Phytoplankton disturbed by nanoparticles

Due to its antibacterial properties, nanosilver is used in a wide range of products from textiles to cosmetics; but nanosilver if present at high concentrations also disrupts the metabolism of algae that are essential for the aquatic food web dynamics

UNIVERSITÉ DE GENÈVE

Research News

 

IMAGE: THIS NANOPARTICLE DISRUPTS THE METABOLISM OF ALGAE. view more 

CREDIT: UNIGE/ WEI LIU

Products derived from nanotechnology are efficient and highly sought-after, yet their effects on the environment are still poorly understood. A research team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), working in collaboration with the University of California at Santa Barbara, have investigated the effects of nanosilver, currently used in almost 450 products for its antibacterial properties, on the algae known as Poterioochromonas malhamensis. The results - published in the journal Scientific Reports - show that nanosilver and its derivative, ionic silver, disturb the alga's entire metabolism. Its membrane becomes more permeable, the cellular reactive oxygen species increases and photosynthesis is less effective. The Swiss-American team was able to demonstrate for the first time the metabolic perturbations induced by nanosilver following its uptake in the food vacuoles of freshwater algae, paving the way for early detection of the metabolic changes before they express themselves physiologically.

The nanosilver is used for its antibacterial properties and is employed in textiles and cosmetics, inter alia. In addition, the agro-food, biomedical and biopharmaceutical industry is interested in it for developing drugs, devices and pesticides. «Since nanosilver is designed to destroy, repel or render harmless noxious organisms such as bacteria, scientists have realised that it might also be harmful to organisms that are crucial to our environment,» begins Vera Slaveykova from the Department F.A. Forel for Environmental and Aquatic Sciences in UNIGE's Faculty of Sciences. To assess the influence of nanotechnology products on phytoplankton and to evaluate the impacts on aquatic environment, the researcher team conducted a study on the alga Poterioochromonas malhamensis as a model phytoplankton species. «The phytoplankton are everywhere, in lakes and oceans," continues Professor Slaveykova. «As a whole, phytoplankton generate almost half of the oxygen we breathe. And they have a second essential role, since they are at the base of the food chain. If they accumulate nanoparticles, these will be integrated into the aquatic food chain».

Multiple disturbances

The study led by Professor Slaveykova shows that treating the algae with nanosilver disrupts the metabolism of the amino acids that are vital for producing cellular proteins, the nucleotide metabolism that is important for genes, and fatty and tricarboxylic acids making up the membranes, as well as the photosynthesis and photorespiration elements.

The study results suggest that the silver ions released by the silver nanoparticles are the main toxicity factor. «The nanosilver is internalised in the algal cells by the phagocytotic mechanism used to supply cells with organic matter,» continues Professor Slaveykova. The study is the first to demonstrate that nanoparticles can follow such internalisation path in a species of phytoplankton. «These measurements were carried out in Geneva by Dr Liu using transmission electron microscopy. This entry mechanism is only known in Poterioochromonas malhamensis; it is still unknown if other phytoplankton species express it,» explains the Geneva researcher.

To finish demonstrating nanosilver's toxicity, the international research team highlighted the fact that metabolic disturbances induce physiological dysfunctions. Professor Slaveykova observed lipid peroxidation leading to membrane permeabilization, increased oxidative stress and less efficient photosynthesis - and, it follows, reduced oxygen production.

An Approach That Needs to Be Implemented

The study underlines the full potential of metabolomics geared towards the molecular basis of the disruptions observed. «It's a fundamental contribution to the field: although the metabolomics approaches are properly in place in medical and pharmaceutical sciences, it's not at all the case for environmental toxicology where phytoplankton metabolomics is still in its infancy. The metabolomics is, therefore, a technique that offers the possibility of early detection of changes induced by a toxin, upstream of more global effects such as the alga growth inhibition and their impact on oxygen production. As it's never easy to demonstrate the relationships between cause and effect in complex environment, it is now essential to use approaches like these.»

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Chia, goji & co. -- BfR consumer monitor special superfoods

Superfoods are part of a healthy diet for approximately half of the population

BFR FEDERAL INSTITUTE FOR RISK ASSESSMENT

Research News

 

The term "superfood" is not legally regulated. Superfoods, however, are often referred to as foods whose ingredients are considered particularly beneficial to health - for example, due to their high content of vitamins or minerals and fibre. Only 8 percent of respondents associate health risks with the consumption of superfoods.

"Superfood products are often not sufficiently investigated to be able to evaluate them from a health perspective," says BfR President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "A balanced and varied diet remains the best basis for staying healthy. This can be supported by the consumption of imported superfoods just as by the consumption of local fruits and vegetables."

Link to the Consumer Monitor special on superfoods: https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/364/bfr-consumer-monitor-2020-special-superfoods.pdf

Link to the superfoods A-Z index: https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/a-z_index/superfoods-259079.html

In Germany, 70 percent of the respondents have already heard of the term "superfood". About half see high health benefits in these foods. The main benefits cited are the content of vitamins, a generally positive effect on the body and a strengthening of the immune system. One third of respondents have superfoods on their menu at least once a week. However, almost 40 percent state that they do not consume any superfoods at all.

Compared to local foods, the majority tend to label imported foods, such as chia seeds, goji berries and quinoa, as superfoods. Yet, local foods often provide comparable health benefits. For example, blackcurrants present an alternative to goji berries due to their high content of vitamin C just as linseed, with its high content of proteins and omega-3 fatty acids, shares similarities with the nutritional profile of chia seeds.

About two out of five respondents consider the health benefits of superfoods to be scientifically proven. Just as many assume that superfood products are tested for health safety before they are available in Germany.

This particularly applies to superfoods that were rarely used for consumption in the European Union before 1997 and are, therefore, considered to be novel foods. They have to go through strict approval procedures, including an official health safety assessment. Thus far, this has applied to chia seeds, for example.

However, some superfood products, such as certain food supplements, consist of extracts or preparations of plant-based superfoods, which may contain potentially harmful substances in concentrated form. The lack of standards in extraction procedures or partly insufficient data from studies can make the health risk assessment of these products difficult. For this reason, they cannot be compared to the plant-based superfoods from which they are derived.

Only 8 percent of respondents believe that superfoods can pose health risks. Even though the positive effect of these foods for the health usually takes centre stage, certain ingredients and contaminants can be harmful to health if consumed excessively. In some cases, superfoods can also trigger intolerances or allergic reactions.

More detailed information on the possible health risks of superfoods can be found at: https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/343/superfoods-super-gut.pdf (in German)

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About the BfR Consumer Monitor

Whether antimicrobial resistance, microplastics, salmonella or aluminium in foods - which health risks do the population know about and what is it that worries them? The BfR Consumer Monitor, a representative population survey that has been conducted regularly since 2014, provides answers to these and other questions. To this end, around 1,000 people living in private households in Germany, and who are at least 14 years old, are interviewed by telephone on behalf of the BfR. Furthermore, the BfR conducts representative surveys on individual topics of particular current interest, such as tattoos, e-cigarettes or superfoods.

About the BfR

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) is a scientifically independent institution within the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) in Germany. It advises the German federal government and German federal states ("Laender") on questions of food, chemical and product safety. The BfR conducts its own research on topics that are closely linked to its assessment tasks.

This text version is a translation of the original German text which is the only legally binding version.

Effect of climate change on infectious diseases unknown to half of the population

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA

Research News

 

The transmission of specific infectious diseases have been altered by processes linked to climatic and environmental anomalies. An increase in infectious outbreaks is expected to be seen in mild climates due to global warming, and the alterations in climate patterns, such as El Niño, are modifying the presence, density, strength and dynamics of transmission of many viruses and pathogens.

Understanding how climate variability affects the transmission of these diseases is important for both researchers and the general public. Much has been done to raise awareness about climate change in the past years, but there still seems to be a widespread lack of knowledge of the effects climate change has on infectious diseases.

A study published recently in PlosOne and conducted by students from the international master's degree Erasmus Mundus IDOH+ (Infectious Disease and One Health) coordinated by the Université de Tours, the UAB and the Hannover Medical School, reveals that almost half of the population is unaware of the relation between climate change and its effect on infectious diseases.

The research was based on a multinational cross-sectional survey, in which a total of 458 participants from around the world were assessed to discover their knowledge of the effects climate change has on the emergence of infectious diseases.

The results reveal a lack of knowledge among the general public, and with marked differences according to nationality and educational background. A total of 48.9% of the participants had never before considered the effects of climate change on infectious diseases. This percentage falls to 38.4% among those with a solid knowledge of the natural sciences, and rises to 59.2% in those who work in sectors not related to science. Despite this difference, the survey also demonstrated that knowledge and awareness of climate change is unrelated to the educational level of participants, given that scientific dissemination of environmentally-related topics has been highly intensified in the past years.

The large majority of participants (64.6%) were afraid of contracting an infectious disease. In Europe, participants were less afraid (51.7%) than their US (71.4%) and Asian (87.7%) counterparts. With regard to protection measures, the large majority (70.5%) consult the need for vaccines before travelling to a tropical country. In line with this observation, over half of those surveyed (56.1%) were afraid of contracting an infectious disease in a tropical country, although differences were detected according to nationality: in this case, European participants were more afraid (72.0%), when compared to US (41.3%) and Asian participants (37.7%).

According to Max van Wijk, Erasmus Mundus IDOH+ student and one of the authors of the study, "this data can help to establish intervention measures that can raise awareness among the public on issures related to climate change and infectious diseases, within the concept of One Health".

"The study was conducted with an academic objective, but contains original content that can be applied to other scientific studies", explains UAB Department of Animal Health and Anatomy lecturer Marga Martín, one of the programme's coordinators.

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High achievement cultures may kill students' interest in math -- especially for girls

FRONTIERS

Research News

 

A new study in Frontiers in Psychology suggests that high national math achievement combined with societal pressures may contribute to how well girls and boys like math. Past research has shown that achievement-driven cultures frequently correlate with less enthusiasm for learning subjects like math. This study of over 500,000 eighth graders from 50 countries is the first to show that girls appear even more susceptible to this effect, providing insights into how to close this gender gap.

"I think we need to look more critically at the idea that we can judge a country's school system mainly on the achievement level its pupils attain--other important aspects, such as pupils feeling interested in their schoolwork, may get lost in the process," says the author, Prof Kimmo Eriksson of Mälardalen University College and Stockholm University in Sweden. "It seems that cultures that promote high achievement in math may also tend to kill many pupils' interest in math schoolwork and I found that this negative effect of high-achievement culture was stronger among girls than among boys."

Eriksson used the results from the multinational Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) from 2011 and 2015 to look at trends between math performance and students' interest levels. Although the survey had been performed in prior years, 2011 and 2015 were the first years when the survey included both a math test as well as a questionnaire about the students' interest in what they were learning.

The results showed that girls were significantly less interested in math in countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Sweden and New Zealand. But, surprisingly, the roles were reversed in countries like Oman, Malaysia, Palestine and Kazakhstan, where girls were far more engaged in the subject.

One particularly striking result was that whichever way national interest levels trended, the effect was more pronounced among girls. Eriksson named this effect 'female amplification' and suggests that this may be due to girls' stronger tendency to conform to peer influence.

It is important to note that these findings only imply correlation. Additional research is needed to better understand the underlying factors that cause these differences. But these observations may provide useful guidance for how to promote both math interest as well as achievement for girls and boys. Countries such as Singapore have also shown that it is possible to have both high interest and high performance, and further study of these school systems may help improve teaching methods elsewhere.

"By highlighting how girls' interest in schoolwork is especially sensitive to high-achievement culture, perhaps my work can make researchers and policy-makers recognize and address this challenge: How can schools promote high achievement in mathematics without killing pupils' interest in their schoolwork?" says Eriksson.

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RUDN University mathematicians applied 19th century ideas to modern computerized algebra systems

RUDN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: A TEAM OF MATHEMATICIANS FROM RUDN UNIVERSITY ADDED NEW SYMBOLIC INTEGRATION FUNCTIONALITY TO THE SAGE COMPUTERIZED ALGEBRA SYSTEM. THE TEAM IMPLEMENTED IDEAS AND METHODS SUGGESTED BY THE GERMAN MATHEMATICIAN KARL... view more 

CREDIT: RUDN UNIVERSITY

A team of mathematicians from RUDN University added new symbolic integration functionality to the Sage computerized algebra system. The team implemented ideas and methods suggested by the German mathematician Karl Weierstrass in the 1870s. The results were published in the Journal of Symbolic Computation.

The first computer program capable of calculating integrals of elementary functions was developed in the late 1950s. By creating it, the developers confirmed that a computer could not only perform simple calculations but was also able to deal with tasks that required a certain degree of 'thinking'. Symbolic integration, i.e. integration that involves letters and abstract symbols instead of numbers, is an example of such a task. At the same time, scientists realized that neither humans nor computers were able to determine whether a given integral can be taken in elementary functions (provided such a human or computer used the methods studied in a university course of analysis and took a finite number of steps). Therefore, in the 1960s mathematicians working on symbolic integrators started to refer to methods that had been suggested by Liouville in the 1830s. From that time on, computer scientists have been tapping into the classic scientific heritage.

The calculation of primitives of algebraic functions is one of the bottlenecks in the process of integrator development. Before World War I, the integration of algebraic functions or Abelian integrals had been considered one of the most important issues in mathematics, but later on, it was forgotten. "Current computer algebra systems are able to fulfill even the most exotic requests of mathematical analysis students, but at the same time, many of these systems fail to recognize integrals in elementary functions. Only several packages allow for the integration of algebraic functions or with Abelian integrals, but their development stopped 15 years ago, and their functionality leaves much to be desired," says Mikhail Malykh, a Doctor of Science in Physics and Mathematics, and an assistant professor at the Department of Applied Informatics and Probability Theory, RUDN University.

One of the theories developed by the German mathematician Karl Weierstrass in the 1870s reduces the calculation of an integral of an algebraic function to finding a given set of known integrals of all three types. The initial integral is represented as a sum of standard integrals (this construction is knowns as the normal representation of an Abelian integral). The team from RUDN University confirmed that this representation is indicative of whether a given integral can be calculated in elementary functions. To confirm their theory, the mathematicians tested them on simple elliptical integrals using a software package that had been created by the team in 2017. The package helps calculate coefficients of the normal form of an integral. In the future, the team plans to conduct similar studies for a wider range of integrals.

"This work is just one step on our way to an ambitious goal: we want to express Weierstrass's theory of Abelian integrals and functions using the language of computer algebra and to implement it in the Sage system, giving researchers from all over the world free access to it," added Mikhail Malykh from RUDN University

IS IT GLUTEN FREE?

New modified wheat could help tackle global food shortage

UNIVERSITY OF YORK

Research News

 

Researchers at the University of York have created a new modified wheat variety that increases grain production by up to 12%.

Wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world, providing 20% of human calories; with ever increasing global food demand, increasing crop yield is critically important.

Wheat breeders work hard to increase yield to meet global demand, but since the 'green revolution' of the 1960s, the rate of yield increase has been slowing and is currently less than 1% per year.

Most improvements have been made by breeding varieties that produce higher numbers of grain, but it should also be possible to increase yield by producing plants with bigger grains. When this has been achieved, however, it is accompanied by a decrease in grain numbers.

Researchers at the University of York have now resolved this issue by directly modifying the growth of the young developing grain by increasing the amount of a protein that controls growth rates in plants.

This resulted in plants that produced grain that are up to 12% bigger than in the conventional variety. In field experiments conducted by their collaborators in Chile, they found that there was no decrease in grain number, resulting in an increase in yield.

Professor Simon McQueen-Mason, from the University of York's Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) at the Department of Biology, said: "Experts predict that we need to increase global food production by 50% by 2030 in order to meet demand from population growth. The negative impacts of climate change on crop yields are making this even more challenging. While researchers are working hard to meet this challenge, there remains a lot to do."

"Attempts to increase the yield of wheat have been thwarted by the apparent trade-off between grain size and grain number. We decided to side-step this complex control system by giving a boost to the natural growth system that controls the size of plant tissues.

"We did this by increasing the levels of a protein called expansin, which is a major determinant of growth in plants. We targeted this modification so that it was confined to developing wheat grain, and are delighted by the results."

Research partners at the Universidad Austral de Chile conducted field experiments that demonstrated the effectiveness of the plants under agricultural conditions.

The team are now looking at ways to make this research accessible to farmers and the wider industry to help inform their decisions on crop production.

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The research, in collaboration with Professor Daniel Calderini in Chile and Dr Emma Wallington, at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, was funded by the BBSRC in the UK and FONDECYT in Chile, and is published in New Phytologist.

In temperate trees, climate-driven increase in carbon capture causes autumn leaves to fall sooner

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Research News

 

For decades, scientists have expected that the shedding of leaves from temperate trees will get later and later under ongoing climate change. And early observations supported that idea, as warming caused leaves to stay on the trees later over recent decades, driving increased growing season length that could help to slow the rate of climate change. However, a large-scale study of European trees now suggests that this trend is beginning to change, and in fact, tree leaves may start to fall earlier as the productivity of those trees increases. The results build on growing evidence that plant growth is limited by the ability of tree tissues to use and store carbon. While changes in the growing-season lengths of temperate trees greatly affect global carbon balance, future growing-season trajectories remain highly uncertain because the environmental drivers of autumn leaf senescence are poorly understood. Autumn leaf-shedding at the end of the growing season in temperate regions is an adaptation to stressors, such as freezing temperatures. A common related assumption is that alleviating some of these stressors - as a warmer climate could - would allow leaves to persist longer to fix more atmospheric carbon by photosynthesis. However, the role of photosynthesis in governing the timing of leaf senescence has not been widely tested in trees. To do this, Deborah Zani and colleagues used long-term observations from dominant Central European tree species from 1948 to 2015, and experiments designed to modify carbon uptake by trees, to evaluate related impacts on senescence. Collectively, their data show that increased growing-season productivity in spring and summer due to elevated carbon dioxide, temperature, or light levels can lead to earlier - not later - leaf senescence. This is likely because roots and wood cease to use or store leaf-captured carbon at a point, making leaves costly to keep. The authors used their observations to build a model to improve autumn senescence prediction under a business-as-usual climate scenario. It forecasts the possibility of slight advances, not delays, in autumn leaf-dropping dates over the rest of the century. The results "substantially lower our expectations of the extent to which longer growing seasons will increase seasonal carbon uptake in forests," they write, though the universality of this pattern in other forest types remains unknown. They note an important next avenue of research is implementing such growing-season length constraints in Earth system and vegetation models, which currently do not consider these dynamics when predicting seasonal carbon dioxide uptake of plants. A related Perspective discusses the results in more detail.

High genomic variability predicts success in desert tortoise refugees; could inform conservation

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Research News

 NEWS RELEASE 26-NOV-2020

 

Tortoise refugees with the highest genetic variation are far more likely to survive conservation translocation than tortoises whose genetic diversity is lower, according to a new study. The findings suggest that translocation efforts should account for genetic variation when selecting target individuals rather than focusing solely on those determined to be most geographically or genetically similar to the target populations. Human activity and climate change are driving record numbers of species towards extinction and represent a challenge that is being addressed by a myriad of conservation efforts worldwide. One conservation strategy employed to preserve threatened species is through translocation of individual plants and animals to areas where they've become locally extinct or to new locations where they might bolster declining resident populations. While the approach is becoming increasingly common, it is often reserved as a last resort as the long-term success is often quite poor. An ongoing debate in this area relates to whether such efforts are most successful when they target individuals from environmentally similar regions or genetically close target populations, or when they focus on overall genetic diversity. To test these hypotheses, Peter Scott and colleagues used a long-term dataset of displaced Mojave Desert Tortoises - many previously captive pets - brought to the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center's translocation site in Nevada. Scott et al. analyzed genomic data for 166 desert tortoise refugees that either survived or died over a period of twenty years and found that neither geographical distance nor genetic similarity had any effect on post-translocation survival. Instead, the greatest predictor for success was heterozygosity - individuals with the highest genomic variation survived at much higher rates than others. While the authors note that further research is needed to understand the reasons behind this increased survival, the new insights suggest ways to improve current translocation efforts.

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UCLA study of threatened desert tortoises offers new conservation strategy

Animals with more genetic variation are more likely to survive relocation

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES

Research News 

In Nevada's dry Ivanpah Valley, just southeast of Las Vegas, a massive unintended experiment in animal conservation has revealed an unexpected result.

From 1997 to 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved more than 9,100 Mojave desert tortoises to the 100-square-kilometer (about 39 miles square) Large Scale Translocation Site. The newcomers, many of which were abandoned pets or had been displaced by development, joined nearly 1,500 desert tortoises already living there.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that tortoises from areas closest to the translocation site would fare best. But a new UCLA study, published today in Science, found no connection between the tortoises' place of origin and their chances of survival. It did, however, uncover a far better predictor.

Tortoises with lots of genetic variation were much more likely to survive after their relocation, said UCLA conservation ecologist Brad Shaffer, the study's senior author. Like most organisms, tortoises have two copies of their entire genome, with one copy from each parent. The more those copies differ from each other, the higher the organism's heterozygosity.

The researchers compared translocated tortoises that lived or died over the same time period after being relocated to the site. They found that survivors averaged 23% greater heterozygosity than those that perished. Simply put, tortoises with more genetic variation had higher survival rates.

"It flies in the face of what we know from other translocation studies, but lots of genetic variation was hands-down the best predictor of whether a tortoise lived or died," said Shaffer, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. "Relocating endangered plants and animals is increasingly necessary to counteract the effects of climate change, and this gives us a new tool to increase survival rates."

Although the relationship between heterozygosity and survival was well supported by the study, it's unclear why greater genetic variation is linked to survival rates, said former UCLA postdoctoral scholar Peter Scott, the study's lead author.

"Potentially, individuals with higher heterozygosity have more genomic flexibility," said Scott, who is now an assistant professor at West Texas A&M University. "It's likely that tortoises with more variation have a better chance of having one copy of a gene that works really well in stressful or new environments compared to those individuals with two identical copies that only work really well in their environment of origin."

The researchers wanted to make tortoise conservation efforts more effective, and uncover trends that would help other species as well, Scott said.

"Oftentimes, the chances of success for relocating plants or animals is pretty dismal," he said. "We wanted to understand why, and use that understanding to increase survival."

Over the years, tortoises that were given up as pets, or removed from places like developments in suburban Las Vegas and solar farms in the desert, were surrendered to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency took blood samples to screen for diseases and marked each animal before releasing them into the Ivanpah Valley site, which enabled the animals to be tracked in later surveys. The UCLA researchers sequenced blood samples drawn from 79 tortoises that were released to the site and were known to be alive in 2015, and from another 87 known to have died after they were released at the site.

Although the Large Scale Translocation Site provided an intriguing dataset, it's not the same as a controlled experiment. Additional studies would be needed to understand why more heterozygous tortoises had a higher survival probability and precisely how much of an increase in genetic variation improves a tortoise's odds of surviving.

"The only reason we could do this study was because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was incredibly forward-thinking when they set up the translocation site and tracked who lived and died," Shaffer said. "Many died, and no one was happy about that. But we can learn a lot from that unfortunate result to help conservation management improve.

"When thinking about moving animals or plants out of danger, or repopulating an area emptied by wildfire, now we can easily and economically measure genetic variability to better gauge the survival probability of those translocated individuals. It's not the only criteria, but it's an important piece of the puzzle."

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Keyhole wasps may threaten aviation safety

PLOS

Research News

 

IMAGE: PACHODYNERUS NASIDENS ON 3D-PRINTED DE HAVILAND DASH-8 PITOT PROBE view more 

CREDIT: HOUSE ET AL (2020) PLOS ONE, CC BY

Over a period of 39 months, invasive keyhole wasps (Pachodynerus nasidens) at the Brisbane Airport were responsible for 93 instances of fully blocked replica pitot probes - vital instruments that measure airspeed -- according to a study published November 30 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alan House of Eco Logical Australia and colleagues. As noted by the authors, the results underscore the importance of risk-mitigating strategies, such as covering pitot probes when aircraft arrive and setting up additional traps to intercept the wasps.

Interactions between aircraft and wildlife are frequent and can have serious financial and safety consequences. But the risk posed by wildlife when aircraft are on the ground is much less understood, and specific threats posed by insects have not been quantified before. In the new study, House and his colleagues investigated the possible role of keyhole wasps in obstructing pitot probes at Brisbane Airport. A total of 26 wasp-related issues were reported at the airport between November 2013 and April 2019, in conjunction with a series of serious safety incidents involving pitot probes. In its native range in South and Central America and the Caribbean, the wasp is known to construct nests using man-made cavities, such as window crevices, electrical sockets, and of course, keyholes.

The researchers used 3D-printing technology to construct a series of replica pitot probes, which they mounted at four locations at the airport. All nests in these probes were made by keyhole wasps, and peak nesting occurred in the summer months. Nesting success (i.e., the proportion of nests producing live adults) was optimal between 24 and 31°C, and probes with apertures of more than 3 mm in diameter were preferred. The majority of nests were constructed in one area of the airport. The proportion of grassed areas within 1000 m of probes was a significant predictor of nesting, and the nest volume in pitot probes may determine the sex of emerging wasps. According to the authors, P. nasidens poses a significant risk to aviation safety, and further work is warranted to develop strategies for controlling or eradicating persistent populations of this adaptable, inventive, and highly mobile species.

The authors add: "We hope this research will bring attention to a little known but serious issue for air travel in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Having found its way across the Pacific Ocean, there is no reason to doubt that it could spread to other parts of Australia. The consequences of not managing this clever but dangerous pest could be substantial."

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Citation: House APN, Ring JG, Shaw PP (2020) Inventive nesting behaviour in the keyhole wasp Pachodynerus nasidens Latreille (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) in Australia, and the risk to aviation safety. PLoS ONE 15(11): e0242063. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242063

Funding: The funder (BAC) provided support in the form of salaries for authors [APNH, PPS, JGR] and provided access to the airport to conduct the experiment, co-designed the experiment and assisted in monitoring. Qantas (Matthew Hill is a paid employee of Qantas) made significant in-kind (but not financial) contributions to the project through professional advice and access to materials and 3D-printing facilities. the funders did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the 'author contributions' section.

Competing Interests: This work was commissioned and funded in its entirety by Brisbane Airport Corporation (JGR is a paid employee of BAC) to address a serious threat to aviation safety at the airport. No other sources of funding were received by the project team. BAC provided salaries to JGR, APNH and PPS. Ecosure (PPS) and Eco Logical Australia (APNH) (both consultancies) were engaged to provide professional ecological advice and devise and run a research program. Qantas (MJH is a paid employee of Qantas) made significant in-kind (but not financial) contributions to the project through professional advice and access to materials and 3D-printing facilities. There are no financial competing interests beyond these relationships. As the funder of the work, BAC (through JGR) provided access to the airport to conduct the experiment, co-designed the experiment and assisted in monitoring. All analysis and interpretation was done by Alan House. This does not alter our adherence to PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242063

The paper will publish at 2 p.m. US ET on Monday, November 30.