Extreme Environmental Changes Research Articles

Accounting for photosystem I photoinhibition sheds new light on seasonal acclimation strategies of boreal conifers.

The photosynthetic acclimation of boreal evergreen conifers is controlled by regulatory and photoprotective mechanisms that allow conifers to cope with extreme environmental changes. However, the underlying dynamics of photosystem II (PSII) and photosystem I (PSI) remain unresolved. Here, we investigated the dynamics of PSII and PSI during the spring recovery of photosynthesis in Pinus sylvestris and Picea abies using a combination of chlorophyll-a fluorescence, P700 difference absorbance measurements, and quantification of key thylakoid protein abundances. In particular, we derived a new set of PSI quantum yield equations, correcting for the effects of PSI photoinhibition. Using the corrected equations, we found that the seasonal dynamics of PSII and PSI photochemical yields remained largely in balance, despite substantial seasonal changes in the stoichiometry of PSII and PSI core complexes driven by PSI photoinhibition. Similarly, the previously reported seasonal upregulation of cyclic electron flow was no longer evident, after accounting for PSI photoinhibition. Overall, our results emphasize the importance of considering the dynamics of PSII and PSI to elucidate the seasonal acclimation of photosynthesis in overwintering evergreens. Beyond the scope of conifers, our corrected PSI quantum yields expand the toolkit for future studies aimed at elucidating the dynamic regulation of PSI.

Under pressure: Assessing the ecological boundaries of the epipelagic goose barnacle Lepas anatifera using ocean gliders and laboratory experiments

Epipelagic barnacles have been considered good bioindicators since they are abundant and broadly distributed but with apparent tolerance restrictions to temperature and salinity, and also bioaccumulate pollutants. However, Lepas anatifera was found attached to the oceanic gliders, thriving through drastic and unreported environmental fluctuations. This study aimed to assess the resistance and oxidative stress responses of L. anatifera collected from gliders and attached to floating litter to temperature, salinity, and pressure. Barnacles withstood all tested pressure, temperature, and salinity ranges, except the extreme salt concentration. The activities of antioxidant enzymes – catalase and superoxide dismutase – were significantly increased under high temperature, high pressure, and low salinity. Malondialdehyde levels significantly increased only under high pressure. In conclusion, L. anatifera can be considered resistant organisms to extreme environmental changes. However, the instauration of oxidative stress under certain circumstances makes them vulnerable to predicted future trends in marine environments.

Increased coral biomineralization due to enhanced symbiotic activity upon volcanic ash exposure

Coral reefs, which are among the most productive ecosystems on earth, are in global decline due to rapid climate change. Volcanic activity also results in extreme environmental changes at local to global scales, and may have significant impacts on coral reefs compared to other natural disturbances. During explosive eruptions, large amounts of volcanic ash are generated, significantly disrupting ecosystems close to a volcano, and depositing ash over distal areas (10s - 1000s of km depending on i.a. eruption size and wind direction). Once volcanic ash interacts with seawater, the dissolution of metals leads to a rapid change in the geochemical properties of the seawater column. Here, we report the first known effects of volcanic ash on the physiology and elemental cycling of a symbiotic scleractinian coral under laboratory conditions. Nubbins of the branching coral Stylophora pistillata were reared in aquaria under controlled conditions (insolation, temperature, and pH), while environmental parameters, effective quantum yield, and skeletal growth rate were monitored. Half the aquaria were exposed to volcanic ash every other day for 6 weeks (250 mg L−1 week−1), which induced significant changes in the fluorescence-derived photochemical parameters (ΦPSII, Fv/Fm, NPQ, rETR), directly enhanced the efficiency of symbiont photosynthesis (Pg, Pn), and lead to increased biomineralization rates. Enhancement of symbiont photosynthesis is induced by the supply of essential metals (Fe and Mn), derived from volcanic ash leaching in ambient seawater or within the organism following ingestion. The beneficial role of volcanic ash as an important micronutrient source is supported by the fact that neither photophysiological stress nor signs of lipid peroxidation were detected. Subaerial volcanism affects micronutrient cycling in the coral ecosystem, but the implication for coral ecophysiology on a reef scale remains to be tested. Nevertheless, exposure to volcanic ash can improve coral health and thus influence resilience to external stressors.

Characterisation of Multi Parameter Sensor for Aero Engine

A multi parameter sensor (Pressure and Temperature) has been developed for use in the harsh environment during aero engine testing. The sensor will be subjected to extreme environmental changes from room temperature and pressure to negative temperature and pressure within a small span of time. It is also very difficult to choose a category of micro behaviors to be characterized among the so many associated with its performance. The multi parameter sensor presented in this paper has been characterized for accuracy, linearity, drift, hysteresis, repeatability, offset and time response. The sensor is intended for applications in the developmental aero engine testing. The evaluation of the performance characteristics carried out in this work is chosen with reference to aero engine testing requirements.

Relationship between Racial Diversity in Medical Staff and Hospital Operational Efficiency: An Empirical Study of 3870 U.S. Hospitals.

Demand for foreign nurses and medical staff is rapidly increasing due to the severe labor shortage in U.S. hospitals triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, empirical studies on the effect of the racial diversity of medical staff on hospital operations are still lacking. This research gap is thus investigated based on the foreign medical staff working in 3870 U.S. hospitals. Results show that workforce racial diversity has a significantly positive relationship with hospital operational efficiency regarding occupancy rate, manpower productivity, capacity productivity, and case mix index. Notably, this study empirically supports that increasing the ratio of foreign nurses positively affects the overall operational efficiency of hospitals. In addition, the study results also indicate that the hospital location, size, ownership, and teaching status act as significant control variables for the relationship between racial diversity and hospital efficiency. These results imply that hospitals with these specific operating conditions need to pay more attention to racial diversity in the workplace, as they are structurally more sensitive to the relationship between racial diversity and operational efficiency. In short, the findings of this study suggest that hospital efficiency can be operationally improved by implementing workforce ethnic diversity. For this reason, hospital stakeholders and healthcare policymakers are expected to benefit from this study's findings. Above all, the results of this study imply that if an organization adapts to extreme external environmental changes (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) through appropriate organizational restructuring (i.e., expanding the workforce racial diversity by hiring foreign medical staff), the organization can gain a competitive advantage, a claim that is supported by contingency theory. Further, investors are increasingly interested in ESG, especially companies that embody ethical and socially conscious workplaces, including a diverse and inclusive workforce. Thereby, seeking racial diversity in the workforce is now seen as a fundamental benchmark for organizational behavior that predicts successful ESG business practices, a claim that is supported by stakeholder theory. Therefore, in conclusion, the findings of this study suggest that workforce racial diversity is no longer an optional consideration but should be considered as one of the essential determinants of competitive advantage in organizations, particularly in the healthcare sector.

The resource (in)sufficiency of the Caribbean: analyzing socio-metabolic risks (SMR) of water, energy, and food

IntroductionSocio-metabolic risks (SMRs) are systemic risks associated with the availability of critical resources, the integrity of material circulation, and the distribution of their costs and benefits in a socio-ecological system. For resource-stressed systems like small island nations, understanding trade-offs and synergies between critical resources is not only crucial, but urgent. Climate change is already putting small islands at high risk through more frequent and intense extreme weather events, changing precipitation patterns, and threats of inundation with future sea-level rise.MethodsThis study compares the shifting resource-baseline for 14 Caribbean island nations for the year 2000 and 2017. We analyze water, energy, and food (WEF) and their nexus through the lens of SMRs, using indicators related to their availability, access, consumption, and self-sufficiency.ResultsOur findings point to the decreasing availability of all three resources within the Caribbean region. Meanwhile, between 2000 and 2017, consumption levels have increased by 20% with respect to water (from 230 to 275 m3/cap/yr) and primary energy (from 89 to 110 GJ/cap/yr), and 5% for food (from 2,570 to 2,700 kcal/cap/day). While universal access to these resources increased in the population, food and energy self-sufficiency of the region has declined.DiscussionCurrent patterns of resource-use, combined with maladaptive practices, and climate insensitive development—such as coastal squeeze, centralized energy systems, and trade policies—magnify islands' vulnerability. Disturbances, such as climate-induced extreme events, environmental changes, financial crises, or overexploitation of local resources, could lead to cascading dysfunction and eventual breakdown of the biophysical basis of island systems. This research is a first attempt at operationalizing the concept of SMRs, and offers a deeper understanding of risk-related resource dynamics on small islands, and highlights the urgency for policy response.

Climate resilience and risks of rigidity traps in Iceland's fisheries.

Iceland's fisheries system is well-governed, data-rich, and has adapted to past ecological change. It thus provides an opportunity to identify social-ecological attributes of climate resilience and interactions among them. We elicited barriers and enabling conditions for adaptation in Iceland's fisheries from semi-structured expert interviews, using projections of fish habitat shifts by mid-century to guide discussion. Interviewees highlighted flexible management, highly connected institutions that facilitate learning, ample assets to expand adaptive options, and cultural comfort with change. However, examining how these attributes interact in reinforcing feedback loops revealed potential rigidity traps, where optimization for resilience to stock shifts may render the system more vulnerable to extreme environmental change and social backlash. This study articulates resilience attributes that Iceland and other fisheries systems might prioritize as the climate changes. It further explores circumstances in which these same attributes risk forming traps, and potential pathways to escape them.

The dynamics of Arabidopsis H2A.Z on SMALL AUXIN UP RNAs regulates abscisic acid-auxin signaling crosstalk.

Extreme environmental changes threaten plant survival and worldwide food production. In response to osmotic stresses, plant hormone ABA activates stress responses and restricts plant growth. However, the epigenetic regulation of the ABA signaling and ABA-auxin crosstalk are not well known. Here we report that the histone variant H2A.Z knockdown mutant in Arabidopsis Col-0 ecotype, h2a.z-kd, has altered ABA signaling and stress performances. RNA-sequencing data showed that a majority of stress related genes are activated in h2a.z-kd. In addition, we revealed that ABA directly promotes the deposition of H2A.Z on SMALL AUXIN UP RNAs (SAURs), which is involved in ABA-repressed SAUR expression. Moreover, we found that ABA represses the transcription of H2A.Z genes through suppressing ARF7/19-HB22/25 module. Our results shed light on a dynamic and reciprocal regulation hub through H2A.Z deposition on SAURs and ARF7/19-HB22/25-mediated H2A.Z transcription to integrate ABA/auxin signaling and regulate stress responses in Arabidopsis.

Phytoplankton communities as indicators of environmental change in the Canadian Rockies

Remote mountain lakes in protected areas are sentinels of the ecological impacts of extreme and novel environmental changes occurring at broad regional scales. Ecosystem responses to such stressors are often first detected as shifts in community composition. We surveyed phytoplankton communities across 82 mountain lakes to test the hypothesis that taxonomic composition is indicative of more environmental changes than are aggregate properties, such as total biomass. Phosphorus was the only significant predictor of chlorophyll-inferred algal biomass, a correlative finding supported by evidence from our nutrient amendment bioassays. Interlake variances in taxonomically diagnostic algal pigments and 78 genera were indicative of changes in total phosphorus, glacial coverage, underwater light availability, and dissolved organic carbon. Lack of concordance was observed between ordinations of pigment- and genus-based data as environmental variables captured more variance in the pigment data. Our findings provide a baseline for future lake monitoring programs in the Canadian Rockies as they increasingly experience interactive effects involving climate change and landscape features, such as variation in turbid glacial meltwaters and aeolian phosphorus deposition from wildfires.

Structure-Aware Feature Disentanglement With Knowledge Transfer for Appearance-Changing Place Recognition.

Long-term visual place recognition (VPR) is challenging as the environment is subject to drastic appearance changes across different temporal resolutions, such as time of the day, month, and season. A wide variety of existing methods address the problem by means of feature disentangling or image style transfer but ignore the structural information that often remains stable even under environmental condition changes. To overcome this limitation, this article presents a novel structure-aware feature disentanglement network (SFDNet) based on knowledge transfer and adversarial learning. Explicitly, probabilistic knowledge transfer (PKT) is employed to transfer knowledge obtained from the Canny edge detector to the structure encoder. An appearance teacher module is then designed to ensure that the learning of appearance encoder does not only rely on metric learning. The generated content features with structural information are used to measure the similarity of images. We finally evaluate the proposed approach and compare it to state-of-the-art place recognition methods using six datasets with extreme environmental changes. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and improvements achieved using the proposed framework. Source code and some trained models will be available at http://www.tianshu.org.cn.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: effects of volcanic heat and other stressors on the conservation of a critically endangered plant in Hawai‘i

SummaryLoss of local biodiversity resulting from abrupt environmental change is a significant environmental problem throughout the world. Extinctions of plants are particularly important yet are often overlooked. Drawing from a case in Hawai‘i, a global hotspot for plant and other extinctions, we demonstrate an effort to better understand and determine priorities for the management of an endangered plant (‘Ihi makole or Portulaca sclerocarpa) in the face of rapid and extreme environmental change. Volcanic heat emissions and biological invasions have anecdotally been suggested as possible threats to the species. We integrated P. sclerocarpa outplanting with efforts to collect geological and ecological data to gauge the role of elevated soil temperatures and invasive grasses in driving P. sclerocarpa mortality and population decline. We measured soil temperature, soil depth, surrounding cover and P. sclerocarpa survivorship over three decades. The abundance of wild P. sclerocarpa decreased by 99.7% from the 1990s to 2021. Only 51% of outplantings persisted through 3–4 years. Binomial regression and structural equation modelling revealed that, among the variables we analysed, high soil temperatures were most strongly associated with population decline. Finding the niche where soil temperatures are low enough to allow P. sclerocarpa survival but high enough to limit other agents of P. sclerocarpa mortality may be necessary to increase population growth of this species.

Stromatolitic carbonates from the Middle Miocene of the western Pannonian Basin reflect trace metal availability in microbial habitats during the Badenian Salinity Crisis

Stromatolitic carbonates of the Middle Miocene Oberpullendorf Basin (Austria) provide a great opportunity to study the evolution of microbial habitats under extreme environmental changes during the Badenian (Langhian and early Serravallian) Salinity Crisis. We here present the first geochemical data for Badenian stromatolites and show in a combined approach using major, trace element, and C – O isotope compositions obtained in individual stromatolitic carbonate laminae that short-term variations of palaeo-environmental conditions within the Oberpullendorf Basin coincide with individual microbialite morphologies.The studied carbonates were affected by both detrital contamination and post-depositional alteration processes to different degrees. While fluid-mobile elements show clear evidence for post-depositional alteration processes, the rare earth element and yttrium (REY) as well as bio-essential element (Fe, Mn, Co, Zn, Mo, W) compositions of the carbonates remained unaffected. Stromatolitic carbonates that are devoid of detrital contamination (< 300 ppm Al) show typical shale-normalized seawater-like rare earth element and yttrium (REYSN) patterns with positive LaSN, GdSN anomalies, super-chondritic Y/Ho ratios, and heavy over light REYSN enrichments in the lower stromatolite units. These features suggest an open ocean seawater influenced depositional setting at the north-western margin of the Paratethys Sea. Stratigraphically upwards, pure stromatolitic carbonates show suppressed seawater-like REYSN signatures that argue for the development of a (semi)closed lagoon with restricted access to the open sea. Seawater-like REYSN patterns in the uppermost part resemble a reappearance of open marine environmental conditions. Interestingly, geochemical data of the upper part of the section contradict the ambient fossil record, showing the urge for future interdisciplinary approaches targeting the understanding and interplay of geochemistry, palaeontology, and geomicrobiology in modern and ancient microbial habitats. Enrichment factors of bio-essential trace elements that are either used as co-factors in metalloenzymes or metal-activated enzymes in biochemical reactions can be directly linked to the reconstructed environmental conditions: Sufficient element availability is ensured during marine conditions in the lower and uppermost stratigraphic sections; in contrast, continuous decreasing element availability of these elements is directly related to the temporary development of a (semi)closed lagoon.

The extreme Anthropogen of the Arctic: the formation of the Great Glacier, the emergence a man and the Arctic Ocean in the Early Holocene

The relevance of the article stems from the need to consider recent events in the Arctic in recent time, which are largely contradictory. The aim of the study is to show extreme environmental changes in the Arctic of anthropogenic nature, including the emergence of man and the Arctic Ocean in the Early Holocene. The territory of the Arctic was a landmass with high mountains, in the period preceding the Holocene, on which a large glacier formed 30-18 thousand years ago (Late Pleistocene). The glacier slid irrepressibly southward over great distances, where it covered vast areas of Europe and North America. In the years that followed, a dramatic warming and active melting of the glacier began. By the beginning of the Holocene, the glacier had melted, and a narrow strait of the Atlantic appeared at the foot of Greenland. Coniferous-deciduous forests, numerous rivers and the first human settlements appeared on the flat territory of the Arctic, and various animals – mammoths, horses, bulls - spread out. However, a major catastrophic event occurred by the middle of the Holocene (6.0 thousand years ago), after active volcanism in the Arctic: the collapse of the central part of the Arctic to a depth of about 5 km and the formation of the Central Arctic graben, associated with the appearance of a huge amount of endogenous water. There began a rapid movement of water on the flat parts of the Arctic and the formation of the modern huge, shallow (50-100 m) shelf - the Arctic Ocean. Many human settlements were flooded, animals escaped, in part, on high uplands. For example, huge animal cemeteries were preserved on the Novosibirsk Islands. A new cooling of the climate occurred 4 thousand years ago, and an ice sheet formed on the surface of the ocean, which led to the name of the North Glacial Ocean in Russia. Modern man began to explore the coastal territories of the Arctic shelf since the mid - Holocene, but active industrial development of the Arctic began in the 21st century.

Effects of Climate Change and Environmental Factors on Bamboo (Ferrocalamus strictus), a PSESP Unique to China

Bamboo is a plant that may replace plastics and wood as a new green environmental protection material that can be developed. Ferrocalamus strictus is a very special and rare bamboo which is a plant species with extremely small populations (PSESP) endemic to Yunnan, China, and it is listed as a China key national first-class protected wild plant. To explore the effects of extreme climate and environmental changes on this PSESP, we conducted a case study on the response of F. strictus to climate under two extreme future emission scenarios. We combined 29 environmental variables, including the temperature, precipitation, altitude, slope, aspect, soil pH, soil organic carbon content, and mean UV-B radiation of the highest month, to analyze the important environmental factors limiting the distribution of F. strictus and identified the priority conservation areas (PCAs) of F. strictus. Under the two future extreme climate scenarios, the core potential suitable distribution area of F. strictus would decrease by 26%–34% in 2040, 44%–46% in 2060, and 23%–58% in 2080, respectively. Bio18 (precipitation in the warmest quarter) and Bio3 (isotherm) were the two key factors limiting the geographical distribution of F. strictus (the contribution rates were 40.1% and 18.45%, respectively). The results of this study show that F. strictus is in urgent need of protection and PSESPs require more attention.

Concrete Performance Attenuation of Mix Nano-SiO2 and Nano-CaCO3 under High Temperature: A Comprehensive Review.

Fire and extreme heat environmental changes can have an impact on concrete performance, and as climate change increases, new concrete structures are being developed. Nano-silica and nano-calcium carbonate have shown excellent performances in modifying concrete due to their large specific surface areas. This review describes the changes in concrete modified with nano-silica (NS) and nano-calcium carbonate (NC), which accelerate the hydration reaction with the cementitious materials to produce more C-S-H, resulting in a denser microstructure and improved mechanical properties and durability of the concrete. The mechanical property decay and visualization of deformation of mixed NS and NC concrete were tested by exposure to high temperatures to investigate the practical application of mixed composite nanomaterials (NC+NS) to concrete. The nano-modified concrete had better overall properties and was heated at 200 °C, 400 °C, 600 °C and 800 °C to relatively improve the mechanical properties of the nano concrete structures. The review concluded that high temperatures of 800 °C to 1000 °C severely damaged the structure of the concrete, reducing the mechanical properties by around 60%, and the dense nano concrete structures were more susceptible to cracking and damage. The high temperature resistance of NS and NC-modified nano concrete was relatively higher than that of normal concrete, with NC concrete being more resistant to damage at high temperatures than the NS samples.

Climate change, biodiversity loss and mental health: a global perspective

Climate change can have various psychopathological manifestations which have been more actively addressed by scientific research only in recent years. Indeed, extreme weather events and environmental changes have been shown to be associated with a range of mental health problems. Following the destruction of ecosystems, biodiversity loss can cause mental distress and emotional responses, including so-called ‘psychoterratic’ syndromes arising from negatively felt and perceived environmental change. Studies investigating relationships between biodiversity and mental health reveal a complex landscape of scientific evidence, calling for a better understanding of this challenging issue.

Binary Neural Networks for Memory-Efficient and Effective Visual Place Recognition in Changing Environments

Visual place recognition (VPR) is a robot's ability to determine whether a place was visited before using visual data. While conventional hand-crafted methods for VPR fail under extreme environmental appearance changes, those based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) achieve state-of-the-art performance but result in heavy runtime processes and model sizes that demand a large amount of memory. Hence, CNN-based approaches are unsuitable for resource-constrained platforms, such as small robots and drones. In this paper, we take a multi-step approach of decreasing the precision of model parameters, combining it with network depth reduction and fewer neurons in the classifier stage to propose a new class of highly compact models that drastically reduces the memory requirements and computational effort while maintaining state-of-the-art VPR performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to propose binary neural networks for solving the visual place recognition problem effectively under changing conditions and with significantly reduced resource requirements. Our best-performing binary neural network, dubbed FloppyNet, achieves comparable VPR performance when considered against its full-precision and deeper counterparts while consuming 99% less memory and increasing the inference speed seven times.

Kesiapan untuk Berubah: Self-Efficacy dan Komitmen Organisasi

The extreme changes in the global environment and the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic have created shock and readiness for individual employees and organizations to have a commitment to increase their abilities and knowledge in dealing with changes that occur. PT. Pegadain (Persero) is currently carrying out a transformation that makes every employee need to have self-efficacy and high organizational commitment to support readiness to change. This study aims to determine the effect of self-efficacy and organizational commitment on the readiness to change employees of PT. Pegadaian (Persero) Pegadaian Branch Offices in the Cirebon Region. Respondents in this study were permanent employees of PT. Pegadaian (Persero) Pegadaian Branch Offices in the Cirebon Region, amounting to 80 people. The research method used is multiple linear regression analysis. The results showed that partially thevariable self-efficacy had a positive and significant effect on the readiness to change variable, partially the organizational commitment variable It has a positive and significant effect on the readiness to change variable, and simultaneously thevariables self-efficacy and organizational commitment positive and significant effect on the variable readiness to change employees of PT. Pegadaian (Persero) Pegadaian Branch Offices in the Cirebon Region.

Analysis on the desert adaptability of indigenous sheep in the southern edge of Taklimakan Desert

The southern margin of the Taklimakan Desert is characterized by low rainfall, heavy sandstorms, sparse vegetation and harsh ecological environment. The indigenous sheep in this area are rich in resources, with the advantages of perennial estrus and good resistance to stress in most sheep. Exploring the molecular markers of livestock adaptability in this environment will provide the molecular basis for breeding research to cope with extreme future changes in the desert environment. In this study, we analyzed the population genetic structure and linkage imbalance of five sheep breeds with three different agricultural geographic characteristics using four complementary genomic selection signals: fixation index (FST), cross-population extended haplotype homozygosity (xp-EHH), Rsb (extended haplotype homozygosity between-populations) and iHS (integrated haplotype homozygosity score). We used Illumina Ovine SNP 50K Genotyping BeadChip Array, and gene annotation and enrichment analysis were performed on selected regions of the obtained genome. The ovary of Qira Black sheep (Follicular phase, Luteal phase, 30th day of pregnancy, 45th day of pregnancy) was collected, and the differentially expressed genes were screened by transcriptomic sequencing. Genome-wide selective sweep results and transcriptome data were combined for association analysis to obtain candidate genes associated with perennial estrus and stable reproduction. In order to verify the significance of the results, 15 resulting genes were randomly selected for fluorescence quantitative analysis. The results showed that Dolang sheep and Qira Black sheep evolved from Kazak sheep. Linkage disequilibrium analysis showed that the decay rate of sheep breeds in the Taklimakan Desert was higher than that in Yili grassland. The signals of FST, xp-EHH, Rsb and iHS detected 526, 332, 308 and 408 genes, respectively, under the threshold of 1% and 17 overlapping genes under the threshold of 5%. A total of 29 genes were detected in association analysis of whole-genome and transcriptome data. This study reveals the genetic mechanism of perennial estrus and environmental adaptability of indigenous sheep breeds in the Taklimakan Desert. It provides a theoretical basis for the conservation and exploitation of genetic resources of indigenous sheep breeds in extreme desert environment. This provides a new perspective for the quick adaptation of sheep and other mammals to extreme environments and future climate changes.

Association of selected gene polymorphisms with thermotolerance traits in cattle - A review.

Thermal stress due to extreme changes in the thermal environment is a critical issue in cattle production. Many previous findings have shown a decrease in feed intake, milk yield, growth rate, and reproductive efficiency of cattle when subjected to thermal stress. Therefore, selecting thermo-tolerant animals is the primary goal of the efficiency of breeding programs to reduce those adverse impacts. The recent advances in molecular genetics have provided significant breeding advantages that allow the identification of molecular markers in both beef and dairy cattle breeding, including marker-assisted selection (MAS) as a tool in selecting superior thermo-tolerant animals. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which can be detected by DNA sequencing, are desirable DNA markers for MAS due to their abundance in the genome's coding and non-coding regions. Many SNPs in some genes (e.g., HSP70, HSP90, HSF1, EIF2AK4, HSBP1, HSPB8, HSPB7, MYO1A, and ATP1A1) in various breeds of cattle have been analyzed to play key roles in many cellular activities during thermal stress and protecting cells against stress, making them potential candidate genes for molecular markers of thermotolerance. This review highlights the associations of SNPs within these genes with thermotolerance traits (e.g., blood biochemistry and physiological responses) and suggests their potential use as MAS in thermotolerant cattle breeding.