TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits—almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Socially valid outcomes of intervention for people with mental retardation and challenging behaviour : a preliminary descrptive analysis of the views of different stakeholders.

Potentially salient outcomes of intervention for challenging behavior shown by people with mental retardation (MR) were identified by focus groups and through a literature review. Items generated by this process were subsequently rated by 150 respondents from seven stakeholder groups: 28 people with MR, 9 parents of people with MR, 22 clinical psychologists, 7 psychiatrists, 31 nurses, 33 managers, and 20 direct support workers. Results indicated that reduction in the severity of challenging behavior was considered the most important outcome of intervention for a child/young adult living with his or her family by four of the seven stakeholder groups; reduction in the severity of challenging behavior was considered the most important outcome of intervention for an adult living in a community-based group home by three of the seven stakeholder groups; alternative outcomes considered to be the most important by stakeholder groups included increased friendships and relationships, changes in the perceptions of individuals by others, learning of alternative ways of getting needs met, increased control, and empowerment; there were moderate levels of agreement on the relative importance of outcomes between individual members of stakeholder groups who did not have MR; there were high levels of agreement on the relative importance of outcomes between stakeholder groups of people who did not have MR; and levels of agreement on the relative importance of outcomes between people with MR and members of all other stakeholder groups did not reach the level of statistical significance

The genome sequence of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae

Anopheles gambiae is the principal vector of malaria, a disease that afflicts more than 500 million people and causes more than 1 million deaths each year. Tenfold shotgun sequence coverage was obtained from the PEST strain of A. gambiae and assembled into scaffolds that span 278 million base pairs. A total of 91% of the genome was organized in 303 scaffolds; the largest scaffold was 23.1 million base pairs. There was substantial genetic variation within this strain, and the apparent existence of two haplotypes of approximately equal frequency ("dual haplotypes") in a substantial fraction of the genome likely reflects the outbred nature of the PEST strain. The sequence produced a conservative inference of more than 400,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms that showed a markedly bimodal density distribution. Analysis of the genome sequence revealed strong evidence for about 14,000 protein-encoding transcripts. Prominent expansions in specific families of proteins likely involved in cell adhesion and immunity were noted. An expressed sequence tag analysis of genes regulated by blood feeding provided insights into the physiological adaptations of a hematophagous insect