The effects of parameter choice on defining molecular operational taxonomic units and resulting ecological analyses of metabarcoding data

Copyright remains with the author(s) or their institution(s). Permission for reuse (free in most cases) can be obtained from RightsLink.This work was supported by a NSERC CREATE grant to M.E.C. and an Institutional Links grant 172726351 to E.L.C. under the Newton-Ungku Omar Fund, through the British Council in the UK and the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology in Malaysia. The Newton Fund is Overseas Development Assistance administered through the UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS). For further information, please visitwww.newtonfund.ac.uk

Prioritizing taxa for genetic reference database development to advance inland water conservation

Biodiversity loss has accelerated over the past century and freshwater species overall are among those experiencing greatest declines. Genetic resources have the potential to help evaluate the full magnitude of this loss and represent a key tool to effectively allocate conservation resources and monitor the success of restoration efforts. The full power of genetic resources will be realized when the daunting task of referencing all DNA sequences of freshwater organisms is complete. Here, we quantified the availability and distribution of barcode and genome data for freshwater macroscopic organisms in Canada, a country rich in inland water resources and thus particularly vulnerable to aquatic species losses. Impressively, most inland water species (86 %) were represented by barcodes recorded in the BOLD Systems database, while very few had full genomes available (<4 %) in the NCBI database. We identified barcode data deficiencies in northern regions and for taxa assessed as most at risk or without sufficient information for conservation status classification. As expected, the speciose insect group had a lower-than-average number of records per species and a high proportion of data deficient species without adequate barcode coverage. This study highlights where future sequencing resources should be prioritized within initiatives such as the Canada BioGenome Project and BIOSCAN Canada and provides a workflow that could be applied internationally to inform conservation management plans and to mitigate biodiversity loss

A direct physiological trade-off between personal and social immunity

1. Recent work shows that organisms possess two strategies of immune response: personal immunity, which defends an individual, and social immunity, which protects other individuals, such as kin. However, it is unclear how individuals divide their limited resources between protecting themselves and protecting others. 2. Here, with experiments on female burying beetles, we challenged the personal immune system and measured subsequent investment in social immunity (antibacterial activity of the anal exudates). 3. Our results show that increased investment in one aspect of personal immunity (wound repair) causes a temporary decrease in one aspect of the social immune response. 4. Our experiments further show that by balancing investment in personal and social immunity in this way during one breeding attempt, females are able to defend their subsequent lifetime reproductive success. 5. We discuss the nature of the physiological trade-off between personal and social immunity in species that differ in the degree of eusocality and coloniality, and suggest that it may also vary within species in relation to age and partner contributions to social immunity

Within- and Trans-Generational Effects of Variation in Dietary Macronutrient Content on Life-History Traits in the Moth <i>Plodia interpunctella</i>

<div><p>It is increasingly clear that parental environment can play an important role in determining offspring phenotype. These “transgenerational effects” have been linked to many different components of the environment, including toxin exposure, infection with pathogens and parasites, temperature and food quality. In this study, we focus on the latter, asking how variation in the quantity and quality of nutrition affects future generations. Previous studies have shown that artificial diets are a useful tool to examine the within-generation effects of variation in macronutrient content on life history traits, and could therefore be applied to investigations of the transgenerational effects of parental diet. Synthetic diets varying in total macronutrient content and protein: carbohydrate ratios were used to examine both within- and trans-generational effects on life history traits in a generalist stored product pest, the Indian meal moth <i>Plodia interpunctella</i>. The macronutrient composition of the diet was important for shaping within-generation life history traits, including pupal weight, adult weight, and phenoloxidase activity, and had indirect effects via maternal weight on fecundity. Despite these clear within-generation effects on the biology of <i>P</i>. <i>interpunctella</i>, diet composition had no transgenerational effects on the life history traits of offspring. <i>P</i>. <i>interpunctella</i> mothers were able to maintain their offspring quality, possibly at the expense of their own somatic condition, despite high variation in dietary macronutrient composition. This has important implications for the plastic biology of this successful generalist pest.</p></div

Effects of maternal weight and longevity on maternal fecundity.

<p>There was a positive relationship between maternal pupal weight and fecundity (left panel, slope = 8.01) and a negative relationship between maternal longevity and fecundity (right panel, slope = -17.065). Conditional r² for model = 0.207, based on [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0168869#pone.0168869.ref049" target="_blank">49</a>] and calculated with piecewiseSEM [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0168869#pone.0168869.ref050" target="_blank">50</a>].</p

Effects of within-generation and transgenerational variation in dietary macronutrients on adult weight.

<p>A three way interaction between total macronutrient content, P:C ratio, and sex shaped the response of adult weight to diet composition in the within-generation experiment (left panel). There were no transgenerational effects of maternal diet composition (right panel). Black bars: males, grey bars: females; X axis labels refer to diet composition, e.g. 3H = 30% cellulose, high protein, 5L = 50% cellulose, low protein; error bars are 95% confidence intervals.</p

Effects of within-generation and transgenerational variation in dietary macronutrients on haemocyte counts.

<p>There were no within-generation or transgenerational effects of dietary composition on haemocyte count. Left panel: within-generation experiment, right panel: transgenerational experiment; black bars: males, grey bars: females. X axis labels refer to diet composition, e.g. 3H = 30% cellulose, high protein, 5L = 50% cellulose, low protein; error bars are 95% confidence intervals.</p

Effects of within-generation and transgenerational variation in dietary macronutrients on phenoloxidase vmax.

<p>The interaction between total macronutrient content (protein and carbohydrates combined) and sex shaped the response of phenoloxidase activity to diet composition in the within-generation experiment (left panel). There were, however, no transgenerational effects of maternal diet composition (right panel). Black bars: males, grey bars: females; X axis labels refer to diet composition, e.g. 3H = 30% cellulose, high protein, 5L = 50% cellulose, low protein; error bars are 95% confidence intervals.</p

Data from: Molecular diet analysis finds an insectivorous desert bat community dominated by resource sharing despite diverse echolocation and foraging strategies

Interspecific differences in traits can alter the relative niche use of species within the same environment. Bats provide an excellent model to study niche use because they have a wide variety of behavioural, acoustic and morphological traits that may lead to multi-species, functional groups. Predatory bats have been classified by their foraging location (edge, clutter, open space), ability to aerial hawk and/or substrate glean prey and echolocation call design and flexibility, all of which may dictate their diet. For example, high frequency, broadband calls do not travel far but offer high object resolution while high intensity, low frequency calls travel further but provide lower resolution. Because these behaviours can be flexible four behavioural categories have been proposed: (1) gleaning, (2) behaviourally flexible (gleaning and hawking), (3) clutter tolerant hawking, and (4) open space hawking. Recent studies of diet in bats use molecular tools to identify prey but mainly focus on one or two species in isolation and few studies provide evidence for substantial differences in prey use despite the many behavioural, acoustic and morphological differences. Here we analyse the diet of 17 sympatric species in the Chihuahuan desert and test the hypothesis that peak echolocation frequency and behavioural categories are linked to differences in diet. We find no significant correlation between dietary richness and echolocation frequency (though it spanned close to 100kHz across species). However, our data suggest that behaviourally flexible bats that use gleaning and aerial hawking have the broadest diets and are the most differentiated from clutter-tolerant aerial hawking species

Supplementary text from Freshwater connectivity transforms spatially integrated signals of biodiversity

Supplementary Note 1: Broad scale monitoring of fish and zooplankton populations; Supplementary Note 2: Taxonomic assignment and processing of sequence dat