Social Interactions of Juvenile Brown Boobies at Sea as Observed with Animal-Borne Video Cameras

While social interactions play a crucial role on the development of young individuals, those of highly mobile juvenile birds in inaccessible environments are difficult to observe. In this study, we deployed miniaturised video recorders on juvenile brown boobies Sula leucogaster, which had been hand-fed beginning a few days after hatching, to examine how social interactions between tagged juveniles and other birds affected their flight and foraging behaviour. Juveniles flew longer with congeners, especially with adult birds, than solitarily. In addition, approximately 40% of foraging occurred close to aggregations of congeners and other species. Young seabirds voluntarily followed other birds, which may directly enhance their foraging success and improve foraging and flying skills during their developmental stage, or both

Seascape Genetics of a Globally Distributed, Highly Mobile Marine Mammal: The Short-Beaked Common Dolphin (Genus Delphinus)

Identifying which factors shape the distribution of intraspecific genetic diversity is central in evolutionary and conservation biology. In the marine realm, the absence of obvious barriers to dispersal can make this task more difficult. Nevertheless, recent studies have provided valuable insights into which factors may be shaping genetic structure in the world's oceans. These studies were, however, generally conducted on marine organisms with larval dispersal. Here, using a seascape genetics approach, we show that marine productivity and sea surface temperature are correlated with genetic structure in a highly mobile, widely distributed marine mammal species, the short-beaked common dolphin. Isolation by distance also appears to influence population divergence over larger geographical scales (i.e. across different ocean basins). We suggest that the relationship between environmental variables and population structure may be caused by prey behaviour, which is believed to determine common dolphins' movement patterns and preferred associations with certain oceanographic conditions. Our study highlights the role of oceanography in shaping genetic structure of a highly mobile and widely distributed top marine predator. Thus, seascape genetic studies can potentially track the biological effects of ongoing climate-change at oceanographic interfaces and also inform marine reserve design in relation to the distribution and genetic connectivity of charismatic and ecologically important megafauna

Stabilizing Effects in Oxazolidin-2-ones-Containing Pseudopeptides

Novel homo-oligomers of the Gly-L-Oxd moiety have been prepared and their preferential conformations have been analyzed by IR, 1H NMR and CD spectroscopy, with the aim of checking whether these molecules are able to fold in ordered structures. We have noticed that in these homo-oligomers two stabilizing effects are active: besides the trans conformation of the imide group, the formation of C=O…H-N hydrogen bonds takes place and is very sensitive to the pseudopeptide size