the impact of roosting ecology on a bat's mating strategy

With their extraordinary species richness and diversity in ecological traits and social systems, bats are a promising taxon for testing socio-ecological hypotheses in order to get new insights into the evolution of animal social systems. Regarding its roosting habits, proboscis bats form an extreme by occupying sites which are usually completely exposed to daylight (e.g. tree trunks, vines or rocks). This is accompanied by morphological and behavioural adaptations to remain cryptic in exposed day roosts. With long-term behavioural observations and genetic parentage analyses of individually marked proboscis bats, we assessed its social dispersion and male mating strategy during day and night. Our results reveal nocturnal male territoriality—a strategy which most closely resembles a resource-defence polygyny that is frequent also in other tropical bats. Its contrasting clumped social dispersion during the day is likely to be the result of strong selection for crypsis in exposed roosts and is accompanied by direct female defence in addition to male territoriality. To the best of our knowledge, such contrasting male mating strategies within a single day–night cycle have not been described in a vertebrate species so far and illustrate a possible evolutionary trajectory from resource-defence to female-defence strategy by small ecologically driven evolutionary steps

Günther et al. RSOS-160503_Microsatellite_Genotypes

Dataset of 510 individual bats with allele lengths at ten different microsatellite loci. Each row represents an individual bat with its ID, age at capture, sex, colony of capture, date of capture, and both the lengths of both alleles at the ten different microsatellite loci. Details on each loci (Rn01, Rn04, Rn09, Rn10, Rn11, Rn13, Rn16, Rn18, Sb84, Sb85) can be found in the supplementary material of the manuscript RSOS-160503 by Günther et al. 2016 (Royal Society Open Science)

Data from: From resource to female defence: the impact of roosting ecology on a bat's mating strategy

With their extraordinary species richness and diversity in ecological traits and social systems, bats are a promising taxon for testing socio-ecological hypotheses in order to get new insights into the evolution of animal social systems. Regarding its roosting habits, proboscis bats form an extreme by occupying sites which are usually completely exposed to daylight (e.g. tree trunks, vines or rocks). This is accompanied by morphological and behavioural adaptations to remain cryptic in exposed day roosts. With long-term behavioural observations and genetic parentage analyses of individually marked proboscis bats, we assessed its social dispersion and male mating strategy during day and night. Our results reveal nocturnal male territoriality—a strategy which most closely resembles a resource-defence polygyny that is frequent also in other tropical bats. Its contrasting clumped social dispersion during the day is likely to be the result of strong selection for crypsis in exposed roosts and is accompanied by direct female defence in addition to male territoriality. To the best of our knowledge, such contrasting male mating strategies within a single day–night cycle have not been described in a vertebrate species so far and illustrate a possible evolutionary trajectory from resource-defence to female-defence strategy by small ecologically driven evolutionary steps

Impedimetric Biosensor to Enable Fast Evaluation of Gaseous Sterilization Processes

Sterilization of packages prior to product filling is a key step in aseptic filling machines. Chemical sterilization is one of the main conventional techniques in many packaging industries. To monitor the effect of sterilization on test microorganisms (Bacillus atrophaeus spores), an impedimetric sensor approach was developed based on a planar interdigitated electrode (IDE) design. In this work, sensor measurements were conducted to prove sensor functionality at different hydrogen peroxide concentrations

The following additional supporting material may be found in the online version of this article. from From resource to female defence: the impact of roosting ecology on a bat's mating strategy

Table S1 Results from allele frequency calculations with CERVUS v. 3.0 (Kalinovski et al. 2007). Figure S2 Sketch of the main hypothesis regarding the differences in social dispersion in the roost between day and night. We assume that the clumped roosting of mixed sex groups during the day is a derived trait and the result of selection for cryptic behaviour on exposed roost structures. At night, we hypothesize to still observe an ancestral strategy, namely that male proboscis bats establish themselves at preferred sites in their roost where they are territorial or dominant. The blue bats represent males. The red bats represent females. Distances between the individual bats are true to scale, while distances between the sites are not to the scale. Figure S3 Top view of the roof of 'Cabina 5'. The extending roof is drawn in black with its grid (1-36) and the five defined sites. Table S4-S6 Detailed census data from different periods (postpartum oestrus mating period 'PEMP'; seasonal mating period 'SMP'; non-mating period 'NMP') between 2010 and 2014

The pupil collaboration: A multi-lab, multi-method analysis of goal attribution in infants

International audienc

The Unfolded Protein Response Is a Major Driver of LCN2 Expression in BCR–ABL- and JAK2V617F-Positive MPN

Lipocalin 2 (LCN2), a proinflammatory mediator, is involved in the pathogenesis of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). Here, we investigated the molecular mechanisms of LCN2 overexpression in MPN. LCN2 mRNA expression was 20-fold upregulated in peripheral blood (PB) mononuclear cells of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and myelofibrosis (MF) patients vs. healthy controls. In addition, LCN2 serum levels were significantly increased in polycythemia vera (PV) and MF and positively correlated with JAK2V617F and mutated CALR allele burden and neutrophil counts. Mechanistically, we identified endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and the unfolded protein response (UPR) as a main driver of LCN2 expression in BCR-ABL- and JAK2V617F-positive 32D cells. The UPR inducer thapsigargin increased LCN2 expression >100-fold, and this was not affected by kinase inhibition of BCR-ABL or JAK2V617F. Interestingly, inhibition of the UPR regulators inositol-requiring enzyme 1 (IRE1) and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) significantly reduced thapsigargin-induced LCN2 RNA and protein expression, and luciferase promoter assays identified nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) and CCAAT binding protein (C/EBP) as critical regulators of mLCN2 transcription. In conclusion, the IRE1–JNK-NF-κB–C/EBP axis is a major driver of LCN2 expression in MPN, and targeting UPR and LCN2 may represent a promising novel therapeutic approach in MPN