Foraging distance distributions reveal how honeybee waggle dance recruitment varies with landscape

Honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies use a unique collective foraging system, the waggle dance, to communicate and process the location of resources. Here, we present a means to quantify the effect of recruitment on colony forager allocation across the landscape by simply observing the waggle dance on the dancefloor. We show first, through a theoretical model, that recruitment leaves a characteristic imprint on the distance distribution of foraging sites that a colony visits, which varies according to the proportion of trips driven by individual search. When we fit this model to the real-world empirical distance distribution of forage sites visited by 20 honeybee colonies in urban and rural landscapes across South East England, obtained via dance decoding, we find considerable variation in the use of dancing in colony foraging, particularly in agri-rural landscapes. In our dataset, reliance on dancing increases as arable land gives way to built-up areas, suggesting that dancing may have the greatest impact on colony foraging in the complex and heterogeneous landscapes of forage-rich urban areas. Our model provides a tool to assess the relevance of this extraordinary behaviour across modern anthropogenic landscape type

Drug discovery: Insights from the invertebrate Caenorhabditis elegans

Therapeutic drug development is a long, expensive, and complex process that usually takes 12–15 years. In the early phases of drug discovery, in particular, there is a growing need for animal models that ensure the reduction in both cost and time. Caenorhabditis elegans has been traditionally used to address fundamental aspects of key biological processes, such as apoptosis, aging, and gene expression regulation. During the last decade, with the advent of large-scale platforms for screenings, this invertebrate has also emerged as an essential tool in the pharmaceutical research industry to identify novel drugs and drug targets. In this review, we discuss the reasons why C. elegans has been positioned as an outstanding cost-effective option for drug discovery, highlighting both the advantages and drawbacks of this model. Particular attention is paid to the suitability of this nematode in large-scale genetic and pharmacological screenings. High-throughput screenings in C. elegans have indeed contributed to the breakthrough of a wide variety of candidate compounds involved in extensive fields including neurodegeneration, pathogen infections and metabolic disorders. The versatility of this nematode, which enables its instrumentation as a model of human diseases, is another attribute also herein underscored. As illustrative examples, we discuss the utility of C. elegans models of both human neurodegenerative diseases and parasitic nematodes in the drug discovery industry. Summing up, this review aims to demonstrate the impact of C. elegans models on the drug discovery pipeline.Fil: Giunti, Sebastián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia; ArgentinaFil: Andersen, Natalia Denise. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia; ArgentinaFil: Rayes, Diego Hernán. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia; ArgentinaFil: de Rosa, Maria Jose. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia; Argentin

Lessons from the Subprime Meltdown

This paper uses Hyman P. Minsky's approach to analyze the current international financial crisis, which was initiated by problems in the American real estate market. In a 1987 manuscript, Minsky had already recognized the importance of the trend toward securitization of home mortgages. This paper identifies the causes and consequences of the financial innovations that created the real estate boom and bust. It examines the role played by each of the key playersincluding brokers, appraisers, borrowers, securitizers, insurers, and regulatorsin creating the crisis. Finally, it proposes short-run solutions to the current crisis, as well as longer-run policy to prevent it (a debt deflation) from happening again

Data from: A land classification protocol for pollinator ecology research: an urbanisation case study

1. Land-use change is one of the most important drivers of widespread declines in pollinator populations. Comprehensive quantitative methods for land classification are critical to understanding these effects, but co-option of existing human-focussed land classifications is often inappropriate for pollinator research. 2. Here we present a flexible GIS-based land classification protocol for pollinator research using a bottom-up approach driven by reference to pollinator ecology, with urbanisation as a case study. Our multi-step method involves manually generating land cover maps at multiple biologically relevant radii surrounding study sites using GIS, with a focus on identifying land cover types that have a specific relevance to pollinators. This is followed by a three-step refinement process using statistical tools: 1) definition of land-use categories, 2) Principal Components Analysis (PCA) on the categories and 3) cluster analysis to generate a categorical land-use variable for use in subsequent analysis. Model selection is then used to determine the appropriate spatial scale for analysis. 3. We demonstrate an application of our protocol using a case study of 38 sites across a gradient of urbanisation in South-East England. In our case study, the land classification generated a categorical land-use variable at each of four radii based on the clustering of sites with different degrees of urbanisation, open land and flower-rich habitat. 4. Studies of land-use effects on pollinators have historically employed a wide array of land classification techniques from descriptive and qualitative to complex and quantitative. We suggest that land-use studies in pollinator ecology should broadly adopt GIS-based multi-step land classification techniques to enable robust analysis and aid comparative research. Our protocol offers a customizable approach that combines specific relevance to pollinator research with the potential for application to a wide range of ecological questions, including agroecological studies of pest control

Data from: Lower bumblebee colony reproductive success in agricultural compared to urban environments

Urbanisation represents a rapidly growing driver of land-use change. While it is clear that urbanisation impacts species abundance and diversity, direct effects of urban land-use on animal reproductive success are rarely documented. Here we show that urban land-use is linked to long-term colony reproductive output in a key pollinator. We reared colonies from wild-caught bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) queens, placed them at sites characterised by varying degrees of urbanisation from inner city to rural farmland, and monitored the production of sexual offspring across the entire colony cycle. Our land-use cluster analysis identified three site categories, and this categorization was a strong predictor of colony performance. Crucially, colonies in the two clusters characterized by urban development produced more sexual offspring than those in the cluster dominated by agricultural land. These colonies also reached higher peak size, had more food stores, encountered fewer parasite invasions and survived for longer. Our results show a link between urbanisation and bumblebee colony reproductive success, supporting the theory that urban areas provide a refuge for pollinator populations in an otherwise barren agricultural landscape

Supplementary Material from Lower bumblebee colony reproductive success in agricultural compared with urban environments

Supplementary methods, results, discussion and figure

Supplementary Material from Lower bumblebee colony reproductive success in agricultural compared to urban environments

Supplementary methods, results, discussion and figure

Supplementary Tables from Lower bumblebee colony reproductive success in agricultural compared with urban environments

Supplementary tables including model selection tables and estimates and confidence intervals for statistical analyses presented and details of Principle Components Analysis for land classificatio

Supplementary Tables from Lower bumblebee colony reproductive success in agricultural compared to urban environments

Supplementary tables including model selection tables and estimates and confidence intervals for statistical analyses presented and details of Principle Components Analysis for land classificatio

Sustainable and responsible ICT innovation in healthcare: a long view and continuous ethical watch required

Healthcare is of central importance to all communities and generally has a high political profile. Access and availability of care, rising costs, and emerging new relationships between experts (doctors and nurses) and users (patients, citizens) pose new challenges. ICT-based innovation is often proposed as a solution, accompanied by optimistic accounts of its transformative potential, both for the developing world and the developed. These ambitions also implicitly endorse new social agreements and business models. In this respect, as in others, technology is not neutral or simple in the service of modernization; it has its own politics. This paper discusses ICT innovation in healthcare in these terms focused on issues of sustainability and responsibility adapting two economic concepts: redistribution and externalities. The analysis reveals ICT innovation in health care as essentially raising 'trans-scientific' questions - matters of policy and intergenerational ethics rather than narrow science