Costs of delayed dispersal and alloparental care in the fungus-cultivating ambrosia beetle Xyleborus affinis Eichhoff (Scolytinae: Curculionidae)

Body reserves may determine the reproductive output of animals, depending on their resource allocation strategy. In insects, an accumulation of reserves for reproduction is often obtained before dispersal by pre-emergence (or maturation) feeding. This has been assumed to be an important cause of delayed dispersal from the natal nest in scolytine beetles. In the cooperatively breeding ambrosia beetles, this is of special interest because in this group delayed dispersal could serve two alternative purposes: "selfish” maturation feeding or "altruistic” alloparental care. To distinguish between these two possibilities, we have experimentally studied the effect of delayed dispersal on future reproductive output in the xyleborine ambrosia beetle Xyleborus affinis. Females experimentally induced to disperse and delayed dispersing females did not differ in their body condition at dispersal and in their founding success afterwards, which indicates that females disperse independently of condition, and staying adult females are fully mature and would be able to breed. However, induced dispersers produced more offspring than delayed dispersers within a test period of 40days. This suggests that delayed dispersal comes at a cost to females, which may result primarily from alloparental care and leads to a reduced reproductive output. Alternatively, females might have reproduced prior to dispersal. This is unlikely, however, for the majority of dispersing females because of the small numbers of offspring present in the gallery when females dispersed, suggesting that mainly the foundress had reproduced. In addition, "gallery of origin” was a strong predictor of the reproductive success of females, which may reflect variation in the microbial complex transmitted vertically from the natal nest to the daughter colony, or variation of genetic quality. These results have important implications for the understanding of proximate mechanisms selecting for philopatry and alloparental care in highly social ambrosia beetles and other cooperatively breeding arthropod

Fungus Cultivation by Ambrosia Beetles: Behavior and Laboratory Breeding Success in Three Xyleborine Species

Fungus cultivation by ambrosia beetles is one of the four independently evolved cases of agriculture known in animals. Such cultivation is most advanced in the highly social subtribe Xyleborina (Scolytinae), which is characterized by haplodiploidy and extreme levels of inbreeding. Despite their ubiquity in forests worldwide, the behavior of these beetles remains poorly understood. This may be in part because of their cryptic life habits within the wood of trees. Here we present data obtained by varying a laboratory breeding technique based on artificial medium inside glass tubes, which enables behavioral observations. We studied species of the three most widespread genera of Xyleborina in the temperate zone: Xyleborus, Xyleborinus, and Xylosandrus. We raised several generations of each species with good breeding success in two types of media. The proportion of females of Xyleborinus saxesenii Ratzeburg producing offspring within 40 d depended significantly on founder female origin, which shows a transgenerational effect. Labor-intensive microbial sterilization techniques did not increase females' breeding success relative to a group of females shortly treated with ethanol. Gallery productivity measured as the mean number of mature offspring produced after 40 d varied between species and was weakly affected by the type of medium used and foundress origin (field or laboratory) in X. saxesenii, whereas different preparation and sterilization techniques of the beetles had no effect. Behavioral observations showed the time course of different reproductive stages and enabled to obtain detailed behavioral information in all species studied. We propose that the laboratory techniques we describe here are suited for extensive studies of sociality and modes of agriculture in the xyleborine ambrosia beetles, which may yield important insights into the evolution of fungal agriculture and advanced social organizatio

Abundance and dynamics of filamentous fungi in the complex ambrosia gardens of the primitively eusocial beetle Xyleborinus saxeseniiRatzeburg (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae)

Insect fungus gardens consist of a community of interacting microorganisms that can have either beneficial or detrimental effects to the farmers. In contrast to fungus-farming ants and termites, the fungal communities of ambrosia beetles and the effects of particular fungal species on the farmers are largely unknown. Here, we used a laboratory rearing technique for studying the filamentous fungal garden community of the ambrosia beetle, Xyleborinus saxesenii, which cultivates fungi in tunnels excavated within dead trees. Raffaelea sulfurea and Fusicolla acetilerea were transmitted in spore-carrying organs by gallery founding females and established first in new gardens. Raffaelea sulfurea had positive effects on egg-laying and larval numbers. Over time, four other fungal species emerged in the gardens. Prevalence of one of them, Paecilomyces variotii, correlated negatively with larval numbers and can be harmful to adults by forming biofilms on their bodies. It also comprised the main portion of garden material removed from galleries by adults. Our data suggest that two mutualistic, several commensalistic and one to two pathogenic filamentous fungi are associated with X. saxesenii. Fungal diversity in gardens of ambrosia beetles appears to be much lower than that in gardens of fungus-culturing ants, which seems to result from essential differences in substrates and behaviour

Monitoring the 5'UTR landscape reveals isoform switches to drive translational efficiencies in cancer

Transcriptional and translational control are key determinants of gene expression, however, to what extent these two processes can be collectively coordinated is still poorly understood. Here, we use Nanopore long-read sequencing and cap analysis of gene expression (CAGE-seq) to document the landscape of 5' and 3' untranslated region (UTR) isoforms and transcription start sites of epidermal stem cells, wild-type keratinocytes and squamous cell carcinomas. Focusing on squamous cell carcinomas, we show that a small cohort of genes with alternative 5'UTR isoforms exhibit overall increased translational efficiencies and are enriched in ribosomal proteins and splicing factors. By combining polysome fractionations and CAGE-seq, we further characterize two of these UTR isoform genes with identical coding sequences and demonstrate that the underlying transcription start site heterogeneity frequently results in 5' terminal oligopyrimidine (TOP) and pyrimidine-rich translational element (PRTE) motif switches to drive mTORC1-dependent translation of the mRNA. Genome-wide, we show that highly translated squamous cell carcinoma transcripts switch towards increased use of 5'TOP and PRTE motifs, have generally shorter 5'UTRs and expose decreased RNA secondary structures. Notably, we found that the two 5'TOP motif-containing, but not the TOP-less, RPL21 transcript isoforms strongly correlated with overall survival in human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients. Our findings warrant isoform-specific analyses in human cancer datasets and suggest that switching between 5'UTR isoforms is an elegant and simple way to alter protein synthesis rates, set their sensitivity to the mTORC1-dependent nutrient-sensing pathway and direct the translational potential of an mRNA by the precise 5'UTR sequence

Transgenerational Effects of Parental Larval Diet on Offspring Development Time, Adult Body Size and Pathogen Resistance in Drosophila melanogaster

Environmental conditions experienced by parents are increasingly recognized to affect offspring performance. We set out to investigate the effect of parental larval diet on offspring development time, adult body size and adult resistance to the bacterium Serratia marcescens in Drosophila melanogaster. Flies for the parental generation were raised on either poor or standard diet and then mated in the four possible sex-by-parental diet crosses. Females that were raised on poor food produced larger offspring than females that were raised on standard food. Furthermore, male progeny sired by fathers that were raised on poor food were larger than male progeny sired by males raised on standard food. Development times were shortest for offspring whose one parent (mother or the father) was raised on standard and the other parent on poor food and longest for offspring whose parents both were raised on poor food. No evidence for transgenerational effects of parental diet on offspring disease resistance was found. Although paternal effects have been previously demonstrated in D. melanogaster, no earlier studies have investigated male-mediated transgenerational effects of diet in this species. The results highlight the importance of not only considering the relative contribution each parental sex has on progeny performance but also the combined effects that the two sexes may have on offspring performance

Foraging for foundations in decision neuroscience: insights from ethology

Modern decision neuroscience offers a powerful and broad account of human behaviour using computational techniques that link psychological and neuroscientific approaches to the ways that individuals can generate near-optimal choices in complex controlled environments. However, until recently, relatively little attention has been paid to the extent to which the structure of experimental environments relates to natural scenarios, and the survival problems that individuals have evolved to solve. This situation not only risks leaving decision-theoretic accounts ungrounded but also makes various aspects of the solutions, such as hard-wired or Pavlovian policies, difficult to interpret in the natural world. Here, we suggest importing concepts, paradigms and approaches from the fields of ethology and behavioural ecology, which concentrate on the contextual and functional correlates of decisions made about foraging and escape and address these lacunae

European Society of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Disease Statistics 2019

Aims The 2019 report from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Atlas provides a contemporary analysis of cardiovascular disease (CVD) statistics across 56 member countries, with particular emphasis on international inequalities in disease burden and healthcare delivery together with estimates of progress towards meeting 2025 World Health Organization (WHO) non-communicable disease targets. Methods and results In this report, contemporary CVD statistics are presented for member countries of the ESC. The statistics are drawn from the ESC Atlas which is a repository of CVD data from a variety of sources including the WHO, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and the World Bank. The Atlas also includes novel ESC sponsored data on human and capital infrastructure and cardiovascular healthcare delivery obtained by annual survey of the national societies of ESC member countries. Across ESC member countries, the prevalence of obesity (body mass index ≥30 kg/m2) and diabetes has increased two- to three-fold during the last 30 years making the WHO 2025 target to halt rises in these risk factors unlikely to be achieved. More encouraging have been variable declines in hypertension, smoking, and alcohol consumption but on current trends only the reduction in smoking from 28% to 21% during the last 20 years appears sufficient for the WHO target to be achieved. The median age-standardized prevalence of major risk factors was higher in middle-income compared with high-income ESC member countries for hypertension {23.8% [interquartile range (IQR) 22.5–23.1%] vs. 15.7% (IQR 14.5–21.1%)}, diabetes [7.7% (IQR 7.1–10.1%) vs. 5.6% (IQR 4.8–7.0%)], and among males smoking [43.8% (IQR 37.4–48.0%) vs. 26.0% (IQR 20.9–31.7%)] although among females smoking was less common in middle-income countries [8.7% (IQR 3.0–10.8) vs. 16.7% (IQR 13.9–19.7%)]. There were associated inequalities in disease burden with disability-adjusted life years per 100 000 people due to CVD over three times as high in middle-income [7160 (IQR 5655–8115)] compared with high-income [2235 (IQR 1896–3602)] countries. Cardiovascular disease mortality was also higher in middle-income countries where it accounted for a greater proportion of potential years of life lost compared with high-income countries in both females (43% vs. 28%) and males (39% vs. 28%). Despite the inequalities in disease burden across ESC member countries, survey data from the National Cardiac Societies of the ESC showed that middle-income member countries remain severely under-resourced compared with high-income countries in terms of cardiological person-power and technological infrastructure. Under-resourcing in middle-income countries is associated with a severe procedural deficit compared with high-income countries in terms of coronary intervention, device implantation and cardiac surgical procedures. Conclusion A seemingly inexorable rise in the prevalence of obesity and diabetes currently provides the greatest challenge to achieving further reductions in CVD burden across ESC member countries. Additional challenges are provided by inequalities in disease burden that now require intensification of policy initiatives in order to reduce population risk and prioritize cardiovascular healthcare delivery, particularly in the middle-income countries of the ESC where need is greatest

Abundance and dynamics of filamentous fungi in the complex ambrosia gardens of the primitively eusocial beetle \u3ci\u3eXyleborinus saxesenii\u3c/i\u3e Ratzeburg (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae)

Insect fungus gardens consist of a community of interacting microorganisms that can have either beneficial or detrimental effects to the farmers. In contrast to fungus-farming ants and termites, the fungal communities of ambrosia beetles and the effects of particular fungal species on the farmers are largely unknown. Here, we used a laboratory rearing technique for studying the filamentous fungal garden community of the ambrosia beetle, Xyleborinus saxesenii, which cultivates fungi in tunnels excavated within dead trees. Raffaelea sulfurea and Fusicolla acetilerea were transmitted in spore-carrying organs by gallery founding females and established first in new gardens. Raffaelea sulfurea had positive effects on egg-laying and larval numbers. Over time, four other fungal species emerged in the gardens. Prevalence of one of them, Paecilomyces variotii, correlated negatively with larval numbers and can be harmful to adults by forming biofilms on their bodies. It also comprised the main portion of garden material removed from galleries by adults. Our data suggest that two mutualistic, several commensalistic and one to two pathogenic filamentous fungi are associated with X. saxesenii. Fungal diversity in gardens of ambrosia beetles appears to be much lower than that in gardens of fungus-culturing ants, which seems to result from essential differences in substrates and behaviours