Trans-eQTLs Reveal That Independent Genetic Variants Associated with a Complex Phenotype Converge on Intermediate Genes, with a Major Role for the HLA

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On the scaling of activity in tropical forest mammals

Activity range – the amount of time spent active per day – is a fundamental aspect contributing to the optimization process by which animals achieve energetic balance. Based on their size and the nature of their diet, theoretical expectations are that larger carnivores need more time active to fulfil their energetic needs than do smaller ones and also more time active than similar‐sized non‐carnivores. Despite the relationship between daily activity, individual range and energy acquisition, large‐scale relationships between activity range and body mass among wild mammals have never been properly addressed. This study aimed to understand the scaling of activity range with body mass, while controlling for phylogeny and diet. We built simple empirical predictions for the scaling of activity range with body mass for mammals of different trophic guilds and used a phylogenetically controlled mixed model to test these predictions using activity records of 249 mammal populations (128 species) in 19 tropical forests (in 15 countries) obtained using camera traps. Our scaling model predicted a steeper scaling of activity range in carnivores (0.21) with higher levels of activity (higher intercept), and near‐zero scaling in herbivores (0.04). Empirical data showed that activity ranges scaled positively with body mass for carnivores (0.061), which also had higher intercept value, but not for herbivores, omnivores and insectivores, in general, corresponding with the predictions. Despite the many factors that shape animal activity at local scales, we found a general pattern showing that large carnivores need more time active in a day to meet their energetic demands. Introduction Activity range – the amount of time, in hours, spent active per day – is a fundamental outcome of the complex physiological and behavioral optimization process by which animals ensure that energy input keeps pace with energy output. In addition to basal metabolism, animals face costs of foraging, acquiring mates and shelter, building reserves for lean times and escaping predators (Carbone et al. 2007, Halle and Stenseth 2012). Environmental and ecological factors that vary through the day (e.g. luminosity, temperature, predation risk and competition avoidance) constrain activity to certain times, depending on morpho‐physiological limitations (Castillo‐Ruiz et al. 2012, Hut et al. 2012). In addition, animals need time to rest in order to recover their cognitive or physical condition (Siegel 2005). Thus, they must optimize their activity range to meet their resource requirements, while dealing with natural daily cycles and saving time for sleep/rest (Downes 2001, Siegel 2005, Cozzi et al. 2012). The resource requirements of mammals are related to basal metabolic rate, which scales positively with body mass (Kleiber 1932, Isaac and Carbone 2010), while predation risk decreases with body mass (Sinclair et al. 2003, Hopcraft et al. 2009). Because high predation risk constrains activity while high resource needs increases activity range (Cozzi et al. 2012, Suselbeek et al. 2014), the question arises whether and how activity range also scales with body mass. Day range (total distance travelled in a day) and home range (area in which animals perform their daily activities) scales positively with body mass and are key metrics to understand the resource requirements of an animal (McNab 1963, Kelt and Van Vuren 2001, Carbone et al. 2005, Tamburello et al. 2015). As activity range is related to space‐use metrics (i.e. home range and day range), it is hence, also related to the acquisition of energy. Given that, one might expect activity range to increase with body mass. However, we have a poor understanding of how this relationship actually looks. Previous work developed predictions of body mass scaling with day range (Garland 1983, Carbone et al. 2005) and travel speed (Carbone et al. 2007, Rowcliffe et al. 2016). From a simple physical viewpoint, activity range should equal the day range divided by average travel speed. It should thus be possible to infer the scaling of activity range with body mass from these relationships. Some of the variation in space use across species that is not explained by body mass is associated with different evolutionary histories and ecological traits (McNab 1963, Kelt and Van Vuren 2001, Price and Hopkins 2015, Tamburello et al. 2015). Diet is the most conspicuous of these, because primary and secondary productivity present different overall yields and accessibility for consumers (Jetz et al. 2004), which in turn influence individual movements (Carbone et al. 2005) and potentially activity range, when exploiting resources at different trophic levels. The nature of the diet aggravates the higher energetic demands of larger carnivores. Predators have considerable energetic constraints related to hunting and handling their prey (Gorman et al. 1998, Carbone et al. 1999) as animal prey can be rare, widely dispersed, unpredictable in time and space and not storable (Jetz et al. 2004, Carbone et al. 2007). Therefore, carnivores have the lowest energy supply rates (supply rate of usable resources available inside the home range), independent of body mass, when compared to other diet categories (Jetz et al. 2004) besides exploring larger areas and traveling greater daily distances (McNab 1963, Kelt and Van Vuren 2001, Carbone et al. 2005, Tamburello et al. 2015). Therefore, larger animals occupy larger areas than small ones, and carnivores occupy larger areas than do similar‐sized non‐carnivores (Jetz et al. 2004, Tamburello et al. 2015). To date, few studies have considered interspecific variation in activity range with body mass and other species traits. For example, van Schaik and Griffiths (1996) and Gómez et al. (2005) anecdotally suggested that larger mammal species are cathemeral (i.e. active day and night), which implies that they can be active during a larger proportion of the 24‐h cycle. Rowcliffe et al. (2014) found that activity range is positively correlated with body mass in tropical forest mammals in Panama. Ramesh et al. (2015) found a negative relationship between body mass and activity concentration (i.e. how concentrated in few hours is the activity of an animal during the day) in Indian mammals, also equating to a positive association between activity range and body mass. However, no study has explored variation in activity range across a diverse range of species, while controlling for phylogeny and diet. This has been, at least in part, due to a lack of consistent data available on a wide range of species. Recent work using camera traps (Oliveira‐Santos et al. 2013, Rowcliffe et al. 2014), however, has demonstrated that accurate estimates of activity range can be obtained from photographic records from camera traps. Given the large and rapidly increasing volume of camera‐trapping data available globally (Burton et al. 2015), these approaches, consistently applied across a wide range of studies, can provide an important basis for the large‐scale study of activity. Here, we provided simple empirical predictions for the scaling of activity range with body mass for mammals of different trophic guilds. To test these predictions, we estimated the activity range for 249 populations of 128 terrestrial mammal species across 19 tropical forests, and used a phylogenetically controlled mixed model to determine how activity range scales with body mass by diet. As larger animals occupy larger areas than small ones, and carnivores occupy larger areas than do similar‐sized non‐carnivores (Jetz et al. 2004), we hypothesize that carnivores will present a higher scaling of activity range with body mass and also higher activity ranges for a given mass (higher intercept) when compared to herbivores, omnivores and insectivores

Enhanced secondary analysis of survival data: reconstructing the data from published Kaplan-Meier survival curves

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The results of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) on time-to-event outcomes that are usually reported are median time to events and Cox Hazard Ratio. These do not constitute the sufficient statistics required for meta-analysis or cost-effectiveness analysis, and their use in secondary analyses requires strong assumptions that may not have been adequately tested. In order to enhance the quality of secondary data analyses, we propose a method which derives from the published Kaplan Meier survival curves a close approximation to the original individual patient time-to-event data from which they were generated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We develop an algorithm that maps from digitised curves back to KM data by finding numerical solutions to the inverted KM equations, using where available information on number of events and numbers at risk. The reproducibility and accuracy of survival probabilities, median survival times and hazard ratios based on reconstructed KM data was assessed by comparing published statistics (survival probabilities, medians and hazard ratios) with statistics based on repeated reconstructions by multiple observers.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The validation exercise established there was no material systematic error and that there was a high degree of reproducibility for all statistics. Accuracy was excellent for survival probabilities and medians, for hazard ratios reasonable accuracy can only be obtained if at least numbers at risk or total number of events are reported.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The algorithm is a reliable tool for meta-analysis and cost-effectiveness analyses of RCTs reporting time-to-event data. It is recommended that all RCTs should report information on numbers at risk and total number of events alongside KM curves.</p

Remembering the Sea: Personal and Communal Recollections of Maritime Life in Jizan and the Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.People create narratives of their maritime past through the remembering and forgetting of seafaring experiences, and through the retention and disposal of maritime artefacts that function mnemonically to evoke or suppress those experiences. The sustenance and reproduction of the resulting narratives depends further on effective media of intergenerational transmission; otherwise, they are lost. Rapid socio-economic transformation across Saudi Arabia in the age of oil has disrupted longstanding seafaring economies in the Red Sea archipelago of the Farasan Islands, and the nearby mainland port of Jizan. Vestiges of wooden boatbuilding activity are few; long-distance dhow trade with South Asia, the Arabian-Persian Gulf and East Africa has ceased; and a once substantial pearling and nacre (mother of pearl) collection industry has dwindled to a tiny group of hobbyists: no youth dive today. This widespread withdrawal from seafaring activity among many people in these formerly maritime-oriented communities has diminished the salience of such activity in cultural memory, and has set in motion narrative creation processes, through which memories are filtered and selected, and objects preserved, discarded, or lost. This paper is a product of the encounter of the authors with keepers of maritime memories and objects in the Farasan Islands and Jizan. An older generation of men recall memories of their experiences as boat builders, captains, seafarers, pearl divers and fishermen. Their recounted memories are inscribed, and Arabic seafaring terms recorded. The extent of the retention of maritime material cultural items as memorials is also assessed, and the rôle of individual, communal and state actors in that retention is considered. Through this reflection, it becomes clear that the extra-biological memory and archive of the region’s maritime past is sparse; that intergenerational transmission is failing; that the participation of state agencies in maritime heritage creation is highly limited; and that, as a result, memories current among the older generation have limited prospect of survival. These memories, recorded and interpreted here, identify the Farasan Islands as a former centre of the pearling industry in the Red Sea, and identify them and Jizan as open to far-reaching maritime-mediated cultural influences in an era before the imposition of the attributes of the modern nation-state.This study was funded by the Golden Web Foundation (UK registered charity number 1100608), with additional support from the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust (UK registered charity number 208669)

Jornadas de trabalho na enfermagem: entre necessidades individuais e condições de trabalho

OBJETIVO: Analisar fatores associados à jornada de trabalho profissional e à jornada de trabalho total (profissional + doméstica) em profissionais de enfermagem. MÉTODOS: Estudo transversal realizado em hospital universitário no município de São Paulo, SP, entre 2004 e 2005. Participaram 696 trabalhadores (enfermeiros, técnicos e auxiliares de enfermagem), predominantemente mulheres (87,8%), que trabalhavam em turnos diurnos e/ou noturnos. Foi aplicado questionário autopreenchível sobre dados sociodemográficos, condições de trabalho e de vida; e versões traduzidas e adaptadas para o português das escalas de demanda-controle-apoio social no trabalho, de desequilíbrio esforço-recompensa, do Questionário Genérico de Avaliação de Qualidade de Vida e do Índice de Capacidade para o Trabalho. Foram utilizados modelos de regressão logística para a análise dos dados. RESULTADOS: Ser o único responsável pela renda familiar, o trabalho noturno e o desequilíbrio esforço-recompensa foram as únicas variáveis associadas tanto à jornada profissional (OR = 3,38; OR = 10,43; OR = 2,07, respectivamente) quanto à jornada total (OR = 1,57; OR = 3,37; OR = 2,75, respectivamente). Nenhuma das variáveis ligadas às jornadas de trabalho se associou significativamente ao baixo Índice de Capacidade para o Trabalho. O tempo insuficiente para o repouso se mostrou estatisticamente associado às jornadas profissional (OR = 2,47) e total (OR = 1,48). O tempo insuficiente para o lazer se mostrou significativamente associado à jornada profissional (OR = 1,58) e valor limítrofe para a jornada total (OR = 1,43). CONCLUSÕES: A responsabilidade financeira, o trabalho noturno e o desequilíbrio esforço-recompensa são variáveis que merecem ser contempladas em estudos sobre as jornadas de trabalho em equipes de enfermagem. Sugere-se que estudos sobre o tema abordem a renda individual do trabalhador, detalhando melhor a relação entre os esforços e recompensas, e principalmente discussões que considerem as relações de gênero

Prey availability and temporal partitioning modulate felid coexistence in Neotropical forests

Carnivores have long been used as model organisms to examine mechanisms that allow coexistence among ecologically similar species. Interactions between carnivores, including competition and predation, comprise important processes regulating local community structure and diversity. We use data from an intensive camera-trapping monitoring program across eight Neotropical forest sites to describe the patterns of spatiotemporal organization of a guild of five sympatric cat species: jaguar (Panthera onca), puma (Puma concolor), ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) and margay (Leopardus wiedii). For the three largest cat species, we developed multi-stage occupancy models accounting for habitat characteristics (landscape complexity and prey availability) and models accounting for species interactions (occupancy estimates of potential competitor cat species). Patterns of habitat-use were best explained by prey availability, rather than habitat structure or species interactions, with no evidence of negative associations of jaguar on puma and ocelot occupancy or puma on ocelot occupancy. We further explore temporal activity patterns and overlap of all five felid species. We observed a moderate temporal overlap between jaguar, puma and ocelot, with differences in their activity peaks, whereas higher temporal partitioning was observed between jaguarundi and both ocelot and margay. Lastly, we conducted temporal overlap analysis and calculated species activity levels across study sites to explore if shifts in daily activity within species can be explained by varying levels of local competition pressure. Activity patterns of ocelots, jaguarundis and margays were similarly bimodal across sites, but pumas exhibited irregular activity patterns, most likely as a response to jaguar activity. Activity levels were similar among sites and observed differences were unrelated to competition or intraguild killing risk. Our study reveals apparent spatial and temporal partitioning for most of the species pairs analyzed, with prey abundance being more important than species interactions in governing the local occurrence and spatial distribution of Neotropical forest felids