Low Levels Of Variation Research Articles

Prevalence and factors associated with adequate dietary diversity among pregnant women in Nekemte town, Western Ethiopia, 2021.

Dietary diversity refers to increasing the consumption of a variety of foods. The consumption of diversified food during pregnancy enables the adequate intake of 11 important micronutrients. Inadequate dietary intake during pregnancy is the major determinant factor in the risk of low birth weight infants. It is capable of ensuring the adequate intake of essential nutrients, which can promote good physical health and mental development. Pregnant women require more protein, iron, iodine, vitamin A, folate, and other nutrients. Adequate intake of fruit, vegetables, and animal products throughout the life cycle helps ensure that women enter pregnancy and lactation without deficiencies. Micronutrient deficiency and protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake imbalances are also linked to an increased risk of chronic disease. To assess the prevalence and associated factors with adequate dietary diversity among pregnant woman in Nekemte town, western Ethiopia, 202.1. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 475 pregnant women in the town. We used a systematic random sampling technique. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews by trained data collectors using a validated questionnaire. Before being exported to STATA version 14, data were entered into EpiData version 3.1, cleaned, coded, and checked for missing values. Results from bivariable analysis of p-value less than 0.25 were moved to a multivariable binary logistic regression model for analysis. Finally, multivariable logistic regression with p-value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The Prevalence of adequate dietary diversity was 43.6% (95% CI; 39.1-48.1). Households with the richest wealth index adjusted odds ratio (AOR = 3.17; 95%Confidence Interval = 1.60-6.28), those who have antenatal care (AOR = 2.16; 95%CI = 1.22-3.84), and women who were government employees (AOR = 1.87; 95%CI = 1.01-3.48) were positively associated with adequate dietary diversity. On the other hand, food-insecure households (AOR = 0.34; 95%CI = 0.17-0.66), women who had not changed their meal frequency (AOR = 0.613; 95%CI = 0.38-0.99), and women in their third trimester (AOR = 0.40; 95%CI = 0.20-0.81) were negatively associated with adequate dietary diversity during pregnancy. The findings showed that there was a low acceptable level of dietary diversity among pregnant women in the town. Wealth index, antenatal care, women's occupation, household food insecurity, gestational age, and not changing meal frequency were identified as factors associated with adequate dietary diversity. Therefore, multi-sectoral collaboration is needed to enhance the dietary diversity of pregnant women by promoting women's employment and strengthening sustainable income-generating activities.

Morphological and genetic characteristics of garfish Belone belone (L., 1760) (Belonidae, Teleostei) population from the southern Bulgarian Black Sea coast

This study was conducted to investigate genetic and some morphometric and meristic characteristics of garfish Belone belone from Nesebar in the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Twelve morphometric characters were measured, and six meristic characters were counted for each individual. Based on both sexes’ morphological and meristic analyses, no statistically significant sexual differences were observed. Additionally, DNA barcoding was done. The fragment of the cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene of mitochondrial DNA was sequenced to supplement the species identification and population diversity study. Two haplotypes were found out of 39 sequences, indicating a low level of haplotype diversity (0.146±0.072). Nucleotide diversity was also found to be low (0.00023±0.00011). The Nesebar population of B. belone requires conservation efforts, due to the highly decreased mtDNA genetic diversity.

Preliminary Inventory of Stomoxys spp., Potential Vectors of Pathogens in the Minkébé Forest Massif in the North-East of Gabon

Aims: This study aims to characterize Stomoxys spp., potential vectors of pathogens in the north-east of Gabon.
 Place and Duration of Study: This research was conducted in the Minkébé forest massif, Woleu-Ntem Province, Gabon from April to May 2023 (rainy season).
 Methodology: The daily captures were conducted at Mikouka, Massoko and Minkébé using Vavoua and Nzi traps. All captured specimens were morphologically identified to species using binocular microscope (Leica Microsystems ©). The identification was aided by “specific” taxonomic keys. The collected data were organized from Microsoft Office Excel 2013. This database was used to calculate numbers and proportions of specimens observed by species. Several parameters including Apparent Density per Trap per day (ADT), Shannon, Simpson, Pielou and Bray-Curtis indices were evaluated.
 Results: A total of 1552 Stomoxys were caught, including 610 at Massoko, 533 at Mikouka and 409 at Minkébé. These specimens belonged to two species: Stomoxys niger niger and Stomoxys omega. Stomoxys niger niger was the most abundant with 1176 specimens caught and an ADT of 4 Stomoxys/trap/day (s/p/d). On the other hand, Stomoxys omega was poorly captured (n= 376; ADT= 1.28). As for the biotopes surveyed, Massoko (n= 619; ADT= 6.42) and Mikouka (n= 533; ADT= 5.44) were the most infested with Stomoxys spp. However, the lowest catches were recorded at Minkébé (n= 409; ADT= 4.17). The Shannon, Pielou and Simpson index values indicate relatively low levels of diversity between sites. The Shannon index reached higher values at Minkébé than at the other study sites. The Simpson and Pielou indices also had higher values at Minkébé. As for the Bray-Curtis index, its values were low between Minkébé and Mikouka (0.592), between Mikouka and Massoko (0.302) and between Minkébé and Massoko (0.384).
 Conclusion: Our findings show the coexistence of Stomoxys niger niger and Stomoxys omega in Minkébé. Their presence constitutes a health risk, because these vectors could play a role in the circulation of certain pathogens in the Minkébé forest massif. So, a longitudinal study of these vectors and a screening of their infectious agents are urgently needed.

Smallholder Farmers Adaptation to Climate Change

Climate change is one of the major threats to agricultural production worldwide, including many parts of Tanzania. However, different rural agricultural systems are affected differently and differ in their adaptive capacities. This paper assessed the adaptive capacity to climate change by farmers engaged in ndiwa and chamazi traditional irrigation farming systems in West Usambara Highlands , Tanzania. The study leading to this paper was conducted in four villages: Shashui, Nkukai, Lunguza and Kivingo in Lushoto District; and it adopted a cross-sectional research design involving a sample of 380 households. Data were collected through household survey, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), observations and documentary reviews. Undeniably, farmers are not poor of what and how to adapt with climate change: they have some knowledge on what they can do to reduce and contain the adverse impacts of climate change. The results show that whereas ndiwa farmers have moderate adaptive capacity (41.6%), chamazi farmers have low adaptive capacity (23.6%) to climate change impacts. Despite this difference in capacities, both farmers are affected by low financing (ndiwa (14.36%), and chamazi (8.48%) as grants or credits hardly reach small-scale farmers; low access to technical information (ndiwa (15.08%), and chamazi (5.17%)); relative low access to physical infrastructure (ndiwa (5.02%), and chamazi (3.02%)); relative low level of diversity of livelihood (ndiwa (4.56%), and chamazi (4.49%)); and relative low level of human resources (ndiwa (2.51%), and chamazi (2.35%)). The paper recommends that strategies for enabling farmers to become change agents of climate change should build capacity in areas of physical resources such as equipment and infrastructure for irrigation, access to climate information, access to financing opportunities, livelihood diversification, and storage.

Diversity Management and Work Engagement of Academic Staff of Kyambogo University, Uganda

This study examined the influence of diversity management and work engagement of the academic staff of Kyambogo University in Uganda. Specifically, the study examined the influence of diversity management policies, diversity management programmes and diversity management climate on the workplace engagement of academic staff of Kyambogo University in Uganda. The study employed the correlational research design, hence adopted the quantitative approach. The sample comprised 188 academic staff of Kyambogo University. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The data was analysed using descriptive and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation modelling (PL-SEM) using SmartPLS. Descriptive results revealed that the workplace engagement of academic staff, diversity management policies, diversity management programmes, and the diversity management climate of the university were moderate. SEM results showed that while diversity management policies had a positive and significant influence on workplace engagement, diversity management programmes had a positive but insignificant influence on workplace engagement, and the diversity management climate had a negative and insignificant influence on workplace engagement. Therefore, it was concluded that diversity management policies are vital for the workplace engagement of academic staff, inadequate diversity management programmes hinder workplace engagement, and a low-level diversity management climate impedes the workplace engagement of academic staff. Thus, it was recommended that universities should adopt diversity management policies, leaders of universities should implement adequate diversity management programmes to enhance workplace engagement, and leaders of universities should promote a climate that favours diversity.

Population Structure and Genetic Diversity of Yunling Cattle Determined by Whole-Genome Resequencing.

The Yunling cattle breed, a three-breed crossbreed, which comprises 50% Brahman cattle, 25% Murray Grey cattle and 25% Yunnan Yellow cattle, has several advantageous traits, including rapid growth, superior meat quality, ability to improve tolerance in hot and humid climates, tick resistance and rough feed. It can be rightfully stated that Yunling cattle serve as vital genetic repositories of the local Yunnan cattle. Gaining insights into the genetic information of Yunling cattle plays a significant role in the formulation of sound breeding strategies for this breed, safeguarding genetic resources and mitigating the risks associated with inbreeding depression. In this study, we constructed the Yunling cattle standard reference genome and aligned the whole genomes of 129 Yunling cattle individuals to the constructed reference genome to estimate the current genetic status of Yunling cattle in Yunnan Province, China. The average alignment rate and the average percentage of properly paired are both 99.72%. The average nucleotide diversity in Yunling cattle is 0.000166, which indicates a lower level of diversity. Population structure analysis classified Yunling cattle into two subgroups. Inbreeding analysis revealed that inbreeding events did occur in the Yunling cattle, which may have contributed to the low genetic diversity observed. This study presents a comprehensive assessment of the genetic structure and diversity among the Yunling cattle and provides a theoretical foundation for the preservation and exploitation of these precious germplasm resources.

Soil deterioration due to long-term grazing of desert-steppe promotes stress-tolerant ecological strategies in plants

Predicting the impact of grazing on desert steppes' vegetation is crucial for sustainable management. The competitor, stress-tolerator and ruderal (CSR) theory has offer valuable insights into plant adaptive capacity and predicting changes in vegetation structure. However, whether adaptive strategy of desert steppe change with grazing intensity is not understood yet. We conducted a comprehensive assessment of the effects of 19 years of varying grazing intensities (no grazing: CK; light grazing: LG; moderate grazing: MG; heavy grazing: HG) on plant CSR strategies. Within the desert steppe ecosystem, the prevailing plant community strategy leaned towards SR (Stress-tolerant/Ruderal) under non-grazed conditions (C:S:R = 2:48:50 %). However, as grazing intensity increased, the S-score increased significantly from 48 % to 62 % while the R-score decreased from 50 % to 36 %. This trend persisted across functional groups and species, except for shrubs, due to the convergent response of traits and ecological strategies of these species under intense grazing pressure. Furthermore, our findings reveal that the shift of CSR on the community level was primarily influenced by soil nutrients and soil density, but not by evolutionary history (phylogenetic conservatism of traits). This suggests that plant traits co-evolved under prolonged environmental stress, resulting consistent variation and ecological strategies in desert grasslands. Overall, long-term grazing reinforced selective pressure, creating a simplified plant community structure with low levels of diversity and productivity, dominated by conservative resource-use strategy. This study highlights the mechanisms of plant adaptation to the prolonged grazing disturbance in desert steppes.

Population Genomics of the Facultatively Sexual Liverwort Marchantia polymorpha.

The population genomics of facultatively sexual organisms are understudied compared with their abundance across the tree of life. We explore patterns of genetic diversity in two subspecies of the facultatively sexual liverwort Marchantia polymorpha using samples from across Southern Ontario, Canada. Despite the ease with which M. polymorpha should be able to propagate asexually, we find no evidence of strictly clonal descent among our samples and little to no signal of isolation by distance. Patterns of identity-by-descent tract sharing further showed evidence of recent recombination and close relatedness between geographically distant isolates, suggesting long distance gene flow and at least a modest frequency of sexual reproduction. However, the M. polymorpha genome contains overall very low levels of nucleotide diversity and signs of inefficient selection evidenced by a relatively high fraction of segregating deleterious variants. We interpret these patterns as possible evidence of the action of linked selection and a small effective population size due to past generations of asexual propagation. Overall, the M. polymorpha genome harbors signals of a complex history of both sexual and asexual reproduction.

Genetic diversity of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in the allelic composition of HMW-GS (a review)

Background. The qualitative composition of wheat grain varies depending on the cultivar, soil and climate conditions, and agricultural practices. The allelic composition of glutenins in bread wheat cultivars is an important parameter for the analysis and management of their genetic structure. In this respect, there is an interest in studying the genetic diversity of alleles of high-molecular-weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) in bread wheat cultivars from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.Materials and methods. The total diversity of alleles in Glu-1 glutenin loci was evaluated according to the calculation of the Nei index (H). Using this indicator and the cluster analysis, wheat cultivars of various ecogeographic origin were distributed into relatively homogeneous groups.Results. Wheat cultivars from Poland, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, and Algeria (Group I) had the average Nei index of 0.59, and those from the U.S., Mexico, Argentina, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, and North Korea (Group II) had 0.42. These groups of wheat cultivars differed in the frequency of occurrence of glutenin subunits at each Glu-1 locus: N, 7+9, 2+12 in Group I, and 2*, 7+9, 5+10 in Group II.Conclusion. Wheat cultivars from Group II had on average a low level of variability of allelic genes in the respective loci, manifesting high grain quality of these cultivars and the highest probability of their genetic depletion compared to the cultivars from Group I, where most of the cultivars are described by a combination of low-quality glutenin subunits.

Eelgrass Zostera capensis populations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, harbour distinct genomic signals despite limited geographical distance

Seagrasses are threatened by anthropogenic stressors and climate change, with numerous population declines reported. In South Africa, the eelgrass Zostera capensis is restricted to estuarine environments and has a disjunct distribution and declining status. With the majority of the distribution of Z. capensis on the west and southwest coasts of South Africa, the isolated easternmost populations in KwaZulu-Natal Province (KZN) are of particular interest. Following the extirpation of Z. capensis at Durban and St Lucia, only five populations remain, of which three (in the Amatikulu, Mlalazi and Mhlatuze estuaries) are situated <50 km apart. Previous molecular analyses showed strong population structure between Z. capensis populations, but the geographically close populations on the east coast were not included. In this study, using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) isolated from 31 individual sampled plants collected from three northern KZN estuaries, we provide evidence for distinct population clusters, with unique evolutionary signals. Zostera capensis in the Mlalazi Estuary has a low level of genomic diversity, likely as a result of a small, dynamic population unable to withstand prolonged freshwater exposure. Our results suggest that conservation efforts need to consider unique population signals even among geographically close populations, in particular within the context of restoration, where genomic compatibility may determine the persistence of restored populations.

Visual Embedding Augmentation in Fourier Domain for Deep Metric Learning

Deep Metric Learning (DML) is very effective for many computer vision applications such as image retrieval or cross-modal matching. The common paradigm for DML is to seek metric spaces that can encode semantically similar objects close while locating the dissimilar ones far away from each other. To make features more discriminative, the mainstream methods usually design various specific loss functions to seek the help of hard negatives through complex hard mining strategies or hard synthesizing with additional networks. In spite of their fruitfulness, these approaches ignore the impact of low-level information in images on the performance, which may degrade the discerning ability of learned embedding. To alleviate these problems, we introduce a simple yet effective augmentation method to generate more hard negatives by swapping the low-frequency spectra of negative instances with anchors in the Fourier domain. Specifically, unlike previous methods, our proposed approach does not involve any complex design strategies but enriches hard negatives by manipulating the low-level variability of images only with simple Fourier transforms. In addition, our method is treated as a universal plug-in, which can be incorporated into different models for performance improvement. In the end, we conduct extensive experiments to evaluate our method on the widely-used datasets including CUB-200-2011, CARS-196, and Stanford Online Products. Our quantitative results demonstrate that the proposed plug-in outperforms previous approaches consistently and significantly across different datasets and evaluation metrics.

Anthropogenic land uses influence stream dissolved organic matter quality more than decomposition rates and macroinvertebrate diversity

In the era of the Anthropocene, streams and rivers are among the most heavily impacted ecosystems due to the influence of catchment land use on stream water quality and ecological condition. In practice, structural and functional indicators collected by biomonitoring programs are underused and thus limited in their ability to offer practical insight into functional-based restoration approaches. Here we applied a novel combination of indicators—cotton strip decomposition, benthic invertebrate sampling together with dissolved organic matter (DOM) composition — to determine if streams highly impacted by urbanized and agricultural land use across Windsor-Essex (southwestern Ontario, Canada) were consistent across season, anthropogenic land use or some combination of both. Overall, our results suggest that urbanized and agricultural streams are indeed degraded at a similar level, with high decomposition rates and low levels of macroinvertebrate diversity. Moreover, DOM quality proved to be the most predictable indicator spatially and seasonally, integrating insights from both decomposition and macroinvertebrate indices. Microbial humic-like DOM correlated positively with decomposition rates, and negatively with invertebrate species richness. Our findings show that functional changes in stream ecological condition can be effectively tracked by structural indicators, namely DOM composition. DOM offers a cost-effective approach to assessing ecosystem health and should be explored as a reliable indicator in monitoring programs and to inform functional-based indicators in ecosystem restoration.

Historical control data of ecotoxicological test with the copepod Tigriopus fulvus

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate the variability of naupliar mortality and sensitivity of T. fulvus to copper sulphate, (positive control), reared in laboratory by using a series of historical control data (HCD). Historical data were obtained by a dataset of 68 mortality acute tests (negative control) and by about 30 values of LC50 determined at 24–48 and 96 h (positive control with copper sulphate), in over 12 years. Data, arranged in Shewhart-like control charts, displayed a mean mortality of 3.53% in negative controls, well below the reference limit of ≤10%, with a low level of variability over time. Lethal concentration (LC50) for copper sulphate showed a stable mean of 0.67 ± 0.12 at 24 h, 0.30 ± 0.08 at 48 h and 0.12 ± 0.05 mg Cu++/L, over time. These data confirm Tigriopus fulvus as a good bioindicator, even after years of culturing in laboratory conditions, since even over time, its responses to negative and positive controls (copper) have not undergone changes.

Density-dependent predatory impacts of an invasive beetle across a subantarctic archipelago

Biological invasions represent a major threat to biodiversity, especially in cold insular environments characterized by high levels of endemism and low species diversity which are heavily impacted by global warming. Terrestrial invertebrates are very responsive to environmental changes, and native terrestrial invertebrates from cold islands tend to be naive to novel predators. Therefore, understanding the relationships between predators and prey in the context of global changes is essential for the management of these areas, particularly in the case of non-native predators. Merizodus soledadinus (Guérin-Méneville, 1830) is an invasive non-native insect species present on two subantarctic archipelagos, where it has extensive distribution and increasing impacts. While the biology of M. soledadinus has recently received attention, its trophic interactions have been less examined. We investigated how characteristics of M. soledadinus, its density, as well as prey density influence its predation rate on the Kerguelen Islands where the temporal evolution of its geographic distribution is precisely known. Our results show that M. soledadinus can have high ecological impacts on insect communities when present in high densities regardless of its residence time, consistent with the observed decline of the native fauna of the Kerguelen Islands in other studies. Special attention should be paid to limiting factors enhancing its dispersal and improving biosecurity for invasive insect species.

Analysis of problems in increasing beef production with the Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM) approach in North Sumatera

The consumption rate is not in line with the rate of beef production, causing problems in fulfilling beef. This study aims to explore problems in increasing beef production and to create graphs and hierarchical diagrams of priority problem solving using the Interpretative Structural Modeling method. The shortage of beef production is caused by several problems, including 1) slaughtering productive female cattle, 2) reproductive disorders due to disease and malnutrition, 3) limited productive females as breeders, 4) limited skilled workers in the field of artificial insemination, 5) limited superior bulls, 6) limited knowledge about cattle farming, 7) small business ownership scale, 8) lack of motivation of farmers, 9) limited insight in feed processing technology, 10) limited capital, 11) limitations sources of feed or limited supply of grazing land due to land conversion, 12) Imports of cattle, 13) Sales of cattle outside North Sumatra, 14) Prices of beef. The final results of the Reachability Matrix have 3 categories of problem solving based on graphs and hierarchies, namely Top-Level variables sub elements E1 and E2, then Middle Level variables sub elements E11, (E2 with E3), E9, E6, E14, E4 and E7 and Low Level Variables sub elements E10, E5, E12 and E13.

The Roles of Chaos Seeding and Multiple Perturbations in Convection-Permitting Ensemble Forecasting over Southern China

Abstract The roles of chaos seeding and multiple perturbations, including model perturbations and topographic perturbations, in convection-permitting ensemble forecasting, are assessed. Six comparison experiments were conducted for 14 heavy rainfall events over southern China. Chaos seeding was run as a benchmark experiment to compare their effects to the intended perturbations. The results first reveal the chaos seeding phenomenon. That is, the tiny and local perturbations of the skin soil moisture propagate into the whole analysis domain within an hour and expand to every prognostic variable, and the perturbations derived from chaos seeding develop when moist convection is active. Second, the chaos seeding has a statistically significant difference from our intended perturbations for the ensemble spread magnitudes of precipitation and the spread–skill relationships and probabilistic forecast skills of dynamical variables. Additionally, for the probabilistic forecasts of precipitation, initial and lateral boundary perturbations and model perturbations can yield statistically larger FSS and AROC scores than chaos seeding; topographic perturbations can only improve FSS and AROC scores a little. The different performances may be related to the different degrees of the real dynamical influence of our intended perturbations. Finally, model perturbations can increase the ensemble spreads of precipitation, and improve FSS and AROC scores of precipitation and the consistency of mid- and low-level dynamical variables. However, the effects of topographic perturbations are small.

The impact of UV variability on the abundance of bright galaxies at z ≥ 9

ABSTRACT JWST observations have revealed a population of galaxies bright enough that potentially challenge standard galaxy formation models in the Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmology. Using a minimal empirical framework, we investigate the influence of variability on the rest-frame ultra-violet (UV) luminosity function of galaxies at z ≥ 9. Our study differentiates between the median UV radiation yield and the variability of UV luminosities of galaxies at a fixed dark matter halo mass. We primarily focus on the latter effect, which depends on halo assembly and galaxy formation processes and can significantly increase the abundance of UV-bright galaxies due to the upscatter of galaxies in lower-mass haloes. We find that a relatively low level of variability, σUV ≈ 0.75 mag, matches the observational constraints at z ≈ 9. However, increasingly larger σUV is necessary when moving to higher redshifts, reaching $\sigma _{\rm UV} \approx 2.0\, (2.5)\, {\rm mag}$ at z ≈ 12 (16). This implied variability is consistent with expectations of physical processes in high-redshift galaxies such as bursty star formation and dust clearance during strong feedback cycles. Photometric constraints from JWST at z ≳ 9 therefore can be reconciled with a standard ΛCDM-based galaxy formation model calibrated at lower redshifts without the need for adjustments to the median UV radiation yield.

A comparison of genomic diversity and demographic history of the North Atlantic and Southwest Atlantic southern right whales.

Right whales (genus Eubalaena) were among the first, and most extensively pursued, targets of commercial whaling. However, understanding the impacts of this persecution requires knowledge of the demographic histories of these species prior to exploitation. We used deep whole genome sequencing (~40×) of 12 North Atlantic (E. glacialis) and 10 Southwest Atlantic southern (E. australis) right whales to quantify contemporary levels of genetic diversity and infer their demographic histories over time. Using coalescent- and identity-by-descent-based modelling to estimate ancestral effective population sizes from genomic data, we demonstrate that North Atlantic right whales have lived with smaller effective population sizes (Ne) than southern right whales in the Southwest Atlantic since their divergence and describe the decline in both populations around the time of whaling. North Atlantic right whales exhibit reduced genetic diversity and longer runs of homozygosity leading to higher inbreeding coefficients compared to the sampled population of southern right whales. This study represents the first comprehensive assessment of genome-wide diversity of right whales in the western Atlantic and underscores the benefits of high coverage, genome-wide datasets to help resolve long-standing questions about how historical changes in effective population size over different time scales shape contemporary diversity estimates. This knowledge is crucial to improve our understanding of the right whales' history and inform our approaches to address contemporary conservation issues. Understanding and quantifying the cumulative impact of long-term small Ne, low levels of diversity and recent inbreeding on North Atlantic right whale recovery will be important next steps.

Pyramid-VAE-GAN: Transferring hierarchical latent variables for image inpainting

Significant progress has been made in image inpainting methods in recent years. However, they are incapable of producing inpainting results with reasonable structures, rich detail, and sharpness at the same time. In this paper, we propose the Pyramid-VAE-GAN network for image inpainting to address this limitation. Our network is built on a variational autoencoder (VAE) backbone that encodes high-level latent variables to represent complicated high-dimensional prior distributions of images. The prior assists in reconstructing reasonable structures when inpainting. We also adopt a pyramid structure in our model to maintain rich detail in low-level latent variables. To avoid the usual incompatibility of requiring both reasonable structures and rich detail, we propose a novel cross-layer latent variable transfer module. This transfers information about long-range structures contained in high-level latent variables to low-level latent variables representing more detailed information. We further use adversarial training to select the most reasonable results and to improve the sharpness of the images. Extensive experimental results on multiple datasets demonstrate the superiority of our method. Our code is available at https://github.com/thy960112/Pyramid-VAE-GAN.

Morphology and genetic characterization of Physaloptera sibirica Petrow & Gorbunov, 1931 (Spirurida: Physalopteridae), from the hog-badger Arctonyx collaris Cuvier (Carnivora: Mustelidae), with molecular phylogeny of Physalopteridae

BackgroundNematodes of the family Physalopteridae (Spirurida: Physalopteroidea) commonly parasitize the alimentary canal of all major vertebrate groups. However, many physalopterid species are not adequately described, especially regarding the detailed morphology of the cephalic end. The current genetic database for Physaloptera species is still very limited, which seriously hampers molecular-based species identification. Additionally, the systematic status of some genera and the evolutionary relationships of the subfamilies in the Physalopteridae remain under debate.MethodsNew morphological data for Physaloptera sibirica was gathered using light and scanning electron microscopy based on newly collected specimens from the hog badger Arctonyx collaris Cuvier (Carnivora: Mustelidae) in China. Six different genetic markers, including nuclear small ribosomal DNA (18S), large ribosomal DNA (28S) and internal transcribed spacer (ITS), mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (cox1) and subunit 2 (cox2), and the 12S small subunit ribosomal RNA gene of P. sibirica were sequenced and analyzed for the first time to our knowledge. Additionally, to construct a basic molecular phylogenetic framework for the Physalopteridae, phylogenetic analyses were performed based on the cox1 and 18S + cox1 genes using maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) methods.ResultsScanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation displayed the details of the cephalic structures, deirids, excretory pore, caudal papillae, vulva, phasmids and egg of P. sibirica for the first time to our knowledge. Pairwise comparison of the sequences obtained for P. sibirica did not reveal intraspecific divergence regarding the 18S, 28S, cox1 and 12S genetic markers and a low level of divergence in the ITS (0.16%) and cox2 (2.39%) regions. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference analyses showed that the representatives of Physalopteridae formed two major clades (species of Physalopterinae + Thubunaeinae parasitic in terrestrial vertebrates and Proleptinae only occurring in marine or freshwater fishes). Turgida turgida was found nested among representatives of Physaloptera. Physaloptera sibirica clustered together with P. rara. Physalopteroides sp. (Thubunaeinae) formed a sister relationship to the physalopterine Abbreviata caucasica.ConclusionsPhysaloptera sibirica was redescribed, which is the fourth nematode parasite reported from the hog badger A. collaris, and A. collaris represents a new host for P. sibirica. The phylogenetic results challenged the validity of the subfamily Thubunaeinae and of the genus Turgida and supported dividing the family Physalopteridae into two subfamilies, Physalopterinae and Proleptinae. However, we do not make any immediate systematic changes in the Physalopteridae, because a more rigorous study with broader representation of the Physalopteridae is required. These present findings contribute to morphologically identifying P. sibirica more accurately and provide new insights into the systematics of the Physalopteridae.Graphical