The Science of Nature最新文献

{"title":"A novel approach using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and chemometric analysis to distinguish male and female human hair samples","authors":"Sukriti Thakur,&nbsp;Akanksha Sharma,&nbsp;Rafał Cieśla,&nbsp;Pawan Kumar Mishra,&nbsp;Vishal Sharma","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01896-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01896-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article presents an attempt to discriminate between human male and female hair samples using a single strand of scalp hair. The methodology involves the non-destructive application of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy coupled with chemometric analysis. A total of 96 hair samples, evenly distributed between 48 male and 48 female volunteers from India, were collected. Spectral analysis revealed subtle differences between the two groups, and reliance on visual interpretation might introduce biasness. To avoid subjective biases, chemometric techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were employed for enhanced data visualization and separation. PCA results revealed that the first 10 principal components accounted for 93% of the total variance, with three significant PCs. The PLS-DA model demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity and specificity in sex discrimination from hair samples, establishing its efficacy as a robust classification tool. Furthermore, the proposed model exhibited 100% accuracy in predicting unknown samples, underscoring its potential applicability in real-world scenarios. These outcomes affirm the viability of our approach for non-invasive classification of human male and female hair based on single-strand scalp hair analysis.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139717286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"New insights into endolithic palaeocommunity development in mobile hard substrate using CT imaging of bioeroded clasts from the Pliocene (Almería, SE Spain)","authors":"Weronika Łaska,&nbsp;Francisco J. Rodríguez-Tovar,&nbsp;Alfred Uchman","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01892-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01892-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Bioeroded carbonate clasts from a Pliocene shallow-marine succession of Almería (SE Spain, Betic Cordillera) were analysed with computed tomography (CT). This revealed the detailed 3D architecture of bioerosion structures hidden within and allowed for their ichnotaxonomic identification (14 ichnospecies of 5 ichnogenera) and quantification. Borings are produced by worms, mostly polychaetes and sipunculids dominated, followed by bivalves and lastly by sponges. The crosscutting relationship between the borings and their preservation characteristics points to a complex colonization history of the clasts with repeated bioerosive episodes interrupted by physical disturbances, including overturning and abrasion of the clasts followed by their recolonization. Our findings facilitated paleoenvironmental interpretation and can be compared to analogous modern-day ecological succession. The sharp dominance of worm borings — early successional species — may be related to frequent, periodic, physical disturbance that possibly prevented the cobble-dwelling macroboring community from being overtaken by sponges — late successional taxa. CT, hand sample and petrographic observations detected, aside from borings, other irregularly shaped pores which are interpreted to be generated by diagenetic processes including dolomitization, silicification and dissolution, representing an intraparticle moldic and moldic enlarged porosity. Boring porosity crosscutting the diagenetically altered grains suggests the later occurrence of bioerosion processes. Irregular shapes ranging from roughly spherical, elongate sub-polyhedral to amoeboid resemble morphologies produced by modern sponges. Moldic pores possibly acted as primary domiciles for boring sponges, which infested, altered and enlarged pre-existing pores as they grew (as happens in the modern), providing an example of how biological and non-biological processes interacted and together influenced endolithic palaeocommunity development.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139701563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Influences of sociality and maternal size on reproductive strategies: trade-offs between offspring size and quantity in five Anelosimus species (Araneae, Theridiidae)","authors":"Gabriel M. Xavier,&nbsp;Rafael R. Moura,&nbsp;João Vasconcellos-Neto,&nbsp;Marcelo O. Gonzaga","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01895-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01895-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Individuals can experience accentuated disputes for resources when living with many conspecifics, even in situations in which cooperative behaviors assure benefits associated with an increase in the frequency of food acquisition and in diet breadth. Thus, intraspecific competition may exert a significant selective pressure on social animals. Theoretical models suggest that females of social species could improve their fitness by producing relatively large offspring, since body size can provide competitive advantages during foraging activities. As female reserves are limited, the production of large offspring would occur at the expense of their number. Using five <i>Anelosimus</i> (Araneae, Theridiidae) species, we assessed whether the social ones produce fewer and larger eggs than the subsocials. In addition, we tested the effect of female size on the adoption of each particular reproductive strategy. Small females could hypothetically invest in producing large offspring since they cannot produce as many offspring as large females. Our results suggested that, indeed, sociality influences reproductive strategies. Females of social species produced fewer and larger offspring than females of subsocial species. Subsociality, in turn, would benefit the production of many small spiderlings, possibly because a large number of siblings is important to maintain and expand new webs and to subdue prey during their initial instars. Our results also indicated that large females produce more eggs without necessarily reduce their sizes. We discussed how the costs and benefits of group living may influence reproductive strategies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139690938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"UV-induced feather color change reflects its porphyrin content","authors":"Masaru Hasegawa,&nbsp;Emi Arai,&nbsp;Shosuke Ito,&nbsp;Kazumasa Wakamatsu","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01890-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01890-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Pigmentary coloration is widespread in animals. Its evolutionary and ecological features are often attributed to the property of predominant pigments; therefore, most research has focused on predominant pigments such as carotenoids in carotenoid-based coloration. However, coloration results from predominant pigments and many other minority pigments, and the importance of the latter is overlooked. Here, we focused on porphyrin, an “uncommon” pigment found in bird feathers, and investigated its importance in the context of feather color changes in the barn swallow <i>Hirundo rustica</i>. We found that the “pheomelanin-based coloration” of the barn swallow faded after the irradiation of UV light, and this effect was particularly strong in the feathers of young swallows (nestlings and fledglings, here). We also found that it is not the predominant pigment, pheomelanin, but protoporphyrin IX pigment that showed the same pattern of depigmentation after the irradiation of UV light, particularly in the feathers of young swallows. In fact, the abovementioned age-dependent feather color change was statistically explained by the amount of porphyrin in the feathers. The current study demonstrates that a minority pigment, porphyrin, explains within-season dynamic color change, an ecological feature of feather coloration. The porphyrin-mediated rapid color change would benefit young birds, in which feather coloration affects the parental food allocation during a few weeks before independence, but not later. Future studies should not ignore these minor but essential pigments and their evolutionary and ecological functions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139650018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"One elephant may sustain 2 million dung beetles in East African savannas on any given day","authors":"Frank-Thorsten Krell,&nbsp;Sylvia Krell-Westerwalbesloh","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01894-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01894-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In East African savannas, in the rainy season, an elephant dung bolus is usually transformed into a flat mat of dung residue within a few hours. We extracted the coprophilous beetles of a dung mat from a 1 kg bolus after a one-night exposure and counted 13,699 specimens, most of them aphodiine dung beetles. This is the largest number of dung beetles per kilogram of mammal dung ever counted. Given that an elephant produces an average of 160 kg of feces per day, we extrapolate that one adult elephant provides food for 2.12 million dung beetles on any given day. The elephant population in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem in central Kenya, an elephant-rich environment, can sustain, by sheer extrapolation, 14.3 billion dung beetles in an area of 55,000 km², which translates to ca. 260,000 dung beetles/km². The decline or extinction of elephants, at least in East African grasslands, may have a massive cascade effect on the populations of coprophagous beetles and the biota dependent on or gaining an advantage from them.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139641404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Competition through ritualized aggressive interactions between sympatric colonies in solitary foraging neotropical ants","authors":"Maria Eduarda Lima Vieira,&nbsp;Serafino Teseo,&nbsp;Dina Lillia Oliveira Azevedo,&nbsp;Nicolas Châline,&nbsp;Arrilton Araújo","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01891-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01891-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Understanding the structure of food competition between conspecifics in their natural settings is paramount to addressing more complex questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation. While much research on ants focuses on aggressive food competition between large and foraging trail-using societies, we lack a thorough understanding of inter-colony competition in socially less derived, solitarily foraging species. To fill this gap, we explored the activity of ten neighbouring colonies of the giant ant <i>Dinoponera quadriceps</i>, monitoring 2513 foraging trips of hundreds of workers and all its inter-individual interactions<i>.</i> We found that, on encountering, workers from different colonies rarely engaged in aggressive fights but instead avoided each other or performed ritualised agonistic bouts. We discovered that during foraging trips, a few workers within each colony repeatedly rubbed their gaster on the substrate, a behaviour not observed in the field before. We propose that workers use this behaviour to mark the foraging area and mark more frequently in its periphery. Only 25% of the individuals specialised in this behaviour, and we hypothesise that the specialisation results from the history of interactions and experience of individual foragers. Our study suggests that workers of contiguous <i>D. quadriceps</i> colonies engage in low-risk conflict, mainly displaying ritualised behaviours. As these small societies mainly rely on tiny, unpredictably scattered, albeit abundant in the environment, arthropod prey, and not on persistent food sources, they do not aggressively defend exclusive foraging territories. On the other hand, colonies rely on large overlapping foraging areas to sustain their survival and growth, most often tolerating foragers from nearby colonies. We discuss whether this type of competitive interaction is expected in all solitary foraging species.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139574774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Harlequin frog tadpoles—comparative buccopharyngeal morphology in the gastromyzophorous tadpoles of the genus Atelopus (Amphibia, Anura, Bufonidae), with discussion on the phylogenetic and evolutionary implication of characters","authors":"Pedro Henrique dos Santos Dias,&nbsp;Marvin Anganoy-Criollo","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01889-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01889-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Neotropical genus <i>Atelopus</i> is the most diverse genus of bufonids comprising 99 species. Tadpoles of these frogs are readily distinguished based on the presence of a belly sucker, used by them to stay attached to rocks in fast-flowing streams. Despite their intriguing biology, information about their anatomy is scarce and many morphological systems are unknown. We describe the buccopharyngeal cavity of five <i>Atelopus</i> species. The <i>Atelopus</i> buccopharyngeal cavity is characterized by (1) presence of a pendulum-like papillae in the prenarial arena, (2) presence of a glandular zone in the prenarial arena, (3) narial vacuities, (4) conical median ridge, (5) absence of buccal roof arena papillae, (6) absence of buccal roof pustulations, (7) single pair of infralabial papillae, (8) absence of lingual papillae, and (9) absence of pustulations in the buccal floor. We propose that characters 1, 2, and 3 are new synapomorphies for the genus. We also propose that the presence of a single pair of infralabial papillae is a synapomorphy for bufonid. Finally, we discuss the convergent evolution of gastromyzophorous and suctorial tadpoles withing anurans.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10803719/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139511410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Drivers of flower visit and resource sharing between the honeybee and native bees in Neotropical coastal sand dunes","authors":"Carlos Pinilla Cruz,&nbsp;Brenda Ratoni,&nbsp;Fabricio Villalobos,&nbsp;Ricardo Ayala,&nbsp;Ismael Hinojoza-Díaz,&nbsp;Wesley Dáttilo","doi":"10.1007/s00114-024-01888-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-024-01888-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The honeybee (<i>Apis mellifera</i>) is one of the most important pollinator species because it can gather resources from a vast variety of plant species, including both natives and introduced, across its geographical distribution. Although <i>A. mellifera</i> interacts with a large diversity of plants and shares resources with other pollinators, there are some plant species with which it interacts more frequently than others. Here, we evaluated the plant traits (i.e., plant length, abundance of bloomed individuals, number of open flowers, and stamen length) that would affect the honeybee visit frequencies to the flowers in a coastal environment in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, we evaluated which native bee species (and their body size) overlap floral resource with <i>A. mellifera</i>. We registered 998 plant-bee interactions between 35 plant species and 47 bee species. We observed that plant species with low height and with high abundances of bloomed individuals are positively related to a high frequency of visits by <i>A. mellifera</i>. Moreover, we found that <i>A. mellifera</i> tends to share a higher number of plant species with other bee species with a similar or smaller body size than with bigger species, which makes them a competitor for the resource with honeybees. Our results highlight that the impacts of <i>A. mellifera</i> on plants and native bees could be anticipated based on its individual’s characteristics (i.e., plant height and abundance of bloomed individuals) and body size, respectively.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.954,"publicationDate":"2024-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139465760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Subterranean termites raise the alarm when their anti-fungal weapon falters","authors":"Bhawana Luitel,&nbsp;Ajijola J. Johnson,&nbsp;Mark S. Bulmer","doi":"10.1007/s00114-023-01887-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-023-01887-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Termicin is an anti-fungal defensin that is disseminated from termite salivary glands. The peptide appears to be critical for the elimination with mutual grooming (allogrooming) of pathogenic spores (conidia) that have attached to the insect cuticle. There has been a recent selective sweep for an advantageous variant of this peptide in the subterranean termite <i>Reticulitermes flavipes</i>. We tested the anti-mycotic activity of a recombinant termicin corresponding with this variant against the conidia of different <i>Metarhizium</i> fungal isolates from soil close to foraging <i>R. flavipes</i> workers. Termicin was most effective against isolates that had previously been shown to elicit a relatively weak alarm response, as indicated by brief bouts of rapid longitudinal oscillatory movement (LOM). These isolates that elicited weak alarm were also the deadliest apparently because the survival of termites exposed to the fungus depends on a strong social immune response (LOMs and allogrooming). The selective pressure for a single termicin variant may have been driven by the most dangerous isolates that elicit a weak behavioral response. The correlation between termicin anti-fungal activity and LOM suggests that pathogen-associated molecular patterns that affect termite recognition of conidial contamination and the onset of elevated allogrooming also affect the vulnerability of conidia to the disruption of their cell membranes by termicin.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.954,"publicationDate":"2023-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139039328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Branched tyramides from males of the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius","authors":"Tappey H. Jones,&nbsp;Satya P. Chinta,&nbsp;Robert K. Vander Meer,&nbsp;Kaitie C. Cartwright","doi":"10.1007/s00114-023-01885-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00114-023-01885-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Tyramides are produced in microgram quantities by males of species in the large Myrmicine ant sub-family (&gt; 7000 species). Tyramides are transferred to female sexuals during mating where a specific female sexual evolved enzyme hydrolyzes the tyramides to the biogenic amine, tyramine. Tyramine is a ligand for receptors that rapidly activate reproductive development in the newly mated queen—previously reproductively inhibited by the mother queen. Without this elaborate biogenic amine precursor and co-evolved female sexual derived tyramide hydrolase, the defenseless newly mated queen’s worker production would be delayed by up to 6 days, which could be lethal to the new queen. This is one of possibly several ant species separation mechanisms evolved to maintain species integrity. Here we report two methyl-branched tyramides from harvester ant, <i>Pogonomyrmex badius,</i> males, including one highly branched tyramide not previously reported.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":794,"journal":{"name":"The Science of Nature","volume":"110 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.954,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00114-023-01885-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138497468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}