Mechanisms Underlying Resistance of Strawberry Cultivars to Tarnished Plant Bugs

ReportThe present study investigated mechanisms that underlie resistance of strawberry cultivars to tarnished plant bugs, Lygus lineolaris (Hemiptera: Miridae). Inter-plant distribution of emerged nymphs in cage experiments suggests that females lay more eggs on plants with numerous fruits, although cultivar per se did not influence oviposition behavior of females. A large number of nymphs emerged from the inflorescence of strawberry plants, which suggests that ovipositing females may cause extensive damage to strawberry fruits. Distinct within-plant distribution of emerged nymphs for different cultivars further suggest that the relative damage caused by ovipositing females may vary for different cultivars

Broad-Scale Latitudinal Variation in Female Reproductive Success Contributes to the Maintenance of a Geographic Range Boundary in Bagworms (Lepidoptera: Psychidae)

Background: Geographic range limits and the factors structuring them are of great interest to biologists, in part because of concerns about how global change may shift range boundaries. However, scientists lack strong mechanistic understanding of the factors that set geographic range limits in empirical systems, especially in animals. Methodology/Principal Findings: Across dozens of populations spread over six degrees of latitude in the American Midwest, female mating success of the evergreen bagworm Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis (Lepidoptera: Psychidae) declines from,100 % to,0 % near the edge of the species range. When coupled with additional latitudinal declines in fecundity and in egg and pupal survivorship, a spatial gradient of bagworm reproductive success emerges. This gradient is associated with a progressive decline in local abundance and an increased risk of local population extinction, up to a latitudinal threshold where extremely low female fitness meshes spatially with the species ’ geographic range boundary. Conclusions/Significance: The reduction in fitness of female bagworms near the geographic range limit, which concords with the abundant centre hypothesis from biogeography, provides a concrete, empirical example of how an Allee effect (increased pre-reproductive mortality of females in sparsely populated areas) may interact with other demographic factor

Pharmacogenomics of the efficacy and safety of Colchicine in COLCOT

© 2021 The Authors. Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine is published on behalf of the American Heart Association, Inc., by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.Background: The randomized, placebo-controlled COLCOT (Colchicine Cardiovascular Outcomes Trial) has shown the benefits of colchicine 0.5 mg daily to lower the rate of ischemic cardiovascular events in patients with a recent myocardial infarction. Here, we conducted a post hoc pharmacogenomic study of COLCOT with the aim to identify genetic predictors of the efficacy and safety of treatment with colchicine. Methods: There were 1522 participants of European ancestry from the COLCOT trial available for the pharmacogenomic study of COLCOT trial. The pharmacogenomic study's primary cardiovascular end point was defined as for the main trial, as time to first occurrence of cardiovascular death, resuscitated cardiac arrest, myocardial infarction, stroke, or urgent hospitalization for angina requiring coronary revascularization. The safety end point was time to the first report of gastrointestinal events. Patients' DNA was genotyped using the Illumina Global Screening array followed by imputation. We performed a genome-wide association study in colchicine-treated patients. Results: None of the genetic variants passed the genome-wide association study significance threshold for the primary cardiovascular end point conducted in 702 patients in the colchicine arm who were compliant to medication. The genome-wide association study for gastrointestinal events was conducted in all 767 patients in the colchicine arm and found 2 significant association signals, one with lead variant rs6916345 (hazard ratio, 1.89 [95% CI, 1.52-2.35], P=7.41×10-9) in a locus which colocalizes with Crohn disease, and one with lead variant rs74795203 (hazard ratio, 2.51 [95% CI, 1.82-3.47]; P=2.70×10-8), an intronic variant in gene SEPHS1. The interaction terms between the genetic variants and treatment with colchicine versus placebo were significant. Conclusions: We found 2 genomic regions associated with gastrointestinal events in patients treated with colchicine. Those findings will benefit from replication to confirm that some patients may have genetic predispositions to lower tolerability of treatment with colchicine.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Female fitness in 2009.

<p>Spatial distribution of host plants of bagworms, <i>Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis</i>, sampled in Indiana to determine multiple components of female fitness during the 2009 bagworm generation (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0014166#pone-0014166-t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>). Latitude (x) significantly affected proportions of pupal survival [linear model with 50 sites, <i>y</i> = 4.33−0.086 <i>x</i>, <i>r²</i> = 0.257, <i>P</i> = 0.0002] and of mated females [linear model with 50 sites, <i>y</i> = 12.2−0.29 <i>x</i>, <i>r²</i> = 0.655, <i>P</i><0.0001], as well as fecundity [linear model with 49 (excluding one site with no egg mass sampled), <i>y</i> = 2315−50.8 <i>x</i>, <i>r²</i> = 0.305, <i>P</i><0.0001].</p

Source of variation.

<p>Partition of variance evaluating the variance component associated with latitude, longitude (both classified as one degree bands), and host plant (arborvitae or juniper) for different parameters of fitness. For all parameters, the highest variance component value was standardised as 1.000, to facilitate comparison of variance effects across fitness parameters.</p

Female fitness in 2008–2009.

<p>Spatial distribution of host plants of bagworms, <i>Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis</i>, sampled in Indiana and south Michigan to determine the presence or absence of bagworms (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0014166#pone-0014166-t003" target="_blank">table 3</a>). For comparison, the effect of latitude (x) on female reproductive output (y, in mg eggs; see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0014166#pone-0014166-t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>) is depicted in 2008 (<i>y</i> = 4059−96.1 <i>x</i>, <i>r²</i> = 0.662, <i>P</i><0.0001, <i>N</i> = 61 sites) and 2009 (<i>y</i> = 4612−110.0 <i>x</i>, <i>r²</i> = 0.652, <i>P</i><0.0001, <i>N</i> = 50 sites).</p