PHYLOGENOMICS, LIFE-HISTORY EVOLUTION AND TAXONOMY OF LEAF MINING MOTHS (LEPIDOPTERA: GRACILLARIOIDEA)

Phytophagous insects dominate the terrestrial earth. While many are external plant feeders, a large diversity of insects specialize on feeding internally within plants. This study constructs one of the first phylogenies of the diverse leaf-mining moth superfamily Gracillarioidea, and examines broad patterns of life history evolution. This dissertation begins with a short introduction (Chapter 1), before a molecular phylogenetic analysis of the Gracillarioidea utilizing over 14,800 nucleotides (Chapter 2). Results indicate that 1) Douglasiidae probably does not belong in Gracillarioidea; 2) the phylogenetic position of Bucculatricidae in Gracillarioidea is generally weak, but strong when non-synonymous changes are analyzed alone; 3) deep divergences in the superfamily are difficult to resolve even with 21 genes; and 4) four strongly supported clades, roughly corresponding to Kumata's classifications were recovered in the Gracillariidae. Chapter 3 is a preliminary examination of life-history evolution in Gracillariidae, focusing on the "top down" effects from parasitoids that may have shaped the life histories of gracillariids. Results include: 1) larval traits (larval habit, cocoon ornamentation) is conserved on phylogeny, but traits associated with hosts are less so; 2) that host shifts in gracillariids are more common among closely related plants, and that closely related insects feed on closely related hosts; 3) blotch mining is the ancestral condition of mine form in Gracillariidae; 4) tentiform blotch mining, a modification of the simple blotch mine, may be an evolutionary innovation against parasitoids. The final three chapters focus on the taxonomy, life-history, and morphology of several gracillariids, including the description of three new species. The central theme is Phyllocnistis, a diverse, yet poorly studied serpentine mining gracillariid genus

Adaptation of the State Trait Anxiety Inventory in Arabic: A Comparison with the American STAI

The main goal of the present study was to develop an Arabic adaptation of the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI, Form Y, Spielberger, 1983). In addition, cultural and linguistic influences on the experience and expression of anxiety were assessed. The American STAI and fifty initial Arabic items were administered to 286 university students at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. The American STAI was also administered to 336 university students at the University of South Florida. Item and factor analyses were conducted on responses of the calibration sample to obtain the final set of Arabic items, which was validated using the responses of the validation sample. In conducting item selection and validation of the Arabic STAI, internal consistency coefficients for subscales, corrected item-total correlations, alpha coefficients if-item-deleted, item-factor loadings, and theoretical meaningfulness were all used as criteria for selection of the best 10 Arabic items to be included in each subscale of the STAI: S-Anxiety Absent, S-Anxiety Present, T-Anxiety Absent, T-Anxiety present. The two-factor solution for the Arabic STAI yielded a simple solution with two distinct factors: Anxiety Present and Anxiety Absent for each of S-Anxiety and T-Anxiety, lending more support to the theoretical distinction of state and trait anxiety. Lebanese students reported significantly higher anxiety levels than their American peers on S-Anxiety Present, T-Anxiety Absent, and T-Anxiety Present, S-Anxiety and T-Anxiety of the American STAI. For S-Anxiety Absent, scores for the Lebanese sample were lower than American students but did not reach significance levels. S-Anxiety Absent and T-Anxiety Absent subscales assessed lower levels of anxiety rather than the higher levels of anxiety assessed by S-Anxiety Present and T-Anxiety Present. Females tend to experience and express higher levels of mild and severe anxiety symptoms as compared to males in both samples. Factor analyses of the American STAI for the American and Lebanese samples revealed similar two and three- factor solutions. For each of the State and trait subscales, three factors emerged: Anxiety Absent, Worry, and Emotionality factors, denoting the importance of cognitions and feelings in the experience and expression of anxiety

Key Education Issues in Review: Nevada Academic Content Standards

final_soap_GNV120025.fa: Assembly of Hemiargus ceraunus from Genbank SRA accession #SRR1299274, using multiple kmers (13,23,33,43,63) with SOAPdenovo-Trans v1.01. Different Kmer assemblies were combined with cd-hit-est and processed with the fastx toolkit. See Kawahara and Breinholt (2014) for more details

Conservation Note on the Status of the Rare Endemic Marquesan Snout Butterfly, Libythea collenettei

The Marquesan snout butterfly (Libythea collenettei) also known as “Papillon à museau des Marquises,” is the only endemic butterfly from the Mar- quesas Islands, French Polynesia. The butterfly is known from just five historic records. We report results from an intensive two–week survey in 2018. Our survey took place on the two islands where historic collection records exist (Nuku Hiva and Ua Pou), plus Hiva Oa and Tahiti, where the species has been thought to exist. Despite visiting multiple localities including sites where the species was previously observed, we were unsuccessful at detecting this species. The larval host plant, Celtis pacifica (Cannabaceae), can still be found on the Marquesas, indicating that the butterfly might still exist in the archipelago. Because the phenology of this species is unknown, future surveys should be conducted on the same islands but during different seasons. Given the very restricted geographic range of this species and threats to its habitat, we suggest that it be listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List

Hawkmoths Produce Anti-Bat Ultrasound

Bats and moths have been engaged in aerial warfare for nearly 65 Myr. This arms race has produced a suite of counter-adaptations in moths, including bat-detecting ears. One set of defensive strategies involves the active production of sound; tiger moths\u27 ultrasonic replies to bat attack have been shown to startle bats, warn the predators of bad taste and jam their biosonar. Here, we report that hawkmoths in the Choerocampina produce entirely ultrasonic sounds in response to tactile stimulation and the playback of biosonar attack sequences. Males do so by grating modified scraper scales on the outer surface of the genital valves against the inner margin of the last abdominal tergum. Preliminary data indicate that females also produce ultrasound to touch and playback of echolocation attack, but they do so with an entirely different mechanism. The anti-bat function of these sounds is unknown but might include startling, cross-family acoustic mimicry, warning of unprofitability or physical defence and/or jamming of echolocation. Hawkmoths present a novel and tractable system to study both the function and evolution of anti-bat defences

Molecular phylogenetic analysis of the hawkmoths (Lepidoptera: Bombycoidea: Sphingidae) and the evolution of the sphingid proboscis

A molecular phylogenetic analysis of hawkmoths was conducted using 6,793 bp of cDNA from five protein-coding nuclear genes for 131 sphingids and eleven outgroups. Results from the combined simultaneous analysis corroborated many previously postulated sets of relationships based morphology, but also uncovered many novel relationships. Parsimony and likelihood recovered the Macroglossinae + (Sphinginae + Smerinthinae), and monophyletic Macroglossinae, Sphinginae, Acherontiini, Ambulycini, Philampelini, and Choerocampina. Monophyly of Sphinginae and the sister-group relationship of the paraphyletic Sphingulini + Sphinginae was corroborated with strong support in all analyses. Ancestral state reconstruction reveals that the short, non-feeding proboscis was the ancestral condition. The nectar-feeding proboscis independently arose multiple times, but was subsequently lost at least three times. The five gene dataset was also combined with the barcoding region of the mitochondrial COI gene to explore the effect of combining the barcoding region for available sphingid taxa to a larger dataset with greater character sampling

Formulation of objective indices to quantify machine failure risk analysis for interruptions in radiotherapy

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of interruption in radiotherapy due to machine failure in patients and medical institutions using machine failure risk analysis (MFRA). Material and methods: The risk of machine failure during treatment is assigned to three scores (biological effect, B; occurrence, O; and cost of labor and repair parts, C) for each type of machine failure. The biological patient risk (BPR) and the economic institution risk (EIR) are calculated as the product of B and O (B×O) and C and O (C×O), respectively. The MFRA is performed in two linear accelerators (linacs). Result: The multileaf collimator (MLC) fault has the highest BPR and second highest EIR. In particular, TrueBeam has a higher BPR and EIR for MLC failures. The total EIR in TrueBeam was significantly higher than that in Clinac iX. The minor interlock had the second highest BPR, whereas a smaller EIR. Meanwhile, the EIR for the LaserGuard fault was the highest, and that for the monitor chamber fault was the second highest. These machine failures occurred in TrueBeam. The BPR and EIR should be evaluated for each linac. Further, the sensitivity of the BPR, it decreased with higher T1=2 and α/β values. No relative difference is observed in the BPR for each machine failure when T1=2 and α/β were varied. Conclusion: The risk faced by patients and institutions in machine failure may be reduced using MFRA. Advances in knowledge: For clinical radiotherapy, interruption can occur from unscheduled downtime with machine failures. Interruption causes sublethal damage repair. The current study evaluated the effect of interruption in radiotherapy owing to machine failure on patients and medical institutions using a new method, that is, machine failure risk analysis

Dose compensation based on biological effectiveness due to interruption time for photon radiation therapy

Objective:To evaluate the biological effectiveness of dose associated with interruption time; and propose the dose compensation method based on biological effectiveness when an interruption occurs during photon radiation therapy. Methods:The lineal energy distribution for human salivary gland tumor was calculated by Monte Carlo simulation using a photon beam. The biological dose (Dbio) was estimated using the microdosimetric kinetic model. The dose compensating factor with the physical dose for the difference of the Dbio with and without interruption (Δ) was derived. The interruption time (τ) was varied to 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 75, and 120 min. The dose per fraction and dose rate varied from 2 to 8 Gy and 0.1 to 24 Gy/min, respectively. Results:The maximum Δ with 1 Gy/min occurred when the interruption occurred at half the dose. The Δ with 1 Gy/min at half of the dose was over 3% for τ >= 20 min for 2 Gy, τ = 10 min for 5 Gy, and τ = 10 min for 8 Gy. The maximum difference of the Δ due to the dose rate was within 3% for 2 and 5 Gy, and achieving values of 4.0% for 8 Gy. The dose compensating factor was larger with a high dose per fraction and high-dose rate beams. Conclusion:A loss of biological effectiveness occurs due to interruption. Our proposal method could correct for the unexpected decrease of the biological effectiveness caused by interruption time. Advances in knowledge:For photon radiotherapy, the interruption causes the sublethal damage repair. The current study proposed the dose compensation method for the decrease of the biological effect by the interruption