Long-term cooperative relationships among vampire bats are not strongly predicted by their initial interactions.

In many group-living animals, survival and reproductive success depend on the formation of long-term social bonds, yet it remains largely unclear why particular pairs of groupmates form social bonds and not others. Can social bond formation be reliably predicted from each individual's immediately observable traits and behaviors at first encounter? Or is social bond formation hard to predict due to the impacts of shifting social preferences on social network dynamics? To begin to address these questions, we asked how well long-term cooperative relationships among vampire bats were predicted by how they interacted during their first encounter as introduced strangers. In Study 1, we found that the first 6 h of observed interactions among unfamiliar bats co-housed in small cages did not clearly predict the formation of allogrooming or food-sharing relationships over the next 10 months.

Antibiotic use in infants in the 6 weeks after delivery in seven low- and middle-income countries: findings from the A-PLUS trial.

Objectives: Antibiotic use is increasing in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC); however, few studies have examined the rates of use in a population. The use of antibiotics for liveborn infants in LMIC was examined.

Design: The study, a planned prospective, observational secondary analysis of the A-PLUS randomised controlled trial of azithromycin, was conducted in Global Network sites in seven countries: Bangladesh, Pakistan, India (two sites), Kenya, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guatemala.

Ecuador Towards Zero Leprosy: A Twenty-Three-Year Retrospective Epidemiologic and Spatiotemporal Analysis of Leprosy in Ecuador.

Ecuador has gone through a significant reduction in new cases from 2000 (106) to 2023 (12), suggesting a trend towards zero leprosy. An ecological spatiotemporal study design was used to describe the epidemiological distribution of the disease in the country during 2000-2023. Leprosy cases registered by the surveillance system of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Public Health were the data utilized for the study.

Empowering Communities through Citizen Science: Dengue Prevention in Córdoba.

Traditional mosquito vector control methods have proved ineffective in controlling the spread of dengue fever. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of community engagement through student-led science in promoting dengue prevention and socioecological factors in the temperate urban city of Córdoba, Argentina. It assesses community perceptions, knowledge, attitudes, and preventive practices regarding dengue fever and its vector.

Coral Community Composition Linked to Hypoxia Exposure.

Tropical reef ecosystems are strongly influenced by the composition of coral species, but the factors influencing coral diversity and distributions are not fully understood. Here we demonstrate that large variations in the relative abundance of three major coral species across adjacent Caribbean reef sites are strongly related to their different low O tolerances. In laboratory experiments designed to mimic reef conditions, the cumulative effect of repeated nightly low O drove coral bleaching and mortality, with limited modulation by temperature.

The evolution of thermal performance curves in fungi farmed by attine ant mutualists in above-ground or below-ground microclimates.

Fungi are abundant and ecologically important at a global scale, but little is known about whether their thermal adaptations are shaped by biochemical constraints (i.e., the hotter is better model) or evolutionary tradeoffs (i.

Intention to Purchase Foods Based on Insects, Arachnids, and Arthropods, Processed by 3D Printing in Panama Consumers.

Currently, food access has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, various alternatives are required to improve the population's diet. Among the many alternatives is the use of 3D printing technology to reproduce food that can reach the most vulnerable population.

Epigenetic Diversity and the Evolutionary Potential of Wild Populations.

Fast-paced selective pressures imposed by climate change and anthropogenic activities call for adaptive evolutionary responses to emerge at ecological timescales. However, the evolution and heritability of genomic variation underlie mechanistic constraints, which dictate a slower pace of adaptation exclusively relying on standing genetic variation and novel mutations. Environmentally responsive epigenetic mechanisms can allow acclimatisation and adaptive phenotypes to arise faster than DNA sequence-based mechanisms alone.

Reach and effectiveness of a HEARTS hypertension pilot project in Guatemala.

The World Health Organization Global Hearts initiative (HEARTS) and technical package aim to improve the primary health care management of hypertension and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease at the population level. This study describes the first HEARTS implementation pilot project in Guatemala's Ministry of Health (MOH) primary health care system. This pilot began in April 2022 in six primary health care facilities in three rural indigenous municipalities.

Surgical training trends in the Americas: A cross-continental assessment of minimally invasive surgery and open surgery among surgical trainees.

Introduction: Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become standard of care in many high-income countries, but its adoption in low- and middle-income countries (LICs/MICs) has been impeded by resource- and training-related barriers. We hypothesized that trainees in MICs perform MIS procedures less often, and that as procedure complexity increases, the rate of MIS decreases.

Methods: A 22-question survey, distributed to representative leaders across Latin America, collected country-specific graduating trainee case requirements and volumes for four index procedures (cholecystectomy, appendectomy, inguinal hernia repair, colectomy) using MIS or open surgery (OS).

Long term T cell response and safety of a tetravalent dengue vaccine in healthy children.

As robust cellular responses are important for protection against dengue, this phase 2 study evaluated the kinetics and phenotype of T cell responses induced by TAK-003, a live-attenuated tetravalent dengue vaccine, in 4-16-year-old living in dengue-endemic countries (NCT02948829). Two hundred participants received TAK-003 on Days 1 and 90. Interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) enzyme-linked immunospot assay [ELISPOT] and intracellular cytokine staining were used to analyze T cell response and functionality, using peptide pools representing non-structural (NS) proteins NS3 and NS5 matching DENV-1, -2, -3, and -4 and DENV-2 NS1.

Evaluating the World Health Organization's HEARTS Model for Hypertension and Diabetes Management: A Pilot Implementation Study in Guatemala.

Background: The World Health Organization HEARTS Technical Package is a widely implemented global initiative to improve the primary care management of cardiovascular disease risk factors. The study's objective is to report outcomes from a pilot implementation trial of integrated hypertension and diabetes management based on the HEARTS model in Guatemala.

Methods: We conducted a single-arm pilot implementation trial over 6 months from October 2023 to May 2024 in 11 Guatemalan Ministry of Health primary care facilities in two districts.

Wood nutrients: Underexplored traits with functional and biogeochemical consequences.

Resource storage is a critical component of plant life history. While the storage of nonstructural carbohydrates in wood has been studied extensively, the multiple functions of mineral nutrient storage have received much less attention. Here, we highlight the size of wood nutrient pools, a primary determinant of whole-plant nutrient use efficiency, and a substantial fraction of ecosystem nutrient budgets, particularly tropical forests.

Simple and Accurate Representation of Cumulative Nighttime Leaf Respiratory CO Efflux.

Leaf respiratory carbon loss decreases independent of temperature as the night progresses. Detailed nighttime measurements needed to quantify cumulative respiratory carbon loss at night are challenging under both lab and field conditions. We provide a simple yet accurate approach to represent variation in nighttime temperature-independent leaf respiratory CO efflux in environments with both stable and fluctuating temperatures, which requires no detailed measurements throughout the night.

A high species diversity of (Basidiomycota, Hymenochaetales) in Central and South America, revealed after morphological and molecular analysis.

A study of corticioid fungi collections from Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador has resulted in the identification of 26 morphospecies of . These distinctions were made based on characters such as basidiospore size and shape, cystidia morphology, basidioma texture, and hymenial surface configuration. Sequences of rDNA ITS were obtained for 12 of these species, and their relationships to previously known taxa were illustrated using Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood reconstructions of the phylogeny.