Sexy fingers: Pheromones in the glands of male dendrobatid frogs.

Many animals exchange chemicals during courtship and mating. In some amphibians, sexual chemical communication is mediated by pheromones produced in male breeding glands that are transferred to the female's nostrils during mating. This has been mostly studied in salamanders, despite frogs having similar glands and courtship behaviours suggestive of chemical communication.

What Amphibians Can Teach Us About the Evolution of Parental Care.

Parenting is considered a key evolutionary innovation that contributed to the diversification and expansion of vertebrates. However, we know little about how such diversity evolved. Amphibians are an ideal group in which to identify the ecological factors that have facilitated or constrained the evolution of different forms of parental care.

A US perspective on closing the carbon cycle to defossilize difficult-to-electrify segments of our economy.

Electrification to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions is essential to mitigate climate change. However, a substantial portion of our manufacturing and transportation infrastructure will be difficult to electrify and/or will continue to use carbon as a key component, including areas in aviation, heavy-duty and marine transportation, and the chemical industry. In this Roadmap, we explore how multidisciplinary approaches will enable us to close the carbon cycle and create a circular economy by defossilizing these difficult-to-electrify areas and those that will continue to need carbon.

Prognostic factors of recurrence and disease-free survival in radically resected pulmonary carcinoids: a real-world analysis.

Background: Pulmonary carcinoids (PCs) are rare neuroendocrine lung tumors which may recur, thus worsening their otherwise favorable overall prognosis. Aiming to identify patients at risk for recurrence, we examined parameters affecting disease-free survival (DFS).

Methods: A retrospective single-center analysis of 82 consecutive patients undergoing curative intent resection for primary PC tumors between 2010 and 2019 was carried out.

Multiple Routes to Color Convergence in a Radiation of Neotropical Poison Frogs.

Convergent evolution is defined as the independent evolution of similar phenotypes in different lineages. Its existence underscores the importance of external selection pressures in evolutionary history, revealing how functionally similar adaptations can evolve in response to persistent ecological challenges through a diversity of evolutionary routes. However, many examples of convergence, particularly among closely related species, involve parallel changes in the same genes or developmental pathways, raising the possibility that homology at deeper mechanistic levels is an important facilitator of phenotypic convergence.

Welfare, Work and the Conditions of Social Solidarity: British Campaigns to Defend Healthcare and Social Security.

When the welfare state is under attack from neoliberal reformers, how can trade unionists and other campaigners build solidarity to defend it? Based on 45 qualitative interviews, this article compares campaigns to defend British health services and social security benefits between 2007 and 2016. Building on the macro-insights of comparative welfare-state literature and the more micro-level insights of studies on mobilisation, community unionism and union strategy, it examines the factors that help or hinder the construction of solidarity. This research finds that building solidarity is more difficult when defending targeted benefits than universal ones, not only because of differences in public opinion and political support for services, but also because the labour process associated with targeting benefits, namely the assessing and sanctioning of clients, can generate conflicts among campaigners.

Lymph Node Log-Odds Ratio Accurately Defines Prognosis in Resectable Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Objectives: The ratio of positive and resected lymph nodes (LN ratio) has been shown to be prognostic in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Contrary to the LN ratio, calculating the LN log-odds ratio (LN-LOR) additionally considers the total number of resected lymph nodes. We aim to evaluate LN-LOR between positive and resected lymph nodes as a prognostic factor in operable NSCLC.

Maternal Provisioning of Alkaloid Defenses are Present in Obligate but not Facultative Egg Feeding Dendrobatids.

Poison frogs sequester alkaloid defenses from a diet of largely mites and ants. As a result, frogs are defended against certain predators and microbial infections. Frogs in the genus Oophaga exhibit complex maternal care, wherein mothers transport recently hatched tadpoles to nursery pools and return regularly to supply developing tadpoles with unfertilized (nutritive) eggs.

Effects of Resistance Training as a Behavioural Preventive Measure on Musculoskeletal Complaints, Maximum Strength and Ergonomic Risk in Dentists and Dental Assistants.

Introduction: For dental professionals, musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) are common health hazards and resistance training programmes have been promising approaches in the quest for a reduction in the pain intensity of these professionals. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of a trunk-oriented 10-week resistance training programme.

Method: In total, the study was conducted with 17 dentists and dental assistants (3 m/14 f) over a course of 10 weeks, with workouts being performed 2 times a week using a 60 min intervention programme consisting of 11 resistance training exercises.

The effects of olfactory stimulation on the behaviour of captive slender lorises (Loris lydekkerianus).

Studies on primate sense of smell are scarce, even though odours represent the main communicative channel for many nocturnal primates such as gray slender lorises (Loris lydekkerianus). Here, we investigate the influence of natural odours on communicative and social behaviours on a group of slender lorises housed at the Frankfurt Zoo. Previously collected chemical marks from unknown conspecifics, urine from a natural predator (rusty-spotted cats) and a control setup were introduced in random order to the group enclosure.

Love bites: male frogs (Plectrohyla, Hylidae) use teeth scratching to deliver sodefrin precursor-like factors to females during amplexus.

Background: Efficient transfer of chemical signals is important for successful mating in many animal species. Multiple evolutionary lineages of animals evolved direct sex pheromone transmission during traumatic mating-the wounding of the partner with specialized devices-which helps to avoid signal loss to the environment. Although such direct transmission modes of so-called allohormone pheromones are well-documented in invertebrates, they are considered rare in vertebrates.

Time to Integrate Pollinator Science into Soybean Production.

Soybeans cover 129 million hectares globally. Soybean productivity can increase with pollinator management, but soybean cultivation practices commonly ignore biotic pollination. If pollinator habitats are created within soybean landscapes and policies to limit agricultural expansion are implemented, millions of hectares could be restored for biodiversity without loss of soybean production.

Natural variation in social conditions affects male mate choosiness in the amphipod .

The extent of male mate choosiness is driven by a trade-off between various environmental factors associated with the costs of mate acquisition, quality assessment and opportunity costs. Our knowledge about natural variation in male mate choosiness across different populations of the same species, however, remains limited. In this study, we compared male mate choosiness across 10 natural populations of the freshwater amphipod (Gervais 1835), a species with overall high male mating investments, and evaluated the relative influence of population density and sex ratio (both affecting mate availability) on male mate choosiness.

Developments in Amphibian Parental Care Research: History, Present Advances, and Future Perspectives.

Despite rising interest among scientists for over two centuries, parental care behavior has not been as thoroughly studied in amphibians as it has in other taxa. The first reports of amphibian parental care date from the early 18th century, when Maria Sibylla Merian went on a field expedition in Suriname and reported frog metamorphs emerging from their mother's dorsal skin. Reports of this and other parental behaviors in amphibians remained descriptive for decades, often as side notes during expeditions with another purpose.

Using Spatially Targeted Conservation to Evaluate Nitrogen Reduction and Economic Opportunities for Best Management Practice Placement in Agricultural Landscapes.

The US Cornbelt leads North American production of intensively managed, row-crop corn and soybeans. While highly productive, agricultural management in the region is often linked with nonpoint source nutrient pollution that negatively impacts water quality. Presently, conservation programs designed to install best management practices (BMPs) to mitigate agricultural nonpoint source pollution have not been targeted to those areas of the landscape that contribute disproportionately to surface water quality concerns.

Multiple Independent Recruitment of Sodefrin Precursor-Like Factors in Anuran Sexually Dimorphic Glands.

Chemical signaling in animals often plays a central role in eliciting a variety of responses during reproductive interactions between males and females. One of the best-known vertebrate courtship pheromone systems is sodefrin precursor-like factors (SPFs), a family of two-domain three-finger proteins with a female-receptivity enhancing function, currently only known from salamanders. The oldest divergence between active components in a single salamander species dates back to the Late Paleozoic, indicating that these proteins potentially gained a pheromone function earlier in amphibian evolution.

Prairie strips improve biodiversity and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services from corn-soybean croplands.

Loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystem services from agricultural lands remain important challenges in the United States despite decades of spending on natural resource management. To date, conservation investment has emphasized engineering practices or vegetative strategies centered on monocultural plantings of nonnative plants, largely excluding native species from cropland. In a catchment-scale experiment, we quantified the multiple effects of integrating strips of native prairie species amid corn and soybean crops, with prairie strips arranged to arrest run-off on slopes.

Public-Private Partnerships Working Beyond Scale Challenges toward Water Quality Improvements from Private Lands.

In recognition that Iowa agriculture must maintain long-term production of food, fiber, clean water, healthy soil, and robust rural economies, Iowa recently devised a nutrient reduction strategy to set objectives for water quality improvements. To demonstrate how watershed programs and farmers can reduce nutrient and sediment pollution in Iowa waters, the Iowa Water Quality Initiative selected the Boone River Watershed Nutrient Management Initiative as one of eight demonstration projects. For over a decade, diverse public, private, and non-profit partner organizations have worked in the Boone River Watershed to engage farmers in water quality management efforts.

Searching for hormonal facilitators: Are vasotocin and mesotocin involved in parental care behaviors in poison frogs?

Although the involvement of peptide hormones in parental care behaviors is well investigated in vertebrates, in amphibians the physiological basis of parental care is largely unknown. This is all the more surprising as parental care behaviors in these tetrapods are remarkably diverse. The poison frog Ranitomeya imitator performs biparental care, including clutch guarding, tadpole transportation and nutrient provisioning.

Poison frogs.

Stynoski et al. introduce the dendrobatids, a charismatic group of frogs known for their colourful and often poisonous skin.

Influence of effective noninvasive positive pressure ventilation on inflammatory and cardiovascular biomarkers in stable hypercapnic COPD patients.

Background: Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) using effective pressure levels to reduce chronic hypercapnia improves survival in stable hypercapnic COPD. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study investigated the influence of effective NPPV on a panel of cytokines and established cardiovascular biomarkers.

Decoding and Discrimination of Chemical Cues and Signals: Avoidance of Predation and Competition during Parental Care Behavior in Sympatric Poison Frogs.

The evolution of chemical communication and the discrimination between evolved functions (signals) and unintentional releases (cues) are among the most challenging issues in chemical ecology. The accurate classification of inter- or intraspecific chemical communication is often puzzling. Here we report on two different communication systems triggering the same parental care behavior in the poison frog Ranitomeya variabilis.