Publications by authors named "Nice C"

Karst ecosystems often contain extraordinary biodiversity, but the complex underground aquifers of karst regions present challenges for assessing and conserving stygobiont diversity and investigating their evolutionary history. We examined the karst-obligate salamanders of the species complex in the Edwards Plateau region of central Texas using population genomics data to address questions about population connectivity and the potential for gene exchange within the underlying aquifer system. The species complex has historically been divided into three nominal species, but their status, and spatial extent of species ranges, have remained uncertain.

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The clinical telephone helpline discussed here is a communication channel for family members and caregivers whose loved ones are in hospital. It makes full use of the effect families can have on the care experience and complements standard visiting as well as when hospital visits are restricted. The helpline helps to meet family members' health information and emotional wellbeing needs and is a reciprocal patient safety communication channel.

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Article Synopsis
  • Plant-insect interactions are significant in biology, but the roles of genetic variation in both plants and insects are often unclear and under-examined.
  • Researchers studied the Melissa blue butterfly's recent use of alfalfa to explore how genetics affects caterpillar performance at different developmental stages.
  • Their findings highlight that caterpillar performance is influenced by both plant and insect genetics, with specific plant chemicals, like saponins and peptides, playing a key role, thereby contributing to theories about coevolution and dietary adaptation in herbivorous insects.
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Infections by maternally inherited bacterial endosymbionts, especially Wolbachia, are common in insects and other invertebrates but infection dynamics across species ranges are largely under studied. Specifically, we lack a broad understanding of the origin of Wolbachia infections in novel hosts, and the historical and geographical dynamics of infections that are critical for identifying the factors governing their spread. We used Genotype-by-Sequencing data from previous population genomics studies for range-wide surveys of Wolbachia presence and genetic diversity in North American butterflies of the genus Lycaeides.

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Structural variants (SVs) can promote speciation by directly causing reproductive isolation or by suppressing recombination across large genomic regions. Whereas examples of each mechanism have been documented, systematic tests of the role of SVs in speciation are lacking. Here, we take advantage of long-read (Oxford nanopore) whole-genome sequencing and a hybrid zone between two Lycaeides butterfly taxa (L.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates genetic and trait differences in a foundation species of salt marshes, focusing on variations based on plant height due to environmental conditions.
  • Seedlings from tall-form plants exhibited greater growth compared to those from short-form plants, suggesting inherited traits.
  • Genetic analysis revealed distinct differences between the two forms across various marsh locations, indicating potential for local adaptation and implications for marsh resilience against sea level rise.
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Premise: When divergent lineages come into secondary contact, reproductive isolation may be incomplete, thus providing an opportunity to investigate how speciation is manifested in the genome. The Louisiana Irises (Iris, series Hexagonae) comprise a group of three or more ecologically and reproductively divergent lineages that can produce hybrids where they come into contact. We estimated standing genetic variation to understand the current distribution of population structure in the Louisiana Irises.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the predictive value of a 'Modified Karnofsky Scoring System' on outcomes and provide real-world data regarding the UK practice of biliary interventions.

Materials And Methods: A prospective multi-centred cohort study was performed. The pre-procedure modified Karnofsky score, the incidence of sepsis, complications, biochemical improvement and mortality were recorded out to 30 days post procedure.

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Uncertainty remains regarding the role of anthropogenic climate change in declining insect populations, partly because our understanding of biotic response to climate is often complicated by habitat loss and degradation among other compounding stressors. We addressed this challenge by integrating expert and community scientist datasets that include decades of monitoring across more than 70 locations spanning the western United States. We found a 1.

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The genomic variation of an invasive species may be affected by complex demographic histories and evolutionary changes during the invasion. Here, we describe the relative influence of bottlenecks, clonality, and population expansion in determining genomic variability of the widespread red macroalga Agarophyton vermiculophyllum. Its introduction from mainland Japan to the estuaries of North America and Europe coincided with shifts from predominantly sexual to partially clonal reproduction and rapid adaptive evolution.

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Insects have diversified through more than 450 million y of Earth's changeable climate, yet rapidly shifting patterns of temperature and precipitation now pose novel challenges as they combine with decades of other anthropogenic stressors including the conversion and degradation of land. Here, we consider how insects are responding to recent climate change while summarizing the literature on long-term monitoring of insect populations in the context of climatic fluctuations. Results to date suggest that climate change impacts on insects have the potential to be considerable, even when compared with changes in land use.

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Specialized plant-insect interactions are a defining feature of life on earth, yet we are only beginning to understand the factors that set limits on host ranges in herbivorous insects. To better understand the recent adoption of alfalfa as a host plant by the Melissa blue butterfly, we quantified arthropod assemblages and plant metabolites across a wide geographic region while controlling for climate and dispersal inferred from population genomic variation. The presence of the butterfly is successfully predicted by direct and indirect effects of plant traits and interactions with other species.

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For many taxa, including isomorphic haplodiplontic macroalgae, determining sex and ploidy is challenging, thereby limiting the scope of some population demographic and genetic studies. Here, we used double-digest restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (ddRAD-seq) to identify sex-linked molecular markers in the widespread red alga Agarophyton vermiculophyllum. In the ddRAD-seq library, we included 10 female gametophytes, 10 male gametophytes, and 16 tetrasporophytes from one native and one non-native site (N = 40 gametophytes and N = 32 tetrasporophytes total).

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Modern metabolomic approaches that generate more comprehensive phytochemical profiles than were previously available are providing new opportunities for understanding plant-animal interactions. Specifically, we can characterize the phytochemical landscape by asking how a larger number of individual compounds affect herbivores and how compounds covary among plants. Here we use the recent colonization of alfalfa () by the Melissa blue butterfly () to investigate the effects of indivdiual compounds and suites of covarying phytochemicals on caterpillar performance.

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Genomic outcomes of hybridization depend on selection and recombination in hybrids. Whether these processes have similar effects on hybrid genome composition in contemporary hybrid zones versus ancient hybrid lineages is unknown. Here we show that patterns of introgression in a contemporary hybrid zone in Lycaeides butterflies predict patterns of ancestry in geographically adjacent, older hybrid populations.

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Disentangling the processes underlying geographic and environmental patterns of biodiversity challenges biologists as such patterns emerge from eco-evolutionary processes confounded by spatial autocorrelation among sample units. The herbivorous insect, Belonocnema treatae (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae), exhibits regional specialization on three plant species whose geographic distributions range from sympatry through allopatry across the southern United States. Using range-wide sampling spanning the geographic ranges of the three host plants and genotyping-by-sequencing of 1,217 individuals, we tested whether this insect herbivore exhibited host plant-associated genomic differentiation while controlling for spatial autocorrelation among the 58 sample sites.

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Many tropical fruit-feeding nymphalid butterflies are associated with either the forest canopy or the understorey; however, the exceptions offer insights into the origins of tropical diversity. As it occurs in both habitats of tropical forests in Ecuador and Peru, Archaeoprepona demophon is one such exception. We compared patterns of occurrence of A.

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When ecologically divergent taxa encounter one another, hybrid zones can form when reproductive isolation is incomplete. The location of such hybrid zones can be influenced by environmental variables, and an ecological context can provide unique insights into the mechanisms by which species diverge and are maintained. Two ecologically differentiated species of small benthic fishes, the endemic and imperiled prairie chub, , and the shoal chub, , are locally sympatric within the upper Red River Basin of Texas.

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Article Synopsis
  • Research indicates that while certain responses of species to climate change are well-known, variability in population-level processes remains unclear.
  • A study of 149 butterfly species over 42 years across various habitats in California showed a wide range of population responses, suggesting that habitat diversity may help buffer against climate change impacts.
  • Despite some successes in predictive modeling for butterfly populations, the overall correlation between observed and predicted data was moderate, emphasizing the challenges posed by climate variability on biodiversity.
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In recent decades, an increased understanding of molecular ecology has led to a reinterpretation of the role of gene flow during the evolution of reproductive isolation and biological novelty. For example, even in the face of ongoing gene flow strong selection may maintain divergent polymorphisms, or gene flow may introduce novel biological diversity via hybridization and introgression from a divergent species. Herein, we elucidate the evolutionary history and genomic basis of a trophically polymorphic trait in a species of cichlid fish, Herichthys minckleyi.

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We analyzed evolutionary rates of conserved, duplicated myosin V (myo5) genes in nine teleost species to examine the outcomes of duplication events. Syntenic analysis and ancestral chromosome mapping suggest one tandem gene duplication event leading to the appearance of myo5a and myo5c, two rounds of whole genome duplication for vertebrates, and an additional round of whole genome duplication for teleosts account for the presence and location of the myo5 genes and their duplicates in teleosts and other vertebrates and the timing of the duplication events. Phylogenetic analyses reveal a previously unidentified myo5 clade that we refer to now as myo5bb.

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Despite accumulating evidence that evolution can be predictable, studies quantifying the predictability of evolution remain rare. Here, we measured the predictability of genome-wide evolutionary changes associated with a recent host shift in the Melissa blue butterfly (Lycaeides melissa). We asked whether and to what extent genome-wide patterns of evolutionary change in nature could be predicted (i) by comparisons among instances of repeated evolution and (ii) from SNP × performance associations in a laboratory experiment.

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