Understanding, predicting, and treating depression in pregnancy to improve mothers' and offspring's mental health outcomes: The HappyMums study.

Background: Perinatal depression is common: on average, more than 13% of women suffer from physician-diagnosed disorder and 20% report symptoms bearing clinical relevance. Maternal depression not only significantly impacts women's quality of life but also increases the offspring's risk of negative developmental outcomes, including mental disorders, through a combination of maternal alterations in biology and postnatal rearing factors during the early period of life. The HappyMums project aims to improve our understanding of perinatal depression by identifying the factors that robustly predict risk and resilience in mothers and their offspring, determining underlying neurobiological mechanisms, and, finally, testing the efficacy of potential interventions.

Coercive mating has no impact on spatial learning, cognitive flexibility, and fecundity in female porthole livebearers (Poeciliopsis gracilis).

Coercive mating is a sexual selection strategy that is likely to influence female cognition. Female harassment levels have been linked to altered brain gene expression patterns and brain size evolution, suggesting females may respond to coercive mating by investing energy into "outsmarting" males. However, females exposed to coercive males have decreased foraging efficiency and likely increased stress levels, suggesting their brain function might instead be impaired.

Repeated independent origins of the placenta reveal convergent and divergent organ evolution within a single fish family (Poeciliidae).

An outstanding question in biology is to what extent convergent evolution produces similar, but not necessarily identical, complex phenotypic solutions. The placenta is a complex organ that repeatedly evolved in the livebearing fish family Poeciliidae. Here, we apply comparative approaches to test whether evolution has produced similar or different placental phenotypes in the Poeciliidae and to what extent these phenotypes correlate with convergence at the molecular level.

Multiple paternity in superfetatious live-bearing fishes.

Superfetation, the ability to carry several overlapping broods at different developmental stages, has evolved independently multiple times within the live-bearing fish family Poeciliidae. Even though superfetation is widespread among poeciliids, its evolutionary advantages remain unclear. Theory predicts that superfetation should increase polyandry by increasing the probability that temporally overlapping broods are fertilized by different fathers.

Sex-dependence and comorbidities of the early-life adversity induced mental and metabolic disease risks: Where are we at?

Early-life adversity (ELA) is a major risk factor for developing later-life mental and metabolic disorders. However, if and to what extent ELA contributes to the comorbidity and sex-dependent prevalence/presentation of these disorders remains unclear. We here comprehensively review and integrate human and rodent ELA (pre- and postnatal) studies examining mental or metabolic health in both sexes and discuss the role of the placenta and maternal milk, key in transferring maternal effects to the offspring.