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1. Night lighting and anthropogenic noise alter the activity and body condition of pinyon mice ( Peromyscus truei )

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3388  

   Willems, Joshua_S; Phillips, Jennifer_N; Vosbigian, Ryan_A; Villablanca, Francis_X; Francis, Clinton_D (March 2021, Ecosphere)

   Abstract Anthropogenic noise and artificial night lighting have been shown to have substantial effects on animal behavior, physiology, and species interactions. Despite the large body of previous work, very few studies have studied the combined effects of light and noise pollution, especially experimentally in the field. Rodents are a highly diverse group that are predominantly nocturnal and occupy a wide range of habitats worldwide, frequently in close association with human development, placing them at a heightened risk from sensory disturbances. To test the singular and combined effects of various levels of anthropogenic light and noise exposure on pinyon mouse (Peromyscus truei) activity and body condition, we used standard trapping methods across a gradient of light and noise and the two combined and accounted for variation of moonlight, vegetation structure, and weather. We hypothesized that increased levels of artificial light would decrease trap success and lead to lower body condition due to an increase in perceived predation risk and that increased noise levels would increase trap success and body condition due to a reduction in predation risk and/or release from competition. Pinyon mouse trap success declined as light intensity increased, and the effect was comparable to that of moonlight, which is well known to influence rodent activity and perception of predation risk. Although noise pollution did not alter trap success of pinyon mice, individuals captured in noisier areas at the beginning of the season had lower body condition than those from quieter areas. Body condition was uninfluenced by noise and light later in the season. We also found no evidence of any additive or synergistic effects of the two stimuli. Our results provide evidence that alterations to the sensory environment from anthropogenic activity can affect wild rodents in several ways. As anthropogenic development increases to meet the demands of growing human populations, more ecosystems will be exposed to increased levels of sensory disturbance, making the understanding of how these changes affect wildlife critical to ongoing conservation efforts. 

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2. The mode of expression divergence in Drosophila fat body is infection-specific

   https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.269597.120  

   Ramirez-Corona, Bryan A.; Fruth, Stephanie; Ofoegbu, Oluchi; Wunderlich, Zeba (June 2021, Genome Research)

   Transcription is controlled by interactions of cis -acting DNA elements with diffusible trans -acting factors. Changes in cis or trans factors can drive expression divergence within and between species, and their relative prevalence can reveal the evolutionary history and pressures that drive expression variation. Previous work delineating the mode of expression divergence in animals has largely used whole-body expression measurements in one condition. Because cis -acting elements often drive expression in a subset of cell types or conditions, these measurements may not capture the complete contribution of cis -acting changes. Here, we quantify the mode of expression divergence in the Drosophila fat body, the primary immune organ, in several conditions, using two geographically distinct lines of D. melanogaster and their F1 hybrids. We measured expression in the absence of infection and in infections with Gram-negative S. marcescens or Gram-positive E. faecalis bacteria, which trigger the two primary signaling pathways in the Drosophila innate immune response. The mode of expression divergence strongly depends on the condition, with trans -acting effects dominating in response to Gram-negative infection and cis -acting effects dominating in Gram-positive and preinfection conditions. Expression divergence in several receptor proteins may underlie the infection-specific trans effects. Before infection, when the fat body has a metabolic role, there are many compensatory effects, changes in cis and trans that counteract each other to maintain expression levels. This work shows that within a single tissue, the mode of expression divergence varies between conditions and suggests that these differences reflect the diverse evolutionary histories of host–pathogen interactions. 

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3. Transcriptome-wide microRNA and target dynamics in the fat body during the gonadotrophic cycle of Aedes aegypti

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1701474114  

   Zhang, Xiufeng; Aksoy, Emre; Girke, Thomas; Raikhel, Alexander S.; Karginov, Fedor V. (March 2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
4. The cosmology dependence of galaxy clustering and lensing from a hybrid N -body–perturbation theory model

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab1358  

   Kokron, Nickolas; DeRose, Joseph; Chen, Shi-Fan; White, Martin; Wechsler, Risa H (June 2021, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   ABSTRACT We implement a model for the two-point statistics of biased tracers that combines dark matter dynamics from N-body simulations with an analytic Lagrangian bias expansion. Using Aemulus, a suite of N-body simulations built for emulation of cosmological observables, we emulate the cosmology dependence of these non-linear spectra from redshifts z = 0 to z = 2. We quantify the accuracy of our emulation procedure, which is sub-per cent at $$k=1\, h \,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$$ for the redshifts probed by upcoming surveys and improves at higher redshifts. We demonstrate its ability to describe the statistics of complex tracer samples, including those with assembly bias and baryonic effects, reliably fitting the clustering and lensing statistics of such samples at redshift z ≃ 0.4 to scales of $$k_{\rm max} \approx 0.6\, h\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$$. We show that the emulator can be used for unbiased cosmological parameter inference in simulated joint clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing analyses with data drawn from an independent N-body simulation. These results indicate that our emulator is a promising tool that can be readily applied to the analysis of current and upcoming data sets from galaxy surveys. 

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5. Immunohistochemistry and Morphometric Analysis of Drosophila Larval Body Wall Neuromuscular Junction Preparations

   https://doi.org/10.1101/pdb.prot108500  

   Ashley, James; Carrillo, Robert A (June 2024, Cold Spring Harbor Protocols)

   TheDrosophilaneuromuscular junction (NMJ) is an excellent model for studying vertebrate glutamatergic synapses. Researchers have uncovered fundamental mechanisms at the fly NMJ that are conserved in higher-order organisms. To gain molecular and structural insight into these and other structures, immunolabeling is invaluable. In this protocol, we describe how to use immunolabeling to visualize embryonic/larval presynaptic and postsynaptic structures at the NMJ. We also include details about amplification of weak immunohistochemistry signals and how to use these signals to quantify synaptic growth via bouton counting. Boutons are bead-like structures at motor axon terminals that house synapses, and the number of boutons reflects the size of the NMJ. We also describe how to identify the different bouton types. 

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