Biofilms inactivate the free-living stage of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the most destructive pathogen for vertebrate diversity.

Emerging infectious diseases threaten biodiversity and human health. Many emerging pathogens have aquatic life stages and all immersed substrates have biofilms on their surface, i.e.

An increase in management actions has compensated for past climate change effects on desert locust gregarization in western Africa.

In response to high population density, the desert locust, , becomes gregarious and forms swarms that can cause significant damage to crops and pastures, threatening food security of human populations from western Africa to India. This switch from solitary to gregarious populations is highly dependent on favorable weather conditions. Climate change, which has been hypothesized to shift conditions towards increasing risks of gregarization, is therefore likely to have significant impacts on the spatial distribution and likelihood of outbreak events.

Morphological phylogeny and revision of Sycophila and Ficomila (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea, Eurytomidae) associated with Afrotropical fig trees (Moraceae, Ficus).

Eurytomidae (Chalcidoidea) species associated with fig trees (Ficus) are still poorly documented. A phylogenetic analysis of 63 morphological characters was conducted to revise Afrotropical species of Sycophila Walker and Ficomila Bouek associated with fig trees. Based on our results, which also included Palaearctic species of Sycophila, three subgenera of Sycophila are proposed: Sycophila s.

Novel Gene Rearrangement Pattern in Mitochondrial Genome: New Gene Order in Pteromalidae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea).

The mitochondrial genomes of , , , and were sequenced to better understand the structural evolution of Pteromalidae mitogenomes. These newly sequenced mitogenomes all contained 37 genes. Nucleotide composition was AT-biased and the majority of the protein-coding genes exhibited a negative AT skew.

Characterisation of some species groups of Brachymeria (Hymenoptera: Chalcididae), with a review of the B. tibialis-group and description of a new species parasitizing Zygaena pupae (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae).

The Brachymeria tibialis species group is newly recognized and diagnosed together with the Brachymeria annulata, femorata, kassiliensis and lasus species groups also newly defined. In these diagnoses a few morphological characters of the ventral part of the mesosoma, discovered in this study, are proposed to help differentiate the groups. The B.

Density-dependent mating behaviors reduce male mating harassment in locusts.

Male mating harassment may occur when females and males do not have the same mating objectives. Communal animals need to manage the costs of male mating harassment. Here, we demonstrate how desert locusts in dense populations reduce such conflicts through behaviors.

Commensal small mammal trapping data in Southern Senegal, 2012-2015: where invasive species meet native ones.

Describing patterns and testing hypotheses on processes driving biological invasions represent major issues in ecology. Addressing these questions requires building adequate data sets, i.e.

Evolutionary novelty in the apoptotic pathway of aphids.

Apoptosis, a conserved form of programmed cell death, shows interspecies differences that may reflect evolutionary diversification and adaptation, a notion that remains largely untested. Among insects, the most speciose animal group, the apoptotic pathway has only been fully characterized in , and apoptosis-related proteins have been studied in a few other dipteran and lepidopteran species. Here, we studied the apoptotic pathway in the aphid , an insect pest belonging to the Hemiptera, an earlier-diverging and distantly related order.

The Needs for Developing Experiments on Reservoirs in Hantavirus Research: Accomplishments, Challenges and Promises for the Future.

Due to their large geographic distribution and potential high mortality rates in human infections, hantaviruses constitute a worldwide threat to public health. As such, they have been the subject of a large array of clinical, virological and eco-evolutionary studies. Many experiments have been conducted in vitro or on animal models to identify the mechanisms leading to pathogenesis in humans and to develop treatments of hantavirus diseases.

Estimating the Fitness Effect of Deleterious Mutations During the Two Phases of the Life Cycle: A New Method Applied to the Root-Rot Fungus .

Many eukaryote species, including taxa such as fungi or algae, have a lifecycle with substantial haploid and diploid phases. A recent theoretical model predicts that such haploid-diploid lifecycles are stable over long evolutionary time scales when segregating deleterious mutations have stronger effects in homozygous diploids than in haploids and when they are partially recessive in heterozygous diploids. The model predicts that effective dominance-a measure that accounts for these two effects-should be close to 0.

Discontinuities in quinoa biodiversity in the dry Andes: An 18-century perspective based on allelic genotyping.

History and environment shape crop biodiversity, particularly in areas with vulnerable human communities and ecosystems. Tracing crop biodiversity over time helps understand how rural societies cope with anthropogenic or climatic changes. Exceptionally well preserved ancient DNA of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.

Parallel evolution of behaviour during independent host-shifts following maize introduction into Asia and Europe.

Maize was introduced into opposite sides of Eurasia 500 years ago, in Western Europe and in Asia. This caused two host-shifts in the phytophagous genus ; (the European corn borer; ECB) and (the Asian corn borer; ACB) are now major pests of maize worldwide. They originated independently from Dicot-feeding ancestors, similar to (the Adzuki bean borer; ABB).

Population genetics, community of parasites, and resistance to rodenticides in an urban brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) population.

Brown rats are one of the most widespread urban species worldwide. Despite the nuisances they induce and their potential role as a zoonotic reservoir, knowledge on urban rat populations remains scarce. The main purpose of this study was to characterize an urban brown rat population from Chanteraines park (Hauts-de-Seine, France), with regards to haematology, population genetics, immunogenic diversity, resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides, and community of parasites.

Taming the late Quaternary phylogeography of the Eurasiatic wild ass through ancient and modern DNA.

Taxonomic over-splitting of extinct or endangered taxa, due to an incomplete knowledge of both skeletal morphological variability and the geographical ranges of past populations, continues to confuse the link between isolated extant populations and their ancestors. This is particularly problematic with the genus Equus. To more reliably determine the evolution and phylogeographic history of the endangered Asiatic wild ass, we studied the genetic diversity and inter-relationships of both extinct and extant populations over the last 100,000 years, including samples throughout its previous range from Western Europe to Southwest and East Asia.

Rodent-borne Trypanosoma from cities and villages of Niger and Nigeria: A special role for the invasive genus Rattus?

Although they are known to sometimes infect humans, atypical trypanosomes are very poorly documented, especially in Africa where one lethal case has yet been described. Here we conducted a survey of rodent-borne Trypanosoma in 19 towns and villages of Niger and Nigeria, with a special emphasis on Niamey, the capital city of Niger. The 1298 rodents that were captured yielded 189 qPCR-positive animals from 14 localities, thus corresponding to a 14.

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project.

The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.

Conflicts of Interest in GM Bt Crop Efficacy and Durability Studies.

Public confidence in genetically modified (GM) crop studies is tenuous at best in many countries, including those of the European Union in particular. A lack of information about the effects of ties between academic research and industry might stretch this confidence to the breaking point. We therefore performed an analysis on a large set of research articles (n = 672) focusing on the efficacy or durability of GM Bt crops and ties between the researchers carrying out these studies and the GM crop industry.

Buchnera has changed flatmate but the repeated replacement of co-obligate symbionts is not associated with the ecological expansions of their aphid hosts.

Symbiotic associations with bacteria have facilitated important evolutionary transitions in insects and resulted in long-term obligate interactions. Recent evidence suggests that these associations are not always evolutionarily stable and that symbiont replacement, and/or supplementation of an obligate symbiosis by an additional bacterium, has occurred during the history of many insect groups. Yet, the factors favouring one symbiont over another in this evolutionary dynamic are not well understood; progress has been hindered by our incomplete understanding of the distribution of symbionts across phylogenetic and ecological contexts.

Parasites and invasions: changes in gastrointestinal helminth assemblages in invasive and native rodents in Senegal.

Understanding why some exotic species become widespread and abundant in their colonised range is a fundamental issue that still needs to be addressed. Among many hypotheses, newly established host populations may benefit from a parasite loss ("enemy release" hypothesis) through impoverishment of their original parasite communities or reduced infection levels. Moreover, the fitness of competing native hosts may be negatively affected by the acquisition of exotic taxa from invaders ("parasite spillover") and/or by an increased transmission risk of native parasites due to their amplification by invaders ("parasite spillback").

C-Nap1 mutation affects centriole cohesion and is associated with a Seckel-like syndrome in cattle.

Caprine-like Generalized Hypoplasia Syndrome (SHGC) is an autosomal-recessive disorder in Montbéliarde cattle. Affected animals present a wide range of clinical features that include the following: delayed development with low birth weight, hind limb muscular hypoplasia, caprine-like thin head and partial coat depigmentation. Here we show that SHGC is caused by a truncating mutation in the CEP250 gene that encodes the centrosomal protein C-Nap1.

Contrasting patterns of polymorphism and selection in bacterial-sensing toll-like receptor 4 in two house mouse subspecies.

Detailed investigation of variation in genes involved in pathogen recognition is crucial for understanding co-evolutionary processes between parasites and their hosts. Triggering immediate innate response to invading microbes, Toll-like receptors (TLRs) belong presently among the best-studied receptors of vertebrate immunity. TLRs exhibit remarkable interspecific variation and also intraspecific polymorphism is well documented.

The genetic structure of Asian corn borer, Ostrinia furnacalis, populations in China: haplotype variance in northern populations and potential impact on management of resistance to transgenic maize.

Asian corn borer, Ostrinia furnacalis (Guenée), is a severe pest that infests cultivated maize in the major production regions of China. Populations show genotype-by-environment variation in voltinism, such that populations with a single generation (univoltine) are fixed in Northern China where growing seasons are short. Low genetic differentiation was found among samples from 33 collection sites across China and one site from North Korea (n=1673) using variation at 6 nuclear microsatellite loci (ENA corrected global FST=0.

'Becoming a species by becoming a pest' or how two maize pests of the genus Ostrinia possibly evolved through parallel ecological speciation events.

New agricultural pest species attacking introduced crops may evolve from pre-existing local herbivores by ecological speciation, thereby becoming a species by becoming a pest. We compare the evolutionary pathways by which two maize pests (the Asian and the European corn borers, ACB and ECB) in the genus Ostrinia (Lepidoptera, Crambidae) probably diverged from an ancestral species close to the current Adzuki bean borer (ABB). We typed larval Ostrinia populations collected on maize and dicotyledons across China and eastern Siberia, at microsatellite and mitochondrial loci.