Vocal production learning in mammals revisited.

Vocal production learning, the ability to modify the structure of vocalizations as a result of hearing those of others, has been studied extensively in birds but less attention has been given to its occurrence in mammals. We summarize the available evidence for vocal learning in mammals from the last 25 years, updating earlier reviews on the subject. The clearest evidence comes from cetaceans, pinnipeds, elephants and bats where species have been found to copy artificial or human language sounds, or match acoustic models of different sound types.

Cross-species parallels in babbling: animals and algorithms.

A key feature of vocal ontogeny in a variety of taxa with extensive vocal repertoires is a developmental pattern in which vocal exploration is followed by a period of category formation that results in a mature species-specific repertoire. Vocal development preceding the adult repertoire is often called 'babbling', a term used to describe aspects of vocal development in species of vocal-learning birds, some marine mammals, some New World monkeys, some bats and humans. The paper summarizes the results of research on babbling in examples from five taxa and proposes a unifying definition facilitating their comparison.

Contours of citizen science: a vignette study.

Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decades. Yet, defining citizen science and its boundaries remained a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature-for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners community on what should be considered as citizen science activity.

Developmental and evolutionary dynamics of cis-regulatory elements in mouse cerebellar cells.

Organ development is orchestrated by cell- and time-specific gene regulatory networks. In this study, we investigated the regulatory basis of mouse cerebellum development from early neurogenesis to adulthood. By acquiring snATAC-seq (single-nucleus assay for transposase accessible chromatin using sequencing) profiles for ~90,000 cells spanning 11 stages, we mapped cerebellar cell types and identified candidate cisregulatory elements (CREs).

Diversity and Paleodemography of the Addax (), a Saharan Antelope on the Verge of Extinction.

Since the 19th century, the addax () has lost approximately 99% of its former range. Along with its close relatives, the blue antelope () and the scimitar-horned oryx (), the addax may be the third large African mammal species to go extinct in the wild in recent times. Despite this, the evolutionary history of this critically endangered species remains virtually unknown.

Herbivory shapes the rhizosphere bacterial microbiota in potato plants.

Plant-associated microbiomes assist their host in a variety of activities, spanning from nutrition to defence against herbivores and diseases. Previous research showed that plant-associated microbiomes shift their composition when plants are exposed to stressors, including herbivory. However, existing studies explored only single herbivore-plant combinations, whereas plants are often attacked by several different herbivores, but the effects of multiple herbivore types on the plant microbiome remain to be determined.

Babbling in a vocal learning bat resembles human infant babbling.

Babbling is a production milestone in infant speech development. Evidence for babbling in nonhuman mammals is scarce, which has prevented cross-species comparisons. In this study, we investigated the conspicuous babbling behavior of , a bat capable of vocal production learning.

The evolution of size-dependent competitive interactions promotes species coexistence.

Theory indicates that competing species coexist in a community when intraspecific competition is stronger than interspecific competition. When body size determines the outcome of competitive interactions between individuals, coexistence depends also on how resource use and the ability to compete for these resources change with body size. Testing coexistence theory in size-structured communities, therefore, requires disentangling the effects of size-dependent competitive abilities and niche shifts.

Social behaviour and vocalizations of the tent-roosting Honduran white bat.

Bats are highly gregarious animals, displaying a large spectrum of social systems with different organizational structures. One important factor shaping sociality is group stability. To maintain group cohesion and stability, bats often rely on vocal communication.

Global co-occurrence of methanogenic archaea and methanotrophic bacteria in Microcystis aggregates.

Global warming and eutrophication contribute to the worldwide increase in cyanobacterial blooms, and the level of cyanobacterial biomass is strongly associated with rises in methane emissions from surface lake waters. Hence, methane-metabolizing microorganisms may be important for modulating carbon flow in cyanobacterial blooms. Here, we surveyed methanogenic and methanotrophic communities associated with floating Microcystis aggregates in 10 lakes spanning four continents, through sequencing of 16S rRNA and functional marker genes.

Transposable elements and introgression introduce genetic variation in the invasive ant Cardiocondyla obscurior.

Introduced populations of invasive organisms have to cope with novel environmental challenges, while having reduced genetic variation caused by founder effects. The mechanisms associated with this "genetic paradox of invasive species" has received considerable attention, yet few studies have examined the genomic architecture of invasive species. Populations of the heart node ant Cardiocondyla obscurior belong to two distinct lineages, a New World lineage so far only found in Latin America and a more globally distributed Old World lineage.

A genetic variant alters the secondary structure of the lncRNA H19 and is associated with dilated cardiomyopathy.

lncRNAs are at the core of many regulatory processes and have also been recognized to be involved in various complex diseases. They affect gene regulation through direct interactions with RNA, DNA or proteins. Accordingly, lncRNA structure is likely to be essential for their regulatory function.

Image3C, a multimodal image-based and label-independent integrative method for single-cell analysis.

Image-based cell classification has become a common tool to identify phenotypic changes in cell populations. However, this methodology is limited to organisms possessing well-characterized species-specific reagents (, antibodies) that allow cell identification, clustering, and convolutional neural network (CNN) training. In the absence of such reagents, the power of image-based classification has remained mostly off-limits to many research organisms.

Citizen science and online data: Opportunities and challenges for snake ecology and action against snakebite.

The secretive behavior and life history of snakes makes studying their biology, distribution, and the epidemiology of venomous snakebite challenging. One of the most useful, most versatile, and easiest to collect types of biological data are photographs, particularly those that are connected with geographic location and date-time metadata. Photos verify occurrence records, provide data on phenotypes and ecology, and are often used to illustrate new species descriptions, field guides and identification keys, as well as in training humans and computer vision algorithms to identify snakes.

Return of the Lemnaceae: duckweed as a model plant system in the genomics and postgenomics era.

The aquatic Lemnaceae family, commonly called duckweed, comprises some of the smallest and fastest growing angiosperms known on Earth. Their tiny size, rapid growth by clonal propagation, and facile uptake of labeled compounds from the media were attractive features that made them a well-known model for plant biology from 1950 to 1990. Interest in duckweed has steadily regained momentum over the past decade, driven in part by the growing need to identify alternative plants from traditional agricultural crops that can help tackle urgent societal challenges, such as climate change and rapid population expansion.

Morphological response accompanying size reduction of belemnites during an Early Jurassic hyperthermal event modulated by life history.

One of the most common responses of marine ectotherms to rapid warming is a reduction in body size, but the underlying reasons are unclear. Body size reductions have been documented alongside rapid warming events in the fossil record, such as across the Pliensbachian-Toarcian boundary (PToB) event (~ 183 Mya). As individuals grow, parallel changes in morphology can indicate details of their ecological response to environmental crises, such as changes in resource acquisition, which may anticipate future climate impacts.

Assessing acoustic competition between sibling frog species using rhythm analysis.

Male frog advertisement calls are species-specific vocalizations used to attract females for breeding. However, it is possible for environmental or biological sounds to overlap these calls in both frequency and duration resulting in signal confusion, influencing female decision and/or location abilities. It is therefore important for vocal species competing for the same acoustic space to partition their calls either spatially or temporally (via call alternation or suppression).

Ageing Effects in Mounting Media of Microscope Slide Samples from Natural History Collections: A Case Study with Canada Balsam and Permount.

Microscope slide collections represent extremely valuable depositories of research material in a natural history, forensic, veterinary, and medical context. Unfortunately, most mounting media of these slides deteriorate over time, with the reason for this not yet understood at all. In this study, Raman spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, and different types of light microscopy were used to investigate the ageing behaviour of naturally aged slides from museum collections and the experimentally aged media of Canada balsam and Permount™, representing a natural and a synthetic resin, respectively, with both being based on mixtures of various terpenes.

The Glyptothorax catfishes of the Euphrates and Tigris with the description of a new species (Teleostei: Sisoridae).

The Glyptothorax species inhabiting the Euphrates and Tigris drainages are reviewed and six species are recognised, one of which is described herein as new species. Glyptothorax armeniacus is endemic to headwater streams in the Euphrates drainage. Glyptothorax kurdistanicus is endemic to the upper Tigris downstream to the Lesser Zab drainage.

Oxynoemacheilus nasreddini, a new nemacheilid loach from Central Anatolia (Teleostei: Nemacheilidae).

Oxynoemacheilus nasreddini, new species, from Lake Akşehir, Eber, Eğirdir, and Ilgın basins in Central Anatolia is distinguished from other species of Oxynoemacheilus in Central Anatolia by having irregularly shaped blotches on flank; 24 dark-brown bands on caudal fin; a slender body, and an emarginate caudal fin in which the shortest middle caudal-fin ray is 7691% of the longest ray of the upper caudal-fin lobe. Molecular data suggest that the new species is closely related to O. mediterraneus from the Aksu and Köprüçay drainages.

A new critically endangered slippery frog (Amphibia, Conrauidae, Conraua) from the Atewa Range, central Ghana.

Forty-nine years after the last description of a slippery frog, we describe a seventh species of the genus Conraua. The new Conraua is endemic to the Atewa Range Forest Reserve, central Ghana, and is described based on genetic, bioacoustics, and morphological evidence. Recent molecular phylogenetic and species delimitation analyses support this population as distinct from nominotypical C.

Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones) in Eocene Rovno amber (Ukraine).

Six species of harvestman (Arachnida: Opiliones) are documented from the Eocene Rovno amber in Ukraine. From the suborder Eupnoi we record Caddo dentipalpus (C. L.