A global phylogeny of butterflies reveals their evolutionary history, ancestral hosts and biogeographic origins

Butterflies are a diverse and charismatic insect group that are thought to have evolved with plants and dispersed throughout the world in response to key geological events. However, these hypotheses have not been extensively tested because a comprehensive phylogenetic framework and datasets for butterfly larval hosts and global distributions are lacking. We sequenced 391 genes from nearly 2,300 butterfly species, sampled from 90 countries and 28 specimen collections, to reconstruct a new phylogenomic tree of butterflies representing 92% of all genera. Our phylogeny has strong support for nearly all nodes and demonstrates that at least 36 butterfly tribes require reclassification. Divergence time analyses imply an origin similar to 100 million years ago for butterflies and indicate that all but one family were present before the K/Pg extinction event. We aggregated larval host datasets and global distribution records and found that butterflies are likely to have first fed on Fabaceae and originated in what is now the Americas. Soon after the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, butterflies crossed Beringia and diversified in the Palaeotropics. Our results also reveal that most butterfly species are specialists that feed on only one larval host plant family. However, generalist butterflies that consume two or more plant families usually feed on closely related plants

Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) Conference and Expo

Meeting Abstracts: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) Conference and Expo Clearwater Beach, FL, USA. 9-11 June 201

Cardiac status of children infected with human immunodeficiency virus who are receiving long-term combination antiretroviral therapy: results from the Adolescent Master Protocol of the Multicenter Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study

Prior to contemporary antiretroviral therapies (ARTs), children infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were more likely to have heart failure. This study suggests that highly active ART (HAART) does not appear to impair heart function. To determine the cardiac effects of prolonged exposure to HAART on HIV-infected children. In the National Institutes of Health-funded Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study's Adolescent Master Protocol (AMP), we used linear regression models to compare echocardiographic measures. A total of 14 US pediatric HIV clinics. Perinatally HIV-infected children receiving HAART (n = 325), HIV-exposed but uninfected children (n = 189), and HIV-infected (mostly HAART-unexposed) historical pediatric controls from the National Institutes of Health-funded Pulmonary and Cardiovascular Complications of Vertically Transmitted HIV Infection (P2C2-HIV) Study (n = 70). EXPOSURE Long-term HAART. Echocardiographic measures of left ventricular (LV) function and structure. The 325 AMP HIV-infected children had lower viral loads, higher CD4 counts, and longer durations of ART than did the 70 HIV-infected children from the P2C2-HIV Study (all P < .001). The z scores for LV fractional shortening (a measure of cardiac function) were significantly lower among HIV-infected children from the P2C2-HIV Study than among the AMP HIV-infected group or the 189 AMP HIV-exposed but uninfected controls (P < .05). For HIV-infected children, a lower nadir CD4 percentage and a higher current viral load were associated with significantly lower cardiac function (LV contractility and LV fractional shortening z scores; all P = .001) and an increased LV end-systolic dimension z score (all P < .03). In an interaction analysis by HIV-infected cohort, the HIV-infected children from the P2C2-HIV Study with a longer ART exposure or a lower nadir CD4 percentage had lower mean LV fractional shortening z scores, whereas the mean z scores were relatively constant among AMP HIV-infected children (P < .05 for all interactions). Long-term HAART appears to be cardioprotective for HIV-infected children and adolescents