New findings of terrestrial arthropods from the Azorean Islands.

The knowledge on taxonomic diversity of arthropods is key to better understanding the biodiversity patterns and processes and guiding sustainable conservation strategies and practices. In the Azores, terrestrial arthropods are relatively well-inventoried following the publication of comprehensive checklists that have been regularly updated. Nevertheless, every year, new species are found as a result of new arrivals to the Archipelago and from addressing specific taxonomic lacunae.

Between-year weather differences and long-term environmental trends both contribute to observed vegetation changes in a plot resurvey study.

Repeated surveys of vegetation plots offer a viable tool to detect fine-scale responses of vegetation to environmental changes. In this study, our aim was to explore how the species composition and species richness of dry grasslands changed over a period of 17 years, how these changes relate to environmental changes and how the presence of spring ephemerals, which may react to short-term weather fluctuations rather than long-term climatic trends, may influence the results. A total of 95 plots was surveyed in 2005 and resurveyed in 2022 in dry grasslands of the Kiskunság Sand Ridge (Hungary, Eastern Central Europe), where there has been a significant increase in mean annual temperature during the last decades, while no trends in precipitation can be identified.

No sex-dependent mortality in an amphibian upon infection with the chytrid fungus, .

One of the major factors driving the currently ongoing biodiversity crisis is the anthropogenic spread of infectious diseases. Diseases can have conspicuous consequences, such as mass mortality events, but may also exert covert but similarly severe effects, such as sex ratio distortion via sex-biased mortality. Chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungal pathogen (Bd) is among the most important threats to amphibian biodiversity.

From darkness to twilight: Morphological divergence between cave and surface-subterranean ecotone species.

Subterranean and surface habitats are in stark contrast in several environmental factors. Therefore, adaptation to the subterranean environment typically impedes the (re)colonisation of surface habitats. The genus includes amphipod crustaceans that primarily occupy subterranean habitats.

Heatwave-induced functional shifts in zooplankton communities result in weaker top-down control on phytoplankton.

Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly affected by rising annual mean temperatures and heatwaves. While heatwaves are expected to have more immediate effects than mean temperature increases on local communities, comparative experimental studies are largely lacking. We conducted a 1-month mesocosm experiment to test the effect of different warming treatments, constantly raised temperatures (+3°C) and recurring heatwaves (+6°C), on plankton communities.

Sports and exercise-related smartphone use is antagonistic to hedonic use in regular exercisers: A cross-sectional study examining the roles of exercise frequency and duration.

Background: Hedonic smartphone use has been associated with dependence and addiction studied under the umbrella term Problematic Smartphone Use (PSU). Research usually explores total screen time as an index of PSU. A few studies suggest that exercise is inversely related to smartphone use time.

Food density drives diet shift of the invasive mysid shrimp, .

Understanding the diet preferences and food selection of invasive species is crucial to better predict their impact on community structure and ecosystem functioning. , a Ponto-Caspian invasive mysid shrimp, is one of the most successful invaders in numerous European river and lake ecosystems. While existing studies suggest potentially strong trophic impact due to high predation pressure on native plankton communities, little is known of its food selectivity between phyto- and zooplankton, under different food concentrations.

A semiochemical view of the ecology of the seed beetle Say (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae, Bruchinae).

The dried bean beetle, , is an economically important pest of stored legumes worldwide. Tracking the human-aided dispersion of its primary hosts, the beans, it is now widespread in most bean-growing areas of the tropics and subtropics. In temperate regions where it can only occasionally overwinter in the field, proliferates in granaries, having multiple generations a year.

The estimation of additive genetic variance of body size in a wild passerine is sensitive to the method used to estimate relatedness among the individuals.

Assessing additive genetic variance is a crucial step in predicting the evolutionary response of a target trait. However, the estimated genetic variance may be sensitive to the methodology used, e.g.

Broadly sympatric occurrence of two thief ant species (Latreille, 1798) and (Arakelian, 1991) in the East European Pontic-Caspian region (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) is disclosed.

This paper presents numeric morphology-based evidence on the broadly overlapping distribution of two thief ant species (Latreille, 1798) and (Arakelian, 1991) in the East European Pontic-Caspian region. The paper integrates two autonomous data collections and independent analyses performed by different researchers, using different equipment, considering different character combinations, and evaluating partially different samples. Five type series, the neotype series of (Latreille 1798) and the type series of (Nylander, 1849), S.

Opportunistic citizen science data reveals habitat selection of lesser black-backed gulls in Central Europe.

This study is the first attempt to find a relation between the opportunistic observation data of an easily identifiable but locally rare bird, in our case the lesser black-backed gull (), and the Corine Land Cover habitat map by applying a resource selection function model to reveal the habitat selection of the species. We provide a scientific analysis using the valuable citizen science dataset sourced from the www.birding.

Exploring diversity within the genus (Basidiomycota, Agaricales) in the Pannonian sandy steppe: four fascinating novel species from Hungary.

Steppe vegetation on sandy soil in Hungary has recently been revealed as one of the hot spots in Europe for the stalked puffballs (genus ). In the framework of the taxonomic revision of gasteroid fungi in Hungary, four species are described here as new to science: , , and . The study is based on detailed macro- and micromorphological investigations (including light and scanning electron microscopy), as well as a three-locus phylogeny of nrDNA ITS, nrDNA LSU and sequences.

Comment on "Human-directed attachment behaviour in wolves suggests standing ancestral variation for human-dog attachment bonds".

In their recent paper, Hansen Wheat et al. (, 2022, , e9299) claimed that hand raised 23-week-old wolves showed the same attachment behaviour towards their handler in the Strange Situation Test (SST) (, 1969, , 111) as dogs. At first glance, their results seem to contradict previous findings that domestication caused a unique change in social-affiliative behaviours in dogs (, 2005, , 1367).

Genomic analysis reveals complex population structure within the smooth newt, , in Central Europe.

Species with wide-range distributions usually display high genetic variation. This variation can be partly explained by historical lineages that were temporally isolated from each other and are back into secondary reproductive contact, and partly by local adaptations. The smooth newt () is one of the most widely distributed amphibians species across Eurasia and forms a species complex with a partially overlapping distribution and morphology.

East-facing has maximal number and mass of kernel-filled seeds: Seed traits versus head orientation.

After anthesis, the majority of mature sunflower () inflorescences face constantly East, which direction ensures maximal light energy absorbed by the inflorescences in regions where afternoons are on average cloudier than mornings. Several theories have tried to explain the function(s) of this eastward orientation. Their common assumption is that eastward facing has certain advantages for sunflowers.

Optimal prey for red fox cubs-An example of dual optimizing foraging strategy in foxes from a dynamic wetland habitat.

The red fox () is the most abundant mesopredator in the Central European region. Detailed knowledge about their feeding behavior is important both from ecological and wildlife management reasons. Food choices of foxes are poorly predictable in high-biodiversity marshlands.

Locally common graphs.

Goodman proved that the sum of the number of triangles in a graph on nodes and its complement is at least ; in other words, this sum is minimized, asymptotically, by a random graph with edge density 1/2. Erdős conjectured that a similar inequality will hold for in place of , but this was disproved by Thomason. But an analogous statement does hold for some other graphs, which are called .

Comparing ant morphology measurements from microscope and online AntWeb.org 2D z-stacked images.

Unprecedented technological advances in digitization and the steadily expanding open-access digital repositories are yielding new opportunities to quickly and efficiently measure morphological traits without transportation and advanced/expensive microscope machinery. A prime example is the AntWeb.org database, which allows researchers from all over the world to study taxonomic, ecological, or evolutionary questions on the same ant specimens with ease.

Removal and identification of external protein corona members from RBC-derived extracellular vesicles by surface manipulating antimicrobial peptides.

In the last years, extracellular vesicles (EVs), secreted by various cells and body fluids have shown extreme potential in biomedical applications. Increasing number of studies suggest that a protein corona could adhere to the surface of EVs which can have a fundamental effect on their function, targeting and therapeutical efficacy. However, removing and identifying these corona members is currently a challenging task to achieve.

Formerly considered rare, the ant species (Mayr, 1855) can be commonly detected using citizen-science tools.

Citizen science is a valuable tool for monitoring different species, especially in cases concerning truly rare and difficult-to-detect species where time-consuming field studies are limited and long-term research projects are uncertain. To better understand the distribution of the rarely collected (Mayr, 1855) (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in Hungary, we obtained the occurrence data with photos uploaded by non-professionals to the page of the largest Hungarian Facebook group dealing with ants and a citizen-science website dealing with biological data collection. In this article, we expand the known distribution of to include 46 new records from Hungary and one from Serbia.

A carbapenem antibiotic inhibiting a mammalian serine protease: structure of the acylaminoacyl peptidase-meropenem complex.

The structure of porcine AAP (pAAP) in a covalently bound complex with meropenem was determined by cryo-EM to 2.1 Å resolution, showing the mammalian serine-protease inhibited by a carbapenem antibiotic. AAP is a modulator of the ubiquitin-proteasome degradation system and the site of a drug-drug interaction between the widely used antipsychotic, valproate and carbapenems.

Forty years of combinatorial technology.

Combinatorial technology has been facilitating the synthesis and screening of large molecular libraries containing millions of organic compounds ever since its introduction 40 years ago. It has changed the paradigms of pharmaceutical research from focusing on single compounds to focusing on immense collections of compounds. It inspired the development of dynamic combinatorial libraries, fragment-based drug discovery and virtual library screening.

Foraging decisions with conservation consequences: Interaction between beavers and invasive tree species.

Herbivore species can either hinder or accelerate the invasion of woody species through selective utilization. Therefore, an exploration of foraging decisions can contribute to the understanding and forecasting of woody plant invasions. Despite the large distribution range and rapidly growing abundance of beaver species across the Northern Hemisphere, only a few studies focus on the interaction between beavers and invasive woody plants.

Individual differences in song plasticity in response to social stimuli and singing position.

Individual animals can react to the changes in their environment by exhibiting behaviors in an individual-specific way leading to individual differences in phenotypic plasticity. However, the effect of multiple environmental factors on multiple traits is rarely tested. Such a complex approach is necessary to assess the generality of plasticity and to understand how among-individual differences in the ability to adapt to changing environments evolve.

Simulated trapping and trawling exert similar selection on fish morphology.

Commercial fishery harvest can influence the evolution of wild fish populations. Our knowledge of selection on morphology is however limited, with most previous studies focusing on body size, age, and maturation. Within species, variation in morphology can influence locomotor ability, possibly making some individuals more vulnerable to capture by fishing gears.