From anecdotes to evidence: Environmental DNA detection of Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus L.) at the southern limit of its circumpolar range.

The urgency of rapid species monitoring is at an all-time high due to the increasing threat of climate change to global ecosystems, in particular freshwater habitats. Fish such as Arctic charr, Salvelinus alpinus, are particularly vulnerable to increasing water temperatures and changes in land use due to their dependence on cold waters and confinement to lacustrine environments. Nonetheless, current monitoring practices, relying on physical capture of organisms, are hindered by resource constraints, desire to manage habitats for recreational fishing, and restricted access to sites.

Preservation and early evolution of scalidophoran ventral nerve cord.

Ecdysozoan worms (Nematoida + Scalidophora) are typified by disparate grades of neural organization reflecting a complex evolutionary history. The fossil record offers a unique opportunity to reconstruct the early character evolution of the nervous system via the exceptional preservation of extinct representatives. We focus on their nervous system as it appears in early and mid-Cambrian fossils.

Contrasting distributions and expression characteristics of transcribing repeats in Setaria viridis.

Repetitive DNA contributes significantly to plant genome size, adaptation, and evolution. However, little is understood about the transcription of repeats. This is addressed here in the plant green foxtail millet (Setaria viridis).

Tropical forest clearance impacts biodiversity and function, whereas logging changes structure.

The impacts of degradation and deforestation on tropical forests are poorly understood, particularly at landscape scales. We present an extensive ecosystem analysis of the impacts of logging and conversion of tropical forest to oil palm from a large-scale study in Borneo, synthesizing responses from 82 variables categorized into four ecological levels spanning a broad suite of ecosystem properties: (i) structure and environment, (ii) species traits, (iii) biodiversity, and (iv) ecosystem functions. Responses were highly heterogeneous and often complex and nonlinear.

Different impacts of oil-based and bio-based microplastics on isotopic composition and stoichiometry of a model freshwater grazer.

Microplastic pollution has become a pervasive environmental challenge due to their global distribution and putatively harmful effects on organisms at different ecotoxicological endpoints. However, in some cases, the effects of microplastics are similar to, or even less harmful than those of naturally occurring particles. Bioplastics, developed as a more sustainable alternative to traditional plastics, still have unclear effects compared with oil-based microplastics.

Aquatic-terrestrial linkages drive contrasting biodiversity patterns in tropical and temperate forests.

Riparian ecosystems harbour unique biodiversity because of their close interconnections with adjacent aquatic ecosystems. Yet, how aquatic ecosystems influence terrestrial biodiversity over different spatial scales is poorly understood, particularly in the tropics. We conducted field campaigns to collect 235 terrestrial invertebrate assemblages along 150 m transects from 47 streams in both Brazil and the UK, compiling one of the largest known datasets of riparian invertebrate community composition at multiple spatial scales.

A giant specimen of and comments on the ontogeny of rhamphorhynchines.

is one of the best-known pterosaurs, with well over 100 specimens being held in public collections. Most of these represent juvenile animals, and the adults known are typically around 1 m in wingspan. Here we describe a near complete skeleton, preserved partially in 3D, of an animal with a wingspan of around 1.

Advancements in understanding the role and mechanism of sirtuin family (SIRT1-7) in breast cancer management.

Breast cancer (BC) is the most prevalent type of cancer in women worldwide and it is classified into a few distinct molecular subtypes based on the expression of growth factor and hormone receptors. Though significant progress has been achieved in the search for novel medications through traditional and advanced approaches, still we need more efficacious and reliable treatment options to treat different types and stages of BC. Sirtuins (SIRT1-7) a class III histone deacetylase play a major role in combating various cancers including BC.

Theory of morphodynamic information processing: Linking sensing to behaviour.

The traditional understanding of brain function has predominantly focused on chemical and electrical processes. However, new research in fruit fly (Drosophila) binocular vision reveals ultrafast photomechanical photoreceptor movements significantly enhance information processing, thereby impacting a fly's perception of its environment and behaviour. The coding advantages resulting from these mechanical processes suggest that similar physical motion-based coding strategies may affect neural communication ubiquitously.

Introducing a global database of entomopathogenic fungi and their host associations.

Pathogens significantly influence natural and agricultural ecosystems, playing a crucial role in the regulation of species populations and maintaining biodiversity. Entomopathogenic fungi (EF), particularly within the Hypocreales order, exemplify understudied pathogens that infect insects and other arthropods globally. Despite their ecological importance, comprehensive data on EF host specificity and geographical distribution are lacking.

Genome size influences plant growth and biodiversity responses to nutrient fertilization in diverse grassland communities.

Experiments comparing diploids with polyploids and in single grassland sites show that nitrogen and/or phosphorus availability influences plant growth and community composition dependent on genome size; specifically, plants with larger genomes grow faster under nutrient enrichments relative to those with smaller genomes. However, it is unknown if these effects are specific to particular site localities with speciifc plant assemblages, climates, and historical contingencies. To determine the generality of genome size-dependent growth responses to nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization, we combined genome size and species abundance data from 27 coordinated grassland nutrient addition experiments in the Nutrient Network that occur in the Northern Hemisphere across a range of climates and grassland communities.

Latent mechanisms of language disorganization relate to specific dimensions of psychopathology.

Comprehensible communication is critical for social functioning and well-being. In psychopathology, incoherent discourse is assumed to reflect disorganized thinking, which is classically linked to psychotic disorders. However, people do not express everything that comes to mind, rendering inferences from discourse to the underlying structure of thought challenging.

Proteome-wide forced interactions reveal a functional map of cell-cycle phospho-regulation in .

Dynamic protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation play an essential role in cell cycle progression. Kinases and phosphatases are generally highly conserved across eukaryotes, underlining their importance for post-translational regulation of substrate proteins. In recent years, advances in phospho-proteomics have shed light on protein phosphorylation dynamics throughout the cell cycle, and ongoing progress in bioinformatics has significantly improved annotation of specific phosphorylation events to a given kinase.

Bumblebee social learning outcomes correlate with their flower-facing behaviour.

Previous studies suggest that social learning in bumblebees can occur through second-order conditioning, with conspecifics functioning as first-order reinforcers. However, the behavioural mechanisms underlying bumblebees' acquisition of socially learned associations remain largely unexplored. Investigating these mechanisms requires detailed quantification and analysis of the observation process.

Spatial and directional tuning of serial dependence for tracking eye movements.

An attractive influence of past sensory experience on current behavior has been observed in many domains ranging from perceptual decisions to motor responses. However, it is unclear what sort of information is integrated across trials, especially for oculomotor behavior. Here we provide a detailed investigation of the spatial and directional tuning of serial dependence for oculomotor tracking.

Reconstructing the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes.

Understanding the origin of eukaryotic cells is one of the most difficult problems in all of biology. A key challenge relevant to the question of eukaryogenesis is reconstructing the gene repertoire of the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). As data sets grow, sketching an accurate genomics-informed picture of early eukaryotic cellular complexity requires provision of analytical resources and a commitment to data sharing.

Bayesian Selection of Relaxed-clock Models: Distinguishing Between Independent and Autocorrelated Rates.

In Bayesian molecular-clock dating of species divergences, rate models are used to construct the prior on the molecular evolutionary rates for branches in the phylogeny, with independent and autocorrelated rate models being commonly used. The two classes of models, however, can result in markedly different divergence time estimates for the same dataset, and thus selecting the best rate model appears important for obtaining reliable in- ferences of divergence times. However, the properties of Bayesian rate model selection are not well understood, in particular when the number of sequence partitions analysed increases and when age calibrations (such as fossil calibrations) are misspecified.

War Exposure and DNA Methylation in Syrian Refugee Children and Adolescents.

Importance: Exposure to war is associated with poor mental health outcomes. Adverse and traumatic experiences can lead to long-lasting DNA methylation changes, potentially mediating the link between adversity and mental health. To date, limited studies have investigated the impact of war on DNA methylation in children or adolescents, hampering our understanding of the biological impact of war exposure.

Optimal metacognitive decision strategies in signal detection theory.

Signal detection theory (SDT) has long provided the field of psychology with a simple but powerful model of how observers make decisions under uncertainty. SDT can distinguish sensitivity from response bias and characterize optimal decision strategies. Whereas classical SDT pertains to "type 1" judgments about the world, recent work has extended SDT to quantify sensitivity for metacognitive or "type 2" judgments about one's own type 1 processing, e.

The information exchange between working memory and long-term memory.

A fundamental question in memory research has long been the interplay between briefly maintaining information in working memory (WM) and its enduring retention in long-term memory (LTM). Much of the research has explored how WM processes influence the formation of LTM and, in turn, how stored LTM can either support or disrupt WM performance. This Special Issue of Memory & Cognition brings together cutting-edge research that delves into this relationship, showcasing studies that reveal the latest advances in the field.

Structure and evolution of Photosystem I in the early-branching cyanobacterium .

Thylakoid-free cyanobacteria are thought to preserve ancestral traits of early-evolving organisms capable of oxygenic photosynthesis. However, and until recently, photosynthesis studies in thylakoid-free cyanobacteria were only possible in the model strain . Here, we report the isolation, biochemical characterization, cryo-EM structure, and phylogenetic analysis of photosystem I from a newly-discovered thylakoid-free cyanobacterium, , a distant relative of the genus .