Publications by authors named "Matthew Symonds"

Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied 5013 museum bird skins from 78 Australian species to investigate how climate change affects body size and shape in birds.
  • Findings revealed that birds are adapting to warming climates by increasing appendage sizes (like bill and wing length) while overall body size tends to decrease, supporting existing theories about climate-induced morphological changes.
  • The study also noted complex, short-term responses to temperature increases, showing that while appendage sizes might decrease after heatwaves, the long-term trends indicate broader adaptive strategies across various bird types.
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Morphology is integral to body temperature regulation. Recent advances in understanding of thermal physiology suggest a role of the avian bill in thermoregulation. To explore the adaptive significance of bill size for thermoregulation we characterized relationships between bill size and climate extremes.

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Endotherms use their appendages-such as legs, tails, ears and bills-for thermoregulation by controlling blood flow to near-surface blood vessels, conserving heat when it is cold, and dissipating heat in hot conditions. Larger appendages allow greater heat dissipation, and appendage sizes vary latitudinally according to Allen's rule. However, little is known about the relative importance of different appendages for thermoregulation.

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The introduction and spread of non-native flora threatens native pollinators and plants. Non-native angiosperms can compete with native plants for pollinators, space, and other resources which can leave native bees without adequate nutritional or nesting resources, particularly specialist species. In the current study, we conducted flower preference experiments through field observations and controlled binary choice tests in an artificial arena to determine the impact of field vs.

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Animals tend to decrease in body size (Bergmann's rule) and elongate appendages (Allen's rule) in warm climates. However, it is unknown whether these patterns depend on each other or constitute independent responses to the thermal environment. Here, based on a global phylogenetic comparative analysis across 99.

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Bergmann's and Allen's rules state that endotherms should be larger and have shorter appendages in cooler climates. However, the drivers of these rules are not clear. Both rules could be explained by adaptation for improved thermoregulation, including plastic responses to temperature in early life.

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Background: Gleason grading of prostate cancer is an important prognostic factor, but suffers from poor reproducibility, particularly among non-subspecialist pathologists. Although artificial intelligence (A.I.

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Despite making up a significant proportion of airborne allergens, the relationship between fungal spores and asthma is not fully explored. Only 80 taxa of fungi have so far been observed to exacerbate respiratory presentations, with spp., spp.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how civil war impacts the flight initiation distances (FIDs) of birds in Sri Lanka, revealing that birds in war-affected areas exhibit longer FIDs.
  • Larger bird species, which are more often hunted by humans, show a significant increase in FID during the war, suggesting heightened hunting pressure.
  • The findings indicate that the consequences of war can affect wildlife behavior, leaving lasting effects on how birds respond to threats.
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Many animal appendages, such as avian beaks and mammalian ears, can be used to dissipate excess body heat. Allen's rule, wherein animals in warmer climates have larger appendages to facilitate more efficient heat exchange, reflects this. We find that there is widespread evidence of 'shape-shifting' (changes in appendage size) in endotherms in response to climate change and its associated climatic warming.

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and other species of the yellow-staining section are responsible for mushroom-related poisoning cases that require treatment. However, longstanding anecdotal evidence indicates that this species appears to exhibit considerable variation in toxicity, resulting in gastrointestinal irritation of varying severity in most cases. We quantified the amount of phenol, hydroquinone, and catechol in mushrooms using a novel protocol for gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and investigated their levels in different basidiomatal structures, different developmental stages, and on different nutritional substrates.

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Hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) provide an excellent opportunity to study the evolution of Batesian mimicry, where defenseless prey avoid predation by evolving to resemble defended "model" species. Although some hoverflies beautifully resemble their hymenopteran models, others seem to be poor mimics or are apparently nonmimetic. The reasons for this variation are still enigmatic despite decades of research.

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The majority of angiosperms require animal pollination for reproduction, and insects are the dominant group of animal pollinators. Bees are considered one of the most important and abundant insect pollinators. Research into bee behaviour and foraging decisions has typically centred on managed eusocial bee species, including Apis mellifera and Bombus terrestris.

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Background: The Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) is a popular test used by sports medicine professionals to identify dysfunctional movement patterns by analyzing mobility and stability during prescribed movements. Although the FMS™ has been a popular topic of research in recent years, normative data and asymmetries in college-aged students have not been established through research.

Purpose: The objective was to determine normative FMS™ scores, report frequency counts for FMS™ asymmetries, and determine if the number of sports seasons and number of different sports an individual participated in during high school varied between university students that showed FMS™ identified asymmetries.

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Many forms of polygyny are observed across different animal groups. In some species, groups of females may remain with a single male for breeding, often referred to as "harem polygyny". The environment and the amount of habitat available for feeding, mating and oviposition may have an effect on the formation of harems.

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Importance: Expert-level artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for prostate biopsy grading have recently been developed. However, the potential impact of integrating such algorithms into pathologist workflows remains largely unexplored.

Objective: To evaluate an expert-level AI-based assistive tool when used by pathologists for the grading of prostate biopsies.

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Many animals undergo complete metamorphosis, where larval forms change abruptly in adulthood. Color change during ontogeny is common, but there is little understanding of evolutionary patterns in these changes. Here, we use data on larval and adult color for 246 butterfly species (61% of all species in Australia) to test whether the evolution of color is coupled between life stages.

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Passerine birds produce costly traits under intense sexual selection, including elaborate sexually dichromatic plumage and sperm morphologies, to compete for fertilizations. Plumage and sperm traits vary markedly among species, but it is unknown if this reflects a trade-off between pre- and post-copulatory investment under strong sexual selection producing negative trait covariance, or variation in the strength of sexual selection among species producing positive covariance. Using phylogenetic regression, we analysed datasets describing plumage and sperm morphological traits for 278 passerine species.

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The observed variation in the body size responses of endotherms to climate change may be explained by two hypotheses: the size increases with climate variability () and the size shrinks as mean temperatures rise (). Across 82 Australian passerine species over 50 years, shrinking was associated with annual mean temperature rise exceeding 0.012°C driven by rising winter temperatures for arid and temperate zone species.

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Developmental plasticity provides individuals with a distinct advantage when the reproductive environment changes dramatically. Variation in population density, in particular, can have profound effects on male reproductive success. Females may be easier to locate in dense populations, but there may be a greater risk of sperm competition.

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Sexual selection theory predicts that female choice may favour the evolution of elaborate male signals. Darwin also suggested that sexual selection can favour elaborate receiver structures in order to better detect sexual signals, an idea that has been largely ignored. We evaluated this unorthodox perspective by documenting the antennal lengths of male Uraba lugens Walker (Lepidoptera: Nolidae) moths that were attracted to experimentally manipulated emissions of female sex pheromone.

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The avian bill is a textbook example of how evolution shapes morphology in response to changing environments. Bills of seed-specialist finches in particular have been the focus of intense study demonstrating how climatic fluctuations acting on food availability drive bill size and shape. The avian bill also plays an important but under-appreciated role in body temperature regulation, and therefore in energetics.

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The capacity of non-native species to undergo rapid adaptive change provides opportunities to research contemporary evolution through natural experiments. This capacity is particularly true when considering ecogeographical rules, to which non-native species have been shown to conform within relatively short periods of time. Ecogeographical rules explain predictable spatial patterns of morphology, physiology, life history and behaviour.

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