Promises and Prospects of Microbiome Studies

Since Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, first microscopic observations of the unseen microbiota and the more recent realization that little of the microbes in the biosphere are known, humans have developed a deep curiosity to fully understand the inner workings of the microbial realm. Our ability to characterize the complexity of microbial communities in their natural habitats has dramatically improved over the past decade thanks to advances in high-throughput methodologies. By eliminating the need to isolate and culture individual species, metagenomics approaches have removed many of the obstacles that hindered research in the ecology of mixed microbial consortia, providing valuable information about the diversity, composition, function, and metabolic capability of the community. Microbes are the unseen majority with the capability to colonize every environment, including our bodies. The establishment and composition of a stable human microbiome is determined by the host genetics, immunocompetence, and life-style choices. Our life-style choices determine our exposure to many external and internal environmental factors that permanently or temporarily can influence our microbiome composition. Figure 1 illustrates some of the life-style-related factors that might influence the microbiota of the skin, mouth, and gut. It is not limited to what we carry, touch, breath, and eat. Other dispersal vectors include secretion, excretions, aerosols, air flow, animals, moving surfaces, water, beverages, food, contact, wind, tools, toiletry, and others. These influence the microbiome membership, who are present, and they have the ability to participate in the microbiome dynamic within an environment. The establishment of a microbial community is dependent on many environmental factors, including pH, temperature, altitude, weather, soil type, nutrient availability, relative humidity, air quality, pollutants, microbial competitors, and others. In other words, we are superorganisms interconnected with other living forms on this Earth

Tidal Evolution of Exoplanets

Tidal effects arise from differential and inelastic deformation of a planet by a perturbing body. The continuous action of tides modify the rotation of the planet together with its orbit until an equilibrium situation is reached. It is often believed that synchronous motion is the most probable outcome of the tidal evolution process, since synchronous rotation is observed for the majority of the satellites in the Solar System. However, in the 19th century, Schiaparelli also assumed synchronous motion for the rotations of Mercury and Venus, and was later shown to be wrong. Rather, for planets in eccentric orbits synchronous rotation is very unlikely. The rotation period and axial tilt of exoplanets is still unknown, but a large number of planets have been detected close to the parent star and should have evolved to a final equilibrium situation. Therefore, based on the Solar System well studied cases, we can make some predictions for exoplanets. Here we describe in detail the main tidal effects that modify the secular evolution of the spin and the orbit of a planet. We then apply our knowledge acquired from Solar System situations to exoplanet cases. In particular, we will focus on two classes of planets, "Hot-Jupiters" (fluid) and "Super-Earths" (rocky with atmosphere).Comment: 30 pages, 19 figures. Chapter in Exoplanets, ed. S. Seager, to be published by University of Arizona Pres

AMD-stability in presence of first order Mean Motion Resonances

The AMD-stability criterion allows to discriminate between a-priori stable planetary systems and systems for which the stability is not granted and needs further investigations. AMD-stability is based on the conservation of the Angular Momentum Deficit (AMD) in the averaged system at all orders of averaging. While the AMD criterion is rigorous, the conservation of the AMD is only granted in absence of mean-motion resonances (MMR). Here we extend the AMD-stability criterion to take into account mean-motion resonances, and more specifically the overlap of first order MMR. If the MMR islands overlap, the system will experience generalized chaos leading to instability. The Hamiltonian of two massive planets on coplanar quasi-circular orbits can be reduced to an integrable one degree of freedom problem for period ratios close to a first order MMR. We use the reduced Hamiltonian to derive a new overlap criterion for first order MMR. This stability criterion unifies the previous criteria proposed in the literature and admits the criteria obtained for initially circular and eccentric orbits as limit cases. We then improve the definition of AMD-stability to take into account the short term chaos generated by MMR overlap. We analyze the outcome of this improved definition of AMD-stability on selected multi-planet systems from the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopeadia.Comment: Accepted by A and A 07/10/1

The role of recent experience and weight on hen's agonistic behaviour during dyadic conflict resolution.

Recent victory or defeat experiences and 2-hour familiarity with the meeting place were combined with size differences in order to better understand their effects on the behaviour leading to the establishment of dyadic dominance relationships between hens not previously acquainted with each other. Three kinds of encounters were videotaped: (i) a previous winner unfamiliar with the meeting place met a previous loser familiar for 2 hours with the meeting place (n = 12 dyads); (ii) as in (i) but both were unfamiliar with the meeting place (n=12); (iii) as in (i) but the previous winner was familiar with the meeting place while the previous loser was unfamiliar (n=13). The weight asymmetry was combined with these three types of encounters by selecting hens of various weight differences: in 29 dyads the recent loser was heavier than the recent winner and in 8 dyads it was the reverse. Recent experience had a major influence upon both agonistic behaviour and dominance outcome. Hens that were familiar with the meeting site initiated attacks more frequently than their unfamiliar opponent but did not win significantly more often. Recent experience and site familiarity could be used to identify 80% of future initiators. Once the first aggressive behaviour had been initiated, it led to victory of its initiator in 92% of cases. Weight was not found to influence agonistic behaviour nor dominance outcome. However, hens with superior comb and wattles areas won significantly more initial meetings than opponents with smaller ones. In the final encounters, victory also went more frequently to the bird showing larger comb and wattles, which happened also to be the previous dominant in a majority of cases. The use of higher-order partial correlations as an ex post facto control for comb and wattles indicates that they were not influential upon agonistic behaviour nor on dominance outcome, but were simply co-selected with the selection of victorious and defeated birds in the first phase of the experiment designed to let hens acquire recent victory/defeat experience

The role of hen's weight and recent experience on dyadic conflict outcome

This study simultaneously varied experiences of recent victory or defeat, 2-hour familiarity with the meeting place, and hen weight in order to understand their combined effects on the establishment of dyadic dominance relationships between hens not previously acquainted with each other. Three kinds of encounters were arranged: (i) a previous winner unfamiliar with the meeting place met a previous loser familiar with the meeting place (n =28 dyads); (ii) a previous winner met a previous loser, both unfamiliar with the meeting place (n=27); (iii) a previous winner familiar with the meeting place encountered a previous loser unfamiliar with the meeting place (n=28). The weight asymmetry was combined with these three types of encounters by selecting hens showing various weight differences, in favour of the recent loser in 54 dyads and of the recent winner in 29 dyads. Results indicate that recent victory or defeat experience significantly affected the outcome. Even an important weight asymmetry, or familiarity with the meeting place were not sufficient for a hen recently defeated to overcome an opponent that was previously victorious. A 2-hour period of familiarization with the meeting place did not provide any significant advantage over unfamiliarity. Although a significant relationship was found to exist between comb and wattles areas and the initial and final statuses, examination of partial correlations indicates that the influence was from initial status to final status, rather than from comb and wattles to final status. These results suggest that more importance should be attributed to recent social experience in comparison to intrinsic factors in determining dyadic dominance in the hen