D-Day at Bernieres-Sur-Mer: the 5th BN, Royal Berkshire Regiment

Editor’s Note: Canadian visitors to Bernieres-sur-Mer are frequently puzzled by the name of the main street leading from the beach to the village church. The signs reach “Rue Royal Berkshire Regiment.” Who were the Berkshires and why such prominence in a Canadian landing area? C.P. Stacey’s official history has no listing for the regiment. Copp and Vogel ignore them in Maple Leaf Route: Caen as does Reg Roy in 1944: The Canadians in Normandy. The British official history is almost as silent except for a single chart on “Initial Beach Organisation” which lists “8 Kings and 5 R Berks” as the Beach Groups for 7 and 8 Canadian Infantry Brigades. We are also told that “each beach group contained units of the Royal Engineers, the Royal Army Service Corps, the Royal Army Medical Corps and other specialist formations, and a specially trained battalion of infantry whose commander was the beach group commander. The main task of the infantry was to provide working parties for the specialist units... but at first most of the beach battalions were involved in fighting to subdue enemy posts which had not been cleared when the assault battalions moved inland.” (L.F. Ellis, Victory in the West, Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1962), p.218). What follows is the D-Day story of the 5th Battalion. Royal Berkshire Regiment taken from their regimetnal history, The History of the Royal Berkshire Regiment (Princess Charlotte of Wales’s) 1920–1947 by Brigadier Gordon Blight.

Synthesis of a [2]rotaxane through first- and second-sphere coordination

In an effort to expand the application of a new template from interpenetrated to interlocked molecular species, we report the synthesis of a new [2]rotaxane by means of both first- and second-sphere coordination of a palladium(II) dichloride subunit

Discovery-dominance trade-off among widespread invasive ant species.

Ants are among the most problematic invasive species. They displace numerous native species, alter ecosystem processes, and can have negative impacts on agriculture and human health. In part, their success might stem from a departure from the discovery-dominance trade-off that can promote co-existence in native ant communities, that is, invasive ants are thought to be at the same time behaviorally dominant and faster discoverers of resources, compared to native species. However, it has not yet been tested whether similar asymmetries in behavioral dominance, exploration, and recruitment abilities also exist among invasive species. Here, we establish a dominance hierarchy among four of the most problematic invasive ants (Linepithema humile, Lasius neglectus, Wasmannia auropunctata, Pheidole megacephala) that may be able to arrive and establish in the same areas in the future. To assess behavioral dominance, we used confrontation experiments, testing the aggressiveness in individual and group interactions between all species pairs. In addition, to compare discovery efficiency, we tested the species' capacity to locate a food resource in a maze, and the capacity to recruit nestmates to exploit a food resource. The four species differed greatly in their capacity to discover resources and to recruit nestmates and to dominate the other species. Our results are consistent with a discovery-dominance trade-off. The species that showed the highest level of interspecific aggressiveness and dominance during dyadic interactions

A time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay for the measurement of testosterone in saliva: Monitoring of testosterone replacement therapy with testosterone buciclate

Monitoring of testosterone replacement therapy requires a reliable method for testosterone measurement. Determination of salivary testosterone, which reflects the hormone's biologically active plasma fraction, is a superior technique for this purpose. The aim of the present study was to establish a new sensitive time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay for the accurate measurement of testosterone levels in saliva and to validate it by monitoring testosterone replacement therapy in eight hypogonadal men. A clinical phase I- study with the new ester testosterone buciclate was performed to search for new testosterone preparations to produce constant serum levels in the therapy of male hypogonadism. After two control examinations eight male patients with primary hypogonadism were randomly assigned to two treatment groups (n = 2x4) and given single doses of either 200 mg (group I) or 600 mg (group II) testosterone buciclate intramuscularly. Saliva and blood samples were obtained 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 days post injection and then weekly for three months. The time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay for salivary testosterone shows a detection limit of 16 pmol/l, an intra-assay CV of 8.9% (at a testosterone concentration of 302 pmol/l), an inter-assay CV of 8.7% (at a testosterone concentration of 305 pmol/l) and a good correlation with an established radioimmunsassay of r = 0.89. The sample volume required by this method is only 180 mu l for extraction and duplicate determination. The assay procedure requires no more than three hours. In group I (200 mg) testosterone did not increase to normal levels either in saliva or in serum. However, in group II, androgen levels increased significantly and were maintained in the normal range for up to 12 weeks with maximal salivary testosterone levels of 303 +/- 18 pmol/l (mean+/-SE) and maximal testosterone levels of 13.1 +/- 0.9 nmol/l (mean+/-SE) in serum in study week 6 and 7. The time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay for salivary testosterone provides a useful tool for monitoring androgen status in men and women and is well suited for the follow-up of testosterone replacement therapy on an outpatient basis. The long-acting ester testosterone buciclate is a promising agent for substitution therapy of male hypogonadism and in combination with testosterone monitoring in saliva offers an interesting new perspective for male contraception

Screening disability insurance applications

This paper investigates the effects of stricter screening of disability insurance applications. A large-scale experiment was setup where in two of the 26 Dutch regions case workers of the disability insurance administration were instructed to screen applications more stringently. The empirical results show that stricter screening reduces long-term sickness absenteeism and disability insurance applications. We find evidence for direct effects of stricter screening on work resumption during the period of sickness absence and for self-screening by potential disability insurance applicants. Stricter screening seems to improve targeting efficiency, without inducing negative spillover effects to the inflow into unemployment insurance. The costs of stricter screening are only a small fraction of the monetary benefits.Disability insurance; experiment; policy evaluation; sickness absenteeism; self-screening

Differences in behavioural traits among native and introduced colonies of an invasive ant

Identifying the factors that promote the success of biological invasions is a key pursuit in ecology. To date, the link between animal personality and invasiveness has rarely been studied. Here, we examined in the laboratory how Argentine ant populations from the species' native and introduced ranges differed in a suite of behaviours related to species interactions and the use of space. We found correlations among specific behavioural traits that defined an explorative-aggressive syndrome. The Main "European" supercolony (introduced range) more readily explored novel environments, displayed more aggression, detected food resources more quickly, and occupied more space than the Catalonian supercolony (introduced range) and two other Argentine supercolonies (native range). The two native supercolonies also differed in their personalities; one harbouring the less invasive personality, while the other is intermediate between the two introduced supercolonies. Therefore, instead of a binary pattern, Argentine ant supercolonies display a behavioural continuum that is independent on their geographic origin (native/introduced ranges). Our results also suggest that variability in personality traits is correlated to differences in the ecological success of Argentine ant colonies. Differences in group personalities may facilitate the persistence and invasion of animals under novel selective pressures by promoting adaptive behaviours. We stress that the concept of animal personality should be taken into account when elucidating the mechanisms of invasiveness

Intrinsic and extrinsic factors drive ontogeny of early-life at-sea behaviour in a marine top predator

Young animals must learn to forage effectively to survive the transition from parental provisioning to independent feeding. Rapid development of successful foraging strategies is particularly important for capital breeders that do not receive parental guidance after weaning. The intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of variation in ontogeny of foraging are poorly understood for many species. Grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) are typical capital breeders; pups are abandoned on the natal site after a brief suckling phase, and must develop foraging skills without external input. We collected location and dive data from recently-weaned grey seal pups from two regions of the United Kingdom (the North Sea and the Celtic and Irish Seas) using animal-borne telemetry devices during their first months of independence at sea. Dive duration, depth, bottom time, and benthic diving increased over the first 40 days. The shape and magnitude of changes differed between regions. Females consistently had longer bottom times, and in the Celtic and Irish Seas they used shallower water than males. Regional sex differences suggest that extrinsic factors, such as water depth, contribute to behavioural sexual segregation. We recommend that conservation strategies consider movements of young naïve animals in addition to those of adults to account for developmental behavioural changes

A proactive-reactive syndrome affects group success in an ant species

Social insects have been particularly evolutionarily successful: they dominate terrestrial ecosystems all over the globe. Their success stems from their social organization, where one or a few individuals reproduce, whereas others carry out different colony tasks. From an evolutionary standpoint, social species are particularly interesting because natural selection acts at both the individual and colony levels. Therefore, we might expect to see selection acting simultaneously on personality at the individual level and colony level. In this study, we tested whether captive colonies of the ant Aphaenogaster senilis exhibited different behavioral types and evaluated their consequences for intraspecific competition. Our results demonstrate that colonies of the same age exposed to standardized laboratory conditions did indeed have different personalities. In addition, we found that A. senilis demonstrated a behavioral syndrome that included proactive and reactive behaviors: colonies varied in their approaches to exploration, risk taking, food retrieval, and conspecific interactions. This syndrome appears to be associated with a trade-off between competition for food resources and temperature-related foraging risks. >Bold> colonies contained individuals who more readily explored novel environments, exhibited aggressive behaviors, and demonstrated higher food-retrieval efficiency during intraspecific competition trials. However, such colonies were also more risk prone: workers suffered higher mortality rates because they more frequently foraged over their critical thermal maximum. The trade-off we observed under laboratory conditions might be key in maintaining colony-level personality, thus driving local-level adaptations in collective behavior.Peer Reviewe

Variation in the level of aggression, chemical and genetic distance among three supercolonies of the Argentine ant in Europe.

In their invasive ranges, Argentine ant populations often form one geographically vast supercolony, genetically and chemically uniform within which there is no intraspecific aggression. Here we present regional patterns of intraspecific aggression, cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) and population genetics of 18 nesting sites across Corsica and the French mainland. Aggression tests confirm the presence of a third European supercolony, the Corsican supercolony, which exhibits moderate to high levels of aggression, depending on nesting sites, with the Main supercolony, and invariably high levels of aggression with the Catalonian supercolony. The chemical analyses corroborated the behavioural data, with workers of the Corsican supercolony showing moderate differences in CHCs compared to workers of the European Main supercolony and strong differences compared to workers of the Catalonian supercolony. Interestingly, there were also clear genetic differences between workers of the Catalonian supercolony and the two other supercolonies at both nuclear and mitochondrial markers, but only very weak genetic differentiation between nesting sites of the Corsican and Main supercolonies (F(ST) = 0.06). A detailed comparison of the genetic composition of supercolonies also revealed that, if one of the last two supercolonies derived from the other, it is the Main supercolony that derived from the Corsican supercolony rather than the reverse. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of conducting more qualitative and quantitative analyses of the level of aggression between supercolonies, which has to be correlated with genetic and chemical data