417 research outputs found

    Effects of Local Plant Neighborhood on Plant Herbivory in Perennial Polyculture Cropping Systems

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    Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Biology, 2015Perennializing grain cropping systems has been proposed as a way to mitigate the challenges facing agriculture in the future due to crop intensification. Crop intensification is characterized by utilizing more land and inputs, less crop diversity, and greater crop density. Perennial cropping systems use native prairie as a model and model diverse prairie communities with perenniality and polyculture. Perennial cropping systems allow for complex planting arrangements (e.g. crop frequency, intercrops, and row spacings) that could confer specialist insect pest resistance via reduced host plant apparency, changes in herbivore attraction, and host plant tissue quality. The three chapters in this dissertation examine these themes of perennial polyculture and effects of spatial heterogeneity on insect abundance. The first chapter compares insect herbivore, predator and parasitoid, pollinator, and detritivore abundance, morphospecies richness, and biovolume among hayed grasslands, and wheat fields. Pollinators and detritivores were more abundant, had greater biovolume, and were more species-rich in hayed grasslands than in wheat fields. Therefore, insects may provide more pollination and decomposition ecosystem services in hayed grasslands. However, grasslands and wheat fields supported comparable numbers of herbivores, suggesting that herbivore densities in grasslands are not any more limited by predators and parasitoids than herbivore densities in wheat fields. The second chapter examined insect herbivore foliar feeding on a legume, Desmanthus illinoensis, which is in the early stages of development as a perennial grain crop. Insect herbivory was examined in the context of prairies. Local neighborhood grass cover strongly influenced insect herbivore foliar feeding; greater grass cover within the plant neighborhood resulted in lesser foliar herbivory. Our results suggest that incorporation of crop diversity, through the addition of a grass, in perennial agroecosystems with D. illinoensis could result in reduced foliar feeding by a specialist herbivore. The third chapter examined a legume (D. illinoensis)-grass (Thinopyrum intermedium) intercrop with row spacing and initial frequency of legume seed treatments. The bicultures were productive which suggests that incorporating crop diversity could benefit perennial polyculture. However, row spacing and seeding frequency had little effect on plant herbivory in this agroecosystem, most likely due to dominance of generalist herbivores

    Supporting Underserved Pregnant Women through Smoking Cessation

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    This project assessed smoking behaviors and supported smoking cessation in underserved pregnant women. Using a longitudinal design, women were recruited from a community prenatal center. Using the Transtheoretical model, interventions were designed to support the subjects’ movement along the stages of change. Subjects willing to quit were given a smoking cessation “quit kit.” For subjects not contemplating smoking cessation, information about the harmful effects of smoking was distributed to encourage movement towards quitting. Women who were smoking were followed throughout their pregnancy and up to one year after delivery. Subjects (N = 134) ranged in age from 18 to 41; 71% were single; and 63% had household incomes less than $20,000 per year. Subjects were primarily African American (40%). 57% had previously smoked. 35% were current smokers. Of the smokers (n = 27), 26% were not considering quitting (pre-contemplation), 56% had planned to quit (contemplation), and 18% had an action plan (preparation). Six weeks post-delivery (n = 12), one woman quit smoking and the others were planning to quit. Six months post-delivery (n = 7), two women quit smoking and the remaining smokers were planning to quit. One year post-delivery (n = 9), one woman quit smoking and of the remaining smokers only six planned to quit. Results will add to the growing body of evidence about smoking patterns of underserved pregnant women

    Fixed, Free, and Fixed: The Fickle Phylogeny of Extant Crinoidea (Echinodermata) and Their Permian-Triassic Origin

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    Although the status of Crinoidea (sea lilies and featherstars) as sister group to all other living echinoderms is well-established, relationships among crinoids, particularly extant forms, are debated. All living species are currently placed in Articulata, which is generally accepted as the only crinoid group to survive the Permian–Triassic extinction event. Recent classifications have recognized five major extant taxa: Isocrinida, Hyocrinida, Bourgueticrinina, Comatulidina and Cyrtocrinida, plus several smaller groups with uncertain taxonomic status, e.g., Guillecrinus, Proisocrinus and Caledonicrinus. Here we infer the phylogeny of extant Crinoidea using three mitochondrial genes and two nuclear genes from 59 crinoid terminals that span the majority of extant crinoid diversity. Although there is poor support for some of the more basal nodes, and some tree topologies varied with the data used and mode of analysis, we obtain several robust results. Cyrtocrinida, Hyocrinida, Isocrinida are all recovered as clades, but two stalked crinoid groups, Bourgueticrinina and Guillecrinina, nest among the featherstars, lending support to an argument that they are paedomorphic forms. Hence, they are reduced to families within Comatulida. Proisocrinus is clearly shown to be part of Isocrinida, and Caledonicrinus may not be a bourgueticrinid. Among comatulids, tree topologies show little congruence with current taxonomy, indicating that much systematic revision is required. Relaxed molecular clock analyses with eight fossil calibration points recover Articulata with a median date to the most recent common ancestor at 231–252 mya in the Middle to Upper Triassic. These analyses tend to support the hypothesis that the group is a radiation from a small clade that passed through the Permian–Triassic extinction event rather than several lineages that survived. Our tree topologies show various scenarios for the evolution of stalks and cirri in Articulata, so it is clear that further data and taxon sampling are needed to recover a more robust phylogeny of the group

    Change in longitudinal trends in sleep quality and duration following breast cancer diagnosis: results from the Women's Health Initiative

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    Breast cancer survivors frequently report sleep problems, but little research has studied sleep patterns longitudinally. We examined trends in sleep quality and duration up to 15 years before and 20 years after a diagnosis of breast cancer, over time among postmenopausal women participating in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). We included 12,098 participants who developed invasive breast cancer after study enrollment. A linear mixed-effects model was used to determine whether the time trend in sleep quality, as measured by the WHI Insomnia Rating Scale (WHIIRS), a measure of perceived insomnia symptoms from the past 4 weeks, changed following a cancer diagnosis. To examine sleep duration, we fit a logistic regression model with random effects for both short (<6 h) and long (≄9 h) sleep. In addition, we studied the association between depressive symptoms and changes in WHIIRS and sleep duration. There was a significantly slower increase in the trend of WHIIRS after diagnosis (ÎČ = 0.06; p = 0.03), but there were non-significant increases in the trend of the probability of short or long sleep after diagnosis. The probability of depressive symptoms significantly decreased, though the decrease was more pronounced after diagnosis (p < 0.01). Trends in WHIIRS worsened at a relatively slower rate following diagnosis and lower depression rates may explain the slower worsening in WHIIRS. Our findings suggest that over a long period of time, breast cancer diagnosis does not adversely affect sleep quality and duration in postmenopausal women compared to sleep pre-diagnosis, yet both sleep quality and duration continue to worsen over time.WHI - National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services [HHSN268201600018C, HHSN268201600001C, HHSN268201600002C, HHSN268201600003C, HHSN268201600004C]; Ohio State University Susan G Komen Graduate Trainee Program [GTDR15334082]Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

    Center on Disability Studies eNewsletter, June 2023

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    Welcome to our summer newsletter. In this issue we highlight many events and happenings sponsored by CDS during June and July that you don’t want to miss out on. Disability Pride Month is also celebrated each year in July. Disability Pride initially started as a day of celebration in 1990, the year that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law. It is also an opportunity to raise awareness about improving access and inclusion. The first official Disability Pride celebration occurred in 2015 to commemorate the ADA’s 25th anniversary and the Disability Pride Flag was originally designed in 2019 by Ann Magill, who with feedback within the disabled community, refined its visual elements in 2021 to be more accessible. You can read more about how the disability pride flag helps increase the community’s visibility at https://go.hawaii.edu/qEX

    Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands

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    Dominance often indicates one or a few species being best suited for resource capture and retention in a given environment. Press perturbations that change availability of limiting resources can restructure competitive hierarchies, allowing new species to capture or retain resources and leaving once dominant species fated to decline. However, dominant species may maintain high abundances even when their new environments no longer favour them due to stochastic processes associated with their high abundance, impeding deterministic processes that would otherwise diminish them. Here, we quantify the persistence of dominance by tracking the rate of decline in dominant species at 90 globally distributed grassland sites under experimentally elevated soil nutrient supply and reduced vertebrate consumer pressure. We found that chronic experimental nutrient addition and vertebrate exclusion caused certain subsets of species to lose dominance more quickly than in control plots. In control plots, perennial species and species with high initial cover maintained dominance for longer than annual species and those with low initial cover respectively. In fertilized plots, species with high initial cover maintained dominance at similar rates to control plots, while those with lower initial cover lost dominance even faster than similar species in controls. High initial cover increased the estimated time to dominance loss more strongly in plots with vertebrate exclosures than in controls. Vertebrate exclosures caused a slight decrease in the persistence of dominance for perennials, while fertilization brought perennials' rate of dominance loss in line with those of annuals. Annual species lost dominance at similar rates regardless of treatments. Synthesis. Collectively, these results point to a strong role of a species' historical abundance in maintaining dominance following environmental perturbations. Because dominant species play an outsized role in driving ecosystem processes, their ability to remain dominant—regardless of environmental conditions—is critical to anticipating expected rates of change in the structure and function of grasslands. Species that maintain dominance while no longer competitively favoured following press perturbations due to their historical abundances may result in community compositions that do not maximize resource capture, a key process of system responses to global change.Fil: Wilfahrt, Peter A.. University of Minnesota; Estados UnidosFil: Seabloom, Eric. University of Minnesota; Estados UnidosFil: Bakker, Jonathan. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Biederman, Lori. Iowa State University; Estados UnidosFil: Bugalho, Miguel N.. Universidade Nova de Lisboa; PortugalFil: Cadotte, Marc W.. University of Toronto–Scarborough; Estados UnidosFil: Caldeira, Maria C.. Universidade Nova de Lisboa; PortugalFil: Catford, Jane A.. University of Melbourne; AustraliaFil: Chen, Qingqing. Peking University; China. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; AlemaniaFil: Donohue, Ian. Trinity College Dublin; IrlandaFil: Ebeling, Anne. University of Jena; AlemaniaFil: Eisenhauer, Nico. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; Alemania. Leipzig University; AlemaniaFil: Haider, Sylvia. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg; Alemania. Leuphana University of LĂŒneburg; AlemaniaFil: Heckman, Robert W.. University of Texas; Estados Unidos. United States Forest Service; Estados UnidosFil: Jentsch, Anke. University of Bayreuth; AlemaniaFil: Koerner, Sally E.. University of North Carolina Greensboro; Estados UnidosFil: Komatsu, Kimberly J.. University of North Carolina Greensboro; Estados UnidosFil: Laungani, Ramesh. Poly Prep Country Day School; Estados UnidosFil: MacDougall, Andrew. University of Guelph; CanadĂĄFil: Smith, Nicholas G.. Texas Tech University; Estados UnidosFil: Stevens, Carly J.. Lancaster University; Reino UnidoFil: Sullivan, Lauren L.. Michigan State University; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂ­ficas y TĂ©cnicas; ArgentinaFil: Tedder, Michelle. University of KwaZulu-Natal; SudĂĄfricaFil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂ­ficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia de Santa Cruz. Universidad TecnolĂłgica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Cruz. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia de Santa Cruz. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia de Santa Cruz; ArgentinaFil: Tognetti, Pedro Maximiliano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂ­ficas y TĂ©cnicas; ArgentinaFil: Veen, Ciska. Netherlands Institute of Ecology; PaĂ­ses BajosFil: Wheeler, George. University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Estados UnidosFil: Young, Alyssa L.. University of North Carolina Greensboro; Estados UnidosFil: Young, Hillary. University of California; Estados UnidosFil: Borer, Elizabeth. University of Minnesota; Estados Unido

    Gene content evolution in the arthropods

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    Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Their diversity stems in part from variations on a conserved body plan, resulting from and recorded in adaptive changes in the genome. Dissection of the genomic record of sequence change enables broad questions regarding genome evolution to be addressed, even across hyper-diverse taxa within arthropods. Using 76 whole genome sequences representing 21 orders spanning more than 500 million years of arthropod evolution, we document changes in gene and protein domain content and provide temporal and phylogenetic context for interpreting these innovations. We identify many novel gene families that arose early in the evolution of arthropods and during the diversification of insects into modern orders. We reveal unexpected variation in patterns of DNA methylation across arthropods and examples of gene family and protein domain evolution coincident with the appearance of notable phenotypic and physiological adaptations such as flight, metamorphosis, sociality, and chemoperception. These analyses demonstrate how large-scale comparative genomics can provide broad new insights into the genotype to phenotype map and generate testable hypotheses about the evolution of animal diversity

    Food Insecurity Prevalence Across Diverse Sites During COVID-19: A Year of Comprehensive Data

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    Key Findings NFACT includes 18 study sites in 15 states as well as a national poll, collectively representing a sample size of more than 26,000 people. Some sites have implemented multiple survey rounds, here we report results from 22 separate surveys conducted during the year since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. 18 out of 19 surveys in 14 sites with data for before and since the pandemic began found an increase in food insecurity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as compared to before the pandemic. In nearly all surveys (18/19) that measured food insecurity both before and during the pandemic, more Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) were classified as food insecure during the pandemic as compared to before it began. Prevalence of food insecurity for BIPOC respondents was higher than the overall population in the majority of surveys (19/20) sampling a general population. In almost all surveys (21/22), the prevalence of food insecurity for households with children was higher than the overall prevalence of food insecurity. Food insecurity prevalence was higher for households experiencing a negative job impact during the pandemic (i.e. job loss, furlough, reduction in hours) in nearly all surveys and study sites (21/22). Food insecurity prevalence in most sites was significantly higher before COVID-19 than estimates from that time period. Reporting a percent change between pre and during COVID-19 prevalence may provide additional information about the rate of change in food insecurity since the start of the pandemic, which absolute prevalence of food insecurity may not capture. Results highlight consistent trends in food insecurity outcomes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, across diverse study sites, methodological approaches, and time

    Researching COVID to enhance recovery (RECOVER) tissue pathology study protocol: Rationale, objectives, and design.

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    ImportanceSARS-CoV-2 infection can result in ongoing, relapsing, or new symptoms or organ dysfunction after the acute phase of infection, termed Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC), or long COVID. The characteristics, prevalence, trajectory and mechanisms of PASC are poorly understood. The objectives of the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) tissue pathology study (RECOVER-Pathology) are to: (1) characterize prevalence and types of organ injury/disease and pathology occurring with PASC; (2) characterize the association of pathologic findings with clinical and other characteristics; (3) define the pathophysiology and mechanisms of PASC, and possible mediation via viral persistence; and (4) establish a post-mortem tissue biobank and post-mortem brain imaging biorepository.MethodsRECOVER-Pathology is a cross-sectional study of decedents dying at least 15 days following initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. Eligible decedents must meet WHO criteria for suspected, probable, or confirmed infection and must be aged 18 years or more at the time of death. Enrollment occurs at 7 sites in four U.S. states and Washington, DC. Comprehensive autopsies are conducted according to a standardized protocol within 24 hours of death; tissue samples are sent to the PASC Biorepository for later analyses. Data on clinical history are collected from the medical records and/or next of kin. The primary study outcomes include an array of pathologic features organized by organ system. Causal inference methods will be employed to investigate associations between risk factors and pathologic outcomes.DiscussionRECOVER-Pathology is the largest autopsy study addressing PASC among US adults. Results of this study are intended to elucidate mechanisms of organ injury and disease and enhance our understanding of the pathophysiology of PASC
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