Long-term effects of widespread pharmaceutical pollution on trade-offs between behavioural, life-history and reproductive traits in fish.

In our rapidly changing world, understanding how species respond to shifting conditions is of paramount importance. Pharmaceutical pollutants are widespread in aquatic ecosystems globally, yet their impacts on animal behaviour, life-history and reproductive allocation remain poorly understood, especially in the context of intraspecific variation in ecologically important traits that facilitate species' adaptive capacities. We test whether a widespread pharmaceutical pollutant, fluoxetine (Prozac), disrupts the trade-off between individual-level (co)variation in behavioural, life-history and reproductive traits of freshwater fish.

Evidence of introduced honeybees (Apis mellifera) as pollen wasters in orchid pollination.

Biological invasions threaten global biodiversity, altering landscapes, ecosystems, and mutualistic relationships like pollination. Orchids are one of the most threatened plant families, yet the impact of invasive bees on their reproduction remains poorly understood. We conduct a global literature survey on the incidence of invasive honeybees (Apis mellifera) on orchid pollination, followed by a study case on Australian orchids.

Adapting to the Abyss: Passive Ventilation in the Deep-Sea Glass Sponge Euplectella aspergillum.

We analyze the flow physics inside the body cavity and downstream the deep-sea glass sponge Euplectella aspergillum. We provide evidence that the helical skeletal motifs of the sponge give rise to a rich fluid dynamic field, allowing the organism to scavenge flow from the bottom of the sea and promoting a spontaneous, organized vertical flow within its body cavity toward the osculum. Our analysis points at a functional adaptation of the organism, which can passively divert flow through the osculum in unfavorable, low ambient currents, with no need for active pumping, with potential repercussions in functional ecology, as well as the design of chemical reactors, air-treatment units, and civil and aeronaval structures.

Bioactive Dressing: A New Algorithm in Wound Healing.

Wound management presents a significant global challenge, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of wound care products and clinical expertise in selecting dressings. Bioactive dressings (BD) represent a diverse category of dressings, capable of influencing wound healing through various mechanisms. These dressings, including honey, hyaluronic acid, collagen, alginates, and polymers enriched with polyhexamethylene biguanide, chitin, and chitosan derivatives, create a conducive environment for healing, promoting moisture balance, pH regulation, oxygen permeability, and fluid management.

Size dependent antipredator responses in a fish-shrimp mutualism.

For prey, taking refuge from predators has obvious fitness benefits but may also be costly by impinging on time and effort available for feeding or attracting mates. The antipredator responses of refuge-seeking animals are therefore predicted to vary strategically depending on how threatening they perceive the risk. To test this, we studied the impacts of a simulated predatory threat on the antipredator responses of wild sandy prawn-gobies () that co-inhabit burrows with shrimp (family Alpheidae) in a mutualistic relationship.

Sex-specific effects of psychoactive pollution on behavioral individuality and plasticity in fish.

The global rise of pharmaceutical contaminants in the aquatic environment poses a serious threat to ecological and evolutionary processes. Studies have traditionally focused on the collateral (average) effects of psychoactive pollutants on ecologically relevant behaviors of wildlife, often neglecting effects among and within individuals, and whether they differ between males and females. We tested whether psychoactive pollutants have sex-specific effects on behavioral individuality and plasticity in guppies (), a freshwater species that inhabits contaminated waterways in the wild.

Nanofat in Plastic Reconstructive, Regenerative, and Aesthetic Surgery: A Review of Advancements in Face-Focused Applications.

Nanofat is a relatively novel technique in fat grafting that has gained significant interest in the fields of regenerative medicine, aesthetic and translational research. It involves the extraction of autologous fat from a patient, which is then transformed into "nanofat", consisting of small fat particles with a diameter of less than 0.1 mm and containing high concentrations of stem cells and growth factors.

Temperature change exerts sex-specific effects on behavioural variation.

Temperature is a key factor mediating organismal fitness and has important consequences for species' ecology. While the mean effects of temperature on behaviour have been well-documented in ectotherms, how temperature alters behavioural variation among and within individuals, and whether this differs between the sexes, remains unclear. Such effects likely have ecological and evolutionary consequences, given that selection acts at the individual level.

Frontiers in quantifying wildlife behavioural responses to chemical pollution.

Animal behaviour is remarkably sensitive to disruption by chemical pollution, with widespread implications for ecological and evolutionary processes in contaminated wildlife populations. However, conventional approaches applied to study the impacts of chemical pollutants on wildlife behaviour seldom address the complexity of natural environments in which contamination occurs. The aim of this review is to guide the rapidly developing field of behavioural ecotoxicology towards increased environmental realism, ecological complexity, and mechanistic understanding.

Ecology of fear in highly invasive fish revealed by robots.

Invasive species threaten biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We develop an innovative experimental approach, integrating biologically inspired robotics, time-series analysis, and computer vision, to build a detailed profile of the effects of non-lethal stress on the ecology and evolution of mosquitofish ()-a global pest. We reveal that brief exposures to a robotic predator alter mosquitofish behavior, increasing fear and stress responses, and mitigate the impact of mosquitofish on native tadpoles () in a cause-and-effect fashion.

Extreme flow simulations reveal skeletal adaptations of deep-sea sponges.

Since its discovery, the deep-sea glass sponge Euplectella aspergillum has attracted interest in its mechanical properties and beauty. Its skeletal system is composed of amorphous hydrated silica and is arranged in a highly regular and hierarchical cylindrical lattice that begets exceptional flexibility and resilience to damage. Structural analyses dominate the literature, but hydrodynamic fields that surround and penetrate the sponge have remained largely unexplored.

Psychoactive pollution suppresses individual differences in fish behaviour.

Environmental contamination by pharmaceuticals is global, substantially altering crucial behaviours in animals and impacting on their reproduction and survival. A key question is whether the consequences of these pollutants extend beyond mean behavioural changes, restraining differences in behaviour between individuals. In a controlled, two-year, multigenerational experiment with independent mesocosm populations, we exposed guppies () to environmentally realistic levels of the ubiquitous pollutant fluoxetine (Prozac).

Chronic exposure to a pervasive pharmaceutical pollutant erodes among-individual phenotypic variation in a fish.

Pharmaceutical pollution is now recognised as a major emerging agent of global change. Increasingly, pharmaceutical pollutants are documented to disrupt ecologically important physiological and behavioural traits in exposed wildlife. However, little is known about potential impacts of pharmaceutical exposure on among-individual variation in these traits, despite phenotypic diversity being critical for population resilience to environmental change.

Behavioural and life-history responses of mosquitofish to biologically inspired and interactive robotic predators.

Invasive alien species threaten biodiversity worldwide and contribute to biotic homogenization, especially in freshwaters, where the ability of native animals to disperse is limited. Robotics may offer a promising tool to address this compelling problem, but whether and how invasive species can be negatively affected by robotic stimuli is an open question. Here, we explore the possibility of modulating behavioural and life-history responses of mosquitofish by varying the degree of biomimicry of a robotic predator, whose appearance and locomotion are inspired by natural mosquitofish predators.

The bold and the sperm: positive association between boldness and sperm number in the guppy.

Assessing the consequences of personality traits on reproductive success is one of the most important challenges in personality studies and critical to understand the evolutionary implications of behavioural variability among animals. Personality traits are typically associated with mating acquisition in males, and, hence, linked to variation in their reproductive success. However, in most species, sexual selection continues after mating, and sperm traits (such as sperm number and quality) become very important in determining post-mating competitive success.

Ecological conditions drive pace-of-life syndromes by shaping relationships between life history, physiology and behaviour in two populations of Eastern mosquitofish.

The pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis predicts variation in behaviour and physiology among individuals to be associated with variation in life history. Thus, individuals on the "fast" end of POLS continuum grow faster, exhibit higher metabolism, are more risk prone, but die earlier than ones on the "slow" end. Empirical support is nevertheless mixed and modelling studies suggested POLS to vary along selection gradients.

How different is a 3D-printed replica from a conspecific in the eyes of a zebrafish?

Robotics is emerging as a promising tool for aiding research on animal behavior. The possibility of generating customizable, controllable, and standardized robotic stimuli has been demonstrated through a number of behavioral assays, involving vertebrates and invertebrates. However, the specific appraisal of the nature of robotic stimuli is currently lacking.

Body length rather than routine metabolic rate and body condition correlates with activity and risk-taking in juvenile zebrafish Danio rerio.

In this study, the following hypotheses were explored using zebrafish Danio rerio: (1) individuals from the same cohort differ consistently in activity and risk-taking and (2) variation in activity and risk-taking is linked to individual differences in metabolic rate, body length and body condition. To examine these hypotheses, juvenile D. rerio were tested for routine metabolic rate and subsequently exposed to an open field test.

Behaviour in a standardized assay, but not metabolic or growth rate, predicts behavioural variation in an adult aquatic top predator Esox lucius in the wild.

This study tested for links among behaviour, state and life-history variables as predicted by the pace-of-life hypothesis in adult pike Esox lucius. First, a standardized open-field behavioural assay was developed to assess individual behaviour of wild-captured adult E. lucius.

The evolutionary legacy of size-selective harvesting extends from genes to populations.

Size-selective harvesting is assumed to alter life histories of exploited fish populations, thereby negatively affecting population productivity, recovery, and yield. However, demonstrating that fisheries-induced phenotypic changes in the wild are at least partly genetically determined has proved notoriously difficult. Moreover, the population-level consequences of fisheries-induced evolution are still being controversially discussed.

Influence of robotic shoal size, configuration, and activity on zebrafish behavior in a free-swimming environment.

In animal studies, robots have been recently used as a valid tool for testing a wide spectrum of hypotheses. These robots often exploit visual or auditory cues to modulate animal behavior. The propensity of zebrafish, a model organism in biological studies, toward fish with similar color patterns and shape has been leveraged to design biologically inspired robots that successfully attract zebrafish in preference tests.

Fish and robot dancing together: bluefin killifish females respond differently to the courtship of a robot with varying color morphs.

The experimental integration of bioinspired robots in groups of social animals has become a valuable tool to understand the basis of social behavior and uncover the fundamental determinants of animal communication. In this study, we measured the preference of fertile female bluefin killifish (Lucania goodei) for robotic replicas whose aspect ratio, body size, motion pattern, and color morph were inspired by adult male killifish. The motion of the fish replica was controlled via a robotic platform, which simulated the typical courtship behavior observed in killifish males.

Collective behaviour across animal species.

We posit a new geometric perspective to define, detect, and classify inherent patterns of collective behaviour across a variety of animal species. We show that machine learning techniques, and specifically the isometric mapping algorithm, allow the identification and interpretation of different types of collective behaviour in five social animal species. These results offer a first glimpse at the transformative potential of machine learning for ethology, similar to its impact on robotics, where it enabled robots to recognize objects and navigate the environment.