Many insects possess the plastic ability to either develop directly to adulthood, or enter diapause and postpone reproduction until the next year, depending on environmental cues (primarily photoperiod) that signal the amount of time remaining until the end of the growth season. These two alternative pathways often differ in co-adapted life history traits, e.g. with slower development and larger size in individuals headed for diapause. The developmental timing of these differences may be of adaptive...

Colour polymorphisms are popular study systems among biologists interested in evolutionary dynamics, genomics, sexual selection and sexual conflict. In many damselflies, such as in the globally distributed genus Ischnura (forktails), female colour polymorphisms occur in some species. Female-polymorphic species contain two or three female morphs, one of which is male-coloured (androchrome or male mimic) and co-exists with sexually dimorphic (heterochrome) females. These female colour polymorphisms are considered to be maintained by frequency-dependent sexual conflict, but...

Warning coloration should be under strong stabilizing selection but often displays considerable intraspecific variation. Opposing selection on color by predators and temperature is one potential explanation for this seeming paradox. Despite the importance of behavior for both predator avoidance and thermoregulation, its role in mediating selection by predators and temperature on warning coloration has received little attention. Wood tiger moth caterpillars, Arctia plantaginis, have aposematic coloration, an orange patch on the black body. The size...

Genetic rescue can facilitate the recovery of small and isolated populations suffering from inbreeding depression. Long-term effects are however complex and examples spanning over multiple generations under natural conditions are scarce. The aim of this study was to test for long-term effects of natural genetic rescue in a small population of Scandinavian Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus). By combining a genetically verified pedigree covering almost 20 years with a long-term dataset on individual fitness (n=837 individuals),...

The file “Raw data.csv” contains all data used for the analyses of the article “The effects of four decades of climate change on the breeding ecology of an avian sentinel species across a 1500-km latitudinal gradient are stronger at high latitudes” (DOI: 10.1002/ece3.7459). This data was used to investigate the effect of climate warming on the breeding time and breeding success of European pied flycatchers breeding in Sweden during 1982-2017. The data set contains 29035...

1. Plants are attacked by a large diversity of pathogens. These pathogens can affect plant growth and fitness directly, but also indirectly by inducing changes in the host plant that affect interactions with beneficial and antagonistic insects. Yet, we lack insights into the relative importance of direct and indirect effects of pathogens on their host plants, and how these effects differ among pathogen species. 2. In this study, we examined four fungal pathogens on the...

Comparative evidence suggests that adaptive plasticity may evolve as a response to predictable environmental variation. However, less attention has been placed on unpredictable environmental variation, which is considered to affect evolutionary trajectories by increasing phenotypic variation (or bet-hedging). Here, we examine the occurrence of bet-hedging in egg developmental rates in seven species of annual killifish that originate from a gradient of variation in precipitation rates, under three treatment incubation temperatures (21°C, 23°C, and 25°C). In...

In polyandrous species, males face reproductive competition both before and after mating. Sexual selection thus shapes the evolution of both pre- and postcopulatory traits, creating competing demands on resource allocation to different reproductive episodes. Traits subject to strong selection exhibit accelerated rates of phenotypic divergence, and examining evolutionary rates may inform us about the relative importance and potential fitness consequences of investing in traits under either pre- or postcopulatory sexual selection. Here, we used a...

1. The local climate in forest understories can deviate substantially from ambient conditions. Moreover, forest microclimates are often characterized by cyclic changes driven by management activities such as clear-cutting and subsequent planting. To understand how and why understory plant communities change, both ambient climate change and temporal variation in forest structure has to be considered. 2. We used inventories from 11436 productive forest sites in Sweden repeated every 10th year 1993 - 2017 to examine...

An introduction to authoring with LaTeX for the sciences. The text assumes no prior knowledge of LaTeX. It is intended for students and professionals who wants a brief introduction as a basis for further self-learning. It should be sufficient for writing any document that is based on a template or specific class.
v.5: The section on referencing has been partially rewritten and reorganised. Minor corrections throughout the text.

v.4: Revisions made to follow developments in Overleaf....

Several widely recognized metabolites play a role in regulating the pathophysiological processes of various disorders. Nonetheless, the lack of effective biomarkers for the early diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and premature ovarian failure (POF) has led to the discovery of serum-based metabolic biomarkers for these disorders. We aimed to identify various differentially expressed metabolites (DEMs) through serum-based metabolic profiling in patients with PCOS and POF and in healthy individuals by using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry...

Preeclampsia (PE) is a huge threat to pregnant women. Our previous study demonstrated that long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) NR_002794 was highly expressed in placentas of PE patients and could regulate the phenotypes of trophoblast cells. However, the downstream regulatory mechanisms of NR_002794 remain unknown. In this text, some potential downstream targets or signaling pathways of NR_002794 were identified through RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and bioinformatics analysis in SWAN71 trophoblast cells. Western blot assay demonstrated that NR_002794...

In an attempt to find species specific markers, a phenoxychromone (1) and eight isoflavonoids including six isoflavans (2-7) and two isoflavanones (8 and 9) were isolated from the root of Glycyrrhiza uralensis. Among the isolated phenolic compounds, glycyurelone (1), glycyurelvanins A and B (2 and 3) were found to be undescribed while others, (−)-vestitol (4), conferol A (5), glyasperin C (6), glyasperin D (7), (−)-licoisoflavanone (8), and (−)-3'-(γ,γ-dimethylallyl)kievitone (9) were previously reported. All compounds except...

Four new resorcinol derivatives, namely (−)/(+)-xylarinig A (1), as well as xylarinigs B (2) and C (3), were isolated from the ethyl acetate extracts of the solid fermentation of Xylaria nigripes. Their structures were established by comprehensive spectroscopic analysis combined with electronic circular dichroism (ECD) calculations. Compound 1 is an optical mixture, and was resoluted into optical pure enatiomers (+)-1 and (−)-1 by chiral HPLC. The neuroprotective effects of 1–3 against the damage of PC12...

This research was carried out as part of RJ-funded project “The Neighbourhood Revisited: Spatial polarization and social cohesion in contemporary Sweden” directed by Bo Malmberg at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University. This repository contains a report which describes how multiscalar topology was constructed and a dataset with coordinates of residential areas and their cluster assignment. For mapping coordinates in the dataset in GIS software (QGIS/ArcGIS) please use RT 90 2,5 gon V.
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This research was carried out as part of RJ-funded project “The Neighbourhood Revisited: Spatial polarization and social cohesion in contemporary Sweden” directed by Bo Malmberg at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University. This repository contains a report which describes how multiscalar topology was constructed and a dataset with coordinates of residential areas and their cluster assignment. For mapping coordinates in the dataset in GIS software (QGIS/ArcGIS) please use RT 90 2,5 gon V.
...

Agroforestry systems can provide habitats for rich biodiversity including multitrophic interactions, which presents opportunities to develop natural pest control. Shade coffee systems in several coffee-growing areas of the world host such unique habitats where pests and their natural enemies interact. One of the major global challenges for coffee production, coffee leaf rust caused by the fungal pathogen Hemileia vastatrix is attacked by the fungal hyperparasite, Lecanicillium lecanii. However, we lack insights in the dynamics and...

Studies on predatory arthropods in agricultural areas seldom include Diptera other than hover flies, partly because common sampling methods are less effective for capturing species that easily fly off when disturbed. To study the effect from this bias when describing the predator community, we compared traditional beat sampling of branches and suction sampling for describing the community of predatory arthropods in Swedish apple orchards, both organic orchards and orchards using integrated pest management. Our results...

Temperature and precipitation are two major factors determining arthropod population densities, but the effects from these climate variables are seldom evaluated in the same study system and in combination with inter- and intraspecific density dependence. In this study, I used a 19 year time series on plant variables (shoot height and flowering incidence) and insect density in order to understand direct and indirect effects of climatic fluctuations on insect population densities. The study system includes...

While top-down control plays an important role in shaping both natural and agricultural food webs, we lack insights into how top-down control effects vary across spatial scales. We used a multi-scale survey of top-down control of coffee pests and diseases by arboreal ants to examine if colony location creates a small-scale mosaic in top-down control around trees and if the strength of that control varies between sites at the landscape scale. We investigated pest and...

Bumble bees, due to their morphological monotony and color diversity, have presented difficulties with species delimitation. Recent bumble bee declines have made it ever more imperative to resolve the status of species to address conservation concerns. Some of the taxa found to be most threatened are the often-rare socially parasitic bumble bees, which have additional trophic requirements. Among the socially parasitic bumble bees, Bombus flavidus Eversmann has contentious species status. While multiple separate species allied...

1. In many agricultural landscapes, it is important to restore networks of forests to provide habitat and stepping stones for forest specialist taxa. More knowledge is, however, needed on how to facilitate the immigration of such taxa in restored forest patches. Here, we present the first chronosequence study to quantify the dynamics of immigration credits of forest specialist plants in post-arable forest patches. 2. We studied the distribution of herbaceous forest specialist plant species in...

This paper deals with the non-manual mouth actions of Swedish Sign Language, Svenskt teckenspråk (STS). Based on data from the Swedish Sign Language Corpus and the Swedish Sign Language as L2 Corpus, we compare the use of mouthings in deaf L1 as well as hearing L2 signers. The use, distribution and frequency of mouthings are explored and described quantitatively and qualitatively. The results reveal some similarities as well as differences in the use of mouthings...