Nutrient acquisition is crucial for sustaining life. Plants develop beneficial intracellular partnerships with arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) and nitrogen-fixing bacteria to surmount the scarcity of soil nutrients and tap into atmospheric dinitrogen, respectively. Initiation of these root endosymbioses requires symbiont-induced oscillations in nuclear calcium (Ca) concentrations in root cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEstuaries have been adversely impacted by increased nutrient loads. Eutrophication impacts from these loads include excess algal blooms and low oxygen conditions. In this study, we leveraged data from 28 monitoring programs in the northeastern US to explore the relationships between eutrophication response variables and watershed and estuarine variables.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGroup-living animals sleep together, yet most research treats sleep as an individual process. Here, we argue that social interactions during the sleep period contribute in important, but largely overlooked, ways to animal groups' social dynamics, while patterns of social interaction and the structure of social connections within animal groups play important, but poorly understood, roles in shaping sleep behavior. Leveraging field-appropriate methods, such as direct and video-based observation, and increasingly common on-animal motion sensors (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn monotocous mammals, most individuals experience the birth of a younger sibling. This period may induce losses in maternal care and can be physiologically, energetically and emotionally challenging for the older sibling, yet has rarely been studied in wild primates. We used behavioural data collected from a natural population of mandrills to investigate changes in maternal care and mother-juvenile relationship throughout the transition to siblinghood (TTS), by comparing juveniles who recently experienced the birth of a younger sibling, to juveniles who did not.
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