Modeling juvenile sea turtle bycatch risk in commercial and recreational fisheries.

Understanding the drivers of fisheries bycatch is essential for limiting its impacts on vulnerable species. Here we present a model to estimate the relative magnitude of sea turtle bycatch in major coastal fisheries across the southeastern US based on spatiotemporal variation in fishing effort and the simulated distributions of juvenile Kemp's ridley () and green () sea turtles recruiting from oceanic to nearshore habitats. Over the period modeled (1996-2017), bycatch in recreational fisheries was estimated to be greater than the sum of bycatch that occurred in commercial fisheries that have historically been considered high risks to turtles (e.

Contrasting regulatory effects of organic acids on aerobic vinyl chloride biodegradation in etheneotrophs.

Vinyl chloride (VC) is a common groundwater pollutant generated during anaerobic biodegradation of chlorinated solvents (e.g., trichloroethene (TCE) or tetrachloroethene (PCE)).

Natural Biodegradation of Vinyl Chloride and cis-Dichloroethene in Aerobic and Suboxic Conditions.

Chlorinated ethene (CE) groundwater contamination is commonly treated through anaerobic biodegradation (i.e., reductive dechlorination) either as part of an engineered system or through natural attenuation.

Detection of an alkene monooxygenase in vinyl chloride-oxidizing bacteria with GeneFISH.

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) can provide information on the morphology, spatial arrangement, and local environment of individual cells enabling the investigation of intact microbial communities. GeneFISH uses polynucleotide probes and enzymatic signal amplification to detect genes that are present in low copy numbers. Previously, this technique has only been applied in a small number of closely related organisms.

Life-history constraints on maximum population growth for loggerhead turtles in the northwest Atlantic.

Conservation planning for protected species often relies on estimates of life-history parameters. A commonly used parameter is the instantaneous maximum population growth rate ( ) that can be used to limit removals and design recovery targets. Estimation of can be challenging because of limited availability of species- and population-specific data and life-history information.

Fathoming sea turtles: monitoring strategy evaluation to improve conservation status assessments.

Population monitoring must be accurate and reliable to correctly classify population status. For sea turtles, nesting beach surveys are often the only population-level surveys that are accessible. However, process and observation errors, compounded by delayed maturity, obscure the relationship between trends on the nesting beach and the population.

Cryogenic soil coring reveals coexistence of aerobic and anaerobic vinyl chloride degrading bacteria in a chlorinated ethene contaminated aquifer.

Vinyl chloride (VC) is a common groundwater contaminant and known human carcinogen. Three major bacterial guilds are known to participate in VC biodegradation: aerobic etheneotrophs and methanotrophs, and anaerobic organohalide-respiring VC-dechlorinators. We investigated the spatial relationships between functional genes representing these three groups of bacteria (as determined by qPCR) with chlorinated ethene concentrations in a surficial aquifer at a contaminated site.

Single-gene speciation: Mating and gene flow between mirror-image snails.

Variation in the shell coiling, or chirality, of land snails provides an opportunity to investigate the potential for "single-gene" speciation, because mating between individuals of opposite chirality is believed not possible if the snails mate in a face-to-face position. However, the evidence in support of single-gene speciation is sparse, mostly based upon single-gene mitochondrial studies and patterns of chiral variation between species. Previously, we used a theoretical model to show that as the chiral phenotype of offspring is determined by the maternal genotype, occasional chiral reversals may take place and enable gene flow between mirror image morphs, preventing speciation.

Naturally Produced Defensive Alkenal Compounds Activate TRPA1.

(E)-2-alkenals are aldehydes containing an unsaturated bond between the alpha and beta carbons. 2-alkenals are produced by many organisms for defense against predators and secretions containing (E)-2-alkenals cause predators to stop attacking and allow the prey to escape. Chemical ecologists have described many alkenal compounds with 3-20 carbons common, having varied positions of double bonds and substitutions.

Deepwater Horizon oil spill impacts on sea turtles could span the Atlantic.

We investigated the extent that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill potentially affected oceanic-stage sea turtles from populations across the Atlantic. Within an ocean-circulation model, particles were backtracked from the Gulf of Mexico spill site to determine the probability of young turtles arriving in this area from major nesting beaches. The abundance of turtles in the vicinity of the oil spill was derived by forward-tracking particles from focal beaches and integrating population size, oceanic-stage duration and stage-specific survival rates.

Avoiding Dual Agency in Clinical and Medicolegal Practice.

Mental health professionals who provide medicolegal services need to be aware of the very important differences between clinical and retained expert/forensic roles. This column offers a distinction between clinical and forensic roles in terms of responsibilities, objectives, and guiding ethical principles. Existing professional guidelines and other views from the medical literature that discourage the mixing of such roles are reviewed.

Evidence of climate-driven ecosystem reorganization in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most ecologically and economically valuable marine ecosystems in the world and is affected by a variety of natural and anthropogenic phenomena including climate, hurricanes, coastal development, agricultural runoff, oil spills, and fishing. These complex and interacting stressors, together with the highly dynamic nature of this ecosystem, present challenges for the effective management of its resources. We analyze a compilation of over 100 indicators representing physical, biological, and economic aspects of the Gulf of Mexico and find that an ecosystem-wide reorganization occurred in the mid-1990s.

RAD-Seq derived markers flank the shell colour and banding loci of the Cepaea nemoralis supergene.

Studies on the classic shell colour and banding polymorphism of the land snail Cepaea played a crucial role in establishing the importance of natural selection in maintaining morphological variation. Cepaea is also a pre-eminent model for ecological genetics because the outward colour and banding phenotype is entirely genetically determined, primarily by a 'supergene' of at least five loci. Unfortunately, progress in understanding the evolution and maintenance of the Cepaea polymorphism stalled, partly because of a lack of genetic markers.

Adaptive radiations: competition rules for Galápagos gastropods.

New islands present the perfect opportunity for a species to get a fresh start and undergo adaptive radiation. For Galápagos land snails, both competition and resource diversity have together led to opportunity knocking twice.

A critical review of twenty years' use of the resource-ratio theory.

A model of species interactions based on their use of shared resources was proposed in 1972 by Robert MacArthur and later expanded in an article (1980) and a book (1982) by David Tilman. This "resource-ratio theory" has been used to make a number of testable predictions about competition and community patterns. We reviewed 1,333 papers that cite Tilman's two publications to determine whether predictions of the resource-ratio theory have been adequately tested and to summarize their general conclusions.

Incremental improvement of dichotic left ear accuracy and toe gnosis between 9 and 10 years of age: implications for maturation of a portion of the corpus callosum and of the sense of self.

Analyses of the data from 212 boys and girls, aged 7-14 years, demonstrated a relatively abrupt and permanent decrease in the numbers of errors for dichotic (left ear) word listening and for toe gnosis after the ninth year. This pattern was not observed for right ear errors, finger gnosis, or indices of finger and foot agility. The results are compatible with the hypothesis that the final differentiation of the paracentral lobules and adjacent corpus callosum by the most distal portions of the Anterior Cerebral Artery occurs around 9 or 10 years of age.

Medical and cognitive outcome in children with traumatic brain injury.

Background: Head injury is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in pediatrics. Comprehensive studies on outcome are scarce despite significant clinical concern that multiple areas of functioning may be impaired following moderate to severe head injury. The literature suggests that sequelae include not only medical problems but also impairments in cognitive functioning.

Agility, gnosis, and graphaesthesia for the toes and fingers in children: normative data (ages 7-14 years).

The differential representation of the toes/feet and fingers/hands along the medial and lateral surfaces of the cerebral cortices, respectively, may have diagnostic utility. Normative data for errors for toe and finger graphaesthesia and gnosis, as well as foot and finger agility, were collected for 86 children (ages 7 to 14). The fingers were more agile than the feet, and the right side of the body was more agile than the left side, regardless of age.

Cognitive sequelae in children with posterior fossa tumors.

Late effects of radiotherapy on intellectual functioning have been well documented in children treated for posterior fossa tumors. Other aspects of cognitive functioning, such as memory, have not been adequately assessed in this population. This retrospective review reports on 15 children diagnosed with medulloblastoma or cerebellar astrocytoma who were administered a norm-referenced standardized test of memory functioning (i.

Are there changes in intelligence and memory functioning following surgery for the treatment of refractory epilepsy in childhood?

Materials And Methods: A retrospective review of the neuropsychological and medical variables of 26 children who underwent a cortical resection as part of the management of their medically refractory epilepsy was conducted. Neuropsychological variables included pre- and postoperative measures of intelligence (Wechsler Scales) and memory functioning (Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning). Medical variables included age at onset of seizures, age at surgery, site of resection, and degree of seizure control postoperatively.

Seizure onset times for rats receiving systemic lithium and pilocarpine: sources of variability.

Injection of 30 mg/kg of pilocarpine 24 h after systemic injection of lithium (3 mEq/kg) results in overt limbic motor seizures within about 30 min. Results of several experiments indicated that whereas food deprivation or repeated nociceptive stimulation during the previous 24 h decreased seizure onset times (SOTs) by about 11 to 12 min, food restriction, continuous lighting, or, handling during the previous 7 to 14 days increased SOTs by comparable durations. Early handling before weaning but not injections of clomimpramine also decreased SOTs.

Numbers of details in the reconstruction of an emotional narrative decrease linearly as a function of time.

33 university students listened to a 5-min. ambiguous narrative about a young boy (The Billy Story) while another 33 students did not. At the end of the final examination for the course the students were promised a 2% bonus mark if they could reconstruct the details of the story.

Ontogeny of two-point discrimination for fingers and toes in children (ages 7 through 15 years).

Accuracies of two-point discrimination (successive 2-min increments between 0 and 10 mm) for the middle fingers and the middle toes for 87 children from ages 7 through 15 years were measured to obtain normative data. The finer discriminative capacity for the fingers rather than the toes was evident. Whereas discriminative accuracy approached the asymptote with distances equal to or greater than 4 mm for the fingers, distances equal to or greater than 8 mm were required for the toes.