Publications by authors named "J S Wertz"
Childhood victimization is a key risk factor for poor mental and physical health. In order to prevent childhood victimization, it is important to better understand its underlying etiological factors. Childhood victimization is not randomly distributed in the population but occurs more often in the context of certain characteristics of the child, the family, and the broader environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe assessed genetic and environmental influences on social isolation across childhood and the overlap between social isolation and mental health symptoms including depression symptoms, conduct problems, and psychotic-like experiences from adolescence to young adulthood. Participants included 2,232 children from the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study. Social isolation was measured at ages 5, 7, 10, 12, and 18.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcademic achievement is partly heritable and highly polygenic. However, genetic effects on academic achievement are not independent of environmental processes. We investigated whether aspects of the family environment mediated genetic effects on academic achievement across development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study presents detailed genomes of six ape species, achieving high accuracy and complete sequencing of all their chromosomes.
- It addresses complex genomic regions, leading to enhanced understanding of evolutionary relationships among these species.
- The findings will serve as a crucial resource for future research on human evolution and our closest ape relatives.
Article Synopsis
- The evolution of animals and their gut bacteria is complex, especially in social insects like cephalotine ants, where stable relationships between hosts and their symbionts may arise from transmission among relatives.
- Researchers conducted phylogenetic studies on gut bacteria from various ant species, identifying 18 distinct symbiont lineages and finding evidence of domestication events in some.
- Analysis showed that some bacteria co-diversify with their hosts while others can switch hosts, raising questions about the evolutionary dynamics between ants and their gut microbiomes.