Corvidae Feather Pulp and West Nile Virus Detection

We evaluated cloacal swab, vascular pulp of flight feather, and kidney and spleen pool samples from carcasses of members of the family Corvidae as sources of West Nile virus (WNV). The cloacal swab, kidney and spleen pool, and feather pulp, respectively, were the source of WNV in 38%, 43%, and 77% of the carcasses

West Nile Virus Antibody Prevalence in Wild Mammals, Southern Wisconsin

Twenty percent prevalence of West Nile virus antibody was found in free-ranging medium-sized Wisconsin mammals. No significant differences were noted in antibody prevalence with regard to sex, age, month of collection, or species. Our results suggest a similar route of infection in these mammals

Patterns in soil ammonia-oxidizer response to global change

Background/Question/Methods
The Domains Archaea and Bacteria contain the vast majority of Earth’s biodiversity and biomass, and their members play critical, often exclusive, roles in many biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem services. Human-induced global change, particularly with respect to increased nitrogen deposition, has the potential to drastically alter how soil nitrifying communities perform their biogeochemical function. Additionally, multi-factor global change can alter how microbial communities interact with each other and with the associated plant communities. This study, performed in the context of the long-term Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment (JRGCE) in a California grassland ecosystem, examines how ammonia-oxidizing Archaea and Bacteria (AOA and AOB, respectively) respond to multi-factor global change. Manipulations at the JRGCE include simultaneous increases in CO2, warming, precipitation and nitrogen deposition. Past studies have utilized DNA-fingerprinting methods to assess ammonia-oxidizer response to multi-factor global change. This study compares how seed bank (DNA-based) versus metabolically active (RNA-based) ammonia-oxidizing communities respond to global change manipulations over several seasons. We have employed ultra-deep 454-pyrosequencing techniques to examine these communities using the ammonia monooxygenase (amoA) functional gene marker. Effects of global change have been examined at several phylogenetic levels and linked this community information to gross rates of nitrification using 15N stable isotopic methods. Ammonia-oxidizer and plant communities have been compared using multivariate statistical methods.

Results/Conclusions
Our results show that both AOB and AOA communities are highly influenced by nitrogen deposition in both their abundance and community structure. These changes are linked to increased nitrification rate in the elevated nitrogen deposition plots. Our results further show that the relationship between the AOB and plant communities fundamentally changes under long-term nitrogen deposition manipulation. This positive feedback loop may enhance the rate of change in ammonia-oxidizer communities, which may further elevate nitrification rates. This study provides strong evidence that incorporating microbial community and abundance information into global change predictions is crucial for understanding how ecosystem-level nutrient cycling rates may change.

*The audio track for talks in this symposium may be obtained at the following web address:*

*https://sites.google.com/site/esa2010symposium13audiocontent/esa2010-symposium13-audio-content

The Earth Microbiome Project: Meeting report of the "1 EMP meeting on sample selection and acquisition" at Argonne National Laboratory October 6 2010.

This report details the outcome the first meeting of the Earth Microbiome Project to discuss sample selection and acquisition. The meeting, held at the Argonne National Laboratory on Wednesday October 6(th) 2010, focused on discussion of how to prioritize environmental samples for sequencing and metagenomic analysis as part of the global effort of the EMP to systematically determine the functional and phylogenetic diversity of microbial communities across the world

The Biogeography of Putative Microbial Antibiotic Production

Understanding patterns in the distribution and abundance of functional traits across a landscape is of fundamental importance to ecology. Mapping these distributions is particularly challenging for species-rich groups with sparse trait measurement coverage, such as flowering plants, insects, and microorganisms. Here, we use likelihood-based character reconstruction to infer and analyze the spatial distribution of unmeasured traits. We apply this framework to a microbial dataset comprised of 11,732 ketosynthase alpha gene sequences extracted from 144 soil samples from three continents to document the spatial distribution of putative microbial polyketide antibiotic production. Antibiotic production is a key competitive strategy for soil microbial survival and performance. Additionally, novel antibiotic discovery is highly relevant to human health, making natural antibiotic production by soil microorganisms a major target for bioprospecting. Our comparison of trait-based biogeographical patterns to patterns based on taxonomy and phylogeny is relevant to our basic understanding of microbial biogeography as well as the pressing need for new antibiotics

Defining Anuran Malformations in the Context of a Developmental Problem

This paper summarizes terminology and general concepts involved in animal development for the purpose of providing background for the study and understanding of frog malformations. The results of our radiographic investigation of rear limb malformations in Rana pipiens provide evidence that frog malformations are the product of early developmental errors. Although bacteria, parasites and viruses were identified in these metamorphosed frogs, the relevant window to look for the teratogenic affect of these agents is in the early tadpole stage during limb development. As a result, our microbiological findings must be regarded as inconclusive relative to determining their contribution to malformations because we conducted our examinations on metamorphosed frogs not tadpoles. Future studies need to look at teratogenic agents (chemical, microbial, physical or mechanical) that are present in the embryo, tadpole, and their environments at stages of development that are relevant for the malformation type. The impact of these teratogenic agents then needs to be assessed in appropriate animal models using studies that are designed to mimic field conditions. The results of these laboratory tests should then be analyzed in such a way that will allow comparison with the findings in the wild-caught tadpoles and frogs

Fostering effective and sustainable scientific collaboration and knowledge exchange: a workshop-based approach to establish a national ecological observatory network (NEON) domain-specific user group

The decision to establish a network of researchers centers on identifying shared research goals. Ecologically specific regions, such as the USA’s National Ecological Observatory Network’s (NEON’s) eco-climatic domains, are ideal locations by which to assemble researchers with a diverse range of expertise but focused on the same set of ecological challenges. The recently established Great Lakes User Group (GLUG) is NEON’s first domain specific ensemble of researchers, whose goal is to address scientific and technical issues specific to the Great Lakes Domain 5 (D05) by using NEON data to enable advancement of ecosystem science. Here, we report on GLUG’s kick off workshop, which comprised lightning talks, keynote presentations, breakout brainstorming sessions and field site visits. Together, these activities created an environment to foster and strengthen GLUG and NEON user engagement. The tangible outcomes of the workshop exceeded initial expectations and include plans for (i) two journal articles (in addition to this one), (ii) two potential funding proposals, (iii) an assignable assets request and (iv) development of classroom activities using NEON datasets. The success of this 2.5-day event was due to a combination of factors, including establishment of clear objectives, adopting engaging activities and providing opportunities for active participation and inclusive collaboration with diverse participants. Given the success of this approach we encourage others, wanting to organize similar groups of researchers, to adopt the workshop framework presented here which will strengthen existing collaborations and foster new ones, together with raising greater awareness and promotion of use of NEON datasets. Establishing domain specific user groups will help bridge the scale gap between site level data collection and addressing regional and larger ecological challenges

Selection criteria for patients with chronic ankle instability in controlled research: a position statement of the International Ankle Consortium

While research on chronic ankle instability (CAI) and awareness of its impact on society and health care systems has grown substantially in the last 2 decades, the inconsistency in participant or patient selection criteria across studies presents a potential obstacle to addressing the problem properly. This major gap within the literature limits the ability to generalize this evidence to the target patient population. Therefore, there is a need to provide standards for patient or participant selection criteria in research focused on CAI with justifications using the best available evidence. The International Ankle Consortium provides this position paper to present and discuss an endorsed set of selection criteria for patients with CAI based on the best available evidence to be used in future research and study designs. These recommendations will enhance the validity of research conducted in this clinical population with the end goal of bringing the research evidence to the clinician and patient

Social Salience and the Sociolinguistic Monitor: A Case Study of ING and TH-fronting in Britain

This article examines the role of social salience, or the relative ability of a linguistic variable to evoke social meaning, in structuring listeners’ perceptions of quantitative sociolinguistic distributions. Building on the foundational work of Labov et al. (2006, 2011) on the “sociolinguistic monitor” (a proposed cognitive mechanism responsible for sociolinguistic perception), we examine whether listeners’ evaluative judgments of speech change as a function of the type of variable presented. We consider two variables in British English, ING and TH-fronting, which we argue differ in their relative social salience. Replicating the design of Labov et al.’s studies, we test 149 British listeners’ reactions to different quantitative distributions of these variables. Our experiments elicit a very different pattern of perceptual responses than those reported previously. In particular, our results suggest that a variable’s social salience determines both whether and how it is perceptually evaluated. We argue that this finding is crucial for understanding how sociolinguistic information is cognitively processed