Hemolymph microbiome of Pacific oysters in response to temperature, temperature stress and infection

Microbiota provide their hosts with a range of beneficial services, including defense from external pathogens. However, host-associated microbial communities themselves can act as a source of opportunistic pathogens depending on the environment. Marine poikilotherms and their microbiota are strongly influenced by temperature, but experimental studies exploring how temperature affects the interactions between both parties are rare. To assess the effects of temperature, temperature stress and infection on diversity, composition and dynamics of the hemolymph microbiota of Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas), we conducted an experiment in a fully-crossed, three-factorial design, in which the temperature acclimated oysters (8 or 22 °C) were exposed to temperature stress and to experimental challenge with a virulent Vibrio sp. Strain. We monitored oyster survival and repeatedly collected hemolymph of dead and alive animals to determine the microbiome composition by 16s rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing. We found that the microbial dynamics and composition of communities in healthy animals (including infection survivors) were significantly affected by temperature and temperature stress, but not by infection. The response was mediated by changes in the incidence and abundance of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and accompanied by little change at higher taxonomic levels, indicating dynamic stability of the hemolymph microbiome. Dead and moribund oysters, on the contrary, displayed signs of community structure disruption, characterized by very low diversity and proliferation of few OTUs. We can therefore link short-term responses of host-associated microbial communities to abiotic and biotic factors and assess the potential feedback between microbiota dynamics and host survival during disease

The many faces of biological individuality

Biological individuality is a major topic of discussion in biology and philosophy of biology. Recently, several objections have been raised against traditional accounts of biological individuality, including the objections of monism (the tendency to focus on a single individuality criterion and/or a single biological field), theory-centrism (the tendency to discuss only theory-based individuation), ahistoricity (the tendency to neglect what biologists of the past and historians of biology have said about biological individuality), disciplinary isolationism (the tendency to isolate biological individuality from other scientific and philosophical domains that have investigated individuality), and the multiplication of conceptual uncertainties (the lack of a precise definition of “biological individual” and related terms). In this introduction, I will examine the current philosophical landscape about biological individuality, and show how the contributions gathered in this special issue address these five objections. Overall, the aim of this issue is to offer a more diverse, unifying, and scientifically informed conception of what a biological individual is

A Mixed Self: The Role of Symbiosis in Development

Since the 1950s, the common view of development has been internalist: development is seen as the result of the unfolding of potentialities already present in the egg cell. In this paper I show that this view is incorrect, because of the crucial influence of the environment on development. I focus on a fascinating example, that of the role played by symbioses in development, especially bacterial symbioses, a phenomenon found in virtually all organisms (plants, invertebrates, vertebrates). I claim that we must consequently modify our conception of the boundaries of the developing entity, and I show how immunology can help us in accomplishing this task. I conclude that the developing entity encompasses many elements traditionally seen as “foreign”, while I reject the idea that there is no possible distinction between the organism and its environment

Bacteria dialog with Santa Rosalia: Are aggregations of cosmopolitan bacteria mainly explained by habitat filtering or by ecological interactions?

[Background] Since the landmark Santa Rosalia paper by Hutchinson, niche theory addresses the determinants of biodiversity in terms of both environmental and biological aspects. Disentangling the role of habitat filtering and interactions with other species is critical for understanding microbial ecology. Macroscopic biogeography explores hypothetical ecological interactions through the analysis of species associations. These methods have started to be incorporated into microbial ecology relatively recently, due to the inherent experimental difficulties and the coarse grained nature of the data.[Results] Here we investigate the influence of environmental preferences and ecological interactions in the tendency of bacterial taxa to either aggregate or segregate, using a comprehensive dataset of bacterial taxa observed in a wide variety of environments. We assess significance of taxa associations through a null model that takes into account habitat preferences and the global distribution of taxa across samples. The analysis of these associations reveals a surprisingly large number of significant aggregations between taxa, with a marked community structure and a strong propensity to aggregate for cosmopolitan taxa. Due to the coarse grained nature of our data we cannot conclusively reject the hypothesis that many of these aggregations are due to environmental preferences that the null model fails to reproduce. Nevertheless, some observations are better explained by ecological interactions than by habitat filtering. In particular, most pairs of aggregating taxa co-occur in very different environments, which makes it unlikely that these associations are due to habitat preferences, and many are formed by cosmopolitan taxa without well defined habitat preferences. Moreover, known cooperative interactions are retrieved as aggregating pairs of taxa. As observed in similar studies, we also found that phylogenetically related taxa are much more prone to aggregate than to segregate, an observation that may play a role in bacterial speciation.[Conclusions] We hope that these results stimulate experimental verification of the putative cooperative interactions between cosmopolitan bacteria, and we suggest several groups of aggregated cosmopolitan bacteria that are interesting candidates for such an investigation.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FPI grant BES-2009-013072 to APG and grants BFU2011-24595 and BFU2012-40020 to UB) and by the Comunidad de Madrid (Amarauto program to UB). Research at the CBMSO is facilitated by the Fundación Ramón Areces. We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)

Análise comparativa entre as habilidades sociais dos estudantes de jornalismo e de fonoaudiologia

OBJETIVO:comparar o repertório de habilidades sociais de estudantes de Jornalismo e de Fonoaudiologia.MÉTODOS:participaram desta pesquisa 189 estudantes, sendo 89 do curso de Jornalismo (63 mulheres e 26 homens), com idades variando entre de 18 e 28 anos, e 100 de curso de Fonoaudiologia (96 mulheres e 4 homens) com idades entre 18 a 31 anos. Todos os participantes responderam ao Inventário de Habilidades Sociais.RESULTADOS:os estudantes de Fonoaudiologia demonstraram o repertório de habilidades sociais classificado como "Bom acima da média" para habilidades sociais de comunicação (F1), de civilidade (F2), empáticas (F4) e de trabalho (F5) e classificado como "Bastante elaborado" para as habilidades sociais assertivas de enfrentamento (F3) e escore global. Os estudantes de Jornalismo apresentaram a classificação "Bom abaixo da média" para habilidades sociais de civilidade (F2) e "Bom acima da média" para as habilidades sociais de comunicação (F1), assertivas de enfrentamento (F3), empáticas (F4), de trabalho (F5) e escore global. As análises estatísticas demonstraram diferença estatisticamente significante (p=0,001) entre os alunos dos cursos de Fonoaudiologia e Jornalismo no escore global e para as habilidades sociais de civilidade (F2) e de trabalho (F5), com melhores resultados dos estudantes Fonoaudiologia.CONCLUSÃO:os estudantes de Fonoaudiologia apresentaram melhor desempenho nas habilidades sociais representado pelo escore global e de modo específico nas habilidades sociais de civilidade e de trabalho

Habilidades sociais em estudantes de jornalismo

OBJETIVO: caracterizar o repertório de habilidades sociais de estudantes de Jornalismo. MÉTODOS: participaram 89 estudantes de Jornalismo da UNESP/Bauru, sendo 63 do sexo feminino e 26 do masculino, com idades variando entre 18 e 28 anos, os quais responderam ao Inventário de Habilidades Sociais IHS-Del-Prette (Del Prette & Del Prette, 2001). RESULTADOS: os dados indicaram que os estudantes do curso de jornalismo apresentaram repertório de habilidades sociais classificados "Bom acima da média" para as o escore global, as habilidades sociais de comunicação (F1), assertivas de enfrentamento (F3), empáticas (F4) e de trabalho (F5). O único fator que apresentou classificação como "Bom abaixo da média" foi as habilidades sociais de civilidade (F2), que corresponde a expressar afeto aos amigos, agradecer, apresentar-se, cumprimentar e despedir-se. Não houve diferença estatiscamente significante entre os cinco fatores estudados e os gêneros com relação aos resultados do escore global e os escores dos cinco fatores do IHS-Del-Prette. CONCLUSÃO: Estudantes de jornalismo apresentam habilidades sociais que lhe permitem interações sociais saudáveis, mas estas não se apresentaram no seu potencial máximo. As habilidades sociais que se revelaram com maior necessidade de desenvoltura foram as de "civilidade" e de "expressar sentimentos positivos e negativos"