In insect-microbe nutritional symbioses the gut symbionts supplement the host diet with nutrients by producing amino acids and vitamins or by degrading lignin or polysaccharides macromolecules. In multipartite mutualisms composed of multiple symbionts from different taxonomical orders, it has been suggested that beside the genes involved in the nutritional symbiosis the symbionts maintain genes responsible for the production of metabolites putatively playing a role in the maintenance and interaction of the bacterial communities living in...

La paléogénétique, c’est-à-dire l’analyse génétique de l’ADN préservé dans les vestiges biologiques du passé, principalement os et dents, a ouvert de nouvelles perspectives en archéologie. Cette alliée de poids apporte des informations qui ne sont pas accessibles par d’autres approches et contribue à une meilleure compréhension des sites archéologiques et des sociétés du passé, concernant entre autres migrations et métissages, domestication des animaux et des plantes, effets de l’action humaine sur les populations animales et...

Au travers de deux cas d’étude issus de l’archéologie préventive, cet article a pour objectif d’évaluer le potentiel bioarchéologique des micro-fossiles non-polliniques (MNP). Ils correspondent à des formes de résistance et de dissémination issus des cinq règnes du vivant. Associés à l’analyse des grains de pollen et des spores de végétaux, les premiers résultats obtenus sur les sites de Villeneuve-sur-Lot et de Lavau démontrent leur intérêt tant les informations qu’ils peuvent apporter sont nombreuses sur...

Understanding larval connectivity patterns in exploited fishes is a fundamental prerequisite for developing effective management strategies and assessing the vulnerability of a fishery to recruitment overfishing and localised extinction. To date however, researchers have not considered how regional variations in fishing pressure also influence recruitment. We used genetic parentage analyses and modelling to infer the dispersal patterns of bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) larvae in the Kia fishing grounds, Isabel Province, Solomon Islands. We then extrapolated...

Global change is expected to drive short-term evolution of natural populations. However, it remains unclear whether different populations are changing in unison. Here, we study contemporary evolution of growth-related and reproductive traits of three populations of Cyanus segetum face to warming and pollinator decline across a latitudinal gradient in France. We resurrected stored seeds sampled up to 24 years apart from northern, central-western, and southern populations and conducted an in situ common-garden experiment. To disentangle...

Emerging epidemics and local infection clusters are initially prone to stochastic effects that can substantially impact the epidemic trajectory. While numerous studies are devoted to the deterministic regime of an established epidemic, mathematical descriptions of the initial phase of epidemic growth are comparatively rarer. Here, we review existing mathematical results on the epidemic size over time, and derive new results to elucidate the early dynamics of an infection cluster started by a single infected individual....

Technical advances in 3D imaging have contributed to quantifying and understanding biological variability and complexity. However, small, dry-sensitive objects are not easy to reconstruct using common and easily available techniques such as photogrammetry, surface scanning, or micro-CT scanning. Here we use cephalopod beaks as an example as their size, thickness, transparency, and dry-sensitive nature make them particularly challenging. We developed a new, underwater, photogrammetry protocol in order to add these types of biological structures to...

The IASI atmospheric temperature profiles product (IASI ATP) is a daily 1°x1° global dataset of atmospheric temperatures derived from all IASI radiance observations. The temperatures profiles are given on 11 static pressure levels from 750 to 2 hPa. The method used to retrieve atmospheric temperatures from IASI radiances is detailed in Bouillon et al., 2021 (to be submitted very soon). It relies on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) trained with 450 000 observations (IASI observations...

TFCat (Time-Frequency Catalogue) is a data interchange format based on JSON. It defines several types of JSON objects and the manner in which they are combined to represent data about time-frequency features of a time spectrogram (a.k.a. dynamic spectrum), their properties, and their temporal and spectral extents.

The core goal of the Moorea Biocode Project (MBP) is to genetically barcode every non-microbial species on Moorea. We will thus create a professionally produced, verifiable (vouchered) All Taxa Biotic Inventory (ATBI) of Moorea (Output 1), together with the informatics services needed for ATBI and biocode-enabled research in Model Ecosystems (Outcome 2). We will also design a long-term plan (business model) to ensure the financial self-sustainability of biocode services, and carry out proof of concept...

Water is vital for mammals. Yet, as ephemeral sources can be difficult to find, it raises the question, how do mammals locate water? Elephants (Loxodonta africana) are water-dependent herbivores that possess exceptional olfactory capabilities, and it has been suggested that they may locate water via smell. However, there is no evidence to support this claim. To explore this, we performed two olfactory choice experiments with semi-tame elephants. In the first, we tested whether elephants could...

This document describes the Cassini/RPWS/HFR Electrical Antenna Calibration update after the Saturn Inbound trajectory measurements.

The IASI spectrally resolved Outgoing Longwave Radiation product (IASI OLR) is a monthly (L3), 2 x 2 degree global dataset of spectral OLR derived from the clear-sky IASI satellite radiance measurements in the range 645-2300 cm-1 at the 0.25 cm-1 native spectral sampling of the L1C spectra. The algorithm for the conversion of the spectra to the OLR is detailed in Whitburn et al. (2020, Journal of Climate). It relies on precalculated angular distribution models...

Background: Exaggerated secondary sexual traits are widespread in nature and often evolve under strong directional sexual selection. Although heavily studied from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints, we have little understanding of how sexual selection influences sex-biased gene regulation during the development of exaggerated secondary sexual phenotypes, and how these changes are reflected in genomic architecture. This is primarily due to the limited availability of representative genomes and associated tissue- and sex-transcriptomes to study the development...

Humans have the amazing ability to learn the dynamics of the body and environment to develop motor skills. Traditional motor studies using arm reaching paradigms have viewed this ability as the process of ‘internal model adaptation’. However, the behaviors have not been fully explored in the case when reaches fail to attain the intended target. Here we examined human reaching under two force fields types; one that induces failures (i.e., target errors), and the other...

The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis is widely considered to be wrong but is rarely tested against alternative hypotheses. It predicts that soil disturbances and herbivory have identical impacts on species richness via identical mechanisms (reduction in biomass and in competition). An alternative hypothesis is that the specific traits of disturbance agents (small mammals) and plants differentially affects richness or abundance of different plant groups. We tested these hypotheses on a degu (Octodon degus) colony in central...

Influenza A viruses cause important diseases in both human and animal. The PB1-F2 protein is a virulence factor expressed by some influenza viruses. Its deleterious action for the infected host is mostly described in mammals, while the available information is scarce in avian hosts. In this work, we compared the effects of PB1-F2 in avian and mammalian hosts by taking advantage of the zoonotic capabilities of an avian H7N1 virus. In vitro, the H7N1 virus...