Removing exogenous information using pedigree data

Management of certain populations requires the preservation of its pure genetic background. When, for different reasons, undesired alleles are introduced, the original genetic conformation must be recovered. The present study tested, through computer simulations, the power of recovery (the ability for removing the foreign information) from genealogical data. Simulated scenarios comprised different numbers of exogenous individuals taking partofthe founder population anddifferent numbers of unmanaged generations before the removal program started. Strategies were based on variables arising from classical pedigree analyses such as founders? contribution and partial coancestry. The ef?ciency of the different strategies was measured as the proportion of native genetic information remaining in the population. Consequences on the inbreeding and coancestry levels of the population were also evaluated. Minimisation of the exogenous founders? contributions was the most powerful method, removing the largest amount of genetic information in just one generation.However, as a side effect, it led to the highest values of inbreeding. Scenarios with a large amount of initial exogenous alleles (i.e. high percentage of non native founders), or many generations of mixing became very dif?cult to recover, pointing out the importance of being careful about introgression events in populatio

Studying the Effect of Measured Solar Power on Evolutionary Multi-objective Prediction Intervals

This paper has been presented at: 19th Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning (IDEAL 2018)While it is common to make point forecasts for solar energy generation, estimating the forecast uncertainty has received less attention. In this article, prediction intervals are computed within a multi-objective approach in order to obtain an optimal coverage/width tradeoff. In particular, it is studied whether using measured power as an another input, additionally to the meteorological forecast variables, is able to improve the properties of prediction intervals for short time horizons (up to three hours). Results show that they tend to be narrower (i.e. less uncertain), and the ratio between coverage and width is larger. The method has shown to obtain intervals with better properties than baseline Quantile Regression.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science under contract ENE2014-56126-C2-2-R (AOPRIN-SOL project)

Genotype by environment interaction for 450-day weight of Nelore cattle analyzed by reaction norm models

Genotype by environment interactions (GEI) have attracted increasing attention in tropical breeding programs because of the variety of production systems involved. In this work, we assessed GEI in 450-day adjusted weight (W450) Nelore cattle from 366 Brazilian herds by comparing traditional univariate single-environment model analysis (UM) and random regression first order reaction norm models for six environmental variables: standard deviations of herd-year (RRMw) and herd-year-season-management (RRMw-m) groups for mean W450, standard deviations of herd-year (RRMg) and herd-year-season-management (RRMg-m) groups adjusted for 365-450 days weight gain (G450) averages, and two iterative algorithms using herd-year-season-management group solution estimates from a first RRMw-m and RRMg-m analysis (RRMITw-m and RRMITg-m, respectively). The RRM results showed similar tendencies in the variance components and heritability estimates along environmental gradient. Some of the variation among RRM estimates may have been related to the precision of the predictor and to correlations between environmental variables and the likely components of the weight trait. GEI, which was assessed by estimating the genetic correlation surfaces, had values < 0.5 between extreme environments in all models. Regression analyses showed that the correlation between the expected progeny differences for UM and the corresponding differences estimated by RRM was higher in intermediate and favorable environments than in unfavorable environments (p < 0.0001)

A Candidate Subspecies Discrimination System Involving a Vomeronasal Receptor Gene with Different Alleles Fixed in M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus

Assortative mating, a potentially efficient prezygotic reproductive barrier, may prevent loss of genetic potential by avoiding the production of unfit hybrids (i.e., because of hybrid infertility or hybrid breakdown) that occur at regions of secondary contact between incipient species. In the case of the mouse hybrid zone, where two subspecies of Mus musculus (M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus) meet and exchange genes to a limited extent, assortative mating requires a means of subspecies recognition. We based the work reported here on the hypothesis that, if there is a pheromone sufficiently diverged between M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus to mediate subspecies recognition, then that process must also require a specific receptor(s), also sufficiently diverged between the subspecies, to receive the signal and elicit an assortative mating response. We studied the mouse V1R genes, which encode a large family of receptors in the vomeronasal organ (VNO), by screening Perlegen SNP data and identified one, Vmn1r67, with 24 fixed SNP differences most of which (15/24) are nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions between M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus. We observed substantial linkage disequilibrium (LD) between Vmn1r67 and Abpa27, a mouse salivary androgen-binding protein gene that encodes a proteinaceous pheromone (ABP) capable of mediating assortative mating, perhaps in conjunction with its bound small lipophilic ligand. The LD we observed is likely a case of association rather than residual physical linkage from a very recent selective sweep, because an intervening gene, Vmn1r71, shows significant intra(sub)specific polymorphism but no inter(sub)specific divergence in its nucleotide sequence. We discuss alternative explanations of these observations, for example that Abpa27 and Vmn1r67 are coevolving as signal and receptor to reinforce subspecies hybridization barriers or that the unusually divergent Vmn1r67 allele was not a product of fast positive selection, but was derived from an introgressed allele, possibly from Mus spretus

Attachment, infidelity, and loneliness in college students involved in a romantic relationship: the role of relationship satisfaction, morbidity and prayer for partner

This study examined the mediating effects of relationship satisfaction, prayer for a partner, and morbidity in the relationship between attachment and loneliness, infidelity and loneliness, and psychological morbidity and loneliness, in college students involved in a romantic relationship. Participants were students in an introductory course on family development. This study examined only students (n = 345) who were involved in a romantic relationship. The average age of participants was 19.46 (SD = 1.92) and 25 % were males. Short-form UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8), (Hays and DiMatteo in J Pers Assess 51:69–81, doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa5101_6, 1987); Relationship Satisfaction Scale (Funk and Rogge in J Fam Psychol 21:572–583, doi:10.1037/0893-3200.21.4.572, 2007); Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (De Haes et al. in Measuring the quality of life of cancer patients with the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RSCL): a manual, Northern Centre for Healthcare Research, Groningen, 1996); Prayer for Partner Scale, (Fincham et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 99:649–659, doi:10.1037/a0019628, 2010); Infidelity Scale, (Drigotas et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 77:509–524, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.3.509, 1999); and the Experiences in Close Relationship Scale-short form (Wei et al. in J Couns Psychol 52(4):602–614, doi:10.1037/0022-0167.52.4.602, 2005). Results showed that relationship satisfaction mediated the relationship between avoidance attachment and loneliness and between infidelity and loneliness. Physical morbidity mediated the relationship between anxious attachment and psychological morbidity. Psychological morbidity mediated the relationship between anxious attachment and physical morbidity. The present results expand the literature on attachment by presenting evidence that anxious and avoidant partners experience loneliness differently. Implications for couple’s therapy are addressed. Future research should replicate these results with older samples and married couples.Acknowledgments This research was supported by Grant Number 90FE0022 from the United States Department of Health and Human Services awarded to the last author

A decade of experience with injuries to the gallbladder

Article deposited according to publisher policy posted on SHERPA/RoMEO, 05/08/2010.YesFunding provided by the Open Access Authors Fund

Evolution of Female Preference for Younger Males

Previous theoretical work has suggested that females should prefer to mate with older males, as older males should have higher fitness than the average fitness of the cohort into which they were born. However, studies in humans and model organisms have shown that as males age, they accumulate deleterious mutations in their germ-line at an ever-increasing rate, thereby reducing the quality of genes passed on to the next generation. Thus, older males may produce relatively poor-quality offspring. To better understand how male age influences female mate preference and offspring quality, we used a genetic algorithm model to study the effect of age-related increases in male genetic load on female mate preference. When we incorporate age-related increases in mutation load in males into our model, we find that females evolve a preference for younger males. Females in this model could determine a male's age, but not his inherited genotype nor his mutation load. Nevertheless, females evolved age-preferences that led them to mate with males that had low mutation loads, but showed no preference for males with respect to their somatic quality. These results suggest that germ-line quality, rather than somatic quality, should be the focus of female preference in good genes models

The Rise and Fall of the Adaptive Landscape?

The discussion of the adaptive landscape in the philosophical literature appears to be divided along the following lines. On the one hand, some claim that the adaptive landscape is either “uninterpretable” or incoherent. On the other hand, some argue that the adaptive landscape has been an important heuristic, or tool in the service of explaining, as well as proposing and testing hypotheses about evolutionary change. This paper attempts to reconcile these two views