A revision of the rhinocerotid material from the Negev (Israel), dating back to the early Miocene (MN3 in the European Mammal Biochronology), highlights the presence of Brachypotherium and a taxon close to Gaindatherium in the Levantine Corridor. A juvenile mandible, investigated using CT scanning, displays morphologically distinct characters consistent with B. cf. B. snowi rather than with other Eurasian representatives of this genus. Some postcranial remains from the Negev, such as a humerus, display features...

Animals balance the risk of predation against other vital needs by adjusting their spatial behavior to match spatiotemporal variation in predation risk. To map this ‘landscape of fear’, prey use evolutionary rules of thumbs that are associated with the activity and hunting efficiency of predators. In addition, prey acquire perceptual information about the presence, identity, and state of potential predators and use these cues to focus their acute anti-predatory responses. Our goal was to explore...

The discovery of extremophiles helped enable the development of groundbreaking technology such as polymerase chain reaction. Temperature variation is often an essential step of these technology platforms, but the effect of temperature on the error rate of polymerases from different origins is under-explored. We applied high-throughput sequencing to profile the error rates of DNA polymerases from psychrophilic, mesophilic, and thermophilic origins with single-molecule resolution. We found that reaction temperature substantially increases substitution and deletion error...

It has long been believed that Neanderthals originated and flourished on the European continent. However, recent morphological and genetic studies have suggested that they may have received a genetic contribution from a yet unknown non-European group. Here we report on the recent discovery of archaic Homo fossils from the site of Nesher Ramla, Israel, which we dated to 140,000 to 120,000 years ago. Comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analyses of the parietal bones, mandible, and lower...

Additional file 2: Hand rings.stl. File format for 3D-printing of the two complementary hand rings.

Additional file 3: Chemical holder.stl. File format for 3D-printing of the chemical holder component.

Additional file 5. Data file of in vivo experiments in the 4T1 system 12 days post RT. The data includes single cell protein expression levels as measured by FACS, lambda (λα(cell)) values and G (Giα) values and % of subpopulations out of the entire population.

Additional file 6. Data file of in vitro experiments in BR45 cells 6 and 14 days post RT. The data includes single cell protein expression levels as measured by FACS, lambda (λα(cell)) values and G (Giα) values and % of subpopulations out of the entire population.

Controlled population development and genome-wide association studies have proven powerful in uncovering genes and alleles underlying complex traits. An underexplored dimension of such studies is the phenotypic contribution of non-additive interactions between quantitative trait loci (QTL). Capturing such epistasis in a genome-wide manner requires very large populations to represent replicated combinations of loci whose interactions determine phenotypic outcomes. Here, we dissect epistasis using a densely genotyped population of 1400 backcross-inbred lines (BILs) between a modern...

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are communities of microorganisms that control ecosystem functions in drylands. Despite their importance, little is known about how trophic interactions affect BSC function. We conducted a series of mechanistic experiments to tease out the direct (i.e., consumption) and indirect (i.e., fecal and mucus deposition) pathways by which crustivore (i.e., consume BSCs) and detritivores affect BSC functions— complemented by a manipulative field experiment exploring the integrative effect of these pathways. We showed...

Fleas are acknowledged vectors and reservoirs of various bacteria that present a wide range of pathogenicity. In this study, fleas collected from wild rodents from the Negev desert in southern Israel were tested for RickettsiaDNA by targeting the 16S rRNA (rrs) gene. Thirty-eight Xenopsylla ramesis, 91 Synosternus cleopatrae and 15 Leptopsylla flea pools (a total of 568 fleas) were screened. RickettsiaDNA was detected in 100% of the X. ramesis and in one S. cleopatrae flea...

Background: Pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have the unique ability to differentiate into every cell type and to self-renew. These characteristics correlate with a distinct nuclear architecture, epigenetic signatures enriched for active chromatin marks and hyperdynamic binding of structural chromatin proteins. Recently, several chromatin-related proteins have been shown to regulate ESC pluripotency and/or differentiation, yet the role of the major heterochromatin proteins in pluripotency is unknown. Results: Here we identify Heterochromatin Protein 1β (HP1β) as...

To survive, organisms must extract information from the past that is relevant for their future. How this process is expressed at the neural level remains unclear. We address this problem by developing a novel approach from first principles. We show here how to generate low-complexity representations of the past that produce optimal predictions of future events. We then illustrate this framework by studying the coding of ‘oddball’ sequences in auditory cortex. We find that for...

The miniaturized arachnid order Palpigradi has ambiguous phylogenetic affinities, due to its odd combination of plesiomorphic and derived morphological traits. This lineage has never been sampled in phylogenomic datasets because of its small body size and fragility of most species, a sampling gap of immediate concern to recent disputes over arachnid monophyly. To redress this gap, we sampled a population of the cave-inhabiting species Eukoenenia spelaea from Slovakia and inferred its placement in the phylogeny...

Understanding the ecological, behavioral and evolutionary response of organisms to changing environments is of primary importance in a human-altered world. It is crucial to elucidate how human activities alter gene flow and what are the consequences for the genetic structure of a species. We studied two lineages of the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) throughout the contact zone between mesic and arid ecozones in the Middle East to evaluate the species' response to the growing...

Protective mimicry, in which a palatable species avoids predation by being mistaken for an unpalatable model, is a remarkable example of adaptive evolution. These complex interactions between mimics, models and predators can explain similarities between organisms beyond the often-mechanistic constraints typically invoked in studies of convergent evolution. However, quantitative studies of protective mimicry typically focus on static traits (e.g. colour and shape) rather than on dynamic traits like locomotion. Here, we use high-speed cameras and...

Increasing crop productivity under climate change requires the identification, selection and utilization of novel alleles for breeding. We analyzed the genotype and field phenotype of the barley HEB-25 multi-parent mapping population under well-watered and water-limited (WW and WL) environments for two years. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) for genotype by-environment interactions was performed for ten traits including flowering time (HEA) and plant grain yield (PGY). Comparison of the GWAS for traits per-se to that for...

Seven decades of research on the “cognitive map”, the allocentric representation of space, have yielded key neurobiological insights, yet we still lack field evidence from free-ranging wild animals. Using a system capable of tracking dozens of animals simultaneously at high accuracy and resolution, we assembled a large dataset of 172 foraging Egyptian fruit bats comprising >18M localizations collected over 3,449 bat-nights across 4 years. Detailed track analysis, combined with translocation experiments, revealed that wild bats...

Grasses are hyper-accumulators of silicon (Si) which they acquire from the soil and deposit in tissues to resist environmental stresses. Moreover, given the high metabolic costs of herbivore defensive chemicals and structural constituents (e.g. cellulose), grasses may substitute Si for these components when carbon (C) is limited. Indeed, high Si uptake grasses evolved in the Miocene when atmospheric CO2 concentration was much lower than present levels. It is; however, unknown how pre-industrial CO2 concentrations affect...

1. Alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) are variable, often discontinuous, behaviours that allow a particular sex to achieve enhanced mating success. Predation risk has been hypothesised to drive the evolution of ARTs, but few empirical studies have examined this. It is unclear whether predators affect fitness of the two sexes directly, by reducing survival, or indirectly, by altering mate-searching. 2. In crickets, mate-search typically involves acoustic signalling by males and acoustic-mediated movement towards males by silent...

Near Eastern Neolithic farmers introduced several species of domestic plants and animals as they dispersed into Europe. Dogs were the only domestic species present in both Europe and the Near East prior to the Neolithic. Here, we assessed whether early Near Eastern dogs possessed a unique mitochondrial lineage that differentiated them from Mesolithic European populations. We then analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 99 ancient European and Near-Eastern dogs spanning the Upper Palaeolithic to the Bronze...

Long-branch attraction is a systematic artifact that results in erroneous groupings of fast-evolving taxa. The combination of short, deep internodes in tandem with LBA artifacts has produced empirically intractable parts of the Tree of Life. One such group is the arthropod subphylum Chelicerata, whose backbone phylogeny has remained unstable despite improvements in phylogenetic methods and genome-scale datasets. Pseudoscorpion placement is particularly variable across datasets and analytical frameworks, with this group either clustering with other long-branch...

When a transmission hotspot for an environmentally persistent pathogen establishes in otherwise high-quality habitat, the disease may exert a strong impact on a host population. However, fluctuating environmental conditions lead to heterogeneity in habitat quality and animal habitat preference, which may interrupt the overlap between selected and risky habitats. We evaluated spatiotemporal patterns in anthrax mortalities in a plains zebra (Equus quagga) population in Etosha National Park, Namibia, incorporating remote-sensing and host telemetry data. A...

Fall-sown chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) yields are often double those of spring-sown chickpea in regions with Mediterranean climates that have mild winters. However, winter kill can limit the productivity of fall-sown chickpea. Developing cold-tolerant chickpea would allow the expansion of the current geographic range where chickpea is grown and also improve productivity. The objective of this study was to identify the quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with cold tolerance in chickpea. An interspecific recombinant inbred...

Aim: Animal movement is an important determinant of individual survival, population dynamics, and ecosystem structure and function. Yet it is still unclear how local movements are related to resource availability and the spatial arrangement of resources. Using resident bird species and migratory bird species outside of the migratory period, we examined how the distribution of resources affect the movement patterns of both large terrestrial birds (e.g., raptors, bustards, hornbills) and waterbirds (e.g., cranes, storks, ducks,...