An experimental test of disease resistance function in the skin-associated bacterial communities of three tropical amphibian species.

Variation in the structure of host-associated microbial communities has been correlated with the occurrence and severity of disease in diverse host taxa, suggesting a key role of the microbiome in pathogen defense. However, whether these correlations are typically a cause or consequence of pathogen exposure remains an open question, and requires experimental approaches to disentangle. In amphibians, infection by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) alters the skin microbial community in some host species, whereas in other species, the skin microbial community appears to mediate infection dynamics.

Dogs and wolves differ in their response allocation to their owner/caregiver or food in a concurrent choice procedure.

Dogs and wolves both show attachment-like behaviors to their owners/caregivers, including exploring more in the presence of the owner/caregiver, and greeting the owner/caregiver more effusively after an absence. Concurrent choice studies can elucidate dogs' and wolves' relationship to their owners/caregivers by assessing their preference for the owner/caregiver compared to other stimuli. While previous research has used concurrent choice paradigms to evaluate dogs' and wolves' preference between humans giving social interaction or humans giving food, no research has explored their preferences for an owner/caregiver compared to food when the food is not delivered by a human.

SIRIUS: Dual, Symmetric, Interactive Dimension Reductions.

Much research has been done regarding how to visualize and interact with observations and attributes of high-dimensional data for exploratory data analysis. From the analyst's perceptual and cognitive perspective, current visualization approaches typically treat the observations of the high-dimensional dataset very differently from the attributes. Often, the attributes are treated as inputs (e.

Outlier Detection for Sensor Systems (ODSS): A MATLAB Macro for Evaluating Microphone Sensor Data Quality.

Microphone sensor systems provide information that may be used for a variety of applications. Such systems generate large amounts of data. One concern is with microphone failure and unusual values that may be generated as part of the information collection process.

Towards a Systematic Combination of Dimension Reduction and Clustering in Visual Analytics.

Dimension reduction algorithms and clustering algorithms are both frequently used techniques in visual analytics. Both families of algorithms assist analysts in performing related tasks regarding the similarity of observations and finding groups in datasets. Though initially used independently, recent works have incorporated algorithms from each family into the same visualization systems.

Expert-Guided Generative Topographical Modeling with Visual to Parametric Interaction.

Introduced by Bishop et al. in 1996, Generative Topographic Mapping (GTM) is a powerful nonlinear latent variable modeling approach for visualizing high-dimensional data. It has shown useful when typical linear methods fail.

Panamanian frog species host unique skin bacterial communities.

Vertebrates, including amphibians, host diverse symbiotic microbes that contribute to host disease resistance. Globally, and especially in montane tropical systems, many amphibian species are threatened by a chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), that causes a lethal skin disease. Bd therefore may be a strong selective agent on the diversity and function of the microbial communities inhabiting amphibian skin.

Community Structure and Function of Amphibian Skin Microbes: An Experiment with Bullfrogs Exposed to a Chytrid Fungus.

The vertebrate microbiome contributes to disease resistance, but few experiments have examined the link between microbiome community structure and disease resistance functions. Chytridiomycosis, a major cause of amphibian population declines, is a skin disease caused by the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). In a factorial experiment, bullfrog skin microbiota was reduced with antibiotics, augmented with an anti-Bd bacterial isolate (Janthinobacterium lividum), or unmanipulated, and individuals were then either exposed or not exposed to Bd.

Hydrometeorological and physicochemical drivers of fecal indicator bacteria in urban stream bottom sediments.

High levels of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) are the leading cause of surface water quality impairments in the United States. Watershed-scale models are commonly used to identify relative contributions of watershed sources and to evaluate the effectiveness of remediation strategies. However, most existing models simplify FIB transport behavior as equivalent to that of dissolved-phase contaminants, ignoring the impacts of sediment on the fate and transport of FIB.

Accurate characterization of delay discounting: a multiple model approach using approximate Bayesian model selection and a unified discounting measure.

The study of delay discounting, or valuation of future rewards as a function of delay, has contributed to understanding the behavioral economics of addiction. Accurate characterization of discounting can be furthered by statistical model selection given that many functions have been proposed to measure future valuation of rewards. The present study provides a convenient Bayesian model selection algorithm that selects the most probable discounting model among a set of candidate models chosen by the researcher.

Amphibian skin may select for rare environmental microbes.

Host-microbe symbioses rely on the successful transmission or acquisition of symbionts in each new generation. Amphibians host a diverse cutaneous microbiota, and many of these symbionts appear to be mutualistic and may limit infection by the chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which has caused global amphibian population declines and extinctions in recent decades. Using bar-coded 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, we addressed the question of symbiont transmission by examining variation in amphibian skin microbiota across species and sites and in direct relation to environmental microbes.

Semantics of directly manipulating spatializations.

When high-dimensional data is visualized in a 2D plane by using parametric projection algorithms, users may wish to manipulate the layout of the data points to better reflect their domain knowledge or to explore alternative structures. However, few users are well-versed in the algorithms behind the visualizations, making parameter tweaking more of a guessing game than a series of decisive interactions. Translating user interactions into algorithmic input is a key component of Visual to Parametric Interaction (V2PI) [13].

Visual to Parametric Interaction (V2PI).

Typical data visualizations result from linear pipelines that start by characterizing data using a model or algorithm to reduce the dimension and summarize structure, and end by displaying the data in a reduced dimensional form. Sensemaking may take place at the end of the pipeline when users have an opportunity to observe, digest, and internalize any information displayed. However, some visualizations mask meaningful data structures when model or algorithm constraints (e.

Cherry-picking for complex data: robust structure discovery.

Complex data often arise as a superposition of data generated from several simpler models. The traditional strategy for such cases is to use mixture modelling, but it can be problematic, especially in higher dimensions. This paper considers an alternative approach, emphasizing data exploration and robustness to model misspecification.