Is the Bombali virus pathogenic in humans?

Motivation: The potential of the Bombali virus, a novel Ebolavirus, to cause disease in humans remains unknown. We have previously identified potential determinants of Ebolavirus pathogenicity in humans by analysing the amino acid positions that are differentially conserved (specificity 15 determining positions; SDPs) between human pathogenic Ebolaviruses and the non-pathogenic Reston virus. Here, we include the many Ebolavirus genome sequences that have since become available into our analysis and investigate the amino acid sequence of the Bombali virus proteins at the SDPs that discriminate between human pathogenic and non-human pathogenic Ebolaviruses. 20 Results: The use of 1408 Ebolavirus genomes (196 in the original analysis) resulted in a set of 166 SDPs (reduced from 180), 146 (88%) of which were retained from the original analysis. This indicates the robustness of our approach and refines the set of SDPs that distinguish human pathogenic Ebolaviruses from Reston virus. At SDPs, Bombali virus shared the majority of amino acids with the human pathogenic Ebolaviruses (63.25%). However, for two SDPs in VP24 (M136L, R139S) 25 that have been proposed to be critical for the lack of Reston virus human pathogenicity because they alter the VP24-karyopherin interaction, the Bombali virus amino acids match those of Reston virus. Thus, Bombali virus may not be pathogenic in humans. Supporting this, no Bombali virusassociated disease outbreaks have been reported, although Bombali virus was isolated from fruit bats cohabitating in close contact with humans, and anti-Ebolavirus antibodies that may indicate 30 contact with Bombali virus have been detected in humans

Lucene4IR: Developing information retrieval evaluation resources using Lucene

The workshop and hackathon on developing Information Retrieval Evaluation Resources using Lucene (L4IR) was held on the 8th and 9th of September, 2016 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK and funded by the ESF Elias Network. The event featured three main elements: (i) a series of keynote and invited talks on industry, teaching and evaluation; (ii) planning, coding and hacking where a number of groups created modules and infrastructure to use Lucene to undertake TREC based evaluations; and (iii) a number of breakout groups discussing challenges, opportunities and problems in bridging the divide between academia and industry, and how we can use Lucene for teaching and learning Information Retrieval (IR). The event was composed of a mix and blend of academics, experts and students wanting to learn, share and create evaluation resources for the community. The hacking was intense and the discussions lively creating the basis of many useful tools but also raising numerous issues. It was clear that by adopting and contributing to most widely used and supported Open Source IR toolkit, there were many benefits for academics, students, researchers, developers and practitioners - providing a basis for stronger evaluation practices, increased reproducibility, more efficient knowledge transfer, greater collaboration between academia and industry, and shared teaching and training resources

Widespread psychoactive pollutant augments daytime restfulness and disrupts diurnal activity rhythms in fish

Pharmaceutical pollution is a major driver of global change, with the capacity to alter key behavioural and physiological traits in exposed animals. Antidepressants are among the most commonly detected pharmaceuti-cals in the environment. Despite well-documented pharmacological effects of antidepressants on sleep in humans and other vertebrates, very little is known about their ecologically relevant impacts as pollutants on non-target wildlife. Accordingly, we investigated the effects of acute 3-day exposure of eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) to field-realistic levels (nominal concentrations: 30 and 300 ng/L) of the widespread psychoactive pollutant, fluoxetine, on diurnal activity patterns and restfulness, as indicators of disruptions to sleep. We show that exposure to fluoxetine disrupted diel activity patterns, which was driven by augmentation of daytime inactivity. Specifically, unexposed control fish were markedly diurnal, swimming farther during the day and exhibiting longer periods and more bouts of inactivity at night. However, in fluoxetine-exposed fish, this natural diel rhythm was eroded, with no differences in activity or restfulness observed between the day and night. As a misalignment in the circadian rhythm has been shown to adversely affect fecundity and lifespan in animals, our findings reveal a potentially serious threat to the survival and reproductive success of pollutant-exposed wildlife

Predicting the impacts of chemical pollutants on animal groups

Wildlife are exposed to an increasing number and diversity of chemical pollutants.Chemical pollutants can elicit a range of sublethal effects on individual organisms, but research on how these contaminants affect social interactions and animal groups is severely lacking.It is imperative that perspectives from behavioural ecology and ecotoxicology are integrated, to increase our understanding of how contaminant effects on individuals might cascade to group-level processes.We present a conceptual framework for researchers and practitioners to guide the study of how chemical pollutants might affect the emergence, organisation, and function of animal social groups.Chemical pollution is among the fastest-growing agents of global change. Synthetic chemicals with diverse modes-of-action are being detected in the tissues of wildlife and pervade entire food webs. Although such pollutants can elicit a range of sublethal effects on individual organisms, research on how chemical pollutants affect animal groups is severely lacking. Here we synthesise research from two related, but largely segregated fields – ecotoxicology and behavioural ecology – to examine pathways by which chemical contaminants could disrupt processes that govern the emergence, self-organisation, and collective function of animal groups. Our review provides a roadmap for prioritising the study of chemical pollutants within the context of sociality and highlights important methodological advancements for future research

No evidence that the widespread environmental contaminant caffeine alters energy balance or stress responses in fish

Anthropogenic sources of environmental pollution are ever-increasing as urban areas expand and more chemical compounds are used in daily life. The stimulant caffeine is one of the most consumed chemical compounds worldwide, and as a result, has been detected as an environmental contaminant in all types of major water sources on all continents. Exposure of wildlife to environmental pollutants can disrupt the energy balance of these organisms, as restoration of homeostasis is prioritised. In turn, energy allocated to other key biological processes such as growth or reproduction may be affected, consequently reducing the overall fitness of an individual. Therefore, we aimed to investigate if long-term exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of caffeine had any energetic consequences on wildlife. Specifically, we exposed wild eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) to one of three nominal concentrations of caffeine (0, 100 and 10,000 ng/L) and assayed individuals for metabolic rate, general activity, antipredator and foraging behaviour and body size as measures of energy expenditure or energy intake. We found no differences in any measured traits between any of the given exposure treatments, indicating that exposure to caffeine at current environmental levels may not adversely affect the energy balance and fitness of vulnerable freshwater fish

Psychoactive pollution suppresses individual differences in fish behaviour

Environmental contamination by pharmaceuticals is global, substantially altering crucial behaviours in animals and impacting on their reproduction and survival. A key question is whether the consequences of these pollutants extend beyond mean behavioural changes, restraining differences in behaviour between individuals. In a controlled, two-year, multigenerational experiment with independent mesocosm populations, we exposed guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to environmentally realistic levels of the ubiquitous pollutant fluoxetine (Prozac). Fish (unexposed: n = 59, low fluoxetine: n = 57, high fluoxetine: n = 58) were repeatedly assayed on four separate occasions for activity and risk-taking behaviour. Fluoxetine homogenized individuals' activity, with individual variation in populations exposed to even low concentrations falling to less than half that in unexposed populations. To understand the proximate mechanism underlying these changes, we tested the relative contribution of variation within and between individuals to the overall decline in individual variation. We found strong evidence that fluoxetine erodes variation in activity between but not within individuals, revealing the hidden consequences of a ubiquitous contaminant on phenotypic variation in fish—likely to impair adaptive potential to environmental change

Social context mediates the expression of a personality trait in a gregarious lizard

The social environment is a key factor that influences behavioural traits across a wide array of species. Yet, when investigating individual differences in behaviour, studies tend to measure animals in isolation from other conspecifics-even in social species. Surprisingly, whether behavioural traits measured in isolation are predictive of individual-level behaviour when in social groups is still poorly understood. Here, we repeatedly measured risk-taking behaviour (i.e. boldness; 741 total trials) in both the presence and absence of conspecifics in a social lizard, the delicate skink (Lampropholis delicata). Further, we manipulated food availability during group trials to test whether the effect of the social environment on risk-taking behaviour was mediated by competition over resources. Using 105 lizards collected from three independent populations, we found that individual risk-taking behaviour was repeatable when measured in either social isolation or within groups both with and without food resources available. However, lizards that were bolder during individual trials were not also bolder when in groups, regardless of resource availability. This was largely driven by individual differences in social behavioural plasticity, whereby individual skinks responded differently to the presence of conspecifics. Together, this resulted in a rank order change of individual behavioural types across the social conditions. Our results highlight the importance of the social environment in mediating animal personality traits across varying levels of resource availability. Further, these findings suggest that behavioural traits when measured in isolation, may not reflect individual variation in behaviour when measured in more ecologically realistic social groups

The endocrine disruptor 17 beta-trenbolone alters the relationship between pre- and post-copulatory sexual traits in male mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki)

It is now well-established that reproduction in wildlife can be disrupted by anthropogenic environmental changes, such as chemical pollution. However, very little is known about how these pollutants might affect the interplay between pre-and post-copulatory mechanisms of sexual selection. Here, we investigated the impacts of 21-day exposure of male eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) to a field-realistic level (average measured concentration: 11 ng/L) of the endocrine-disrupting chemical 17S-trenbolone (17S-TB) on pre-and post-copulatory reproductive traits. We examined male reproductive behaviour by testing the time spent near a female behind a partition, as well as the number of copulation attempts made, and the time spent chasing a female in a free-swimming context. Sperm traits were also assayed for all males. We found that exposure of male fish to 17S-TB altered the relationship between key pre-and post-copulatory reproductive traits. Furthermore, 17S-TB-exposed males had, on average, a higher percentage of motile sperm, and performed fewer copulation attempts than unexposed males. However, there was no overall effect of 17S-TB exposure on either the time males spent associating with or chasing females. Taken together, our findings demonstrate the potential for chemical pollutants to affect both pre-and post-copulatory sexual traits, and the interplay between these mechanisms of sexual selection in contaminated wildlife. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Antidepressant exposure causes a nonmonotonic reduction in anxiety-related behaviour in female mosquitofish

Worldwide, biologically active pharmaceuticals, such as psychoactive drugs, are routinely detected in aquatic ecosystems. In this regard, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of antidepressant, are of major environmental concern. Through targeted action on evolutionarily conserved physiological pathways, SSRIs could alter ecologically important behaviours in exposed organisms. Here, using two field-realistic dosages (measured concentrations: 18 and 215 ng/L) of the SSRI fluoxetine (Prozac), we examined the effects of exposure on anxiety-related behaviours in wild-caught female mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki. Anxiety-related behaviour was assessed using a light/dark transition test, with the swimming activity of fish recorded under two alternating light conditions, complete darkness and bright light, with the shift in light condition used to induce an anxiety-like response. Fluoxetine exposure resulted in a nonmonotonic decrease in anxiety-related behaviour (i.e. nonlinear with dose), with fish in the low-fluoxetine treatment being less responsive to shifts in light condition compared to unexposed fish. There was no such difference between unexposed and high-exposed fish. Further, we detected a significant interaction between exposure treatment and fish weight on general swimming activity, suggesting the presence of a mass-specific effect of fluoxetine. More broadly, contaminant-induced disruption of animal behaviour—as documented here—could have wide-reaching effects on population-level fitness