Endangered Bahamas bird may be lost from island following hurricane

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

 

IMAGE: BAHAMA WARBLER view more 

CREDIT: DAVID PEREIRA

The endangered Bahama Warbler may be surviving on just one island following Hurricane Dorian’s devastation in 2019, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia.

A new study shows the bird’s distribution and ecology on Grand Bahama before the hurricane struck.

But the team says that the warbler may now only survive on neighbouring Abaco island, after hurricane Dorian destroyed the bird’s forest habitat on Grand Bahama.

The research comes from the same team that found what is thought to have been the last living Bahama Nuthatch, previously thought to have been extinct.

The fieldwork was conducted by two students on UEA’s Masters in Applied Ecology and Conservation, David Pereira and Matthew Gardner, who spent three months surveying the island for the Bahama Warbler and Bahama Nuthatch.

Their supervisor Prof Diana Bell, from UEA’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “Although more than half the endemic birds of the Bahamas are judged in danger of global extinction, there has been little international engagement to help remedy the situation.”

The Bahama Warbler is a little grey and yellow bird with a long bill and is only found on the islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco in the Bahamas.

But it is now classed as an endangered species - largely because its pine forest habitat has been seriously affected by urban development, human-induced fires, fly-tipping, logging and increased strength and frequency of hurricanes.

The team wanted to assess the birds’ conservation status and determine its habitat requirements after a Category 4 Hurricane (Matthew) hit the island in 2016. They also wanted to find out more about its habitat preferences for conservation purposes.

Pereira and Gardner searched for the little bird across 464 pine forest locations in Grand Bahama. They played recorded warbler song to attract the birds and also surveyed the habitat at each location, paying close attention to habitat damaged by hurricanes and fires.

They found a total of 327 warblers present in 209 of the 464 points surveyed. 71 per cent of sightings were in forests in the centre of the island and 29 per cent were in the East.

David Pereira said: “We found that the warblers were more likely to be present in sites with fewer needleless mature trees and some burnt vegetation. They seem to prefer living among taller, more mature, Thatch Palms. This is likely because these trees are capable of surviving forest fires and are also home to insects that warblers feed on.

“They also found that the species are quite adaptable, particularly when it comes to areas that have been affected by fire. This is probably because they can forage on tree trunks and use their bills to get under burnt peeling bark.”

Their co-supervisor Prof Nigel Collar, from BirdLife International, said: “We assume that Hurricane Matthew, which struck Grand Bahama only 18 months before our 2018 survey began, killed a significant proportion of the Bahama Warblers on the island. And it is possible that our findings on the bird’s preferences largely reflect the habitat that provided the best shelter.”

Fifteen months after the fieldwork ended, Hurricane Dorian devastated Grand Bahama with winds of 295 km per hour for over 24 hours, creating such human misery and economic damage that three years later the situation of the island’s wildlife remains unclear.

Matthew Gardner said: “It is possible that Grand Bahama’s entire population of Bahama Warblers was wiped out, but we know that the only other population of the species, on Abaco, has survived in the south of the island, where much of the forest remained standing.”

“We hope that our ecological insights will help conservation management on Abaco, but both islands now need to be surveyed,” added Prof Bell.

This research was funded by Thrigby Hall Wildlife Gardens and the Sir Philip Reckitt Educational Trust. The project was led by the University of East Anglia and BirdLife International in collaboration with the University of Chester.

‘Distribution and habitat requirements of the Bahama Warbler Setophaga flavescens on Grand Bahama in 2018’ is published in the journal Bird Conservation International.

ENDS

The endangered Bahama Warbler, which may be surviving on just one island following Hurricane Dorian’s devastation in 2019.

The endangered Bahama Warbler, which may be surviving on just one island following Hurricane Dorian’s devastation in 2019.

CREDIT

David Pereira

Searching for the endangered Bahama Warbler

The fieldwork was conducted by two students on UEA’s Masters in Applied Ecology and Conservation, David Pereira and Matthew Gardner, who spent three months surveying the island for the Bahama Warbler and Bahama Nuthatch.

CREDIT

Matthew Gardner

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JOURNAL

Bird Conservation International

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Distribution and habitat requirements of the Bahama Warbler Setophaga flavescens on Grand Bahama in 2018’

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Feb-2023

Breastfeeding may reduce arsenic exposure in infants in arsenic-contaminated areas

Texas A&M School of Public Health researchers use biomonitoring to measure how arsenic passes between mothers and their babies.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

Arsenic contamination is a significant threat to human health in many parts of the world. Exposure to high levels of arsenic has been associated with a range of health problems such as diabetes, cognitive dysfunction, and certain types of cancer. In addition, arsenic exposure during pregnancy can cause miscarriages, reduced fetal growth and greater risk of health problems for children born in regions with high levels of arsenic. However, little is known about exactly how arsenic passes between mothers and their babies—both born and unborn—in populations living in contaminated areas.

A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health used biomonitoring techniques to gain insight into different possible routes of arsenic exposure in pregnant women and their children. Findings from the study show that arsenic can be passed through the placenta during pregnancy, and breastfeeding may reduce arsenic exposure in infants compared to formula feeding.

In this study, Taehyun Roh, PhD, assistant professor at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, joined colleagues from several research institutions in Mexico to compare arsenic levels of people living in arsenic-contaminated areas of Mexico and a comparison population with lower levels of exposure.

Inorganic arsenic species, which are most commonly found in drinking water and crops grown using contaminated water, are known to cause oxidative stress and inflammation in humans, which can lead to a vast number of diseases over time. The health risks of arsenic exposure led the World Health Organization to set a safe maximum level of 10 micrograms per liter. In Comarca Lagunera, a region in northern Mexico, average arsenic levels in drinking water are 82 micrograms per liter, far exceeding the recommended maximum.

Roh and colleagues collected samples of drinking water, maternal blood, urine and breast milk along with samples of placenta and umbilical cord blood right after birth. They also collected neonatal urine samples immediately and three to four days after delivery. The researchers compared concentrations of arsenic in these samples against samples collected from populations living in areas with safe arsenic levels.

The researchers found significantly higher levels of arsenic in maternal blood and urine, umbilical cord blood, and breast milk in mothers living in Comarca Lagunera compared to uncontaminated regions. They also found that arsenic levels in cord blood were associated with levels in drinking water, and maternal urine samples from mothers and infants. These findings point to the placental passage as a major in utero transmission route for arsenic.

Infant urine samples collected days after birth showed continued high levels of arsenic, indicating a continuing source of arsenic contamination after birth. However, breast milk samples showed notably lower levels of arsenic than formula prepared with contaminated water.

This study found a clear association between maternal and neonatal arsenic exposure. The findings indicate transmission of arsenic through the placenta, which is consistent with existing research, and point to breastfeeding as a possible way to reduce arsenic exposure in infants compared to formula feeding. These findings highlight the importance of the further study of arsenic exposure and the need to develop interventions to reduce exposure in vulnerable groups.

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

DOI

10.3390/ijerph192316232 

ARTICLE TITLE

Comparative biomonitoring of arsenic exposure in mothers and their neonates in Comarca Lagunera, Mexico

The ants go marching … methodically

Most biologists have assumed that ants wander aimlessly around a new environment. New University of Arizona research suggests that one species of rock ants actually searches in a more methodical way.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

 

IMAGE: THE ROCK ANTS STUDIED BY THE RESEARCHERS BELONG TO THE GENUS TEMNOTHORAX (PICTURED HERE IS A CLOSELY RELATED SPECIES). ROCK ANTS LIVE IN SMALL COLONIES AND OFTEN BUILD THEIR NESTS INSIDE ROCK CREVICES. view more 

CREDIT: GILLES SAN MARTIN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

When strolling through an unfamiliar grocery store, you may find yourself methodically walking down each aisle to ensure you find everything you need without crossing the same path twice. At times, you'll stray from this orderly process, such as when you see a vibrant "for sale" sign from across the store or realize that you forgot something. According to a study led by researchers at the University of Arizona, some ants go about their search for food and shelter in a similar manner.

In a recent paper published in the journal iScience, UArizona researchers found that when a colony of rock ants is placed in an unfamiliar environment in the lab, the ants wander in a way that's not as random as previously thought. The ants followed a systematic meandering pattern combined with some random movement – a method with the potential to optimize exploration in their natural environment.

"Previously, researchers in the field assumed that ants move in a pure random walk when searching for targets of which they don't know their location," said Stefan Popp, the first author of the paper and graduate student in UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "We found that rock ants show a striking, regular meandering pattern when exploring the area around their nests."

In Arizona, these ants can be found nesting between or under rocks in areas above elevations of 7000 feet. These slow-moving critters are only about half the length of a medium grain of rice.

The study finds that the ants' meandering, or zigzag, walking pattern may make their search more efficient than a purely random search. This is because the ants can explore a large area in less time, as they cross their own paths less frequently.

"These ants don't form obvious foraging trails like many ants we are familiar with," Popp said. "Instead, the colony depends on individual foragers finding resources, making their search strategy a crucial part of colony success."

According to the researchers, the evolutionary advantage of meandering found in these rock ants could have possibly evolved in other species of insects and animals as well. The ants' movement could someday be used to inform the design of autonomous swarms of robots performing search and rescue missions in disaster areas or exploring landscapes on other worlds.

Because it is difficult to track ants in their natural environment, Popp and his team collected rock ant colonies from atop and around Mount Lemmon just north of Tucson. The team then moved the ants to the lab, placing them in an enclosed arena with a paper floor. The enclosure measured 2 by 3 meters – giant compared to the tiny scurrying ants.

After being introduced to a new home, the ants were eager to explore.

"These ants may have been patrolling the area for other competitor ants," Popp said, explaining that there is a selective pressure to keep other ants from intruding on their nest. "They may have also been searching for food and new nest sites."

The researchers soon noticed the meandering pattern of the ants as they walked around. It raised an immediate question: Were these patterns just random squiggles, or were the ants moving in a methodical, non-random way?

To address this question, the researchers set up cameras and used automatic-tracking software, coupled with manual corrections, to track the individual paths of each marching insect over the course of five hours. The ants' journeys were then compared to simulated ants walking in a random fashion.

"We looked at whether the direction in which an ant was moving in some way depended on the direction that it was moving before," said study co-author Anna Dornhaus, a professor in the UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "These methods helped us realize that the ants' search behavior was not completely random, as biologists had previously thought."

In other words, the researchers used statistics to determine that the direction an ant turned was directly correlated to the turns it had taken previously.

"Our research showed that the ants smoothly alternate left and right turns on a relatively regular length scale of roughly three body lengths," Popp said, "For some ants, the meandering-like search pattern was even more extreme than others, kind of like a meandering river in the Amazon basin. I am fascinated by this and wonder how the ants ensure that they don't cross their own path again and again, while still doing extreme turns and loops."

Popp and Dornhaus noted that they don't know how this search behavior changes across an ant's lifetime, or even if individual ants are aware of it. Regardless, the combination of meandering and randomness may be optimal for searching for resources in an unknown environment. The systematic approach can keep an ant close to its nest without crossing back and forth on previously explored ground. The added randomness accounts for obstacles that come with an unpredictable, natural environment. 

"Until now, the widespread assumption was that free-searching animals are incapable of searching for new resources methodically," Popp said. "Most of the previous research on search behavior only focused on situations where the animal is already familiar with where it's going, such as going back to the nest entrance or going back to a memorable food source."

"Based on these results, many animals may be using complex combinations of random and systematic search that optimize efficiency and robustness in real and complex habitats," Dornhaus said. "This discovery opens up a whole new way of looking at all animal movement."

The researchers believe their discovery has the potential to unify different fields of science, including biology and robotics. The wanderings of these ants may have applications for real environments where a completely systematic search would fail when faced with an obstacle.

"This discovery could possibly lead to applications for roboticists as they program robots to be able to find their way around or search for something," Dornhaus said. "In this way, they can make their algorithms more robust, so they don't immediately fail as soon as the robot loses track of its exact location."

The researchers compared the walking paths of these ants to random simulations and discovered that these ants explored their newfound home with methodical movements, combined with some randomness.

\

This image shows all included ant tracks recorded during one 5-hour trial. The white circle indicates the position of the nest entrance. Zoom window shows a part of one track with an image of an ant to scale.

CREDIT

Dornhaus Lab/University of Arizona

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JOURNAL

iScience

DOI

10.1016/j.isci.2022.105916 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Ants combine systematic meandering and correlated random walks when searching for unknown resources

Trained dogs can sniff out a deadly deer disease

The proof-of-concept investigation by University of Pennsylvania researchers suggests detection dogs could be an asset in the effort to identify, contain, and manage chronic wasting disease, a highly contagious ailment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Charlie, Jari, and Kiwi are pet dogs with a superpower: Their sensitive noses can distinguish between a healthy deer and one sick with chronic wasting disease (CWD), all from a whiff of the deer’s poop.

That’s the finding of a study by scientists from Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, published in the journal Prion. Using feces samples from CWD-positive deer and deer in which CWD was not detected, the researchers trained the dogs to identify the odor of CWD, alerting their handlers to its presence in the lab and in the field.

“We were already quite certain that the dogs could detect the volatile organic compounds released by chronic wasting disease in feces,” says Amritha Mallikarjun, a postdoctoral researcher in Penn Vet’s Working Dog Center and lead author on the study. “Not only did we show this was possible, but we also answered a second, more interesting question, which is, Can they detect the disease in a simulated field setting, as they would if we were using the dogs to find the disease in the landscape of a forest or on a deer farm?”

The dogs indeed could, with enough accuracy to suggest that detection dogs could be a useful strategy in the fight to manage CWD.

“We learned a lot through the study and are now set up well to continue refining our training,” says Cynthia Otto, the senior author on the study and director of the Working Dog Center.

CWD is a disease that affects a variety of deer species, including white-tailed deer, mule deer, and elk. Always fatal and highly contagious, the disease can hide away in an affected animal for a year or two before symptoms manifest: the deer losing weight—“wasting”—and developing neurological signs, like stumbling and drooling. No cure or treatment exists.

The disease has been in Pennsylvania since 2012, and the state has invested significantly in trying to contain it, with several tools in place for keeping tabs on its spread. One hurdle is figuring out which deer are affected. A healthy-looking but infected animal could shed prions, malformed and infectious proteins, for many months or even years before succumbing to the illness. What’s more, prions are known to bind to soil, potentially contaminating the land on which other animals may roam.

The gold-standard diagnostic test can only be performed after death by assessing an affected animal’s brain. Some alternative tests have been trialed that involve taking a biopsy from a potentially infected animal while it’s still alive, but deer are known to be highly stressed by being captured, and collecting these samples can be physically and logistically difficult for the people involved as well.

The Working Dog Center, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, and the Wildlife Futures Program, a partnership between Penn Vet and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, were well positioned to try to contribute an additional technique for managing the disease: dogs and their highly sensitive noses. Ideally, dogs trained to discern CWD-positive from CWD-not-detected feces in a forest or deer farm could help state agencies and private landowners understand whether further testing or management would be needed to keep their land and herds free from the disease.

First, scientists had to prove the dogs could make this distinction reliably. The Working Dog Center began by enlisting three dogs from their citizen science program—Labrador retrievers Charlie and Kiwi and Finnish spitz Jari—to train on the Center’s “scent wheel,” a contraption equipped with eight ports, each containing a specific substance or scent.

The dogs proved adept at this task. Once they had been trained, using samples provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and processed by the Wildlife Futures Program, the dogs responded with great specificity, passing by the not-detected samples 90-95% of the time. Their sensitivity, however, was not as strong, alerting to just 40% of the positive samples. Overall, the researchers found that the dogs spent more time at the ports containing positive samples than those with not-detected samples, suggesting that they perceived a difference even if they didn’t always produce the trained response, such as a bark or sitting down when they smelled the positive sample.

Moving toward a more naturalistic setting, the researchers then experimented with having the dogs and their handlers try to discern CWD-positive samples placed throughout a large, privately owned field. To avoid contaminating the soil or having the dogs come in contact with the samples, two-gram samples of feces were placed in jars with mesh lids to allow the odor to waft out and then partially buried in the ground in different areas.

The researchers observed that the dogs responded to the positive samples more often than the not-detect samples in the field trial. In total, they detected eight of 11 positive samples in the field, with a false negative rate of 13%. Both handlers and dogs seemed to improve as they went, their accuracy increasing after their first field search.

“Given the amount of time that we trained these dogs and the novel environment, not to mention the fact that these are pet dogs and not trained search dogs, our results are promising,” says Mallikarjun. “As we move forward and work with dogs that are specifically trained to search in a field setting and devote their entire lives to detecting this odor, they are going to do an even better job.”

That’s a step the Wildlife Futures Program is already taking, with canine handlers training “professional” detection dogs how to canvas fields and forests, searching for CWD.

The researchers believe that, while dogs don’t represent a silver bullet in the fight against CWD, they may prove useful as an early warning system, helping fill gaps in knowledge from other monitoring systems and management approaches.

“These dogs could increase the odds of catching an outbreak early,” says Lisa Murphy, a study co-author and co-director of the Wildlife Futures Program.

The Penn Vet team is also collaborating with other groups not only to work with detection dogs but also to identify the odor dogs may be responding to in order to develop other systems for early detection. The lessons learned could be broadly useful.

“If we’re able to tap into what we’ve learned with chronic wasting disease and apply it to other issues in agriculture and conservation, these dogs could be a major asset,” Otto says.

Amritha Mallikarjun is a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Lisa Murphy is resident director of PADLS New Bolton Center, a professor of toxicology, associate director of the Institute for Infectious and Zoonotic Diseases, and co-director of the Wildlife Futures Program at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

Cynthia Otto is a professor of working dog sciences and sports medicine and director of the Working Dog Center in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

Mallikarjun, Murphy, and Otto’s coauthors were Penn Vet’s Ben Swartz, Sarah A. Kane, Michelle Gibison, Isabella Wilson, Amanda Collins, Madison B. Moore, Ila Charendoff, and Julie Ellis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Tracy Nichols. Mallikarjun is corresponding author on the study. 

The work was supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the Wildlife Futures Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

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JOURNAL

Prion

DOI

10.1080/19336896.2023.2169519 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Canine detection of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in laboratory and field settings

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Feb-2023

New ESA journal collection spotlights Black scholarship in ecology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

This week, the Ecological Society of America highlights the contributions of Black scholars to 21st-century ecology in a virtual collection of papers: “Advancing ecology through Black voices.”

The authors of the articles in the virtual collection address the exclusionary history of the natural sciences, explore ideologies that perpetuate disparities in environmental engagement, and confront public health injustices that have harmed communities of color.

The idea for the collection sprang from ESA’s Black Ecologists Section, with members seeking to promote the contributions of Black Ecologists to the discipline. “This initiative stemmed from my time as co-chair of the Black Ecologist Section, as we brainstormed on how to elevate our contributions to the rapidly expanding and increasingly relevant field of ecology in society,” said Nyeema Harris, Ph.D., an associate professor of wildlife and land conservation at Yale University.

“We recognized that by combating the historic erasure of Black scholars and disciplinary whitewashing, we could build a more inclusive community of a practice. These efforts also highlighted that our identities directly influence our scholarship and that warrants explicit celebration,” Harris said. “So, this collection is a triumphant union of past, present, and future; acknowledgement of foundational principles that get scrutinized in new ways; contemporary Black thought-leaders melding theories and approaches to advance ecology and the future outcomes resultant for our innovations.” 

The collection features papers published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment and Ecological Applications. All of the articles in the collection are open access and have been published under Creative Commons licenses.

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Articles:

The public health implications of gentrification: tick-borne disease risks for communities of color
Samniqueka J. Halsey, Meredith C. VanAcker, Nyeema C. Harris, Kaleea R. Lewis, Lisette Perez, Genee S. Smith

The history of natural history and race: Decolonizing human dimensions of ecology
Maria N. Miriti, Ariel J. Rawson, Becky Mansfield

Redefining American conservation for equitable and inclusive social-environmental management
Nia Morales, Jordan Lee, Milton Newberry, Karen Bailey

Responsibility, equity, justice, and inclusion in dynamic human–wildlife interactions
Nyeema C. Harris, Christine E. Wilkinson, Gabriela Fleury, Zoliswa N. Nhleko

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###

The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 9,000 member Society publishes five journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society’s Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at https://www.esa.org.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

Researchers successfully prevent peanut allergic reactions in mice, blocking onset in its tracks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

 

IMAGE: PHOTO BY MATT CASHORE/UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY MATT CASHORE/UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

An allergen-specific inhibitor devised by researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the Indiana University School of Medicine has successfully prevented potentially life-threatening allergic responses to peanuts.

The results of the new study were just published in Science Translational Medicine.

Peanuts cause severe, sometimes fatal, reactions in an estimated 1.1 percent of the global population. Strict dietary avoidance is the most common therapy for peanut allergies, but the risk of accidental exposure is high. There currently are no therapies to prevent allergic events from happening in the first place.

"Our approach is unique because our inhibitor starts working before the allergen has a chance to trigger an allergic reaction," said Başar Bilgiçer, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “Our collaboration with Dr. Mark Kaplan at Indiana University School of Medicine and Dr. Scott Smith at Vanderbilt University Medical Center made the development of these inhibitors possible. With their help, we were able to demonstrate the potency of our approach in animal studies.”

Using a cHBI inhibitor that they designed in their previous work, the researchers prevented allergic reactions in mice with human immune cells. A single administration provided protection against peanut allergic reaction for over two weeks. Moreover, when given shortly after the onset of symptoms, the inhibitor stopped the progression of the allergic reaction in its tracks.

When IgE antibodies and peanut allergens interact in an allergic person’s bloodstream, inflammatory mediators such as histamine are released in large quantities throughout the body.

"The release of histamines is meant to fight against invading pathogens, but, in the case of peanut allergy, there is no pathogen, just peanut proteins,” said Bilgiçer.

The new inhibitor effectively masks the immune system’s ability to recognize the allergen, allowing it to fly under the immune system’s radar without initiating a dangerous response or compromising its ability to fight real pathogens.

The researchers developed inhibitors specifically for peanut allergy because it is the most common food allergy, with high prevalence especially in children. Nevertheless, the success of cHBI in this study paves the way for the development of other allergen-specific inhibitors.

“What we’ve developed is a platform technology,” said Bilgiçer. “The same design and engineering principles used in this paper can be applied in developing inhibitors to treat a range of other allergies such as shellfish and penicillin.” 

The research will now advance to preclinical trials.

Other authors of the study include Scott A. Smith from Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Notre Dame doctoral students Jaeho Shin, Jenna Sjoerdsma, Emily K. Bromley and Gyoyeon Hwang; and Nada S. Alakhras, Anthony L. Sinn, Wenwu Zhang and Karen E. Pollock from IU School of Medicine.

 

More from Başar Bilgiçer:

Fighting to Cure Food Allergies

 

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JOURNAL

Science Translational Medicine

DOI

10.1126/scitranslmed.add6373 

ARTICLE TITLE

Peanut Allergen Inhibition Prevents Anaphylaxis in a Humanized Mouse Model

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Feb-2023

Physiological basis of yield in cotton: New “focus on cotton” webcast

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

 

IMAGE: A FIELD OF COTTON TO BE HARVESTED view more 

CREDIT: JOHN L. SNIDER

As the most commonly used natural fiber, cotton is a vital and versatile crop worldwide—grown for fiber, food, and even fuel. However, cotton production has fluctuated in the past decade due to various factors such as cultivar availability and climate change.

A foundational understanding of the physiological basis of yield in cotton is an important first step toward targeted yield improvement by using functional crop traits that are known to determine productivity. In a new “Focus on Cotton” webcast on Grow: Plant Health Exchange, John L. Snider, Associate Professor of Crop Physiology at the University of Georgia, provides an overview of the physiological drivers of yield in cotton and describes some of the factors that can influence each one. Additionally, he presents results from recently completed research with advanced breeding lines in the southeastern United States.

This 29-minute presentation is freely available through the “Focus on Cotton” resource on Grow: Plant Health Exchange—an outreach service of The American Phytopatholgical Society that contains more than 400 webcasts, including presentations from a number of conferences. These resources cover a broad range of aspects of cotton crop management: agronomic practices, diseases, harvest and ginning, insects, irrigation, nematodes, precision agriculture, soil health and crop fertility, and weeds. These webcasts are available to readers open access (without a subscription).

The “Focus on Cotton” homepage also provides access to “Cotton Cultivated,” a resource from Cotton Incorporated that helps users quickly find the most current cotton production information available. These and other resources are freely available courtesy of Cotton Incorporated at www.planthealthexchange.org/cotton/Pages/default.aspx.

To learn more, watch Physiological Basis of Yield in Cotton on Grow: Plant Health Exchange.

 

Follow Grow: Plant Health Exchange and The Cotton Board on Twitter @crop_protection and @TheCottonBoard.

 

About Grow: Plant Health Exchange: Grow: Plant Health Exchange is a nonprofit, freely available, online resource of timely, science-based information on plant health. It’s a place for plant health management professionals to exchange knowledge and discover the latest applied research. Applied researchers generate the content for Grow, sharing their work and amplifying their reach, and plant health practitioners consume the content on Grow, relying on this user-friendly platform to provide proven plant health science. As an outreach service of The American Phytopathological Society, Grow serves the full range of professionals in plant health management.

About the Cotton Board: The Cotton Research & Promotion Act established the Cotton Board as a quasi-governmental, nonprofit entity to serve as the administrator of the Cotton Research & Promotion Program. Funded by America’s cotton producers and importers through the cotton check-off, the program’s research and promotion activities are conducted worldwide by Cotton Incorporated, the Cotton Board’s sole-source contracting organization, to increase the demand for and improve the market position of cotton.

The Cotton Research & Promotion Program continues to work in all areas of cotton’s pipeline—from the field to the consumer—to keep cotton the number-one fiber choice in the United States. For more information about the Cotton Board and the innovative activities stemming from the program, visit www.cottonboard.org.

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DOI

10.1094/GROW-COT-11-22-352 

ARTICLE TITLE

Physiological Basis of Yield in Cotton