Effects of Rising Temperature on Interactions between Monarch Butterflies and their Parasites

During the last few decades, global climate change has been one of the major drivers of species extinction, and has altered many ecological interactions. Monarch butterflies, which represent a cultural icon in North America, have been experiencing population declines due to several anthropogenic forces associated with environmental change. In addition, a monarch protozoan neogregarine parasite, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), aggravates their situation by decreasing the reproductive success and longevity of adult butterflies. Previous studies have shown that global warming can modify the interaction between parasites and their hosts. This study aimed to assess how a rise in temperature affects the virulence and transmission potential of OE. I hypothesized that an increase in temperature would result in shorter adult life spans and higher parasite loads. A total of 154 larvae were reared on artificial diet in incubators at three temperatures, 22°C, 25°C and 28°C until adult emergence or premature death. Approximately 30 larvae from each temperature were inoculated with 10 OE spores and 20 larvae were un-inoculated controls. Developmental time, pupal weight and spore loads were measured and data were analyzed using generalized linear models. Unexpected co-infection with an unknown pathogen resulted in high larval mortality in both OE-inoculated and control treatments, preventing an independent assessment of the effect of temperature on the monarch-OE interaction. As a result of co-infection, monarchs inoculated with OE were more likely to die during the larval stage. As expected, the total developmental time of butterflies declined at higher temperatures. Importantly, only 8 out of 42 OE-inoculated larvae that survived to adulthood produced OE spores, suggesting an antagonistic interaction between the unknown pathogen and OE. Overall, higher temperatures appeared to have a largely positive effect on monarch performance, since butterflies reared at warmer temperatures had shorter developmental times, resulting in a decrease in exposure time to the unknown pathogen. In conclusion, the unknown pathogen interacted in complex ways with OE, affecting monarch performance more than the increase in temperature itself. In this changing world, temperature sensitive host-parasite interactions could potentially be altered by global warming. However, they need to be studied within the context of how multiple pathogens will interact with their hosts under elevated temperature scenarios.Master of ScienceFrontiers Bridging Masters ProgramUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120240/1/Final Thesis Nifosi.pd

The Role of the Protein Matrix in GFP Chromophore Biosynthesis: A Molecular Dynamics Study

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The key to the yellow-to-cyan tuning in the green fluorescent protein family is polarisation

Computational approaches have to date failed to fully capture the large (about 0.4 eV) excitation energy tuning displayed by the nearly identical anionic chromophore in different green fluorescent protein (GFP) variants. Here, we present a thorough comparative study of a set of proteins in this sub-family, including the most red- (phiYFP) and blue-shifted (mTFP0.7) ones. We employ a classical polarisable embedding through induced dipoles and combine it with time-dependent density functional theory and multireference perturbation theory in order to capture both state-specific induction contributions and the coupling of the polarisation of the protein to the chromophore transition density. The obtained results show that only upon inclusion of both these two effects generated by the mutual polarisation between the chromophore and the protein can the full spectral tuning be replicated. We finally discuss how this mutual polarisation affects the correlation between excitation energies, dipole moment variation, and molecular electrostatic field

Cent ans de jalousie proustienne, éds. Erika Fülöp et Philippe Chardin

Il volume raccoglie gli interventi presentati al convegno One Hundred Years of Jealousy: Homage to Swann, tenutasi a Oxford dal 31 maggio al primo giugno del 2013. La collettanea offre ulteriori chiavi di lettura rispetto al tema, dominante nella narrazione proustiana, della gelosia. Come affermato da Erika Fülöp nell’Introduction (pp. 11-19), gli autori si propongono un duplice obiettivo: innanzitutto, il motivo ricorrente della gelosia invita a una rivisitazione di Du côté de chez Swann, di..

Son et traduction dans l’œuvre de Proust, sous la direction d’Emily Eells et Naomi Toth

Il presente volume è il risultato dei lavori svolti durante un convegno del giugno 2015 tenutosi tra l’università di Paris Nanterre e l’Hôtel de Lauzun, sede dell’Institut d’études avancées di Parigi. Il titolo del convegno, Traduire la sonorité proustienne, unisce i due temi cardine della traduzione e delle molteplici riverberazioni dell’elemento sonoro all’interno del romanzo proustiano. La miscellanea si compone di una parte dedicata agli interventi dei relatori e di un’altra che raccoglie..

L'Area Archeologica della Villa romana di San Vincenzino a Cecina (LI): Aspetti della musealizzazione in situ.

Lo straordinario potenziale della villa romana di San Vincenzino e l’importanza che essa rivestiva all'interno del territorio cecinese sono stati immediatamente percepiti sin dalla sua scoperta. In questo progetto di tesi si sono quindi avanzate alcune proposte per il recupero e la musealizzazione al fine di rendere il sito archeologico fruibile e attrezzato non soltanto al fine di valorizzare e conservare il patrimonio archeologico emerso, ma anche di trasmettere nel giusto modo i risultati delle ricerche sia alla popolazione residente, così da avvicinarla al suo glorioso passato, sia al flusso sempre maggiore di turisti, vista l’avvenuta trasformazione della città di Cecina da centro rurale a centro balneare

Jean-Pierre Ollivier, Proust et les sciences

Questa volta è un professore di medicina ad avvicinare con estrema competenza e dedizione il testo proustiano, per evidenziarne ancora una volta la spiccata vocazione interdisciplinare. Nel presente volume, infatti, Jean-Pierre Ollivier prende in esame il discorso scientifico all’interno della Recherche, a partire da tre domande fondamentali relative alla sua ragion d’essere, alla sua pertinenza e alla sua funzione nel tessuto narrativo del romanzo («Introduction», p. 14). Il saggio, organizz..

Energy, Structures, and Response Properties with a Fully Coupled QM/AMOEBA/ddCOSMO Implementation

We present the implementation of a fully coupled polarizable QM/MM/continuum model based on the AMOEBA polarizable force field and the domain decomposition implementation of the conductor-like screening model. Energies, response properties, and analytical gradients with respect to both QM and MM nuclear positions are available, and a generic, atomistic cavity can be employed. The model is linear scaling in memory requirements and computational cost with respect to the number of classical atoms and is therefore suited to model large, complex systems. Using three variants of the green-fluorescent protein, we investigate the overall computational cost of such calculations and the effect of the continuum model on the convergence of the computed properties with respect to the size of the embedding. We also demonstrate the fundamental role of polarization effects by comparing polarizable and nonpolarizable embeddings to fully QM ones