Scientists identify beetle that triggers production of red propolis in Brazil

The new species of beetle in the family Buprestidae was found in the state of Bahia and described by researchers at the University of São Paulo and collaborators. The group discovered how the insect contributes to production of red propolis by honey bees

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

Jairo Kenupp Bastos first heard about the insect while visiting Canavieiras on the south coast of Bahia, a state in the Northeast of Brazil. “Local beekeepers told me about a tiny beetle that made holes in a plant called Dalbergia ecastaphyllum [Coinvine], a member of the pea family, and that the holes leaked a resin used by bees to make red propolis,” said Bastos, a professor of pharmacognosy (the study of drugs isolated from natural sources, such as plants, animals and minerals) at the University of São Paulo’s Ribeirão Preto School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (FCFRP-USP) in Brazil.

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) harvest the resin and blend it with wax, pollen and enzymes to make red propolis, the second most widely produced and marketed type of propolis in Brazil. Its red color derives from the resin. It has anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor properties.

To understand more about the process, Bastos took several larvae of the beetle to the Zoology Museum in São Paulo city, where he was told that adult specimens were needed to identify the insect properly. He invited PhD candidate Letizia Migliore to carry out the mission by going into the countryside outside Canavieiras in search of the plant with its beetles. She was accompanied by Gianfranco Curletti, an entomologist affiliated with the Civic Museum of Natural History in Carmagnola, Italy; Gari Ccana-Ccapatinta, a postdoctoral fellow at FCFRP-USP; and Jean Carvalho, a biologist and beekeeper who lives in Canavieiras.

“The beetle is very small, so it was no easy task, but we managed to collect a few males and females, which were fixed in ethanol at 70% and taken to the museum, where they were analyzed under a microscope. This is how we discovered this new species in the family Buprestidae, which was named Agrilus propolis,” Migliore recalled. 

Curletti, Gabriel Biffi and Sônia Casari, head of the museum’s Coleoptera Lab and Migliore’s supervisor, also took part.

“In parallel with this, phytochemical analysis was performed in the Pharmacognosy Lab [at FCFRP-USP] to confirm that the resin and propolis had the same chemical composition, proving their botanical origin and showing that this new species of beetle contributes to the production of the medicinal substance,” said Ccana-Ccapatinta, who is a member of Bastos’s team.

Transformation

The two groups’ combined research offers an overview of the process. Beetle larvae develop inside stems of D. ecastaphyllum, and on reaching adulthood emerge through holes, together with the resinous exudate.

The researchers’ findings are reported in an article published in The Science of Nature. They were funded by FAPESP via a Thematic Project led by Bastos, and a doctoral scholarship awarded to Jennyfer Mejía, a co-author of the article.

“The article is extremely important because it shows that the agent that induces the host plant to produce the key ingredient in red propolis has finally been identified. Until now we had no information on the species of insect that could be behind this phenomenon,” Casari said, adding that the data serves as a basis for further research on the production of red propolis, which sells for a high price and therefore has economic significance. A kilo was worth USD 150 on the market in 2019, when the research was done.

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About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

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JOURNAL

The Science of Nature

ARTICLE TITLE

A new species of jewel beetle (Coleoptera, Buprestidae, Agrilus) triggers the production of the Brazilian red propolis

Sensor network in the forest to improve forecasts of climate change impacts

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG

The German Research Foundation (DFG) will fund the Collaborative Research Center CRC 1537 "ECOSENSE" from July 1, 2022. The SFB will receive about 10.5 million euros over four years for its interdisciplinary, detailed research on ecosystem processes in forests.

The team led by CRC spokespersons Prof. Dr. Ulrike Wallrabe, Professor of Microactuators at the Institute of Microsystems Engineering, and Prof. Dr. Christiane Werner, Professor of Ecosystem Physiology at the Institute of Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Freiburg, would like to be able to more precisely and quickly detect and predict critical changes in the forest ecosystem - which are occurring as a result of climate change.

Sensor network sends measurement data to database in real time

To do so, the CRC is developing an autonomous, intelligent sensor network based on novel microsensors. Tailored to harsh forest environments, these will measure the spatio-temporal dynamics of ecosystem states and fluxes in a natural, complex-structured forest in a minimally invasive manner. "The measurement data will be transferred in real time to a sophisticated database and will be immediately available for process analysis, deep learning and improved simulation models for short- and medium-term predictions," Wallrabe explains. "Currently, there is a lack of suitable measurement, data and modeling tools for comprehensive quantification of change processes in real time at the highest spatio-temporal resolution. That's where we come in and develop mobile, easily deployable systems."

Impacts of climate change on complex forest ecosystems are largely unexplored

"Climate change is threatening forest ecosystems worldwide, which serve an important regulatory function in the climate system as carbon reservoirs. The impacts on complex forest ecosystems with their multiple processes and interactions between soil, plant and atmosphere are largely unexplored. Future changes are therefore hardly predictable," Werner explains. "Improved process understanding of carbon and water cycles is imperative for accurate predictions of climate change impacts on our forests."

The two CRC spokespersons Werner and Wallrabe are convinced: "The ECOSENSE toolkit, validated under controlled climate stress experiments and in our ECOSENSE forest, will enable a rapid assessment of any ecosystem in the future; even in remote areas."

Interdisciplinary collaboration between the University of Freiburg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

The research group is composed of scientists from various research areas: Freiburg researchers from six professorships of the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources and six professorships of the Institute for Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) and the Institute for Sustainable Technical Systems (INATECH) are involved. "This means that two large departments are equally involved in this project," says Wallrabe. As part of the CRC, the Freiburg researchers are collaborating with the Institute for Microstructure Technology and the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

 

Fact Box:

• Werner has been a professor of ecosystem physiology at the Institute of Forest Sciences since 2015, researching plant and ecosystem responses to climate change and investigating processes from the molecular to the ecosystem level with experimental laboratory and field work. In 2015, she was awarded the ERC consolidator grant.
• Wallrabe has been a professor of microactuators at the Institute of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) since 2003. Her work focuses on magnetic microstructures and adaptive microoptics. In September 2010, Wallrabe received a research fellowship at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) as an Internal Fellow.

Wine as scapegoat in trade disputes means consumers pay the price

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES


IMAGE: WILLIAM RIDLEY, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURAL AND CONSUMER ECONOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, EXPLORED THE ECONOMIC COSTS OF WINE TARIFFS FOR PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE. view more

CREDIT: MARIANNE STEIN, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

URBANA, Ill. ­­– When you sit down for a nice dinner and sip a glass of wine, is your bottle of choice from France, Australia, or South America? Chances are the fine beverage you’re enjoying is imported from a major global wine producer.

Wine is one of the most heavily traded products worldwide. It is also a prime target for import tariffs, even though wine rarely has anything to do with the conflicts that trigger these measures.

A new study from the University of Illinois explores the economic costs of wine tariffs for producers and consumers in the global marketplace.

“Wine often becomes a punching bag in trade disputes. It gets targeted for cross-retaliatory measures and punitive tariffs imposed by parties in dispute,” says William Ridley, assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at U of I, and lead author on the paper, published in Food Policy.

Why is wine a popular target for these trade disputes?

One reason is wine producers are heavily reliant on export markets. And wine is a culturally significant product for many countries, Ridley says.

The European Union produces 60% of the world’s wine and accounts for 67% of global exports. Other large producers include the U.S., with 8.2% of the world’s output and 5% of wine exports, as well as Australia, Argentina, Chile, and China.

Wine has been caught in the crossfire of several recent trade disputes. In their study, the researchers focus on the impacts of two ongoing conflicts.

The U.S. and the EU have recently been engaged in a years-long dispute over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus aircrafts. Both parties have imposed tariffs on unrelated products in cross-sectoral retaliation. U.S. tariffs have targeted $4.5 billion worth of food and agricultural exports from Europe; wine accounted for one third of this. In 2019, the U.S. imposed 25% duties on beverages containing up to 14% alcohol. Both the U.S. and the EU had planned additional tariffs on wine import from each other, though these measures were placed on hold when the parties reached a temporary truce in 2021.

Another major dispute occurred between China and Australia, where China enacted tariffs of up to 212% on Australian wine imports. China claimed this was in response to dumping (Australian wine producers selling wine at an artificially low price), but it also aligns with ongoing political tension between the two countries. China is the largest foreign market for Australian wine, and the tariffs effectively halted this trade.

These instances of collateral retaliation in wine imports have led to substantial economic losses, the researchers find. The dispute between the U.S. and the EU cost $190 million in lost trade, while the China-Australia dispute cost $149 million – that’s a total of $339 million annually in trade disruptions; that is trade that no longer takes place and isn’t redirected elsewhere.

Consumers in the importing countries also suffer the consequences. U.S. wine consumers experienced a 4.1% reduction in consumer welfare, measured by changes in consumer prices. EU consumers, on the other hand, are better off. Because the tariffs hurt producers and result in lower exports, more wine is available in the domestic market. The EU exports far more wine to the U.S. than the other way around, so this benefits EU consumers more. The results are similar for the China-Australia conflict, with Chinese consumers bearing the brunt of the economic impact.

Ridley and his colleagues also conducted counterfactual simulations to show what would happen if there were no import tariffs at all. They found that complete trade liberalization would lead to approximately $76 million in new trade globally, and a 4% increase in the welfare of wine consumers.

Ridley says the findings can lead to policy recommendations.

“The World Trade Organization sets the rules for how trade conflicts can proceed, and cross retaliation is one of the tools they allow countries to adopt,” he says.

“However, tariffs are inherently distortionary and have a negative net effect. You can say the tariffs protect certain domestic industries, because you're shielding them from foreign competition. But you’re making your own consumers worse off, because you’re putting a tax on things they buy. It's not difficult to show the negative effects almost universally outweigh any positive effects.”

Tariffs, including those on wine imports, have also contributed to the economy-wide inflation that has persisted in recent months, Ridley explains.

“When imports face tariffs, consumers are left paying higher prices, regardless of whether they’re buying foreign or domestically produced goods. While this isn’t the sole cause of the recent inflation, it’s unambiguously a contributor to it,” he concludes.

The Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics is in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.

The paper, “Wine: The punching bag in trade retaliation,” is published in Food Policy [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2022.102250]. Authors are William Ridley, Jeff Luckstead, and Stephen Devadoss.

The research was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Program, Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities , grant # 2022-67023-36382.

JOURNAL

Food Policy

DOI

10.1016/j.foodpol.2022.102250

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Wine: The punching bag in trade retaliation

SFU researchers exploit the body’s innate drive for safety to improve motor memory

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

A new study by Simon Fraser University researchers suggests the brain may learn faster when threatened with danger. Their research is published in the journal eNeuro.

Human bodies are constantly learning how to adapt to new situations. Through a process of motor learning, the brain corrects actions that lead to movement errors in order to develop movement patterns that allow the body to move more safely.

“Because of our innate drive for safety, and the fact that maintaining balance is fundamental to movement, we hypothesized that experiencing a balance-threatening physical consequence when making a movement error would enhance motor memory,” says Amanda Bakkum, a former PhD student in SFU’s Sensorimotor Neuroscience Lab, who carried out the research with professor Dan Marigold, associate director of the SFU Institute for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology.

To test the idea the researchers asked a group of participants to carry out a precision walking task while wearing prism lenses to alter their vision. The lenses increased the difficulty of the task by artificially shifting participants’ perceptions of the location of the target they needed to step on, which caused them to make errors.

For some participants this task was made even more challenging with a hazard placed near the target that caused them to slip and lose their balance. When this group returned the following week, they were able to remember and perform the task better. 

When threatened with possible injury, participants’ motor learning was enhanced. They were better able to correct for movement errors so they could carry out the tasks more safely in the future. 

The researchers suggest that their findings could be used to design more effective therapies to rehabilitate individuals with neurological impairment. 

“Physical therapists could consider incorporating tasks or situations that elicit a threatening physical consequence, such as a loss of balance, if the individual moves in a way that is inconsistent with the goal of the training,” says Marigold, noting how this could be accomplished with the individual in a safety harness, or possibly using virtual reality to simulate a loss of balance.

The findings also suggest that there may be other kinds of situations which could be used to enhance motor learning. “It is unclear at this point whether some other form of physical consequence or emotionally arousing event would work instead of a balance-threatening physical consequence,” Marigold says, “This is something we plan to test soon.”

The research is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

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JOURNAL

eNeuro

DOI

10.1523/ENEURO.0459-21.2022 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Learning from the physical consequences of our actions improves motor memory

When hurricanes strike, social media can save lives

A new study finds social media can be a powerful tool for cities to communicate and to collect information to deploy emergency resources where needed most

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

 

IMAGE: UCF ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION CLAIRE CONNOLLY KNOX. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

Everyone knows that while disinformation is a problem, social media is a powerful tool for communicating fast in an emergency.

In 2011 only about 10% of the U.S. population turned to social media for information during a crisis, according to several studies. Today that number is closer to 70%. A new study from the University of Central Florida found that social media isn’t just good for communicating. It can be a critical tool for collecting intelligence in real time to better deploy resources before and after hurricanes hit. 

Associate Professor of Public Administration Claire Connolly Knox looked at 23 Florida counties and their use of social media during Hurricane Irma. Results of the U.S. National Science Foundation study were recently published in the Disasters journal.

For many Florida counties, Hurricane Irma in 2017 was the first time using social media during a disaster. Some counties were creative in using the latest social media tools, some didn’t use any social media during a disaster, and most were somewhere in the middle, Knox says.

Knox analyzed After Action Reports (AARs) from every county that completed them in Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) Regions 4 through 7, which represents Central and southern Florida. These reports are not required by law but are considered a best practice to capture lessons learning during the response phase of an incident. The research team also held focus groups sessions to gather more detailed information. The in-person sessions included emergency managers from three counties (two coastal, one inland), one major city (population greater than 250,000), FDEM, the Florida Department of Transportation, a regional planning council, and two private sector organizations. 

“While 95% of the counties who used social media discussed it in positive terms in the AARs and focus group discussions, less than half of the counties engaged in two-way communication, or pulled information for situational awareness or rumor management,” Knox says. “There is progress in using social media, but we certainly have a way to go.”

The findings can be grouped in two categories.

Challenges

• Funding for enough staff to keep up with information during crisis. Some counties were creative and used mutual aid or emergency management assistance compacts for needed staffing, while others relied on digital volunteers.
• No broad use of monitoring software to track social media information, which the public assumes local government is engaging in throughout the disaster.
• Misinformation 
• Not all agencies are taking into consideration social media information to make real time decisions
• No consistent policies or guidelines for managing multiple government social media channels
• Technical issues (access, power)

Opportunities

• More government agencies recognize social media as communication vehicle
• General public is more familiar with many social media platforms
• Some agencies are tailoring information beyond Facebook that allows information to be targeted to specific neighborhoods. These include Twitter, Nextdoor, Instagram, YouTube, Periscope and Flickr.
• Sometimes, social media can be a critical tool. In one community, the 9-1-1 system went offline because of the storm. The local government was able to use social media to get critical information to its community.

One lesson learned — the public seeks out information about hurricanes on social media much more often before and during the storm than afterwards, so timing of messages is important as many lose power and are unable to access social media. Therefore, emergency managers are posting recovery information before the storm landfall. Additionally, knowing which social media account the public uses is vital. Nearly one-third of counties struggled with managing multiple social media accounts. For example, the City of Orlando has more than 50 social media accounts. Some counties were able to shut down and redirect the public to one Twitter or Facebook account for consistent disaster information.

There are certainly challenges such as correcting bad information and combating rumors, but social media can also provide rich information that properly shared can help emergency managers and their teams better respond to emergencies such as hurricanes, the researcher said. 

Knox joined UCF in 2011. She is an Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Master’s in Emergency and Crisis Management Program in UCF’s School of Public Administration. She has a Ph.D. in public administration and policy and a master’s of public administration (MPA) (environmental policy and management concentration, emergency management certificate) from Florida State University. She is a member of UCF’s National Center for Integrated Coastal Research 

She has nearly $5 million in funded research, and she has published more than 25 articles and eight book chapters in her areas of research which include: environmental vulnerability and disaster response, environmental policy and planning in coastal zones, cultural competency, and Habermas' critical theory. Her co-edited book, Cultural Competency for Emergency and Crisis Management: Concepts, Theories and Case Studies, won the 2021 Book of the Year from the American Society for Public Administration’s Section on Democracy and Social Justice. She has also prepared multiple white papers and reports for municipalities looking to improve their emergency and resiliency planning in Florida and Louisiana. 

 

 

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JOURNAL

Disasters

DOI

10.1111/disa.12544 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Local emergency management's use of social media during disasters: case study of Hurricane Irma

Women resent compliments about communality at work

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – Women feel more frustrated than men by the gendered expectations placed on them at work, even when those expectations appear to signal women’s virtues and are seen as important for workplace advancement, according to new Cornell University research.

Both women and men face gendered pressures at work. While men are expected to display independent qualities, like being assertive, women are expected to display communal qualities, like being collaborative, prior research shows. Recent polling reveals that beliefs that women possess positive communal qualities are on the rise in the U.S.; and ILR School research has found that women themselves view qualities like collaborativeness and skill at interaction as relevant to success and advancement at work.

Still, when women and men are faced with positive gendered stereotypes, women experience more frustration and less motivation to comply with the expectation than men, according to Devon Proudfoot, assistant professor of human resource studies in the ILR School and co-author of “Communal Expectations Conflict With Autonomy Motives: The Western Drive for Autonomy Shapes Women’s Negative Responses to Positive Gender Stereotypes.”

The research published April 21 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“We find that one reason why women feel more frustrated than men by these positive gendered expectations is that women and men face gender stereotypes that differ in the extent to which they affirm a sense of autonomy,” Proudfoot said. “In the Western world, people tend to strive to maintain an autonomous sense of self. But while Western society is subtly communicating that an ideal self is an autonomous, independent self, society is also telling women that they should be interdependent and connected to others. We find that this conflict helps explain women’s frustration toward the positive gender stereotypes they experience.”

In the paper, Proudfoot and her co-author, Aaron Kay of Duke University, examined how women feel about positive gendered stereotypes in the U.S., a Western individualistic culture. Further, the duo engaged in a cross-cultural comparison, finding that women in a non-Western collectivistic culture, in this case India, do not feel the same resentment.

“Our findings provide initial evidence that culture influences the way that women and men respond to gender stereotypes,” Proudfoot said. “We show that it’s the interaction between cultural models of ideal selfhood and the expectations placed on women and men that shape how women and men experience gendered pressures.”

Proudfoot, whose work often examines stereotyping and discrimination, as well as what motivates employee attitudes and behavior, led participants through five studies to gauge their reactions to positive gender stereotypes. The centerpiece of each study focused on personal experience and how the participant felt as a result.

“For instance, in some studies we ask participants to recall a time when they were expected to act a certain way because their gender,” Proudfoot said. “What we find is that women report more anger and frustration when they were expected to be collaborative or socially skilled than men experienced when they were expected to be assertive or decisive.”

To further examine their theory, Proudfoot and Kay compared women and men in the U.S. with women and men in India, a country that has a collectivistic culture in which people tend to strive for social connection and interdependence with others. They found that women in India did not experience the same feelings of anger and frustration, as the positive gender stereotypes align with cultural goals.

“What I find interesting is thinking how these Western cultural ideals around autonomy and independence intersect with gender and gendered expectations,” Proudfoot said. “Our research considers how people’s experiences of gendered trait expectations are dependent on the cultural context they grew up in and the ideal model of self promoted by that culture.”

The research suggests that complimenting women employees for being collaborative or socially skilled could backfire, she said.

“Reinforcing these types of gender stereotypes could have negative emotional and motivational consequences for women in the workplace,” Proudfoot said.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

DOI

10.1037/pspa0000311 

ARTICLE TITLE

Communal expectations conflict with autonomy motives: The western drive for autonomy shapes women’s negative responses to positive gender stereotypes.

In wake of hurricane, microbial ecosystem remarkably resilient

Findings offer hope for coastal regions even as climate change intensifies storm risk

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: PHOTOS TAKEN BEFORE AND AFTER THE HURRICANE DEMONSTRATE THE RESILIENCE OF THE MICROBIAL MATS. view more 

CREDIT: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

After sustaining seemingly catastrophic hurricane damage, a primordial groundcover vital to sustaining a multitude of coastal lifeforms bounced back to life in a matter of months.

The finding, co-led by a Johns Hopkins University geochemist and published today in Science Advances, offers rare optimism for the fate of one of Earth’s most critical ecosystems as climate change alters the global pattern of intense storms.

“The good news is that in these types of environments, there are these mechanisms that can play an important role in stabilizing the ecosystem because they recover so quickly,” said Maya Gomes, a Johns Hopkins assistant professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences. “What we saw is that they just started growing again and that means that as we continue to have more hurricanes because of climate change these ecosystems will be relatively resilient.”

The team, co-led by California Institute of Technology and University of Colorado, Boulder, researchers, had been studying Little Ambergris Cay, an uninhabited island in Turks and Caicos, in particular the island’s microbial mats. Microbial mats are a squishy, spongey ecosystems that for eons have sustained a diverse array of life from the microscopic organisms that that make a home in the upper oxygenated layers to the mangroves it helps root and stabilize, which in turn provide habitats for even more species. Mats can be found all over the world in wildly different environments, but the variety this team studied are commonly found in tropical, saltwater-oriented places, exactly the coastal locations most vulnerable to severe storms.

In September 2017, the eyewall of Category 5 Hurricane Irma directly hit the island the team had been working on.

“Once we learned everyone was OK, we were uniquely well-poised to investigate how the mat communities responded to such a catastrophic disturbance,” Gomes said.

CAPTION

For eons microbial mats have hosted a diverse array of life from the microscopic organisms vital to the survival of the ecosystem.

CREDIT

Johns Hopkins University

The tropical cyclone’s impact was immediately devastating, choking the mats with a blanket of sandy sediment that decimated new growth. However, as the team checked on the site first in March 2018, then again in July 2018 and June 2019, they were excited to see the mats regrowing, with new mats visibly sprouting from the sand layer in as little as 10 months.

New mat growth proceeded rapidly and suggested that storm perturbation may facilitate these ecosystems adapting to changing sea levels.

“For islands and tropical locations with this type of geochemistry, Florida Keys would be one in the United States, this is sort of good news in that we think that the mangrove ecosystem as well as the microbial maps are pretty well stabilized and resilient,” said lead author Usha F. Lingappa, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Berkeley.

The team also included: Co-senior author Woodward W. Fischer., Nathaniel T. Stein, Kyle S. Metcalfe, Theodore M. Present, Victoria J. Orphan and John P. Grotzinger, all of California Institute of Technology’s Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences; Andrew H. Knoll of Harvard University; and co-senior author Elizabeth J. Trower of the University of Colorado Boulder.

The work was supported by: the Agouron Institute, NASA Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science grant 80NSSC18K0278, and the NSF GRFP.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

Animals may evolve faster than previously thought

Wild animals may be able to evolve more rapidly than scientists thought

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

A higher genetic contribution to differences in individual survival and reproduction means animal species can adapt more rapidly. This “fuel” of evolution may exist in wild animal populations at two to four times the rate previously thought, the study suggests, potentially aiding species’ odds of survival. The study, published in the journal Science, was led out of Australian National University by Dr Timothée Bonnet. Dr Anna Santure, of University of Auckland – Waipapa Taumata Rau, was among the co-authors. New statistical methods were applied to data relating to 19 populations of wild animals around the world, including superb fairy-wrens in Australia, spotted hyenas in Tanzania, song sparrows in Canada and red deer in Scotland. The data pointed to the contribution of genes versus environment in the ability of species to survive and reproduce. The research showed that the majority of the 19 wild animal populations were able to adapt rapidly. “Hihi are one of the unluckier species, with a lower capacity to adapt,” says Dr Santure. “However, this research suggests that many species can adapt quickly, provided they’re not totally outpaced by habitat loss and climate change.” “For hihi, the analysis matches previous work that we’ve done suggesting a low capacity to adapt, but they can be buffered from extinction by conservation management actions such as provisioning food and parasite and predator control.” The individual studies contributing to the research had been running for an average of nearly 30 years each, generating a remarkable resource of detailed records on wild animal populations. For hihi, two datasets, from populations on Tiritiri Matangi island and at Zealandia Sanctuary, represented a combined 31 years and 90,000 hours of fieldwork from dedicated conservation staff, volunteers and students. The populations have been intensively studied since they were re-established, with breeding and survival data available for every bird. Evolution can proceed extremely slowly, but changes can also occur within just a few years and are now more easily detected by scientists after advances in genetics and statistics. Species introduced to Aotearoa New Zealand have provided examples of rapid adaptation to conditions very different than their native habitats. For example, weasels are generally larger than the European populations they came from. In addition, ‘artificial’ (human-directed) selection causes considerable and rapid change in many domesticated and farmed species of animals. This link to the research will become live once the paper is published on Friday: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abk0853

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abk0853 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-May-2022

 Seeing how odor is processed in the brain

New study shows odor unpleasantness processed more quickly than perceived quality

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

 

IMAGE: DURING THE EEG MEASUREMENT, PARTICIPANTS WERE ASKED TO RATE THE PLEASANTNESS OF THE ODORS. THEY THEN EVALUATED THE ODORS USING DESCRIPTIONS RANGING FROM CITRUS AND TEA LEAVES, TO MOTHBALLS AND WET DOG. view more 

CREDIT: MUGIHIKO KATO

A specially created odor delivery device, along with machine learning-based analysis of scalp-recorded electroencephalogram, has enabled researchers at the University of Tokyo to see when and where odors are processed in the brain. The study found that odor information in the brain is unrelated to perception during the early stages of being processed, but when perception later occurred, unpleasant odors were processed more quickly than pleasant odors. Problems with odor perception can be an early symptom of neurodegenerative diseases, so uncovering more of the neural bases of odor perception could help towards better understanding of those diseases in future.

 

Does the smell of a warm cup of coffee help you start your day the right way? Or can you not stand the strong, heady stuff? According to new research, how quickly your brain processes the smell of your morning beverage might depend on whether you think that odor is pleasant or not.

 

A team at the University of Tokyo created a special device that can deliver 10 diverse odors in a way that is accurate and timely. The odors were administered to participants who rated their pleasantness while wearing noninvasive scalp-recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) caps, which record signals inside the brain. The team was then able to process the EEG data using machine learning-based computer analysis, to see when and where the range of odors was processed in the brain with high temporal resolution for the first time.

 

“We were surprised that we could detect signals from presented odors from very early EEG responses, as quickly as 100 milliseconds after odor onset, suggesting that representation of odor information in the brain occurs rapidly,” said doctoral student Mugihiko Kato from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Tokyo.

 

Detection of odor by the brain occurred before the odor was consciously perceived by the participant, which didn’t happen until several hundred milliseconds later. “Our study showed that different aspects of perception, in particular odor pleasantness, unpleasantness and quality, emerged through different spatial and temporal cortical processing,” said Kato.

 

“The representation of unpleasantness in the brain emerged earlier than pleasantness and perceived quality,” said Project Associate Professor Masako Okamoto, also from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences. When unpleasant odors (such as rotten and rancid smells) were administered, participants’ brains could differentiate them from neutral or pleasant odors as early as 300 milliseconds after onset. However, representation of pleasant odors (such as floral and fruity smells) in the brain didn’t occur until 500 milliseconds onwards, around the same time as when the quality of the odor was also represented. From 600-850 milliseconds after odor onset, significant areas of the brain involved in emotional, semantic (language) and memory processing then became most involved.

 

The earlier perception of unpleasant odors may be an early warning system against potential dangers. “The way each sensory system recruits the central nervous system differs across the sensory modalities (smell, light, sound, taste, pressure and temperature). Elucidating when and where in the brain olfactory (smell) perception emerges helps us to understand how the olfactory system works,” said Okamoto. “We also feel that our study has broader methodological implications. For example, it was not known that scalp-recorded EEG would allow us to assess representation of odors from time periods as early as 100 milliseconds.”

 

This high temporal resolution imaging of how our brains process odors may be a stepping stone towards better understanding the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases in future, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, in which a dysfunction in the sense of smell is an early warning sign. The team is interested in exploring several further research avenues. “In our daily life, odors are perceived along with other sensory information like vision, and each sense influences the perception of the other,” said Kato. “Although we presented olfactory stimuli alone in the current study, we think that analyzing brain activity under more natural conditions, such as presenting odors with a movie, is important.” Perhaps Smell-O-Vision might yet make a comeback?

CAPTION

EEG readings enabled the research team to record which parts of the brain processed the odors.

CREDIT

Mugihiko Kato

Journal article

Mugihiko Kato, Toshiki Okumura, Yasuhiro Tsubo, Junya Honda, Masashi Sugiyama, Kazushige Touhara, Masako Okamoto “Spatiotemporal dynamics of odor representations in the human brain revealed by EEG decoding”. PNAS. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.211496611

Funding

This work was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science to M.O. (18H04998 and 21H05808) and JST-Mirai program to K.T. (JPMJMI17DC and JPMJMI19D1).

 

Useful Links

Link to Lab: https://www.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp/english/  

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.211496611 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Spatiotemporal dynamics of odor representations in the human brain revealed by EEG decoding

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-May-2022