187 results match your criteria: "CNRS-Universite de Montpellier-Universite Paul-Valery Montpellier-EPHE[Affiliation]"

Immunomodulatory and Antioxidant Properties of Flour and Extracts Obtained by Green Extraction.

Curr Issues Mol Biol

August 2023

Qualisud, Univ Montpellier, Avignon Université, CIRAD, Institut Agro, IRD, Université de La Réunion, 97400 Montpellier, France.

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the nutritional composition and health benefits of orange flesh sweet potato (OFSP) flour, which is a source of energy and beta-carotene.
  • The research focuses on the flour’s antioxidant and immunomodulatory properties, particularly its impact on pro-inflammatory cytokines in murine macrophages.
  • Findings reveal high levels of fiber, minerals, and polyphenols in OFSP flour, indicating potential for helping manage metabolic diseases linked to low-grade inflammation.
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Organisms have evolved a range of constitutive (always active) and inducible (elicited by parasites) defence mechanisms, but we have limited understanding of what drives the evolution of these orthogonal defence strategies. Bacteria and their phages offer a tractable system to study this: Bacteria can acquire constitutive resistance by mutation of the phage receptor (surface mutation, sm) or induced resistance through their CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune system. Using a combination of theory and experiments, we demonstrate that the mechanism that establishes first has a strong advantage because it weakens selection for the alternative resistance mechanism.

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The Impact of Elevated Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Exposure on Magic Tomatoes' Nutrition-Health Properties.

Int J Mol Sci

August 2023

Qualisud, Université de Montpellier, Avignon Université, CIRAD, Institut Agro, IRD, Université de La Réunion, 34093 Montpellier, France.

The release of carbon dioxide (CO) into the atmosphere has accelerated during the last two decades. Elevated atmospheric CO concentration (eCO) is known as an agent that improves plant photosynthesis. However, eCO was also correlated with alterations in the macronutrient and micronutrient compositions of various dietary crops.

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The black truffle Tuber melanosporum was disseminated all over the world, propelled by the development of a wide variety of empirical practices. A widespread practice, called 'truffle trap', consists of placing pieces of truffles into excavations dug under host trees, and of collecting truffle in these traps in the next years. This research aims at (1) evaluating the effect of this practice on fruitbody production based on the analysis of 9924 truffle traps installed in 11 orchards across T.

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Will climate change affect the survival of tropical and subtropical species? Predictions based on Bulwer's petrel populations in the NE Atlantic Ocean.

Sci Total Environ

November 2022

Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Av. Diagonal 643, Barcelona 08028, Spain; Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain.

Climate change has repeatedly been shown to impact the demography and survival of marine top predators. However, most evidence comes from single populations of widely distributed species, limited mainly to polar and subpolar environments. Here, we aimed to evaluate the influence of environmental conditions on the survival of a tropical and migratory seabird over the course of its annual cycle.

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Differential Nutrition-Health Properties of Leaf and Stem Extracts.

Foods

June 2022

Qualisud, University Montpellier, Avignon Université, CIRAD, Institut Agro, IRD, Université de La Réunion, 34000 Montpellier, France.

(1) Background: L. is an aromatic medicinal plant of the Lamiaceae family known as sweet basil. It is used in traditional medicine for its beneficial effects on gastrointestinal disorders, inflammation, immune system, pyrexia or cancer among others.

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To investigate altitude control in honeybees, an optical configuration was designed to manipulate or cancel the optic flow. It has been widely accepted that honeybees rely on the optic flow generated by the ground to control their altitude. Here, we create an optical configuration enabling a better understanding of the mechanism of altitude control in honeybees.

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Sex-specific costs of reproduction on survival in a long-lived seabird.

Biol Lett

March 2021

Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Facultat de Biologia, Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, Barcelona 08028, Spain.

Costs of reproduction on survival have captured the attention of researchers since life history theory was formulated. Adults of long-lived species may increase survival by reducing their breeding effort or even skipping reproduction. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the costs of current reproduction on survival and whether skipping reproduction increases adult survival in a long-lived seabird.

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Systematics and geographical distribution of Galba species, a group of cryptic and worldwide freshwater snails.

Mol Phylogenet Evol

April 2021

MIVEGEC, University of Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, Montpellier, France; Département de Biologie-Ecologie, Faculté des Sciences, Université Montpellier, Montpellier, France.

Article Synopsis
  • Cryptic species pose challenges in systematic and biogeographic studies, especially when they are invasive or transmit diseases.
  • The research focuses on the genus Galba, a group of invasive freshwater snails that reproduce mainly through self-fertilization and can carry liver flukes harmful to humans and livestock.
  • Using an integrative approach involving morphology, molecular data, and broad sampling, the study reveals that Galba has six species or complexes, with significant variations in shell shape and genetic diversity, and emphasizes the necessity of molecular markers for accurate species identification.
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Seasonal variation of mercury contamination in Arctic seabirds: A pan-Arctic assessment.

Sci Total Environ

January 2021

Littoral, Environnement et Sociétés (LIENSs), UMR 7266 CNRS-La Rochelle Université, 2 Rue Olympe de Gouges, FR-17000 La Rochelle, France. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • Mercury (Hg) accumulation in Arctic seabirds is higher during the non-breeding period than in the breeding period, with concentrations being up to 3 times greater overall.
  • Research involving nine migratory alcid species revealed significant spatial differences in Hg levels, particularly between the Atlantic and Pacific regions, indicating varying exposure risks.
  • Most seabird colonies had Hg concentrations above the threshold for harmful effects during winter, highlighting potential vulnerabilities that require further study on spatial ecotoxicology and migration impact on Hg exposure.
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Article Synopsis
  • Earth has over 350,000 types of plants, and this study looked at how different plant traits affect things like how much biomass they produce and how much carbon they store.
  • The researchers studied 41 plant traits in 78 grassland areas for 10 years but found that these traits only explained a bit more than 32% of how the ecosystems performed in one year and even less (just about 12%) over the years.
  • They discovered that there wasn't a small group of traits that could explain many ecosystem properties, suggesting that other factors besides plant traits, like weather or soil type, might also be important for understanding changes in ecosystems.
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Temperatures in mountain areas are increasing at a higher rate than the Northern Hemisphere land average, but how fauna may respond, in particular in terms of phenology, remains poorly understood. The aim of this study was to assess how elevation could modify the relationships between climate variability (air temperature and snow melt-out date), the timing of plant phenology and egg-laying date of the coal tit (). We collected 9 years (2011-2019) of data on egg-laying date, spring air temperature, snow melt-out date, and larch budburst date at two elevations (~1,300 m and ~1,900 m asl) on a slope located in the Mont-Blanc Massif in the French Alps.

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Lentinus edodes (= Lentinula edodes) is an edible mushroom grown and marketed for centuries due to its nutritional and medicinal properties. L. edodes has multiple pharmacological activities as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.

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Birds, and especially raptors, are believed to forage mainly using visual cues. Indeed, raptors (scavengers and predators) have the highest visual acuity known to date. However, scavengers and predators differ in their visual systems such as in their foveal configuration.

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An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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In this study, we assessed eye morphology and retinal topography in two flamingo species, the Caribbean flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber) and the Chilean flamingo (P. chilensis). Eye morphology is similar in both species and cornea size relative to eye size (C:A ratio) is intermediate between those previously reported for diurnal and nocturnal birds.

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The Price equation and evolutionary epidemiology.

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci

April 2020

CEFE UMR 5175, CNRS - Université de Montpellier - Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier - EPHE, 1919, route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.

The Price equation has found widespread application in many areas of evolutionary biology, including the evolutionary epidemiology of infectious diseases. In this paper, we illustrate the utility of this approach to modelling disease evolution by first deriving a version of Price's equation that can be applied in continuous time and to populations with overlapping generations. We then show how this version of Price's equation provides an alternative perspective on pathogen evolution by considering the epidemiological meaning of each of its terms.

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Restricting movements to familiar areas should increase individual fitness as it provides animals with information about the spatial distribution of resources and predation risk. While the benefits of familiarity for locating resources have been reported previously, the potential value of familiarity for predation avoidance has been accorded less attention. It has been suggested that familiarity should be beneficial for anti-predator behaviour when direct cues of predation risk are unclear and do not allow prey to identify well-defined spatial refuges.

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Sexually deceptive orchid species from the Mediterranean genus Ophrys usually interact with one or a few pollinator species by means of specific floral scents. In this study, we investigated the respective role of pollinator-mediated selection and phylogenetic constraints in the evolution of floral scents in the section Pseudophrys. We built a phylogenetic tree of 19 Pseudophrys species based on three nuclear loci; we gathered a dataset on their pollination interactions from the literature and from our own field data; and we extracted and analysed their floral scents using solid phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

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Migration is a widespread response of birds to seasonally varying climates. As seasonality is particularly pronounced during interglacial periods, this raises the question of the significance of bird migration during past periods with different patterns of seasonality. Here, we apply a mechanistic model to climate reconstructions to simulate the past 50,000 years of bird migration worldwide, a period encompassing the transition between the last glacial period and the current interglacial.

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Natural selection leaves distinct signatures in the genome that can reveal the targets and history of adaptive evolution. By analysing high-coverage genome sequence data from 4 major colour pattern loci sampled from nearly 600 individuals in 53 populations, we show pervasive selection on wing patterns in the Heliconius adaptive radiation. The strongest signatures correspond to loci with the greatest phenotypic effects, consistent with visual selection by predators, and are found in colour patterns with geographically restricted distributions.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A global database called "CESTES" was created by compiling 80 datasets from various trait-based studies, which include details about species, their traits, environmental conditions, and spatial locations.
  • * CESTES is designed to be a continually updated resource that supports broader research in community ecology by integrating diverse ecosystems and species, aiming to find consistent patterns across different ecological contexts.
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Concern about the functional consequences of unprecedented loss in biodiversity has prompted biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research to become one of the most active fields of ecological research in the past 25 years. Hundreds of experiments have manipulated biodiversity as an independent variable and found compelling support that the functioning of ecosystems increases with the diversity of their ecological communities. This research has also identified some of the mechanisms underlying BEF relationships, some context-dependencies of the strength of relationships, as well as implications for various ecosystem services that mankind depends upon.

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Climate models predict that by 2050 the Arctic Ocean will be sea ice free each summer. Removing this barrier between the Atlantic and the Pacific will modify a wide range of ecological processes, including bird migration. Using published information, we identified 29 arctic-breeding seabird species, which currently migrate in the North Atlantic and could shift to a transarctic migration towards the North Pacific.

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