Inferring the rules of social interaction in migrating caribou

Social interactions are a significant factor that influence the decision-making of species ranging from humans to bacteria. In the context of animal migration, social interactions may lead to improved decision-making, greater ability to respond to environmental cues, and the cultural transmission of optimal routes. Despite their significance, the precise nature of social interactions in migrating species remains largely unknown. Here we deploy unmanned aerial systems to collect aerial footage of caribou as they undertake their migration from Victoria Island to mainland Canada. Through a Bayesian analysis of trajectories we reveal the fine-scale interaction rules of migrating caribou and show they are attracted to one another and copy directional choices of neighbours, but do not interact through clearly defined metric or topological interaction ranges. By explicitly considering the role of social information on movement decisions we construct a map of near neighbour influence that quantifies the nature of information flow in these herds. These results will inform more realistic, mechanism-based models of migration in caribou and other social ungulates, leading to better predictions of spatial use patterns and responses to changing environmental conditions. Moreover, we anticipate that the protocol we developed here will be broadly applicable to study social behaviour in a wide range of migratory and non-migratory taxa. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Collective movement ecology’

Comentarios a la ponencia "Igualdades, desigualdades y derechos", presentada por Mirta Lobato

Teniendo en cuenta -como advierte Mirta Lobato a los comentaristas- que cuando habla de desigualdades en su ponencia se refiere a que "el trabajo es el eje articulador de estas reflexiones", y sin dejar de reconocer la importancia que cabe a los otros temas y sujetos sobre los que tan bien desarrolla su exposición, quiero centrarme en un grupo que estoy estudiando desde hace unos años, como es el de los inmigrantes limítrofes a la Argentina de fin de siglo XX e inicios del XXI. Para ello, voy a analizar brevemente -como así lo exigen las reglas del comentario- a estos sujetos sociales, a quienes, como también ella afirma, ya los habríamos de encontrar censalmente a inicios del siglo pasado, aunque su visibilidad fuera menor porque aún no habían arribado a Buenos Aires; es decir, al escenario donde "las cosas suceden".Fil: Benencia, Roberto Rodolfo. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Compliance In Preschool Children As Related To Nurturance, Nonnurturance, And Nurturance Withdrawal

Nurturance, nonnurturance, and nurturance withdrawal were tested for their effects on the compliance behavior of 60 3- and 4-year-old children. The measure of compliance was obtained by counting the number of blocks the child placed in a box when requested to do so and the number of squares the child filled in on quadrille filler paper. Separate analyses of variance were performed on the two dependent variables. No significant main effects or interactions were found although the means were in the predicted direction

Complementary resource use by tree species in a rain forest tree plantation

Mixed-species tree plantations, composed of high-value native rain forest timbers, are potential forestry systems for the subtropics and tropics that can provide ecological and production benefits. Choices of rain forest tree species for mixtures are generally based on the concept that assemblages of fast-growing and light-demanding species are less productive than assemblages of species with different shade tolerances. We examined the hypothesis that mixtures of two fast-growing species compete for resources, while mixtures of shade-tolerant and shade-intolerant species are complementary. Ecophysiological characteristics of young trees were determined and analyzed with a physiology-based canopy model (MAESTRA) to test species interactions. Contrary to predictions, there was evidence for complementary interactions between two fast-growing species with respect to nutrient uptake, nutrient use efficiency, and nutrient cycling. Fast-growing Elaeocarpus angustifolius had maximum demand for soil nutrients in summer, the most efficient internal recycling of N, and low P use efficiency at the leaf and whole-plant level and produced a large amount of nutrient-rich litter. In contrast, fast-growing Grevillea robusta had maximum demand for soil nutrients in spring and highest leaf nutrient use efficiency for N and P and produced low-nutrient litter. Thus, mixtures of fast-growing G. robusta and E. angustifolius or G. robusta and slow-growing, shade-tolerant Castanospermum australe may have similar or even greater productivity than monocultures, as light requirement is just one of several factors affecting performance of mixed-species plantations. We conclude that the knowledge gained here will be useful for designing large-scale experimental mixtures and commercial forestry systems in subtropical Australia and elsewhere

Froth-like minimizers of a non local free energy functional with competing interactions

We investigate the ground and low energy states of a one dimensional non local free energy functional describing at a mean field level a spin system with both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions. In particular, the antiferromagnetic interaction is assumed to have a range much larger than the ferromagnetic one. The competition between these two effects is expected to lead to the spontaneous emergence of a regular alternation of long intervals on which the spin profile is magnetized either up or down, with an oscillation scale intermediate between the range of the ferromagnetic and that of the antiferromagnetic interaction. In this sense, the optimal or quasi-optimal profiles are "froth-like": if seen on the scale of the antiferromagnetic potential they look neutral, but if seen at the microscope they actually consist of big bubbles of two different phases alternating among each other. In this paper we prove the validity of this picture, we compute the oscillation scale of the quasi-optimal profiles and we quantify their distance in norm from a reference periodic profile. The proof consists of two main steps: we first coarse grain the system on a scale intermediate between the range of the ferromagnetic potential and the expected optimal oscillation scale; in this way we reduce the original functional to an effective "sharp interface" one. Next, we study the latter by reflection positivity methods, which require as a key ingredient the exact locality of the short range term. Our proof has the conceptual interest of combining coarse graining with reflection positivity methods, an idea that is presumably useful in much more general contexts than the one studied here.Comment: 38 pages, 2 figure

The Generalizability of Personality Effects in Politics

A burgeoning line of research examining the relation between personality traits and political variables relies extensively on convenience samples. However, our understanding of the extent to which using convenience samples challenges the generalizability of these findings to target populations remains limited. We address this question by testing whether associations between personality and political characteristics observed in representative samples diverged from those observed in the sub-populations most commonly studied in convenience samples, namely students and internet users. We leverage ten high-quality representative datasets to compare the representative samples with the two sub- samples. We did not find any systematic differences in the relationship between personality traits and a broad range of political variables. Instead, results from the sub-samples generalized well to those observed in the broader and more diverse representative sample

Effectiveness and Cost Effectiveness of Expanding Harm Reduction and Antiretroviral Therapy in a Mixed HIV Epidemic: A Modeling Analysis for Ukraine

A cost-effectiveness study by Sabina Alistar and colleagues evaluates the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of different levels of investment in methadone, ART, or both, in the mixed HIV epidemic in Ukraine

Human Th1 Cells That Express CD300a Are Polyfunctional and After Stimulation Up-Regulate the T-Box Transcription Factor Eomesodermin

Human naïve CD4 T cells express low levels of the immunomodulatory receptor CD300a, whereas effector/memory CD4 cells can be either CD300a+ or CD300a−. This suggested that CD300a expression could define a specific subset within the effector/memory CD4 T cell subpopulations. In fact, ex vivo analysis of the IFN-γ producing CD4 T cells showed that they are enriched in the CD300a+ subset. Moreover, stimulated CD4 T cells producing TNF-α and IL-2 besides IFN-γ (polyfunctional) are predominantly CD300a+. In addition to producing markedly higher levels of Th1-associated cytokines, the stimulated CD300a+ CD4 T cells are distinguished by a striking up-regulation of the T-box transcription factor eomesodermin (Eomes), whereas T-bet is up-regulated in both CD300a+ and CD300a− activated CD4 T cells to similar levels. The pleiotropic cytokine TGF-β1 has a determinant role in dictating the development of this Th1 subset, as its presence inhibits the expression of CD300a and down-regulates the expression of Eomes and IFN-γ. We conclude that CD300a+ human Th1 cells tend to be polyfunctional and after stimulation up-regulate Eomes