264 results match your criteria: "University of Turku Turku[Affiliation]"

Plants host microorganisms that can facilitate their success in becoming invasive. Established plant invasions might thus provide useful insights into potential changes in plant-associated microbiomes over the course of the invasion process. Here, we investigated the endophytic bacterial communities of the invasive herbaceous legume , which is able to form mutualistic associations with N-fixing bacteria.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

New taxonomic and faunistic data on the agelenid spiders of Turkiye and the Caucasus are provided. Five species are described as new to science: (♂♀; Turkiye: Antalya), (♂♀; Turkiye: Antalya), (♂; Turkiye: Antalya), (♂♀; Georgia: Imereti), and (♂♀; Armenia: Kotayk). Dimitrov, 2020, is proposed as a new junior synonym of Brignoli, 1978.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To assess the role of ultrasensitive PSA values (usPSA) after radical prostatectomy in predicting the subsequent biochemical recurrence (BCR).

Material And Methods: The study included 1836 patients who underwent open or robot-assisted RP at Turku University Hospital between 2003 and 2018. Exclusion criteria involved patients with adjuvant treatments and those who did not reach a PSA nadir <0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The epigenome is the suite of interacting chemical marks and molecules that helps to shape patterns of development, phenotypic plasticity and gene regulation, in part due to its responsiveness to environmental stimuli. There is increasing interest in understanding the functional and evolutionary importance of this sensitivity under ecologically realistic conditions. Observations that epigenetic variation abounds in natural populations have prompted speculation that it may facilitate evolutionary responses to rapid environmental perturbations, such as those occurring under climate change.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Open science (OS) awareness and skills are increasingly becoming an essential part of everyday scientific work as e.g., many journals require authors to share data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Dysphagia is commonly evaluated using videofluoroscopy (VFS). As its ratings are usually subjective normal-abnormal ratings, objective measurements have been developed. We compared the inter-rater reliability of the usual VFS ratings to the objective measurement VFS ratings and evaluated their clinical relevance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The deliberate release of captive-bred individuals, the accidental escape of domesticated strains, or the invasion of closely related conspecifics into wild populations can all lead to introgressive hybridization, which poses a challenge for conservation and wildlife management. Rates of introgression and the magnitude of associated demographic impacts vary widely across ecological contexts. However, the reasons for this variation remain poorly understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Families with an infant in need of intensive care most often experience a harmful separation after birth. This is due to a division of medical specialties into neonatal care and maternal care. Therefore, a couplet care intervention is implemented for mother-infant dyads in a neonatal intensive care unit.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ongoing climatic shifts and increasing anthropogenic pressures demand an efficient delineation of conservation units and accurate predictions of populations' resilience and adaptive potential. Molecular tools involving DNA sequencing are nowadays routinely used for these purposes. Yet, most of the existing tools focusing on sequence-level information have shortcomings in detecting signals of short-term ecological relevance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Identifying hybridization between common pathogen vectors is essential due to the major public health implications through risks associated with hybrid's enhanced pathogen transmission potential. The hard-ticks and are the two most common vectors of tick-borne pathogens that affect human and animal health in Europe. is a known native species in Finland with a well-known distribution, whereas has expanded in range and abundance over the past 60 years, and currently it appears the most common tick species in certain areas in Finland.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

For many aquatic and semiaquatic mammal, amphibian and fish species, environmental DNA (eDNA) methods are employed to detect species distribution and to monitor their presence, but eDNA is much less employed for avian species. Here, we developed primers for the detection of true geese and swan species using eDNA and optimised a PCR protocol for eDNA. We selected taiga bean goose () as our focal (sub)species and sampled water from lakes, from which the presence of taiga bean goose was visually confirmed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In pre-clinical models of brain gliomas, Relaxation Along a Fictitious Field in second rotating frame (TRAFF2), continues wave T1rho (T1ρcw), adiabatic T1rho (T1ρadiab), and adiabatic T2rho (T2ρadiab) relaxation time mappings have demonstrated potential to non-invasively characterize brain gliomas. Our aim was to evaluate the feasibility and potential of 4 different spin lock methods at 3T to characterize primary brain glioma. 22 patients (26-72 years) with suspected primary glioma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Aims: Cooperation between practicing community pharmacists (PPs) and primary care physicians has traditionally been limited, with scarce communication on therapeutic issues. The aim of this study was to assess how PPs communicate in writing with physicians regarding (1) the clinically relevant problems they have identified in patients' medications and (2) recommendations to solve the problems to identify development needs in the communication process.

Methods: This retrospective validation study assessed medication reviews conducted by PPs in collaboration with home care nurses, practice nurses, and physicians for 46 older (≥65 years) home care clients in the Municipality of Lohja, Finland.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Agricultural intensification and climate change are serious threats toward animal populations worldwide. Agricultural intensification reduces the heterogeneity of agricultural habitats by diminishing crop variation and destroying microhabitats, such as small woody features, whereas the effects of climate change range from the growing frequency of weather extremes to disrupted prey-predator dynamics. We collected long-term ringing data from a population of Eurasian kestrels () located amidst agricultural areas in western Finland during 1985-2021, which we combined with density indices of their main prey species (voles), spatial data consisting of land cover classification of kestrel territories, and weather data, to study the effects of different environmental drivers on breeding density and success.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Wetland habitats are changing under multiple anthropogenic pressures. Nutrient leakage and pollution modify physico-chemical state of wetlands and affect the ecosystem through bottom-up processes, while alien predators affect the ecosystems in a top-down manner. Boreal wetlands are important breeding areas for several waterbird species, the abundances of which potentially reflect both bottom-up and top-down ecosystem processes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) spacecraft have been sampling the subsolar magnetosheath since the first dayside science phase in 2008, and we finally have observations over a solar cycle. However, we show that the solar wind coverage during these magnetosheath intervals is not always consistent with the solar wind conditions throughout the same year. This has implications for studying phenomena whose occurrence depends strongly on solar wind parameters.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Plant invasions can have major impacts on ecosystems, both above- and belowground. In particular, invasions by legumes, which often host nitrogen-fixing symbionts (rhizobia), are known to modify soil bacterial communities. Here, we examined the effect of the invasive herbaceous legume on the alpha diversity and community composition of soil bacteria.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Polyphagous insect herbivores feed on multiple host-plant species and face a highly variable chemical landscape. Comparative studies of polyphagous herbivore metabolism across a range of plants is an ideal approach for exploring how intra- and interspecific chemical variation shapes species interactions. We used polyphagous caterpillars of (Erebidae, Lepidoptera) to explore mechanisms that may contribute to its ability to feed on various hosts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A new species of Ausserer, 1871 (Araneae, Theraphosidae) from Iran.

Zookeys

August 2023

6365 Willowpark Way, Sooke, British Columbia, Canada Unaffiliated Sooke Canada.

New data on the tarantula genus Ausserer, 1871 are provided. A new species, , is described based on a single female specimen collected in northwestern Iran, which represents the easternmost record of the genus within its entire known range. Additionally, the correct publication date of C.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Colour polymorphism can be maintained by colour morph-specific benefits across environmental conditions. Currently, the amount and the duration of snow cover during winter decrease especially in northern latitudes, which can alter the potential for camouflage of animals with light and dark morphs. Tawny owls, , are colour-polymorphic avian predators with dark (brown) and light (grey) colour morphs, where the grey morph is presumed to enjoy camouflage benefits under snowy conditions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

During the Quaternary, Chaco Phytogeographic Domain (Chaco) flora in subtropical South America experienced temperature and humidity fluctuations, primarily driven by wind dynamics, leading to significant shifts in species distribution. The palm is endemic to the Chaco and thrives in areas characterized by a warm-rainy climate and mostly restricted to sandy soils. To investigate the current geographic distribution of suitable habitat for while assessing the significance of soil variables, we employed two distinct algorithms in species distribution modeling (SDM).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Offspring phenotype at birth is determined by its genotype and the prenatal environment including exposure to maternal hormones. Variation in both maternal glucocorticoids and thyroid hormones can affect offspring phenotype, but the underlying molecular mechanisms, especially those contributing to long-lasting effects, remain unclear. Epigenetic changes (such as DNA methylation) have been postulated as mediators of long-lasting effects of early-life environment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fluctuating light intensity challenges fluent photosynthetic electron transport in plants, inducing photoprotection while diminishing carbon assimilation and growth, and also influencing photosynthetic signaling for regulation of gene expression. Here, we employed in vivo chlorophyll- fluorescence and P700 difference absorption measurements to demonstrate the enhancement of photoprotective energy dissipation of both photosystems in wild-type after 6 h exposure to fluctuating light as compared with constant light conditions. This acclimation response to fluctuating light was hampered in a triple mutant lacking the thylakoid ion transport proteins KEA3, VCCN1, and CLCe, leading to photoinhibition of photosystem I.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Eltonian niche of a species is defined as its set of interactions with other taxa. How this set varies with biotic, abiotic and human influences is a core question of modern ecology. In seasonal environments, the realized Eltonian niche is likely to vary due to periodic changes in the occurrence and abundance of interaction partners and changes in species behavior and preferences.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF