Intrinsic Traits Research Articles

An isolated white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) population on St. John, US Virgin Islands shows low inbreeding and comparable heterozygosity to other larger populations.

This is the first study to document the genetic diversity of the white‐tailed deer population on St. John, US Virgin Islands. The island population was founded by a small number of animals, has very limited hunting or predation, and recently experienced a reduction in size following an extended drought in 2015. DNA samples were collected from hair from 23 anesthetized adult deer (13 males, 10 females) ranging in age from 1 to 8 years (3.36 ± 1.9 years) and also from fecal DNA samples, for a total of 42 individuals analyzed for genetic diversity. The St. John deer data set averaged 4.19 alleles per marker and demonstrates the second lowest number of alleles (A) when compared to other populations of Odocoileus virginianus (4.19). Heterozygosity was similar to the other studies (0.54) with little evidence of inbreeding. To explain the level of heterozygosity and level of inbreeding within the St. John population, three hypotheses are proposed, including the effect of intrinsic biological traits within the population, a recent infusion of highly heterogeneous loci from North American populations, and a consistent level of immigration from a nearby island. Additional work is needed to further understand the genetic history of the St. John and regional deer populations.

Ecological correlates of crop yield growth and interannual yield variation at a global scale

Abstract. Artificial selection and genetic engineering plus an expanding repertoire and use of agrochemical inputs have allowed a rapid and continuous increase in crop yield (i.e., volume production per unit area) over the last century, which is needed to fulfill food demands from a growing human population. However, the first signs of yield deceleration and stagnation have already been reported for some globally important crops. Therefore, the study of the drivers of yield growth and its variation is essential for directing research and policies aiming at ensuring food security in the forthcoming years. We used data on mean and variability in annual yield growth for 107 globally important crops to assess the role of environmental (i.e., climatic region) and plant intrinsic traits (i.e., type of harvested organ, pollinator dependence, and life form) as drivers of change in yield growth and its stability. We applied a comparative approach to control for biases associated with phylogenetic non-independence among crops, an approach rarely used in agronomic studies. Average yield growth and its variation were not phylogenetically structured. Yield growth decreased with increasing pollinator dependence in tree crops but not in herbaceous and shrubby crops. Interannual yield variation tended to increase with increasing pollinator dependence, and it was higher in crops from temperate regions, in those cultivated for their reproductive organs, and in tree and shrubby crops as compared with herbaceous ones. Information on ecological correlates of crop yield growth and interannual yield variation can be used in the design of more sustainable and diversified agriculture schemes.

One size does not fit all: variation in thermal eco-physiology among Pacific salmonids

Pacific salmonids, cold-water fishes native to the northern hemisphere, span a massive geographic range (~ 33° latitude) and are exposed to a wide variety of environmental conditions regionally and temporally. California is home to the greatest concentration of at-risk anadromous salmonids and warming river temperatures pose both current and future threats to numerous populations. Thermal standards for management of California populations are currently based on guidelines for multiple salmonid species and from populations across the Pacific Coast. However, a growing body of literature suggests that salmonid populations exhibit population-specific thermal requirements. Furthermore, in California, salmonid populations regularly encounter temperatures that exceed current thermal standards based upon performance of outside populations. This review focuses on Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), providing evidence for interpopulation variation in thermal performance across life stages, and explores the drivers of variation. To describe the formation of interpopulation variation, we define fundamental and ecological thermal physiologies. Fundamental thermal physiology is the composite of intrinsic physiological traits and abiotic factors that define a species’ thermal window. Ecological and environmental interactions constrain this fundamental thermal physiology, yielding an ecological thermal physiology. Thermal physiology, viewed through this lens, provides researchers and managers avenues for salmonid research and conservation at the population scale. A more nuanced approach to west-coast salmonid conservation will be required to protect the most at-risk and vulnerable populations. Successful salmonid management must incorporate population-specific traits and present and future watershed conditions.

Assessing the relationship between species traits and extinction risk at a regional level: an analysis involving Brazilian terrestrial mammals.

One of the various concerns of conservation biology is determining why certain species are more threatened than others. In this study, we aim to relate the national conservation status of Brazilian mammals with the taxonomic group to which they belong and with three of their intrinsic traits: body mass, diet, and litter size. We compiled a database containing the species, their status, and their attributes, and a multiple correspondence analysis was applied to identify relationships between traits and status. The two groups that presented the highest relative frequencies of threatened species were "ungulates" and Carnivora. Additionally, mammals with body mass of 10 kg or more and with carnivorous diet had a higher relative frequency of threatened taxa. We found not only a strong relationship between intrinsic traits and conservation status, but also among the traits themselves, which highlights the role of the "group" variable as one of the best predictors of the risk that a given species be threatened. We believe our study has a broad potential for the conservation of species at the regional level, especially regarding the species currently classified as Data Deficient, and for identifying which species are prone to becoming threatened.

Joint Attention Network for Finger Vein Authentication

Finger vein, as an intrinsic trait, has received increasing attention from academia and industry for its liveness detection ability and high security. However, the principle of vein imaging and its contact-less mode results in low contrast of finger vein image, where especially the vein texture is susceptible to factors, such as scattering in skin and tissue, ambient illumination, and finger posture variation. To extract discriminative features from low contrast images, in this article, we propose an attention mechanism, namely, joint attention (JA) module, which enables dynamic adjustment and information aggregation in the spatial and channel dimensions of feature maps to focus on fine-grained details, thus enhancing the contribution of vein patterns to extract identity features. Besides, we embed a generalized mean (GeM) pooling layer into our network to reduce the dimensionality of feature maps and output a compact and highly expressive feature representation. Finally, we build a new finger vein authentication architecture, called JA finger vein network (JAFVNet), with competitive experimental results on multiple public and self-built datasets: 0.35% EER for SDUMLA-HMT, 0.08% EER for MMCBNU-6000, 0.34% EER for FV-USM, and 0.49% EER for FV-SCUT. Numerous ablation experiments further illustrate the effectiveness of each component in the network.

A robust metabolomics approach for the evaluation of human embryos from in vitro fertilization.

The identification of the most competent embryos for transfer to the uterus constitutes the main challenge of in vitro fertilization (IVF). We established a metabolomic-based approach by applying Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy on 130 samples of 3-day embryo culture supernatants from 26 embryos that implanted and 104 embryos that failed. On examining the internal structure of the data by unsupervised multivariate analysis, we found that the supernatant spectra of nonimplanted embryos constituted a highly heterogeneous group. Whereas ∼40% of these supernatants were spectroscopically indistinguishable from those of successfully implanted embryos, ∼60% exhibited diverse, heterogeneous metabolic fingerprints. This observation proved to be the direct result of pregnancy's multifactorial nature, involving both intrinsic embryonic traits and external characteristics. Our data analysis strategy thus involved one-class modelling techniques employing soft independent modelling of class analogy that identified deviant fingerprints as unsuitable for implantation. From these findings, we could develop a noninvasive Fourier-transform-infrared-spectroscopy-based approach that represents a shift in the fundamental paradigm for data modelling applied in assisted-fertilization technologies.

Characterization of Salmonella spp. Isolates from Swine: Virulence and Antimicrobial Resistance.

Simple SummarySalmonella is a pathogenic bacterium able to infect both humans and animals. It is diffused worldwide and, generally, animals are a source of infection for humans. Among domestic animals, swine represents an important reservoir and a frequent source of human infection, especially in some countries like Italy. To acquire information on Salmonella, in particular about epidemiology, but also virulence, pathogenesis and antimicrobial resistance, is the basis for a cohesive control program. This manuscript describes an investigation conducted on Salmonella isolates from swine, where two important characteristics were evaluated: the pathogenicity and the antimicrobial resistance. A great variability was observed among investigated strains. Salmonella serovar Typhimurium was confirmed as one of the most virulent serovars; indeed, most isolates belonging to this serovar presented many of the searched virulence factors. A high level of antimicrobial resistance was observed for some compounds (sulfonamide, tetracycline, streptomycin and ampicillin), but not for the so-called “last line antibiotics”, such as, for example, ciprofloxacin. The constant monitoring on circulating strains in reservoir animals is important to acquire information and set up adequate prophylaxis measures.Salmonella is one of the most important zoonotic pathogens worldwide. Swine represent typical reservoirs of this bacterium and a frequent source of human infection. Some intrinsic traits make some serovars or strains more virulent than others. Twenty-nine Salmonella spp. isolated from pigs belonging to 16 different serovars were analyzed for gastric acid environment resistance, presence of virulence genes (mgtC, rhuM, pipB, sopB, spvRBC, gipA, sodCI, sopE), antimicrobial resistance and presence of antimicrobial resistance genes (blaTEM, blaPSE-1, aadA1, aadA2, aphA1-lab, strA-strB, tetA, tetB, tetC, tetG, sul1, sul2, sul3). A percentage of 44.83% of strains showed constitutive and inducible gastric acid resistance, whereas 37.93% of strains became resistant only after induction. The genes sopB, pipB and mgtC were the most often detected, with 79.31%, 48.28% and 37.93% of positive strains, respectively. Salmonella virulence plasmid genes were detected in a S. enterica sup. houtenae ser. 40:z4,z23:-strain. Fifteen different virulence profiles were identified: one isolate (ser. Typhimurium) was positive for 6 genes, and 6 isolates (3 ser. Typhimurium, 2 ser. Typhimurium monophasic variant and 1 ser. Choleraesuis) scored positive for 5 genes. None of the isolates resulted resistant to cefotaxime and ciprofloxacin, while all isolates were susceptible to ceftazidime, colistin and gentamycin. Many strains were resistant to sulfonamide (75.86%), tetracycline (51.72%), streptomycin (48.28%) and ampicillin (31.03%). Twenty different resisto-types were identified. Six strains (4 ser. Typhimurium, 1 ser. Derby and 1 ser. Typhimurium monophasic variant) showed the ASSuT profile. Most detected resistance genes sul2 (34.48%), tetA (27.58%) and strA-strB (27.58%). Great variability was observed in analyzed strains. S. ser. Typhimurium was confirmed as one of the most virulent serovars. This study underlines that swine could be a reservoir and source of pathogenic Salmonella strains.

Optimal feature selection-based biometric key management for identity management system: Emotion oriented facial biometric system

Identity management systems with biometric key binding make digital transactions secure and reliable. A novel methodology is proposed to develop an intelligent key management system using facial emotions. Key binding with facial emotions makes use of an intrinsic user specific trait facilitating a more natural computer to human interaction. The proposed system utilizes metaheuristic swarm intelligence based optimization techniques to extract optimal features. The work demonstrates key binding by encrypting an image with a secret key bound to optimal features extracted from facial emotions. Efficiency and correctness of proposed key management is validated by successful decryption at receiving end with any one of the enrolled emotions given as input. Deer Hunting Optimization Algorithm and Chicken Swarm Optimization are merged to select optimal features from facial emotions. The derived algorithm is called Fitness Sorted Deer Hunting Optimization Algorithm with Rooster Update. Seven facial emotions — anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise and neutral are used to extract optimal features from Japanese Female Facial Expressions and Yale Facial datasets to train the neural network. Proposed work achieved better performance results over state-of-art optimization algorithms such as whale optimization algorithm, grey wolf optimization, chicken swarm optimization and deer hunting optimization algorithm. Accuracy of proposed model is 2.2% better than deer hunting optimization algorithm and 12.3% better than chicken swarm optimization for a key length 80.

Keystone predation: trait‐based or driven by extrinsic processes? Assessment using a comparative‐experimental approach

AbstractKeystone predation can be a determinant of community structure, including species diversity, but factors underlying “keystoneness” have been minimally explored. Using the system in which the original keystone, the sea star Pisaster ochraceus, was discovered, we focused on two potential (but overlapping) determinants of keystoneness: intrinsic traits or state variables of the species (e.g., size, density), and extrinsic environmental parameters (e.g., prey productivity) that may provide conditions favorable for keystone predator evolution. Using a comparative‐experimental approach, with repeated field experiments at multiple sites across a variable coastal environment, we tested predation rates, or how quickly predators consumed prey, and predation effects, or community response to predator presence or absence. We tested five hypotheses: (H1) predation rates and effects will vary in space but not time; (H2) per population predation rates will vary primarily with individual traits and population variables; (HJHH3) per capita predation rates will vary only with individual traits; (H4) predation effects will vary with traits, variables, and external drivers; and (H5) as predicted by the keystone predation hypothesis, diversity will vary unimodally with predation pressure. As hypothesized, predation rates differed among sites but not over time (H1), and in caging exclusion experiments, predation effect varied with both intrinsic and extrinsic factors (H4). Unexpectedly, predation rates varied with both intrinsic and extrinsic (H2, per population), or only with extrinsic (H3, per capita) factors. Further, in large‐plot exclusion experiments, predation effect was most closely associated with individual traits (contra H4). Finally, taxon diversity varied unimodally with proxies of predation pressure (sessile prey abundance) and was sensitive to extrinsic factors (mussel growth, temperature, and upwelling, H5). Hence, keystoneness depended on predator individual traits, predator population variables, and environmental parameters. However, temporal differences in caging experiments suggested that environmental characteristics underlying prey dynamics may be preeminent. Compared to prior experiments, predation was weaker with low prey input compared to periods with high prey input. Collectively, our results suggest that keystone predator evolution depends on the coalescence of species‐specific characteristics, and environmental parameters favoring high prey productivity. Our approach may be a model for future studies exploring the generality of keystoneness.

Evolutionary divergence of novel open reading frames in cichlids speciation

Novel open reading frames (nORFs) with coding potential may arise from noncoding DNA. Not much is known about their emergence, functional role, fixation in a population or contribution to adaptive radiation. Cichlids fishes exhibit extensive phenotypic diversification and speciation. Encounters with new environments alone are not sufficient to explain this striking diversity of cichlid radiation because other taxa coexistent with the Cichlidae demonstrate lower species richness. Wagner et al. analyzed cichlid diversification in 46 African lakes and reported that both extrinsic environmental factors and intrinsic lineage-specific traits related to sexual selection have strongly influenced the cichlid radiation, which indicates the existence of unknown molecular mechanisms responsible for rapid phenotypic diversification, such as emergence of novel open reading frames (nORFs). In this study, we integrated transcriptomic and proteomic signatures from two tissues of two cichlids species, identified nORFs and performed evolutionary analysis on these nORF regions. Our results suggest that the time scale of speciation of the two species and evolutionary divergence of these nORF genomic regions are similar and indicate a potential role for these nORFs in speciation of the cichlid fishes.

Current Status of Pseudomonas putida Engineering for Lignin Valorization

Lignin, a complex aromatic polymer, is a structural component of plant biomass. It decomposes with difficulty because of its rigidity properties, however, lignin valorization is essential for the economics of lignocellulosic biorefineries. Pseudomonas putida has been extensively investigated as a promising host strain for lignin valorizations due to intrinsic traits, such as low nutritional requirement, high tolerance to toxicity, and metabolic versatility with a wide spectrum of substrates, such as aromatic compounds. Although a naturally occurring, lignin-utilizing P. putida strain has been reported, it is necessary to engineer the genome of P. putida for efficient lignin utilization. For biological lignin valorization, the decomposition of lignin polymer to low-molecular weight compounds and transformation of lignin-derived aromatic compounds to value-added chemicals is essential. Various tools of synthetic biology have been developed for the genome engineering of P. putida; efforts in metabolic engineering have been made to expand aromatic substrate specificity and to improve productivity of value-added chemicals. Development of high-performance bio-parts and biosensors for lignin valorization has also been done. In this review, we present recent research on genome engineering tools developed for P. putida and metabolic engineering employed in P. putida to improve lignin valorization.

Patterns of ectoparasite infection in wild-caught and laboratory-bred cichlid fish, and their hybrids, implicate extrinsic rather than intrinsic causes of species differences in infection

Parasite-mediated selection may initiate or enhance differentiation between host populations that are exposed to different parasite infections. Variation in infection among populations may result from differences in host ecology (thereby exposure to certain parasites) and/or intrinsic immunological traits. Species of cichlid fish, even when recently diverged, often differ in parasite infection, but the contributions of intrinsic and extrinsic causes are unknown. Here, we compare infection patterns between two closely related host species from Lake Victoria (genus Pundamilia), using wild-caught and first-generation laboratory-reared fish, as well as laboratory-reared hybrids. Three of the commonest ectoparasite species observed in the wild were also present in the laboratory populations. However, the infection differences between the host species as observed in the wild were not maintained in laboratory conditions. In addition, hybrids did not differ in infection from either parental species. These findings suggest that the observed species differences in infection in the wild might be mainly driven by ecology-related effects (i.e. differential exposure), rather than by intrinsic species differences in immunological traits. Thus, while there is scope for parasite-mediated selection in Pundamilia in the wild, it has apparently not yet generated divergent evolutionary responses and may not enhance assortative mating among closely related species.

Blockchain for Collaborative Businesses

Blockchain applications have continuously improved ever since its first debut on cryptocurrency. From then on, its uses have branched out from the financial realm, finding their way into numerous industries such as health, environmental, and governmental. Businesses are starting to take advantage of the intrinsic traits that made blockchain so notorious into their operations, such as security, integrity, and transparency. Blockchain’s versatility allows companies to cooperate on a shielded environment with business partners safely. This paper details how permissioned blockchain networks can accommodate collaborative business models securely to provide thriving business alliances. Examples of cooperative business models and business relationship orientation are described here, as well as how they generate value when paired with permissioned blockchain networks - a more business-oriented variety of blockchain. To support this study’s endeavors, business use cases are presented to highlight how simple it is to put in place a permissioned blockchain to businesses to achieve tighter bonds with business partners. The use cases contain particular goals that enterprises seek to accomplish by partnering up with other companies, as well as how, with the employment of blockchain, they can attain them.

On the Logical Design of a Prototypical Data Lake System for Biological Resources.

Biological resources are multifarious encompassing organisms, genetic materials, populations, or any other biotic components of ecosystems, and fine-grained data management and processing of these diverse types of resources proposes a tremendous challenge for both researchers and practitioners. Before the conceptualization of data lakes, former big data management platforms in the research fields of computational biology and biomedicine could not deal with many practical data management tasks very well. As an effective complement to those previous systems, data lakes were devised to store voluminous, varied, and diversely structured or unstructured data in their native formats, for the sake of various analyses like reporting, modeling, data exploration, knowledge discovery, data visualization, advanced analysis, and machine learning. Due to their intrinsic traits, data lakes are thought to be ideal technologies for processing of hybrid biological resources in the format of text, image, audio, video, and structured tabular data. This paper proposes a method for constructing a practical data lake system for processing multimodal biological data using a prototype system named ProtoDLS, especially from the explainability point of view, which is indispensable to the rigor, transparency, persuasiveness, and trustworthiness of the applications in the field. ProtoDLS adopts a horizontal pipeline to ensure the intra-component explainability factors from data acquisition to data presentation, and a vertical pipeline to ensure the inner-component explainability factors including mathematics, algorithm, execution time, memory consumption, network latency, security, and sampling size. The dual mechanism can ensure the explainability guarantees on the entirety of the data lake system. ProtoDLS proves that a single point of explainability cannot thoroughly expound the cause and effect of the matter from an overall perspective, and adopting a systematic, dynamic, and multisided way of thinking and a system-oriented analysis method is critical when designing a data processing system for biological resources.

Exploring causal components of plasticity in grey seal birthdates: Effects of intrinsic traits, demography, and climate.

Change in breeding phenology is often a response to environmental forcing, but less is known of the mechanism underlying such changes and their fitness consequences. Here, we report on changes in the breeding phenology from a 27‐year longitudinal study (1991–2017) of individually marked, known‐aged grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) on Sable Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. We used generalized linear mixed models and a 3‐step process to develop a model that includes interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic covariates and to test hypotheses about the influence of fixed factors (maternal age, parity, previous reproductive success, pup sex, colony density, Atlantic Multidecal Oscillation (AMO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and Sea Surface Temperature) and a random factor (female identity) on parturition dates. We also examined the consequences of the shift in birthdates on maternal energy allocation in offspring as measured by pup weaning mass. Birthdates were known for 2,768 pups of 660 known‐age females. For 494 females with ≥2 parturition dates, repeatability as measured by the intraclass correlation was high (mean = 0.66). 87% of the variation in birthdates was explained by a mixed‐effects model that included intrinsic and extrinsic fixed effects. Most of the explained variation was associated with the random effect of female identity. Parity was the most important intrinsic fixed effect, with inexperienced mothers giving birth later in the season than multiparous females. Over almost 3 decades, mean birthdates advanced by 15 days. The mixed model with intrinsic effects and population size, the detrended AMO from the previous year and mean NAO in the previous 3 years explained 80% of the variation with 21% of variation from the fixed effects. Both primiparous and multiparous individuals responded to the climate forcing, and there was strong evidence for heterogeneity in the response. Nevertheless, the shift in birthdates did not impact pup weaning mass.

Neighbour effects do not always show consistent patterns, contrast of seed trait matters: evidence from a seed-rodent mutualism study

Coexisting plant species often share the same animal mutualists and enemies. The selection preference of an animal on a focal individual is not only directly affected by the focal individual’s intrinsic traits, but also indirectly affected by conspecific or interspecific neighbouring individuals. Many studies often show inconsistent neighbour effects by comparison of the results between the presence and absence of neighbours, without considering the contrasting functional traits between the focal individual and the neighbours. Rodent-seed interaction that is ubiquitous in many ecosystems was selected to test the neighbour effect by using artificial seeds with different tannin contents, a vital seed trait that directly influences rodent foraging preference. I compared the seed predation and dispersal preference of rodents by monitoring the fate of 1920 artificial seeds with different absolute tannin contents (from 0 to 25%) among three categories of neighbouring seeds with tannin contents of 0%, 10% and 25%, respectively. Obvious neighbour effects were observed, although the magnitude and direction of the effects differed among different processes of scatter-hoarding behaviour. Furthermore, the neighbour effect did not show a consistent pattern among seeds with different tannin contents. Our results strongly suggested that the neighbour effects of coexisting species should be considered when evaluating the foraging preferences of animal mutualists/predators upon a specific plant species. The contrasting functional traits between focal plants and neighbouring individuals should be considered when studying neighbour effects. By using the artificial seed study system, I found that the contrast of tannin content could explain the inconsistent patterns of neighbour effects (i.e. the fate of a specific seed is influenced by its neighbouring seeds) among different seeds. In natural forest systems, plant seeds have a diverse array of traits, all of which markedly affect rodent foraging behaviour. Furthermore, a large spatio-temporal variation in seed production among species may result in a distinct variation in the relative densities of different seeds, which in turn may lead to even more complex neighbour effects at the whole forest community level. Our results strongly suggested that the neighbour effects of coexisting species of seeds should be considered when evaluating seed dispersal and predation of a specific species. The contrasting seed traits between focal plants and neighbouring individuals should be considered when studying neighbour effects.

Revealing community assembly through barcoding: Mediterranean butterflies and dispersal variation.

In Focus: Scalercio, S., Cini, A., Menchetti, M., Vodă, R., Bonelli, S., Bordoni, A., … Dapporto, L. (2020). How long is 3km for a butterfly? Ecological constraints and functional traits explain high mitochondrial genetic diversity between Sicily and the Italian Peninsula. Journal of Animal Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13196. Biotic and abiotic factors can shape geographical patterns of genetic variation within species, but few studies have addressed how this might generate common patterns at the level of communities of species. Scalercio et al. (2020) have combined mtDNA sequence data and life-history traits, to reveal a repeated pattern of genetic structure between Sicilian and southern Italian butterfly populations, which are separated by only 3km of ocean. They reveal how intrinsic species traits and extrinsic environmental constraints explain this pattern, demonstrating an important role for wind. Moreover, the inclusion of almost 8,000 georeferenced sequences reveals that, in spite of also being present in southern Italy, almost half of Sicilian butterfly species are more closely related to populations from other parts of Europe, Asia or North Africa. We provide further discussion on the biogeographic barrier they identify, and the potential of community-level DNA barcoding to identify processes that structure genetic variation across communities.

A meta-analysis of global avian survival across species and latitude.

Tropical birds are purported to be longer lived than their temperate counterparts, but it has not been shown whether avian survival rates covary with latitude worldwide. Here, we perform a global-scale meta-analysis of 949 estimates from 204 studies of avian survival and demonstrate that a latitudinal survival gradient exists in the northern hemisphere, is dampened or absent for southern hemisphere species, and that differences between passerines and nonpasserines largely drive these trends. We also show that while extrinsic factors related to climate were poor predictors of apparent survival compared to latitude alone, the relationship between apparent survival and latitude is strongly mediated by intrinsic traits - large-bodied species and species with smaller clutch size had the highest apparent survival. Our findings reveal that differences among intrinsic traits and whether species were passerines or nonpasserines surpass latitude and its underlying climatic factors in explaining global patterns of apparent avian survival.

Genetic Organization of the aprX-lipA2 Operon Affects the Proteolytic Potential of Pseudomonas Species in Milk.

Psychrotolerant Pseudomonas species are a main cause of proteolytic spoilage of ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk products due to the secretion of the heat-resistant metallopeptidase AprX, which is encoded by the first gene of the aprX-lipA2 operon. While the proteolytic property has been characterized for many different Pseudomonas isolates, the underlying aprX-lipA2 gene organization was only described for a few strains so far. In this study, the phylogenomic analysis of 185 Pseudomonas type strains revealed that the presence of aprX is strongly associated to a monophylum composed of 81 species, of which 83% carried the aprX locus. Furthermore, almost all type strains of known milk-relevant species were shown to be members of the three monophyletic groups P. fluorescens, P. gessardii, and P. fragi. In total, 22 different types of aprX-lipA2 genetic organizations were identified in the genus, whereby 31% of the species tested carried the type 1 operon structure consisting of eight genes (aprXIDEF prtAB lipA2). Other genetic structures differed from type 1 mainly in the presence and location of genes coding for two lipases (lipA1 and lipA2) and putative autotransporters (prtA and prtB). The peptidase activity of 129 strains, as determined on skim milk agar and in UHT-milk, correlated largely with different aprX-lipA2 gene compositions. Particularly, isolates harboring the type 1 operon were highly proteolytic, while strains with other operon types, especially ones lacking prtA and prtB, exhibited significantly lower peptidase activities. In conclusion, the phylogenomic position and the aprX-lipA2 gene organization specify the proteolytic potential of Pseudomonas isolates. In addition, however, an interplay of several environmental factors and intrinsic traits influences production and activity of AprX, leading to strain-specific proteolytic phenotypes.

Which are Southern Italy’s fastest growing tree species? Lessons from the past for future perspectives, with a special focus on Sicily

Fast growing tree species can generate high wood production in a short time frame. However, maximum productivity is dependent on environmental and management conditions as well as intrinsic plant traits. Within this framework, our research was into tree species with the highest Mean Annual Increments (MAIs) in southern Italy, particularly in Sicily. Eucalyptus spp., Acacia saligna Labill. H. L. Wendl., Ailanthus altissima Mill. (Swingle) , Pinus halepensis Mill. (including Pinus brutia Ten.), Pinus canariensis C.Sm. and Pinus radiata D. Don. were identified . In particularly suitable conditions, the MAI of eucalypt coppices ranged from 8 to 12 m 3 ha -1 , and from 13 to 19 m 3 ha -1 , in Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. and Eucalyptus globulus Labill. , respectively. The MAI of E. camaldulensis high forests was slightly over 6 m 3 ha -1 , while that of E. globulus high forests was very similar to its coppice value. Considering the preliminary data, Acacia saligna Labill. H. L. Wendl. can achieve good wood production. Pinus halepensis Mill. and Pinus brutia (Ten.) Holmboe achieved MAIs of 5-7 m 3 ha -1 . Other species may be promising but either data is very limited or their invasive potential requires careful consideration. This historical review has shown that with optimal tree species-planting site-cultivation technique combinations, tree species can achieve wood yields typical of fast-growing species in Mediterranean Italy, too.