Social context decouples the relationship between a sexual ornament and testosterone levels in a male wild bird

AbstractIn order to maximise fitness individuals should adjust their level of signalling according to their surrounding social environment. However, field experiments showing such adjustment of current signalling associated to changes in social context are lacking. Here, we manipulated levels of male aggressive- and dominance-related displays in a wild bird in our treated area by increasing testosterone levels using implants in a subset of males. We then compared the expression of sexual signals (i.e. comb size) between non-treated red grouse Lagopus lagopus scoticus males from control and treatment areas. We further explored the potential endocrinological mechanism linking social environment and signal expression by analysing testosterone levels in all males. Our treatment successfully increased overall aggressive- and dominance-related behaviours in the treatment area. Furthermore, testosterone-implanted birds increased their comb size as repeatedly shown in previous studies in male red grouse. Interestingly, untreated males living in the treatment area decreased their comb size, whilst increasing testosterone levels. Since comb size is a signal of dominance, untreated males from the treatment area may have perceived themselves as subordinate individuals and decreased their signalling levels to avoid confrontations with testosterone-treated, dominant individuals. In conclusion, our findings show that social context has the potential to regulate sexual signalling and testosterone levels. Our results highlight the role of social context when exploring the link between testosterone and behaviour, as it may reverse the relationship between both traits. Our results suggest that social context affects signalling and testosterone independently

Addressing the 5G cell switch-off problem with a multi-objective cellular genetic algorithm

© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The power consumption foreseen for 5G networks is expected to be substantially greater than that of 4G systems, mainly because of the ultra-dense deployments required to meet the upcoming traffic demands. This paper deals with a multi- objective formulation of the Cell Switch-Off (CSO) problem, a well-known and effective approach to save energy in such dense scenarios, which is addressed with an accurate, yet rather unknown multi-objective metaheuristic called MOCell (multi- objective cellular genetic algorithm). It has been evaluated over a different set of networks of increasing densification levels. The results have shown that MOCell is able to reach major energy savings when compared to a widely used multi-objective algorithm.TIN2016-75097-P Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

La Sombra I. Desarrollo del relato y diseño de entornos para un tráiler de animación

[EN] In the project that is presented I expose my final grade work of practical typology, consisting of the preproduction, production and postproduction for an animated short film until its first trailer. Trying to focus on specific topics such as movement or experimental and surrealist animation. My work consists in the preparation of the preproduction of the project, the environment design and the experimental animation of the natural effects of the environment. This project has been carried out with Marta de Paz García as a designer and character animator. All this elaborated with the learning by the subjects that have been carried out along the last courses. The work process consists of three distinct phases: documentation and narrative in the pre-production, production of the animation and post-production of the final trailer. The result is reflected in all the documents resulting from the process and in the final trailer of the animated short film titled ¿La Sombra¿. Short film that is framed between the genres of horror and surrealism belonging to 19th century Gothic literature.[ES] En el proyecto que se presenta expongo mi trabajo final de grado de tipología práctica, consistiendo en la preproducción, producción y postproducción de un cortometraje de animación hasta su primer tráiler. Tratando de enfocarse en temas específicos como el movimiento o la animación experimental y surrealista. El trabajo consiste en la elaboración de la preproducción del proyecto, el diseño de los escenarios y el montaje de la animación. Este proyecto se ha llevado a cabo en conjunto con Marta de Paz García como diseñadora y animadora de personajes. Todo ello elaborado con el aprendizaje otorgado por las asignaturas que se han ido realizando a lo largo de los últimos cursos. El proceso del trabajo consta de tres fases diferenciadas: documentación y narrativa en la preproducción, producción de la animación y postproducción del tráiler final. El resultado se refleja en todos los documentos resultantes del proceso y en el tráiler final del cortometraje de animación titulado ¿La Sombra¿. Cortometraje que se enmarca entre los géneros de horror y surrealismo pertenecientes a la literatura gótica del siglo XIX.Martínez Padilla, MJ. (2019). La Sombra I. Desarrollo del relato y diseño de entornos para un tráiler de animación. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/127191TFG

Old males reduce melanin-pigmented traits and increase reproductive outcome under worse environmental conditions in common kestrels

Secondary sexual traits displayed by males and females may have evolved as a signal of individual quality. However, both individual quality and investment on producing or maintaining enhanced sexual traits change as individuals age. At the same time, the costs associated to produce sexual traits might be attenuated or increased if environmental conditions are benign or worse respectively. Accordingly, environmental conditions are expected to shape the association between the expression of sexual traits and their reproductive outcome as individuals age. Nonetheless, little is known about the environmental influence on the co-variation between sexual traits and reproductive outcome throughout the life of individuals. We studied the age-dependency of the number and size of back spots, a melanin-based and sexual trait in adults of common kestrels (Falco tinnunculus). We analysed the age-dependence of reproductive traits and the environmental influence, defined as vole abundance, using a 10-year individual-based dataset. We broke down age-related changes of reproductive traits into within- and between-individual variation to assess their contribution to population-level patterns. Our results showed a within-individual decrease in the number, but not the size, of back spots in males. The size of back spots was positively correlated with food availability in males. Reproductive performance of males increased as they aged, in agreement with the life-history theory but depending of vole abundance. Remarkably, we found that having fewer back spots was positively associated with clutch size only for old individuals under low-food conditions. We suggest that environmental variation may shape the association between the expression of a sexual signal and reproductive outcome. We speculate that the reliability of sexual traits is higher when environmental conditions are poor only for old individuals. Within an evolutionary context, we suggest that the expression of sexual traits might be constrained by environmental conditions at later stages of life.The long-term monitoring of the study population was financed by several projects of the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (CGL2004-04479/BOS, CGL2007-61395/BOS, CGL2010-15726/BOS, CGL2013-42451-P) of the Spanish Government.Peer reviewe

Dinámica temporal de la expresión de caracteres sexuales secundarios en hembras de Papamoscas cerrojillo (Ficedula hypoleuca)

Este estudio trata sobre el Papamoscas cerrojillo (Ficedula hypoleuca). Es un ave de unos 12cm de longitud y pesa unos 13g, pasa los veranos en el norte de África y Europa y los inviernos en África (es un ave migratoria). Tiene una mancha blanca en la frente característica de la especie, que en los machos es considerada como un carácter sexual, pero en las hembras se desconoce su funcionalidad.Este estudio se realiza desde 1993 al 2017 en La Hiruela (Madrid) en dos hábitats diferentes separados 1,1 Km respectivamente y pretende encontrar un patrón temporal en la expresión de la mancha blanca en las hembras de Papamoscas cerrojillo en los últimos 30 años. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren un patrón cuadrático negativo en el que la mancha de la hembra decrece de 1993 al 2009 pero luego vuelve a crecer desde 2009 hasta 2017.Estos resultados se podrían explicar por diferencias en la densidad poblacional y quizá por la estructura poblacional. Durante los últimos años, la densidad de parejas reproductoras se ha incrementado, creando un ambiente más competitivo en el que solo las hembras con la mancha más grande son las que resultan más competitivas y consiguen criar en las cajas nido. Las tasas de inmigración-emigración o la estructura de edades en la población podrían ser mecanismos explicativos posibles de los resultados. Hipótesis alternativas como la plasticidad fenotípica son también potenciales candidatos.<br /

Providing longer post-fledging periods increases offspring survival at the expense of future fecundity

All relevant data are deposited at URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/169111; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20350/digitalCSIC/8561.The cost of reproduction is a key concept in life-history trade-offs. However, our understanding of the reproductive costs is biased towards measures of reproductive effort obtained before offspring independence. During the post-fledging dependence period (PFDP), it is well known that parents feed and protect their offspring. However, the effort devoted to this reproductive activity has never been considered in the context of of the costs of reproduction. Moreover, the potential fitness benefits and costs for offspring and parents, respectively, of the duration of the PFDP are largely unknown. We estimated the duration of the PFDP over 5 years using wild common kestrels (Falco tinnunculus) and studied its association with survival probability and future parental reproductive performance. Our results show that longer PFDPs increase the survival probability of fledglings, probably due to the benefits obtained from parental care. In addition, we found that providing longer PFDPs was associated with reduced clutch sizes but not the number of fledglings in the subsequent breeding season in males. We suggest that increased parental expenditures on offspring during the PFDP may represent a potential cost of reproduction in breeding males.The long-term monitoring associated to this study was funded by projects CGL2004-04479/BOS, CGL2007-61395/BOS, CGL2010-15726/BOS and CGL2015-70639-P from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.Peer reviewe

Dynamic Mashup Interfaces for Information Systems using Widgets-as-a-Service

Web Information Systems intend to adapt to the users’ preferences as new data available on the network. In this regard, the composition and reuse of services which are involved in a web application is an interesting research topic, since these techniques pursue the dynamic construction of applications that can be adapted at design or run time. As for the visualization of these applications, web user interfaces play a key role, serving as a connection point between users and the rest of the system. This article proposes an architecture for specification, storage, management and visualization of components, built from widgets complying with the W3C recommendation, for making web user interfaces. We follow a service-based approach for the interface deployment and communication management, introducing the concept of Widgets-as-a-Service (WaaS). To illustrate this proposal, an example of widget-based Web Information System is shown

A Component-based User Interface Approach for Smart TV

The fast growth and diversity of technological devices currently being produced is benefiting areas such as “ambient intelligence”. This area attempts to integrate information technology in any personal environment. However, to construct service/application software that adapts to different environments, there must be techniques available that favor this type of development. Component based software Engineering (CBSE) is a discipline of the software engineering that integrates (previously constructed) components to build new software systems. This paper presents a CBSE approach to build Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) at run-time. Both a component-based perspective of the user interface and a set of component relationships are presented in the paper. As a case study, this paper also describes an application built for an emerging computation environment, Smart TV. A running example is also presented through the paper putting some Web-based solutions to build User Interfaces together (e.g., Wookie, W3C Widgets, Node.js)