Population genetic evidence for sex-specific dispersal in an inbred social spider

A grant from the One-University Open Access Fund at the University of Kansas was used to defray the author's publication fees in this Open Access journal. The Open Access Fund, administered by librarians from the KU, KU Law, and KUMC libraries, is made possible by contributions from the offices of KU Provost, KU Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Studies, and KUMC Vice Chancellor for Research. For more information about the Open Access Fund, please see http://library.kumc.edu/authors-fund.xml.Dispersal in most group-living species ensures gene flow among groups, but in cooperative social spiders, juvenile dispersal is suppressed and colonies are highly inbred. It has been suggested that such inbred sociality is advantageous in the short term, but likely to lead to extinction or reduced speciation rates in the long run. In this situation, very low levels of dispersal and gene flow among colonies may have unusually important impacts on fitness and persistence of social spiders. We investigated sex-specific differences in dispersal and gene flow among colonies, as reflected in the genetic structure within colonies and populations of the African social spider Stegodyphus dumicola Pocock, 1898 (Eresidae). We used DNA fingerprinting and mtDNA sequence data along with spatial mapping of colonies to compare male and female patterns of relatedness within and among colonies at three study sites. Samples were collected during and shortly after the mating season to detect sex-specific dispersal. Distribution of mtDNA haplotypes was consistent with proliferation of social nests by budding and medium- to long-distance dispersal by ballooning females. Analysis of molecular variance and spatial autocorrelation analyses of AFLPs showed high levels of genetic similarity within colonies, and STRUCTURE analyses revealed that the number of source populations contributing to colonies ranged from one to three. We also showed significant evidence of male dispersal among colonies at one site. These results support the hypothesis that in social spiders, genetic cohesion among populations is maintained by long-distance dispersal of female colony founders. Genetic diversity within colonies is maintained by colony initiation by multiple dispersing females, and adult male dispersal over short distances. Male dispersal may be particularly important in maintaining gene flow among colonies in local populations

COBRA-SFS: A thermal-hydraulic analysis code for spent fuel storage and transportation casks

COBRA-SFS is a general thermal-hydraulic analysis computer code for prediction of material temperatures and fluid conditions in a wide variety of systems. The code has been validated for analysis of spent fuel storage systems, as part of the Commercial Spent Fuel Management Program of the US Department of Energy. The code solves finite volume equations representing the conservation equations for mass, moment, and energy for an incompressible single-phase heat transfer fluid. The fluid solution is coupled to a finite volume solution of the conduction equation in the solid structure of the system. This document presents a complete description of Cycle 2 of COBRA-SFS, and consists of three main parts. Part 1 describes the conservation equations, constitutive models, and solution methods used in the code. Part 2 presents the User Manual, with guidance on code applications, and complete input instructions. This part also includes a detailed description of the auxiliary code RADGEN, used to generate grey body view factors required as input for radiative heat transfer modeling in the code. Part 3 describes the code structure, platform dependent coding, and program hierarchy. Installation instructions are also given for the various platform versions of the code that are available

WASOS: An Ontology for Modelling Traditional Knowledge of Sustainable Water Stewardship

Recent work and publications concerning sustainable water stewardship in Rajasthan (India) highlight how contemporary challenges are eroding traditional, communal approaches to water stewardship through mechanised extraction beyond the renewable capacities of ecosystems. Our work is focused on developing a formal ontology for modelling the knowledge of traditional water stewardship in India’s drylands by capturing the key constitutional elements of regenerative methods. Our method follows an iterative evolving prototype process for delivering the first version of the Ontology for Sustainable Water Stewardship (WASOS). The ontology contains a moderate number of high-level classes and properties that represent the water management decisionmaking process. By making key relationships visible, we aim to support decision-making in complex catchments particularly where there are contested urban and rural claims on water

NEOTROPICAL CARNIVORES: a data set on carnivore distribution in the Neotropics

Incluye contenido parcial de los autoresAbstract.Mammalian carnivores are considered a key group in maintaining ecologicalhealth and can indicate potential ecological integrity in landscapes where they occur. Carni-vores also hold high conservation value and their habitat requirements can guide managementand conservation plans. The order Carnivora has 84 species from 8 families in the Neotropicalregion: Canidae; Felidae; Mephitidae; Mustelidae; Otariidae; Phocidae; Procyonidae; andUrsidae. Herein, we include published and unpublished data on native terrestrial Neotropicalcarnivores (Canidae; Felidae; Mephitidae; Mustelidae; Procyonidae; and Ursidae). NEOTRO-PICAL CARNIVORES is a publicly available data set that includes 99,605 data entries from35,511 unique georeferenced coordinates. Detection/non-detection and quantitative data wereobtained from 1818 to 2018 by researchers, governmental agencies, non-governmental organi-zations, and private consultants. Data were collected using several methods including cameratrapping, museum collections, roadkill, line transect, and opportunistic records. Literature(peer-reviewed and grey literature) from Portuguese, Spanish and English were incorporated inthis compilation. Most of the data set consists of detection data entries (n=79,343; 79.7%) butalso includes non-detection data (n=20,262; 20.3%). Of those, 43.3% also include count data(n=43,151). The information available in NEOTROPICAL CARNIVORES will contribute tomacroecological, ecological, and conservation questions in multiple spatio-temporal perspec-tives. As carnivores play key roles in trophic interactions, a better understanding of their distri-bution and habitat requirements are essential to establish conservation management plans andsafeguard the future ecological health of Neotropical ecosystems. Our data paper, combinedwith other large-scale data sets, has great potential to clarify species distribution and relatedecological processes within the Neotropics. There are no copyright restrictions and no restric-tion for using data from this data paper, as long as the data paper is cited as the source of theinformation used. We also request that users inform us of how they intend to use the data

Towards a molecular definition of worker sterility: differential gene expression and reproductive plasticity in honey bees

We show that differences in the reproductive development of honey bee workers are associated with locus-specific changes to abundance of messenger RNA. Using a cross-fostering field experiment to control for differences related to age and environment, we compared the gene expression profiles of functionally sterile workers (wild-type) and those from a mutant strain in which workers are reproductively active (anarchist). Among the set of three genes that are significantly differentially expressed are two major royal jelly proteins that are up-regulated in wild-type heads. This discovery is consistent with sterile workers synthesizing royal jelly as food for developing brood. Likewise, the relative underexpression of these two royal jellies in anarchist workers is consistent with these workers’ characteristic avoidance of alloparental behaviour, in favour of selfish egg-laying. Overall, there is a trend for the most differentially expressed genes to be up-regulated in wild-type workers. This pattern suggests that functional sterility in honey bee workers may generally involve the expression of a suite of genes that effectively ‘switch’ ovaries off, and that selfish reproduction in honey bee workers, though rare, is the default developmental pathway that results when ovary activation is not suppressed

Effects of spoilage on nitrogen and carbon stable isotopes signatures of the clam Ruditapes decussatus

Fish and seafood products are highly susceptible to post-mortem spoilage due to autolytic reactions at start, then microbiological activity and eventually oxidative reactions. Chemical and microbiological parameters are usually used to assess quality and make decisions for protecting public health, but they lack precision in defining which spoilage pathway is occurring at each moment. The objective of this work was to assess the effects of spoilage reactions on nitrogen and carbon stable isotopes in the grooved carpet shell clam, Ruditapes decussatus, and compare them to biochemical indicators of seafood deterioration, in order to better understand the relations between the different spoilage pathways during commercial storage conditions. Clams were kept in a refrigerator at 5 ºC, to simulate normal commercial storage conditions, and sampled in the beginning of the experiment, and after eight, ten and twelve days. Moisture, condition index, percentage edibility, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N), pH, nitrogen and carbon percentages and stable isotopes were determined for each sampling moment. Stable isotope analyses were performed using a Costech Elemental Analyzer (ECS 4010) coupled to a ThermoFinnigan Delta V Advantage. Stable isotopes analysis, especially for nitrogen, proved to be a good tool for the study of clam deterioration. Nitrogen stable isotopes results showed a relation with other spoilage indicators, such as pH and TVB-N, and allowed identifying spoilage specific pathways, such as amino acids decarboxylation and production of volatile nitrogen compounds.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A process pattern model for tackling and improving big data quality

Data seldom create value by themselves. They need to be linked and combined from multiple sources, which can often come with variable data quality. The task of improving data quality is a recurring challenge. In this paper, we use a case study of a large telecom company to develop a generic process pattern model for improving data quality. The process pattern model is defined as a proven series of activities, aimed at improving the data quality given a certain context, a particular objective, and a specific set of initial conditions. Four different patterns are derived to deal with the variations in data quality of datasets. Instead of having to find the way to improve the quality of big data for each situation, the process model provides data users with generic patterns, which can be used as a reference model to improve big data quality

Cross-sectional and longitudinal construct validity of two rotator cuff disease-specific outcome measures

BACKGROUND: Disease-specific Quality Of Life (QOL) measures are devised to assess the impact of a specific disease across a spectrum of important domains of life. The purpose of this study was to examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal construct validity (sensitivity to change) of two rotator cuff disease-specific measures, the Rotator Cuff-Quality Of Life (RC-QOL) and the Western Ontario Rotator Cuff (WORC) index, in relation to one another and to other joint and limb specific measures in the same population of the patients suffering from rotator cuff pathology. METHODS: Participants enrolled were consecutive patients who received physical therapy for management of impingement syndrome or received treatment following rotator cuff repair, acromioplasty or decompression surgeries. All subjects received physical therapy treatment and completed four outcome measures at 3 single points (initial, interim, and final). Cross-sectional convergent validity was assessed at each of the 3 time-points by correlating the WORC and RC-QOL's scores to each other and to two alternative scales; a joint-specific scale, the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) standardized shoulder assessment form and a limb-specific measure, the Upper Extremity Functional Index (UEFI). Non-parametric statistics (Spearman's rho and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests) examined the construct validity. The standardized response mean (SRM) was used to examine sensitivity to change. RESULTS: Forty-one participants entered the study and their scores were compared at 3 cross sectional single points. The correlation coefficients among the 4 measures varied from 0.60 to 0.91. Correlation between corresponding domains of the WORC and RC-QOL varied from 0.45 to 0.85. The known group validity was not significantly different among individual sub-scores and total scores. The final SRMs were (1.42), (1.43), (1.44), and (1.54) for the ASES, RCQOL, WORC, and UEFI respectively. CONCLUSION: The WORC and RC-QOL exhibit similar cross-sectional convergent validity in patients suffering from rotator cuff pathology. The sensitivity to change was very close among all scores, with the UEFI having the highest sensitivity. Further research is needed to examine the extent to which each physical or emotional domain contributes to prognostic or therapeutic decision-making