Winner-loser plant trait replacements in human-modified tropical forests.

Anthropogenic landscape modification may lead to the proliferation of a few species and the loss of many. Here we investigate mechanisms and functional consequences of this winner-loser replacement in six human-modified Amazonian and Atlantic Forest regions in Brazil using a causal inference framework. Combining floristic and functional trait data for 1,207 tree species across 271 forest plots, we find that forest loss consistently caused an increased dominance of low-density woods and small seeds dispersed by endozoochory (winner traits) and the loss of distinctive traits, such as extremely dense woods and large seeds dispersed by synzoochory (loser traits).

Evaluation of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Surveillance with Contrast-enhanced MRI in a High-Risk Western European Cohort.

Aim: To investigate the utilization of MRI using a MRI liver protocol with extracellular contrast-enhanced series for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) surveillance in high-risk patients.

Methods: Consecutive high-risk patients of a western European cohort who underwent repeated liver MRI for HCC screening were included. Lesions were registered according to the Liver Reporting & Data System (LIRADS) 2018.

Non-contrast short MRI surveillance for HCC screening: the study protocol of the SMS-HCC prospective multicenter study.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) comprises 75 to 85% of all primary liver cancers. Current guidelines recommend a biannual HCC surveillance using ultrasound (US) for high-risk patients. However, due to its low sensitivity for detection of early-stage HCC lesions, there is an urgency for more sensitive surveillance tools.

Species Identity, Life History, and Geographic Distance Influence Gut Bacterial Communities in Lab-Reared and European Field-Collected Culicoides Biting midges.

Bacteria are part of the insect gut system and influence many physiological traits of their host. Gut bacteria may even reduce or block the transmission of arboviruses in several species of arthropod vectors. Culicoides biting midges are important arboviral vectors of several livestock and wildlife diseases, yet limited information is available on their gut bacterial communities.

Log-ratio analysis of microbiome data with many zeroes is library size dependent.

Microbiome composition data collected through amplicon sequencing are count data on taxa in which the total count per sample (the library size) is an artefact of the sequencing platform, and as a result, such data are compositional. To avoid library size dependency, one common way of analysing multivariate compositional data is to perform a principal component analysis (PCA) on data transformed with the centred log-ratio, hereafter called a log-ratio PCA. Two aspects typical of amplicon sequencing data are the large differences in library size and the large number of zeroes.

Antimicrobial resistance clusters in commensal Escherichia coli from livestock.

To combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR), policymakers need an overview of evolution and trends of AMR in relevant animal reservoirs, and livestock is monitored by susceptibility testing of sentinel organisms such as commensal E. coli. Such monitoring data are often vast and complex and generates a need for outcome indicators that summarize AMR for multiple antimicrobial classes.

Double constrained ordination for assessing biological trait responses to multiple stressors: A case study with benthic macroinvertebrate communities.

Benthic macroinvertebrate communities are used as indicators for anthropogenic stress in freshwater ecosystems. To better understand the relationship between anthropogenic stress and changes in macroinvertebrate community composition, it is important to understand how different stressors and species traits are associated, and how these associations influence variation in species occurrence and abundances. Here, we show the capacity of the multivariate technique of double constrained correspondence analysis (dc-CA) to analyse trait-environment relationships, and we compare it with the redundancy analysis method on community weighted mean values of traits (CWM-RDA), which is frequently used for this type of analysis.

Author Correction: A global database for metacommunity ecology, integrating species, traits, environment and space.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Benthic invertebrate and microbial biodiversity in sub-tropical urban rivers: Correlations with environmental variables and emerging chemicals.

Urban rivers often function as sinks for various contaminants potentially placing the benthic communities at risk of exposure. We performed a comprehensive biological survey of the benthic macroinvertebrate and bacterial community compositions in six rivers from the suburb to the central urban area of Guangzhou city (South China), and evaluated their correlations with emerging organic contaminants, heavy metals and nutrients. Overall, the benthic macroinvertebrate community shifted from molluscs to oligochaete from the suburban to the central urban rivers that receive treated and untreated sewage.

Differently Pre-treated Alfalfa Silages Affect the Ruminal Microbiota Composition.

Alfalfa ( L.) silage (AS) is an important feedstuff in ruminant nutrition. However, its high non-protein nitrogen content often leads to poor ruminal nitrogen retention.

Investigating microbial associations from sequencing survey data with co-correspondence analysis.

Microbial communities, which drive major ecosystem functions, consist of a wide range of interacting species. Understanding how microbial communities are structured and the processes underlying this is crucial to interpreting ecosystem responses to global change but is challenging as microbial interactions cannot usually be directly observed. Multiple efforts are currently focused to combine next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques with refined statistical analysis (e.

Biomarker Research in ADHD: the Impact of Nutrition (BRAIN) - study protocol of an open-label trial to investigate the mechanisms underlying the effects of a few-foods diet on ADHD symptoms in children.

Introduction: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common childhood behavioural disorder, causing significant impediment to a child's development. It is a complex disorder with numerous contributing (epi)genetic and environmental factors. Currently, treatment consists of behavioural and pharmacological therapy.

Integrating spatial and phylogenetic information in the fourth-corner analysis to test trait-environment relationships.

The fourth-corner analysis aims to quantify and test for relationships between species traits and site-specific environmental variables, mediated by site-specific species abundances. Since there is no common unit of observation, the significance of the relationships is tested using a double permutation procedure (site based and species based). This method implies that all species and sites are independent of each other.

A critical issue in model-based inference for studying trait-based community assembly and a solution.

Statistical testing of trait-environment association from data is a challenge as there is no common unit of observation: the trait is observed on species, the environment on sites and the mediating abundance on species-site combinations. A number of correlation-based methods, such as the community weighted trait means method (CWM), the fourth-corner correlation method and the multivariate method RLQ, have been proposed to estimate such trait-environment associations. In these methods, valid statistical testing proceeds by performing two separate resampling tests, one site-based and the other species-based and by assessing significance by the largest of the two -values (the test).

A risk assessment-driven quantitative comparison of gene expression profiles in PBMCs and white adipose tissue of humans and rats after isoflavone supplementation.

Quantitative insight into species differences in risk assessment is expected to reduce uncertainty and variability related to extrapolation from animals to humans. This paper explores quantification and comparison of gene expression data between tissues and species from intervention studies with isoflavones. Gene expression data from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and white adipose tissue (WAT) after 8wk isoflavone interventions in postmenopausal women and ovariectomized F344 rats were used.

Combining exposure and effect modeling into an integrated probabilistic environmental risk assessment for nanoparticles.

There is a growing need for good environmental risk assessment of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs). Environmental risk assessment of ENPs has been hampered by lack of data and knowledge about ENPs, their environmental fate, and their toxicity. This leads to uncertainty in the risk assessment.

Non-animal models of epithelial barriers (skin, intestine and lung) in research, industrial applications and regulatory toxicology.

Models of the outer epithelia of the human body - namely the skin, the intestine and the lung - have found valid applications in both research and industrial settings as attractive alternatives to animal testing. A variety of approaches to model these barriers are currently employed in such fields, ranging from the utilization of ex vivo tissue to reconstructed in vitro models, and further to chip-based technologies, synthetic membrane systems and, of increasing current interest, in silico modeling approaches. An international group of experts in the field of epithelial barriers was convened from academia, industry and regulatory bodies to present both the current state of the art of non-animal models of the skin, intestinal and pulmonary barriers in their various fields of application, and to discuss research-based, industry-driven and regulatory-relevant future directions for both the development of new models and the refinement of existing test methods.

Parametric estimation of P(X > Y) for normal distributions in the context of probabilistic environmental risk assessment.

Estimating the risk, P(X > Y), in probabilistic environmental risk assessment of nanoparticles is a problem when confronted by potentially small risks and small sample sizes of the exposure concentration X and/or the effect concentration Y. This is illustrated in the motivating case study of aquatic risk assessment of nano-Ag. A non-parametric estimator based on data alone is not sufficient as it is limited by sample size.

Integrated probabilistic risk assessment for nanoparticles: the case of nanosilica in food.

Insight into risks of nanotechnology and the use of nanoparticles is an essential condition for the social acceptance and safe use of nanotechnology. One of the problems with which the risk assessment of nanoparticles is faced is the lack of data, resulting in uncertainty in the risk assessment. We attempt to quantify some of this uncertainty by expanding a previous deterministic study on nanosilica (5-200 nm) in food into a fully integrated probabilistic risk assessment.

Analysing chemical-induced changes in macroinvertebrate communities in aquatic mesocosm experiments: a comparison of methods.

Mesocosm experiments that study the ecological impact of chemicals are often analysed using the multivariate method 'Principal Response Curves' (PRCs). Recently, the extension of generalised linear models (GLMs) to multivariate data was introduced as a tool to analyse community data in ecology. Moreover, data aggregation techniques that can be analysed with univariate statistics have been proposed.

Prediction uncertainty assessment of a systems biology model requires a sample of the full probability distribution of its parameters.

Multi-parameter models in systems biology are typically 'sloppy': some parameters or combinations of parameters may be hard to estimate from data, whereas others are not. One might expect that parameter uncertainty automatically leads to uncertain predictions, but this is not the case. We illustrate this by showing that the prediction uncertainty of each of six sloppy models varies enormously among different predictions.

The effect of fibers on coagulation of casein-based enteral nutrition in an artificial gastric digestion model.

A serious complication seen in critically ill patients is the solidification of enteral nutrition causing gastrointestinal obstruction. It has been suggested that enteral nutrition enriched with insoluble fibers may increase the risk of this complication. Therefore, we investigate the effect of soluble and insoluble dietary fibers on the coagulation of a casein-based enteral nutrition in an artificial gastric digestion model.