Factors from the discovery regarding norovirus amongst asymptomatic adults

The ecology of coral reefs is rapidly shifting from historical baselines. One key-question is whether under these new, less favourable ecological conditions, coral reefs will be able to sustain key geo-ecological processes such as the capacity to accumulate carbonate structure. Here, we use data from 34 Caribbean reef sites to examine how the carbonate production, net erosion and net carbonate budgets, as well as the organisms underlying these processes, have changed over the past 15 years in the absence of further severe acute disturbances. We find that despite fundamental benthic ecological changes, these ecologically shifted coral assemblages have exhibited a modest but significant increase in their net carbonate budgets over the past 15 years. However, contrary to expectations this trend was driven by a decrease in erosion pressure, largely resulting from changes in the abundance and size-frequency distribution of parrotfishes, and not by an increase in rates of coral carbonate production. Although in the short term, the carbonate budgets seem to have benefitted marginally from reduced parrotfish erosion, the absence of these key substrate grazers, particularly of larger individuals, is unlikely to be conducive to reef recovery and will thus probably lock these reefs into low budget states.General intelligence has been a topic of high interest for over a century. Traditionally, research on general intelligence was based on principal component analyses and other dimensionality reduction approaches. The advent of high-speed computing has provided alternative statistical tools that have been used to test predictions of human general intelligence. In comparison, research on general intelligence in non-human animals is in its infancy and still relies mostly on factor-analytical procedures. Here, we argue that dimensionality reduction, when incorrectly applied, can lead to spurious results and limit our understanding of ecological and evolutionary causes of variation in animal cognition. Using a meta-analytical approach, we show, based on 555 bivariate correlations, that the average correlation among cognitive abilities is low (r = 0.185; 95% CI 0.087-0.287), suggesting relatively weak support for general intelligence in animals. We then use a case study with relatedness (genetic) data to demonstrate how analysing traits using mixed models, without dimensionality reduction, provides new insights into the structure of phenotypic variance among cognitive traits, and uncovers genetic associations that would be hidden otherwise. We hope this article will stimulate the use of alternative tools in the study of cognition and its evolution in animals.Through the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) and the financial investments of the LIFE projects, Europe has become an experimental arena for biological conservation. With an estimated annual budget of €20 billion, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 has set an ambitious goal of classifying 30% of its land and sea territory as Protected Areas and ensuring no deterioration in conservation trends and the status of protected species. We analysed LIFE projects focused on animals from 1992 to 2018 and found that investment in vertebrates was six times higher than that for invertebrates (€970 versus €150 million), with birds and mammals alone accounting for 72% of species and 75% of the total budget. BRD-6929 supplier In relative terms, investment per species towards vertebrates has been 468 times higher than that for invertebrates. Using a trait-based approach, we show that conservation effort is primarily explained by species' popularity rather than extinction risk or body size. Therefore, we propose a roadmap to achieve unbiased conservation targets for 2030 and beyond.Mutualistic symbioses are common, especially in nutrient-poor environments where an association between hosts and symbionts can allow the symbiotic partners to persist and collectively out-compete non-symbiotic species. Usually these mutualisms are built on an intimate transfer of energy and nutrients (e.g. carbon and nitrogen) between host and symbiont. However, resource availability is not consistent, and the benefit of the symbiotic association can depend on the availability of resources to mutualists. We manipulated the diets of two temperate sea anemone species in the genus Anthopleura in the field and recorded the responses of sea anemones and algal symbionts in the family Symbiodiniaceae to our treatments. Algal symbiont density, symbiont volume and photosynthetic efficiency of symbionts responded to changes in sea anemone diet, but the responses depended on the species of sea anemone. We suggest that temperate sea anemones and their symbionts can respond to changes in anemone diet, modifying the balance between heterotrophy and autotrophy in the symbiosis. Our data support the hypothesis that symbionts are upregulated or downregulated based on food availability, allowing for a flexible nutritional strategy based on external resources.Genome-scale data have greatly facilitated the resolution of recalcitrant nodes that Sanger-based datasets have been unable to resolve. However, phylogenomic studies continue to use traditional methods such as bootstrapping to estimate branch support; and high bootstrap values are still interpreted as providing strong support for the correct topology. Furthermore, relatively little attention has been given to assessing discordances between gene and species trees, and the underlying processes that produce phylogenetic conflict. We generated novel genomic datasets to characterize and determine the causes of discordance in Old World treefrogs (Family Rhacophoridae)-a group that is fraught with conflicting and poorly supported topologies among major clades. Additionally, a suite of data filtering strategies and analytical methods were applied to assess their impact on phylogenetic inference. We showed that incomplete lineage sorting was detected at all nodes that exhibited high levels of discordance. Those nodes were also associated with extremely short internal branches. We also clearly demonstrate that bootstrap values do not reflect uncertainty or confidence for the correct topology and, hence, should not be used as a measure of branch support in phylogenomic datasets. Overall, we showed that phylogenetic discordances in Old World treefrogs resulted from incomplete lineage sorting and that species tree inference can be improved using a multi-faceted, total-evidence approach, which uses the most amount of data and considers results from different analytical methods and datasets.