global biodiversity dramatically. Ecological theory predicts these changes should be strongly counteractive: nutrient addition drives plant species loss through intensified competition for light, whereas herbivores prevent competitive exclusion by increasing ground-level light, particularly in productive systems. Here we use experimental data spanning a globally relevant range of conditions to test the hypothesis that herbaceous plant species losses caused by eutrophication may be offset by increased light availability due to herbivory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMitochondrial dysfunction plays important roles in many diseases, but there is no satisfactory method to assess mitochondrial health in vivo. Here, we engineered a MitoTimer reporter gene from the existing Timer reporter gene. MitoTimer encodes a mitochondria-targeted green fluorescent protein when newly synthesized, which shifts irreversibly to red fluorescence when oxidized.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA molecular phylogeny was inferred for the 22 nominal species of black flies in the Simulium jenningsi species group, which includes major pests of humans and livestock in North America. Females are structurally monomorphic, presenting a problem for identification of the pests. For each species, we sequenced approximately two kilobases from the mitochondrial genome (ND2, Cox I, proximal one-half of Cox II) and about six kilobases from the nuclear genome (ca.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies of experimental grassland communities have demonstrated that plant diversity can stabilize productivity through species asynchrony, in which decreases in the biomass of some species are compensated for by increases in others. However, it remains unknown whether these findings are relevant to natural ecosystems, especially those for which species diversity is threatened by anthropogenic global change. Here we analyse diversity-stability relationships from 41 grasslands on five continents and examine how these relationships are affected by chronic fertilization, one of the strongest drivers of species loss globally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Crystallogr Sect E Struct Rep Online
January 2014
In the title compound, C26H26ClN3O2·C3H7OH, the benzimid-azole ring system is essentially planar [maximum deviation = -0.018 (2) Å] and its mean plane is oriented with respect to the two benzene rings at dihedral angles of 4.51 (6) and 56.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2014
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 lifecycles of many species representing different life histories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNest success is a critical determinant of the dynamics of avian populations, and nest survival modeling has played a key role in advancing avian ecology and management. Beginning with the development of daily nest survival models, and proceeding through subsequent extensions, the capacity for modeling the effects of hypothesized factors on nest survival has expanded greatly. We extend nest survival models further by introducing an approach to deal with incompletely observed, temporally varying covariates using a hierarchical model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe semiconductor Sr2FeOsO6, depending on temperature, adopts two types of spin structures that differ in the spin sequence of ferrimagnetic iron-osmium layers along the tetragonal c axis. Neutron powder diffraction experiments, 57Fe Mössbauer spectra, and density functional theory calculations suggest that this behavior arises because a lattice instability resulting in alternating iron-osmium distances fine-tunes the balance of competing exchange interactions. Thus, Sr2FeOsO6 is an example of a double perovskite, in which the electronic phases are controlled by the interplay of spin, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys
September 2013
The intersection between a network of polygonal fractures and a cubic cavity is numerically studied. Several probabilities are defined and particular attention is paid to the probabilities of intersection or not of the percolating cluster with the cavity; they depend on the size of the domain, on the fracture density, and on the relative size of the fractures and of the cavity. These probabilities are extrapolated to infinite domains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ecological and medical importance of black flies drives the need for rapid and reliable identification of these minute, structurally uniform insects. We assessed the efficiency of DNA barcoding for species identification of tropical black flies. A total of 351 cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 sequences were obtained from 41 species in six subgenera of the genus Simulium in Thailand.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvasions have increased the size of regional species pools, but are typically assumed to reduce native diversity. However, global-scale tests of this assumption have been elusive because of the focus on exotic species richness, rather than relative abundance. This is problematic because low invader richness can indicate invasion resistance by the native community or, alternatively, dominance by a single exotic species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo determine the geographic origin of the black fly Simulium suzukii on Okinawa Island, Japan, macrogenomic profiles derived from its polytene chromosomes were compared with those of mainland and other insular populations of S. suzukii and of the isomorphic Simulium tani species complex. The Okinawan population is a chromosomally unique cytoform, designated 'D,' which is essentially monomorphic and differs by about 27 fixed rearrangements from the chromosomal standard sequence for the subgenus Simulium and by two fixed differences from its nearest known relative, representing the type of S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNon-peptidomimetic drug-like protease inhibitors have potential for circumventing drug resistance. We developed a much-improved synthetic route to our previously reported inhibitor candidate displaying an unusual quaternized hemi-aminal. This functional group forms from a linear precursor upon passage into physiological media.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent functional trait studies have shown that trait differences may favour certain species (environmental filtering) while simultaneously preventing competitive exclusion (niche partitioning). However, phenomenological trait-dispersion analyses do not identify the mechanisms that generate niche partitioning, preventing trait-based prediction of future changes in biodiversity. We argue that such predictions require linking functional traits with recognised coexistence mechanisms involving spatial or temporal environmental heterogeneity, resource partitioning and natural enemies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the present work, simulated cocoa fermentation was investigated at the level of metabolic pathway fluxes (fluxome) of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), which are typically found in the microbial consortium known to convert nutrients from the cocoa pulp into organic acids. A comprehensive (13)C labeling approach allowed to quantify carbon fluxes during simulated cocoa fermentation by (i) parallel (13)C studies with [(13)C6]glucose, [1,2-(13)C2]glucose, and [(13)C6]fructose, respectively, (ii) gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis of secreted acetate and lactate, (iii) stoichiometric profiling, and (iv) isotopomer modeling for flux calculation. The study of several strains of L.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnaerobic digestion of organic waste generated by households, businesses, agriculture, and industry is an important approach as method of waste treatment - especially with regard to its potential as an alternative energy source and its cost-effectiveness. Separate collection of biowaste from households or vegetal waste from public green spaces is already established in some EU-27 countries. The material recovery in composting plants is common for biowaste and vegetal waste.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMouthparts of fluid-feeding insects have unique material properties with no human-engineered analogue: the feeding devices acquire sticky and viscous liquids while remaining clean. We discovered that the external surface of the butterfly proboscis has a sharp boundary separating a hydrophilic drinking region and a hydrophobic non-drinking region. The structural arrangement of the proboscis provides the basis for the wetting dichotomy.
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