Identifying physical and ecological boundaries that limit where species can occur is important for predicting how those species will respond to global change. The island of Borneo encompasses a wide range of habitats that support some of the highest richness on Earth, making it an ideal location for investigating ecological mechanisms underlying broad patterns of species distribution. We tested variation in richness and range-size in relation to edaphic specialization and vegetation zone boundaries using 3060...

To assess the feasibility of fetoscopy-guided bipolar umbilical cord coagulation for selective fetal reduction in complicated monochorionic diamniotic (MCDA) twin pregnancies. MCDA twins undergoing fetoscopy-guided bipolar cord coagulation (BCC) were enrolled prospectively between December 2015 to March 2020 in a fetal medicine center. Twenty-three cases undergoing fetoscopy-guided BCC were finally analyzed, including 11 cases for type 2 selective intrauterine growth restriction, 4 cases for twin–twin transfusion syndrome, and 8 cases for a severe discordant anomaly....

Hepatoblastoma is a kind of extreme malignancy frequently diagnosed in children. Although surgical resection is considered as the first-line treatment for hepatoblastoma, a relatively large population of patients have lost the preferred opportunity for surgery. Administration of locoregional ablation enables local tumor control but with the deficiency of insufficient ablation, residual tumor, and rapid progression. In this study, we integrated 219 hepatoblastoma and 121 non-cancer liver tissues to evaluate the expression of NR2F6, from which...

Structure from motion photogrametry was used to survey the banks of the Ichilo river, in the city of Puerto Villarroel in Bolivia. The surveyed areas was of aproximately 300 hectares of terrain. A DJI Phantom 4 Pro and a DJI Mavic Pro was used for taking pictures. A total of 44 GCPs were marked along the riverbanks of the Ichilo and their coordinates were measured using a Real-time Kinematic (RTK) GPS unit. After the GCPs...

In an archipelagic system, species diversity is maintained and determined by the balance among speciation, extinction, and migration. As the number of species increases, the average population size of each species decreases, and the extinction likelihood of any given species grows. In contrast, the role of reduced population size in geographic speciation has received comparatively less research attention. Here, to study the rate of recurrent speciation, we adopted a simple multi-species two-island model and considered...

Elucidating the factors affecting the foraging habitat selection of wildlife can further our understanding of the animal– habitat relationships and inform wildlife conservation and management. Canopy and understory vegetation may directly or indirectly affect the foraging habitat selection of carnivores through changes in habitat structure and prey availability, respectively; however, the relative importance of these two effects remains largely unknown. Dwarf bamboo Sasa kurilensis is a predominant understory plant that suppresses regeneration in the forests...

The initial purpose of our study was to understand preferences of stakeholders on green infrastructure for flood control using a discrete choice experiment. However, the results of our study included unexpected findings. According to the utility theory of economics, an inexpensive green infrastructure scenario should have been chosen under ceteris paribus conditions, but our results differed from this expectation. Inconsistent results like ours are often interpreted as indicating bias and/or questionnaire design issues. However, our...

This paper presents a model of an over-the-counter bond market in which bond dealers and cash investors arrange repurchase agreements (repos) endogenously. If cash investors buy bonds to store their cash, then they suffer an endogenous bond-liquidation cost because they must sell their bonds before the scheduled times of their cash payments. This cost provides incentive for both dealers and cash investors to arrange repos with endogenous margins. As part of multiple equilibria, the bond-liquidation...

Resistance to toxins in insects is generally thought of as their own genetic trait, but recent studies have revealed that gut microorganisms could mediate resistance by detoxifying phytotoxins and man-made insecticides. By laboratory experiments, we here discovered a striking example of gut symbiont-mediated insecticide resistance in a serious rice pest, Cletus punctiger. The rice bug horizontally acquired fenitrothion-degrading Burkholderia through oral infection and housed it in midgut crypts. Fenitrothion-degradation test revealed that the gut-colonizing Burkholderia...

Early events in the evolutionary history of a clade can shape the sensory systems of descendant lineages. Although the avian ancestor may not have had a sweet receptor, the widespread incidence of nectar-feeding birds suggests multiple acquisitions of sugar detection. In this study, we identify a single early sensory shift of the umami receptor (the T1R1-T1R3 heterodimer) that conferred sweet-sensing abilities in songbirds, a large radiation containing nearly half of all living birds. We demonstrate...

Splicing factors (SFs) have been increasingly documented to perturb the genome of cancers. However, little is known about the alterations of SFs in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study comprehensively delineated the genomic and epigenomic characteristics of 404 SFs in HCC based on the multi-omics data from the Cancer Genome Atlas database. The analysis revealed several clinically relevant SFs that could be effective biomarkers for monitoring the onset and prognosis of HCC (such as, HSPB1, DDX39A,...

Totten Glacier, the primary ice discharger of East Antarctica, contains 3.85 m sea level rise equivalent ice mass (SLRe) and has displayed ocean-driven dynamic change since at least the early 2000s. We project Totten’s evolution through 2100 in a fully coupled ice-ocean model, forced at the ocean boundaries with anomalies in CMIP6 projected temperature, salinity, and velocity. Consistent with previous studies, the Antarctic Slope Current continues to modulate warm water inflow towards Totten in future...

Previous phylogeographic studies of migratory bird species have not discriminated long-distance dispersal (LDD) from vicariant speciation in their diversification process. We conducted an integrative phylogeographic approach to test the LDD hypothesis, which predicts that a Japanese migratory bird subspecies diverged from a population in the coastal region of the East China Sea (CRECS) via LDD over the East China Sea (ECS). We used the Brown Shrike as a model species, and we conducted molecular phylogenetics,...

Aim: Understanding patterns and processes of geographic genetic variation within and among closely related species is the essence of phylogeography. Japanese macaques, also called snow monkeys, have been extensively studied, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, ecology, and experimental biology; however, our knowledge of their evolutionary history is relatively limited. In this study we aimed to elucidate the geographic patterns of genetic variation in Japanese macaques and the processes that underlie them. Location: Japan Taxon:...

Floral gender in angiosperms often varies within and among populations. We conducted a field survey to test how predispersal seed predation affects sex allocation in an andromonoecious alpine herb Peucedanum multivittatum. We compared plant size, male and perfect flower production, fruit set, and seed predation rate over three years among nine populations inhabiting diverse snowmelt conditions in alpine meadows. Flowering period of individual populations varied from mid-July to late August reflecting the snowmelt time. Although...

In our previous studies, the evolutionary rate (substitutions/site/million years) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in rodents and moles was estimated to be approximately 0.11 in more recent divergence times of a few tens of thousands of years and declined quickly to approximately 0.03 in more distant divergence times. However, the modes and mechanisms associated with the time dependency have not been well documented. We addressed the abundance of nonsynonymous substitutions that had appeared in the protein-coding...

The spatial interaction of clonal organisms is an unsolved but crucial topic in evolutionary biology. We evaluated the interactions between aphid clones using a color mutant (yellow) and an original (green) clone. Colonies founded by two aphids of the same clone and mixed colonies, founded by a green aphid and a yellow aphid, were set up to observe population growth for 15 days. We confirmed positive competition effects, with mixed colonies increasing in size more...

This is the global dataset used for the Campbell et al. (2021) paper “Testing Bergmann’s Rule in marine copepods”. The dataset includes the mean length of copepods weighted by abundance found in 97,830 continuous plankton recorder (CPR) samples. Further, it contains satellite observations for sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a, and dissolved oxygen (see paper for details). It was a massive collaborative effort to get this dataset assembled by the Global Alliance of CPR Surveys (GACS 2011,...

Conservation of large carnivores like leopards requires large and interconnected habitats. Despite the wide geographic range of the leopard globally, only 17% of their habitat is within protected areas. Leopards are widely distributed in Nepal but their population status and occupancy is poorly understood. We carried out the sign-based leopard occupancy survey across the entire Chure range (~19,000 km2)to understand the habitat occupancy along with the covariates affecting their occupancy. Leopard signs were obtained from...

Geographic clines in life-history traits are often recognized as adaptations to the associated transitional environments. As life-history traits evolve in response to anthropogenic processes, these geographic clines can change over time. The geographic and temporal trends of reproductive traits in Japanese chum salmon Oncorhynchus keta were analyzed. Data were collected from 23 rivers located between 36° and 45° north latitude and 136° and 146° east longitude from 1994 to 2010. We confirmed the geographic clines...

To assess the feasibility of fetoscopy-guided bipolar umbilical cord coagulation for selective fetal reduction in complicated monochorionic diamniotic (MCDA) twin pregnancies. MCDA twins undergoing fetoscopy-guided bipolar cord coagulation (BCC) were enrolled prospectively between December 2015 to March 2020 in a fetal medicine center. Twenty-three cases undergoing fetoscopy-guided BCC were finally analyzed, including 11 cases for type 2 selective intrauterine growth restriction, 4 cases for twin–twin transfusion syndrome, and 8 cases for a severe discordant anomaly....

Splicing factors (SFs) have been increasingly documented to perturb the genome of cancers. However, little is known about the alterations of SFs in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study comprehensively delineated the genomic and epigenomic characteristics of 404 SFs in HCC based on the multi-omics data from the Cancer Genome Atlas database. The analysis revealed several clinically relevant SFs that could be effective biomarkers for monitoring the onset and prognosis of HCC (such as, HSPB1, DDX39A,...

Psoriasis vulgaris is a common chronic and recurrent inflammatory skin disease. In clinical practice, acitretin is the first-line treatment drug for psoriasis vulgaris. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a vital role in the initiation and development of psoriasis vulgaris. However few studies focused on the mechanisms of acitretin in the treatment of psoriasis vulgaris from the perspective of miRNAs. Here, the expression profiles of circulating miRNAs in the plasma of 12 patients with psoriasis vulgaris before and...

Psoriasis vulgaris is a common chronic and recurrent inflammatory skin disease. In clinical practice, acitretin is the first-line treatment drug for psoriasis vulgaris. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a vital role in the initiation and development of psoriasis vulgaris. However few studies focused on the mechanisms of acitretin in the treatment of psoriasis vulgaris from the perspective of miRNAs. Here, the expression profiles of circulating miRNAs in the plasma of 12 patients with psoriasis vulgaris before and...

Hybridization is a source of phenotypic novelty and variation because of increased additive genetic variation. Yet, the roles of non-additive allelic interactions in shaping phenotypic mean and variance of hybrids have been underappreciated. Here we examine the distributions of male-mating traits in F1 hybrids via a meta-analysis of 3,208 effect sizes from 39 animal species pairs. Although additivity sets phenotypic distributions of F1s to be intermediate, F1s also showed recessivity and resemblance to maternal species....