Laser scarecrows make birds see red

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

 

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LASER SCARECROWS SET UP IN EXPERIMENTAL FLIGHT PEN IN GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA, US, 

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Damage to crops caused by birds costs millions of dollars each year. Now, researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Rhode Island in the US are investigating the effectiveness of laser scarecrows – a high-tech solution using light to deter birds.

In a new study published in Pest Management Science, they presented captive flocks of European Starlings with fresh ears of sweetcorn and demonstrated that devices emitting a moving laser beam can significantly mitigate damage to the crop, up to 20m from the laser device.

Kathryn Sieving, Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida and corresponding author of the research explained that more and more growers are seeking inexpensive and portable laser units, like the ones tested in the research.

‘Growers need big effects for affordable prices, and if they can spend $300-$500 each for lasers to protect large fields for 1-3 weeks instead of more expensive options such as hiring people to patrol with dogs, falcons, or rifles, then lasers would be beneficial’, she said.

One reason why lasers provide a particularly effective solution for the protection of sweet corn is the short timeframe before harvest in which birds would target the crop, known as the ‘vulnerability window’. This short window reduces the risk of birds becoming desensitised to the lasers.

Sieving explained, ‘Lasers are being explored widely for crops with short vulnerability windows, like sweet corn. They seem to be performing very well and especially when different non-lethal deterrents are combined (e.g., lasers with loud noises). Birds only attack sweet corn during the brief ripening phase (called the milking stage) and it lasts only 5-10 days. So, as soon as it ripens, harvest begins. Therefore, in sweet corn, the protection does not need to last very long, and lasers seem to be working well – surprising birds such that they leave fields with lasers, and this reduces damage during milking stages by far more than 20%.’ 

The study involved two types of trials: Stick Trials, where fresh sweet corn ears were mounted on sticks at varying distances from laser units, and Natural Trials, where birds foraged on ripe corn grown from seed in a flight pen. Laser and control treatments were alternated each day over five days, allowing the researchers to assess the birds' response to repeated laser exposure.

‘We designed the stick trials to increase the sample size for more robust results. Natural corn matures over several weeks but then is only attractive to birds for two weeks – so our planted crop was not going to give us enough sample size. With the stick corn experiments we could study small scale effects and amp up the sample sizes,’ said Sieving.

The results showed that lasers reduced sweet corn damage marginally in Stick Trials and dramatically in Natural Trials. Explaining this difference in effectiveness, Sieving noted ‘the sticks we presented corn on were sturdy and the birds likely could perch and feed on corn while avoiding the laser layer sometimes. Natural corn stalks are flimsy though and the birds would be bouncing in and out of the laser layer with no control. Thus, just as in larger fields it seems that natural corn makes lasers quite effective.’

The researchers also examined how distance from the lasers affected the amount of damage to the sweetcorn. They found that there was effective deterrence up to 20m from the laser source however beyond this distance, damage to the crop increased, with little to no deterrence at 30m. Sieving notes, ‘The data showing that relationship with distance is really the only data of its kind and was possible to get because we did the work with captive birds.’

However, she explained that in true field settings, this effect seems to be unimportant. ‘In open fields, birds will simply leave a field that has detectable laser protection, and they fly far out of its influence. It seems that just one laser per field can often do the trick to keep birds mostly out of a field. So, the fine scale spatial effects might only apply if birds were overly committed to feeding a small area – then a grower may need to add a couple of laser units with overlapping ranges.’

Sieving hopes that laser scarecrows can offer a sustainable solution for the protection of crops with short vulnerability windows.

‘Lasers are silent, unlike acoustic deterrents (loud bangs, other noises occurring several times per hour) which can be very disturbing to neighbours and workers. Lethal deterrents require permits and time and labour to apply and the potentially toxic secondary effects on wildlife, soil and water are often unacceptable.’

Wooden stake presenting corn during the Stick Trials

Planted corn rows in one of the test plots

European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) feeding on corn ear in Stick Trial

CREDIT

University of Florida

JOURNAL

Pest Management Science

DOI

10.1002/ps.7888 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Experimental assessment of laser scarecrows for reducing avian damage to sweet corn

COI STATEMENT

All authors reported there were no conflicts of interest to disclose.

 

How much does biodiversity loss contribute to the spread of new infectious diseases?

Research project coordinated by Charité aims to better gauge zoonosis risks

Grant and Award Announcement

CHARITÉ - UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN BERLIN

 

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CHARITÉ RESEARCHER EXAMINES A RODENT TRAP IN COSTA RICA.

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CREDIT: © CHARITÉ | ANDRES MOREIRA-SOTO

Researchers widely agree that loss of biodiversity due to factors such as human interference with ecosystems contributes to the transmission of pathogens from animals to humans, which is known as a zoonosis. But how large is this effect? Quantifying this phenomenon is the goal of an international team of researchers headed by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The researchers hope their findings will contribute to identifying an elevated risk of emerging zoonoses early on. Their newly launched project, titled “Zoonosis Emergence across Degraded and Restored Forest Ecosystems” (ZOE), is receiving about four million euros in funding from the European Commission for a period of four years.

Zoonotic infectious diseases emerge where human and animal habitats overlap, in settings such as factory farming and the commercial wild animal trade or when people eat wild animals. The same process occurs in areas where humans intervene in natural ecosystems – for two major reasons. First, this brings people into contact with wildlife. And second, human interference upsets ecosystem health.

“When we intervene in natural spaces, it may increase the likelihood that populations of animals that are more successful under the new environmental conditions will grow at a greater rate,” explains Prof. Jan Felix Drexler, a virologist at Charité and the head of the new research project. “There are indications that when those populations grow, they also spread their pathogens, which can potentially pose a risk to people.”

This means loss of biodiversity affects the likelihood of zoonoses emerging. This effect is felt especially keenly where people use landscapes for the first time or in a different way than before, such as when forests are cleared to create pastureland for livestock or plantations, or where cities spread into the surrounding areas.

Interdisciplinary team charts biodiversity at the macro and micro levels

The exact connections between land use changes, loss of biodiversity, and the risk of zoonoses are still unclear. To better understand how these factors fit together, Drexler teamed up with Prof. Nadja Kabisch, a landscape ecologist at Leibniz University Hannover and the project’s co-coordinator, to assemble an interdisciplinary consortium with proven expertise in the fields of virology, geography, epidemiology, geobotany, ecology, immunology, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and dissemination of knowledge.

The researchers, who come from seven countries in Europe and four in the Americas, plan to assess biodiversity in detail in forested areas that have been subjected to different kinds of human intervention. To that end, the team will be investigating native forests as well as degraded and reforested areas in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Slovenia, and Slovakia.

To identify the land use and the various species living in these areas, the researchers plan to use both satellite imaging and on-site field studies to gather information on landscape characteristics and the flora and fauna present there. They also intend to determine how many potentially dangerous microorganisms are circulating in the ecosystem by using advanced sequencing methods to test rodents, ticks, and mosquitoes – all important vectors for zoonotic diseases – for various bacteria and viruses.

Blood samples from people living in the area should shed light on how many of these pathogens have already been transmitted. In addition to the biomedical studies, the team also plans to conduct systematic household surveys on aspects such as how people living in the areas studied perceive the environmental changes taking place there, how often illnesses emerge, and how they deal with the risk of infection.

Predictive models for early detection of zoonosis risk

“We plan to take this wide range of data and use it to develop statistical models,” Drexler says. “Our hope is that this information will tell us how much the risk of zoonotic infections increases, depending on the degree of land use changes and the loss of biodiversity. We also hope to gain insight into the effects of reforestation measures. We think it’s especially important to share this information with local people in the area and with the public at large, including environmental protection agencies, and jointly develop recommendations. Through our work, we aim to help with efforts to identify and limit the risk of new zoonoses right where they emerge, as one way to prevent future epidemics.”

 

About ZOE
The research consortium is coordinated by Prof. Jan Felix Drexler, head of the Virus Epidemiology laboratory at the Institute of Virology at Charité and a researcher at the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF). The co-coordinator is Prof. Nadja Kabisch, head of the Digital Landscape Ecology research group at Leibniz University Hannover. The other partners in the consortium are: Biomedical Research Center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovakia), the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (Germany), Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (Guatemala), the University of Vienna (Austria), the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), the University of Potsdam (Germany), Pikado B.V. (Netherlands), the University of Costa Rica (Costa Rica), the University of A Coruña (Spain), Aix-Marseille University (France), Protisvalor (France), National Autonomous University of Mexico (Mexico), Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (Mexico), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (USA). Funding is being provided as part of the EU’s Horizon Europe framework program.

 

What makes urine yellow? UMD scientists discover the enzyme responsible

Their findings could be applied to future studies of gut health, including conditions like jaundice and inflammatory bowel disease

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Researchers at the University of Maryland and National Institutes of Health have identified the microbial enzyme responsible for giving urine its yellow hue, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Microbiology on January 3, 2024.

The discovery of this enzyme, called bilirubin reductase, paves the way for further research into the gut microbiome’s role in ailments like jaundice and inflammatory bowel disease. 

“This enzyme discovery finally unravels the mystery behind urine’s yellow color,” said the study’s lead author Brantley Hall, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics. “It’s remarkable that an everyday biological phenomenon went unexplained for so long, and our team is excited to be able to explain it.” 

When red blood cells degrade after their six-month lifespan, a bright orange pigment called bilirubin is produced as a byproduct. Bilirubin is typically secreted into the gut, where it is destined for excretion but can also be partially reabsorbed. Excess reabsorption can lead to a buildup of bilirubin in the blood and can cause jaundice—a condition that leads to the yellowing of the skin and eyes. Once in the gut, the resident flora can convert bilirubin into other molecules. 

“Gut microbes encode the enzyme bilirubin reductase that converts bilirubin into a colorless byproduct called urobilinogen,” explained Hall, who has a joint appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. “Urobilinogen then spontaneously degrades into a molecule called urobilin, which is responsible for the yellow color we are all familiar with.”

Urobilin has long been linked to urine’s yellow hue, but the research team’s discovery of the enzyme responsible answers a question that has eluded scientists for over a century.

Aside from solving a scientific mystery, these findings could have important health implications. The research team found that bilirubin reductase is present in almost all healthy adults but is often missing from newborns and individuals with inflammatory bowel disease. They hypothesize that the absence of bilirubin reductase may contribute to infant jaundice and the formation of pigmented gallstones. 

“Now that we’ve identified this enzyme, we can start investigating how the bacteria in our gut impact circulating bilirubin levels and related health conditions like jaundice,” said study co-author and NIH Investigator Xiaofang Jiang. “This discovery lays the foundation for understanding the gut-liver axis.” 

In addition to jaundice and inflammatory bowel disease, the gut microbiome has been linked to various diseases and conditions, from allergies to arthritis to psoriasis. This latest discovery brings researchers closer to achieving a holistic understanding of the gut microbiome’s role in human health.

“The multidisciplinary approach we were able to implement—thanks to the collaboration between our labs—was key to solving the physiological puzzle of why our urine appears yellow,” Hall said. “It’s the culmination of many years of work by our team and highlights yet another reason why our gut microbiome is so vital to human health.” 

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This article was adapted from text provided by Brantley Hall and Sophia Levy.

In addition to Hall, UMD-affiliated co-authors included Stephenie Abeysinghe (B.S. ’23, public health science); Domenick Braccia (Ph.D. ’22, biological sciences); biological sciences major Maggie Grant; biochemistry Ph.D. student Conor Jenkins; biological sciences Ph.D. students Gabriela Arp (B.S. ’19, public health science; B.A. ’19, Spanish language), Madison Jermain, Sophia Levy (B.S. ’19, chemical engineering; B.S. ’19, biological sciences) and Chih Hao Wu (B.S. ’21, biological sciences); Glory Minabou Ndjite (B.S. ’22, public health science); and Ashley Weiss (B.S. ’22, biological sciences).

Their paper, “Discovery of a gut microbial enzyme that reduces bilirubin to urobilinogen,” was published in the journal Nature Microbiology on January 3, 2024.

This research was supported by the NIH’s Intramural Research Program, the National Library of Medicine and startup funding from UMD. This article does not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.

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JOURNAL

Nature Microbiology

DOI

10.1038/s41564-023-01549-x 

ARTICLE TITLE

BilR is a gut microbial enzyme that reduces bilirubin to urobilinogen

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Jan-2024

 Zappa - Apostrophe (') 

- Don't Eat the Yellow Snow Suite

 

Complex, unfamiliar sentences make the brain’s language network work harder

A new study finds that language regions in the left hemisphere light up when reading uncommon sentences, while straightforward sentences elicit little response.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- With help from an artificial language network, MIT neuroscientists have discovered what kind of sentences are most likely to fire up the brain’s key language processing centers.

The new study reveals that sentences that are more complex, either because of unusual grammar or unexpected meaning, generate stronger responses in these language processing centers. Sentences that are very straightforward barely engage these regions, and nonsensical sequences of words don’t do much for them either.

For example, the researchers found this brain network was most active when reading unusual sentences such as “Buy sell signals remains a particular,” taken from a publicly available language dataset called C4. However, it went quiet when reading something very straightforward, such as “We were sitting on the couch.”

“The input has to be language-like enough to engage the system,” says Evelina Fedorenko, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at MIT and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “And then within that space, if things are really easy to process, then you don’t have much of a response. But if things get difficult, or surprising, if there’s an unusual construction or an unusual set of words that you’re maybe not very familiar with, then the network has to work harder.”

Fedorenko is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Nature Human Behavior. MIT graduate student Greta Tuckute is the lead author of the paper.

Processing language

In this study, the researchers focused on language-processing regions found in the left hemisphere of the brain, which includes Broca’s area as well as other parts of the left frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.

“This language network is highly selective to language, but it’s been harder to actually figure out what is going on in these language regions,” Tuckute says. “We wanted to discover what kinds of sentences, what kinds of linguistic input, drive the left hemisphere language network.”

The researchers began by compiling a set of 1,000 sentences taken from a wide variety of sources — fiction, transcriptions of spoken words, web text, and scientific articles, among many others.

Five human participants read each of the sentences while the researchers measured their language network activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The researchers then fed those same 1,000 sentences into a large language model — a model similar to ChatGPT, which learns to generate and understand language from predicting the next word in huge amounts of text — and measured the activation patterns of the model in response to each sentence.

Once they had all of those data, the researchers trained a mapping model, known as an “encoding model,” which relates the activation patterns seen in the human brain with those observed in the artificial language model. Once trained, the model could predict how the human language network would respond to any new sentence based on how the artificial language network responded to these 1,000 sentences.

The researchers then used the encoding model to identify 500 new sentences that would generate maximal activity in the human brain (the “drive” sentences), as well as sentences that would elicit minimal activity in the brain’s language network (the “suppress” sentences).

In a group of three new human participants, the researchers found these new sentences did indeed drive and suppress brain activity as predicted.

“This ‘closed-loop’ modulation of brain activity during language processing is novel,” Tuckute says. “Our study shows that the model we’re using (that maps between language-model activations and brain responses) is accurate enough to do this. This is the first demonstration of this approach in brain areas implicated in higher-level cognition, such as the language network.”

Linguistic complexity

To figure out what made certain sentences drive activity more than others, the researchers analyzed the sentences based on 11 different linguistic properties, including grammaticality, plausibility, emotional valence (positive or negative), and how easy it is to visualize the sentence content.

For each of those properties, the researchers asked participants from crowd-sourcing platforms to rate the sentences. They also used a computational technique to quantify each sentence’s “surprisal,” or how uncommon it is compared to other sentences.

This analysis revealed that sentences with higher surprisal generate higher responses in the brain. This is consistent with previous studies showing people have more difficulty processing sentences with higher surprisal, the researchers say.

Another linguistic property that correlated with the language network’s responses was linguistic complexity, which is measured by how much a sentence adheres to the rules of English grammar and how plausible it is, meaning how much sense the content makes, apart from the grammar.

Sentences at either end of the spectrum — either extremely simple, or so complex that they make no sense at all — evoked very little activation in the language network. The largest responses came from sentences that make some sense but require work to figure them out, such as “Jiffy Lube of — of therapies, yes,” which came from the Corpus of Contemporary American English dataset.

“We found that the sentences that elicit the highest brain response have a weird grammatical thing and/or a weird meaning,” Fedorenko says. “There’s something slightly unusual about these sentences.”

The researchers now plan to see if they can extend these findings in speakers of languages other than English. They also hope to explore what type of stimuli may activate language processing regions in the brain’s right hemisphere.

###

The research was funded by an Amazon Fellowship from the Science Hub, an International Doctoral Fellowship from the American Association of University Women, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the National Institutes of Health, the McGovern Institute, the Simons Center for the Social Brain, and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

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JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-023-01783-7 

ARTICLE TITLE

'Driving and suppressing the human language network using large language models

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Jan-2024

 

Microbial awakening restructures high-latitude food webs as permafrost thaws

New study shows that fungi are replacing plants as primary energy source for Arctic and boreal animals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

USDA FOREST SERVICE - PACIFIC NORTHWEST RESEARCH STATION

 

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AN AERIAL VIEW OF DECAYING PERMAFROST IN ALASKA’S BONANZA CREEK EXPERIMENTAL FOREST.

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CREDIT: USDA FOREST SERVICE

Alaska is on the front lines of climate change, experiencing some of the fastest rates of warming of any place in the world. And when temperatures rise in the state’s interior—a vast high-latitude region spanning 113 million acres—permafrost there not only thaws, releasing significant amounts of its stored carbon back into the atmosphere where it further accelerates rising temperatures, but it decays. This decomposition has the potential to infuse above- and belowground food webs with carbon, which can affect energy flow between these critical ecological linkages and affect the species they support.

One of these species is the tundra vole, one of four Arctic or boreal forest animals that Philip Manlick, a research wildlife biologist with the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in Juneau, Alaska, examined as part of his new study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. Along with collaborators from the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas at Austin, Manlick used a novel technique to quantify the impacts of climate change on energy flow and carbon fluxes between plant-supported aboveground, or green, food webs and microbe-driven belowground, or brown, food webs using two species of vole, a shrew, and a spider as windows into the complex worlds.

“Understanding how energy moves through food webs helps us understand how ecosystems function and how animals might respond to stressors like climate change,” Manlick said. “In Arctic and boreal ecosystems, it’s well known that the climate is warming, permafrost is melting, and microbes are flourishing. But we know very little about the impacts of this process on terrestrial food webs and the animals they support.” 

A Novel Technique With Promise

The novel technique at the heart of the study involved measuring unique carbon isotope “fingerprints” in essential amino acids that only plants, bacteria, and fungi can produce. Animals can only acquire these molecules through their diets. This allowed these essential amino acids to serve as a biomarker that helped the researchers track how carbon was moving between green and brown food webs, which, ultimately, helped them detect changes.

“Scientists often argue about the importance of animals to ecosystem processes like carbon cycling, but when they eat resources from different food webs, they move carbon between storage pools,” Manlick said. “In the future, we think this tool can be used to trace the fate of carbon through food webs to understand the functional roles of animals in ecosystem functions, like nutrient cycling.”

The study analyzed bone collagen from museum specimens of tundra and red-backed voles and masked shrews from the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest near Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1990 and 2021, a sample that represented animals exposed to long-term climate warming. To study the effects of short-term climate warming on animals, the researchers sampled Arctic wolf spiders near Toolik Lake, Alaska. Some of the spiders were gathered as controls and others were exposed to 2 °C warming in outdoor compartmentalized habitats called “mesocosms” in which the scientists could increase temperature on a micro scale to simulate climate warming.

At just over 12,000 acres, and encompassing interior forest and flood-plain habitats, Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest is an ideal site for studying the impacts of climate change on boreal forests and food webs because it provides a long-term record of change in interior Alaska. It was established by the USDA Forest Service 60 years ago and has been a National Science Foundation Long-term Ecological Research site since 1987. For Manlick, the site offers an opportunity to study how these boreal forest changes are affecting the animals living there and how the animals, themselves, affect forest processes through foraging and food web dynamics.

Significant Shift in Energy Source

Through their isotope analyses, Manlick and his colleagues detected significant changes in carbon assimilation in the mammals—notably a shift from plant-based food webs to fungal-based food webs. In other words, fungi replaced plants as the main energy source—with small mammals, like the shrews, assimilating up to 90 percent of their total carbon intake from fungal carbon, a more than 40-percent increase over historical specimens.

The same was true for the Arctic wolf spiders. They, too, shifted from plant-based to fungal-based food webs as the main source of their energy, assimilating more than 50 percent brown carbon under warming conditions, compared to 26 percent at control sites.

“Our study presents clear evidence that climate warming alters carbon flow and food web dynamics among aboveground consumers in Arctic tundra and boreal forest ecosystems—across species, ecosystems, and long- and short-term warming scenarios,” Manlick said. “And we show that these changes are the consequence of a change from predominantly green, plant-based food webs to brown, microbe-based food webs.”

What’s behind the shift?

The scientists suspect brown carbon is being transferred to aboveground consumers, like the mammals and spiders, in a series of predation events known as trophic pathways. Increased warming results in increased decomposition in both permafrost on the tundra and in boreal forests; fungi feed on this decomposing plant matter and are, in turn, consumed by arthropods, mites, and earthworms that transfer the fungal carbon upward in the food web where they, in turn, are consumed by the voles, shrews, and spiders.

“Climate warming significantly alters the flow of energy through food webs, such that animals who were historically supported by plant-based food webs are now supported by fungal-based food webs derived from belowground decomposition,” Manlick said.

A typical black spruce bog in Alaska’s Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest.

CREDIT

USDA Forest Service

Animals Can Alter Carbon Cycling

Manlick and his colleagues’ work underscores that animals serve as a crucial link between green and brown food webs; it also shows that climate warming alters this link across species in the Arctic and in boreal forests. The potential implications of these climate-induced shifts are greater than the small size of these species might imply. 

“Shifts in these interactions can have indirect effects on nutrient cycling and ecosystem function,” Manlick said.

For example, if voles are getting more of their energy from belowground sources, they may be consuming fewer plants, which could increase carbon storage in aboveground ecosystems.

“Much of the current work in high latitudes has focused on ‘Arctic greening,’ or the idea that climate warming is leading to more plant growth and greener ecosystems. We found the exact opposite pattern—food webs are ‘browning,’” he said.

Moving forward, Manlick plans to study why these patterns in plants and animals differ and what it means for the future of these rapidly changing ecosystems.

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01893-0 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Climate warming restructures food webs and carbon flow in high-latitude ecosystems

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Jan-2024

 

Women from low socio-economic backgrounds see themselves as less talented

How distorted self-images carry a negative impact on chances of success

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

Women from low socio-economic backgrounds consider themselves to be less talented than all other groups – even if they show the same performance levels. This is shown by a new study led by Christina Bauer at the University of Vienna. This misconception contributes to the pronounced disadvantage in domains such as STEM subjects, where talent is seen as an important success factor. Social psychologist Christina Bauer has now published these key findings from her latest research in the current issue of the renowned journal Learning and Instruction – and suggests possible solutions to this problem.

Women and people from low socio-economic backgrounds are often seen as less talented, which can contribute to experiences of discrimination. "While a man with very good grades is more likely to be judged as a genius, women with the same achievements are more likely to be seen as hard-working, for example," explains Christina Bauer. People from families with a lower socio-economic status are also generally seen as less capable. Social psychologist Christina Bauer and her colleague Veronika Job, both from the University of Vienna, have now investigated how this social perception affects the self-image of these people and how their life paths are subsequently influenced by it. 

Female gender and low socio-economic status – less talent?

Bauer and Job conducted two studies with a total of 1,600 students in Germany and the USA. The result: compared to all subgroups, women from lower socio-economic backgrounds rated themselves as the least talented – even if they performed just as well in their studies as everyone else. "Our conclusion: society's external image and social hierarchies also have a very strong influence on self-image," says Bauer. 

This socialized distortion of self-perception is not without consequences: "Women therefore have less confidence in themselves, which reduces their chances of success and means that some industries and areas of society are very one-sidedly male-dominated and not very diverse," explains Bauer. For example, women with a low socio-economic status feel less comfortable in areas where talent is expected, are less confident and therefore make less of a contribution.  This applies, for example, to the STEM fields (mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology), jobs such as management consultancies, or even hobbies such as chess. "This view has far-reaching consequences for the chances of success of those affected in these areas," says Bauer. 

Diligence principle instead of talent focus as a possible solution

The authors also suggest solution strategies: In a previously published experiment, Bauer was able to show that women with a lower socio-economic status do not consider themselves to be less hard-working. The current study shows, however, that they consider themselves to be less talented. One way to mitigate disadvantages would therefore be to give greater social recognition to the importance of qualities such as diligence and hard work rather than talent. "This recognition can take place on different levels: How we talk about high achievers - instead of praising geniuses, and looking down on 'nerds', appreciating people for their hard work. Or how we give feedback – constructive feedback that makes it clear how people can improve, rather than just praise or criticism without a development perspective," says Bauer.

Why this distorted self-image occurs will be the subject of further studies. "Stereotypes or different experiences with challenges, which are misinterpreted as a sign of a lack of talent, could play a role," says Bauer.

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JOURNAL

Learning and Instruction

DOI

10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101865 

ARTICLE TITLE

Double Disadvantage: Female first-generation-students think of themselves as least talented, contributing to disproportionate disadvantage.

 

Bacteria load their syringes

Pathogenic bacteria use molecular "shuttle services" to fill their injection apparatus with the right product

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT

 

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SINGLE-PARTICLE TRACKING PHOTOACTIVATED LOCALIZATION MICROSCOPY (SPTPALM) IS A TECHNIQUE TO VISUALIZE THE MOVEMENT OF INDIVIDUAL PROTEINS. WHILE SOME OF THE SHUTTLE COMPONENTS OF THE INJECTISOME ARE BOUND TO THE NEEDLES (WHITE, FIRMLY BOUND DOTS ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE BACTERIUM), OTHER SHUTTLE PROTEINS COMB THROUGH THE BACTERIUM (RED AND BLUE SHADING). IF THEY ENCOUNTER AN EFFECTOR, THEY BIND TO IT, WHICH CAN BE RECOGNIZED BY THE FACT THAT THEY SLOW DOWN, AND DELIVER IT TO THE NEEDLES, FROM WHERE A NEW SHUTTLE PROTEIN SETS OFF ON ITS SEARCH.

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CREDIT: STEPHAN WIMMI/ ALEXANDER BALINOVIC

Disease-causing bacteria of the genus Salmonella or Yersinia can use tiny injection apparatuses to inject harmful proteins into host cells, much to the discomfort of the infected person. However, it is not only with a view to controlling disease that researchers are investigating the injection mechanism of these so-called type III secretion systems, also known as "injectisomes".

If the structure and function of the injectisome were fully understood, researchers would be able to hijack it to deliver specific drugs into cells, such as cancer cells. In fact, the structure of the injectisome has already been elucidated. However, it remained unclear how the bacteria load their syringes so that the right proteins are injected at the right time.

Mobile components of the injectisome search for proteins

A team of scientists led by Andreas Diepold from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg and Ulrike Endesfelder from the University of Bonn has now been able to answer this question: mobile components of the injectisome comb through the bacterial cell in search of the proteins to be injected, so-called effectors. When they encounter an effector, they transport it like a shuttle bus to the gate of the injection needle.

"How proteins of the sorting platform in the cytosol bind to effectors and deliver the cargo to the export gate of the membrane-bound injectisome is comparable to the processes at a freight terminal", explains Stephan Wimmi, first author of the study as a postdoctoral researcher in Andreas Diepold's laboratory. "We think that this shuttle mechanism helps to make the injection efficient and specific at the same time - after all, the bacteria have to inject the right proteins quickly to avoid being recognized and eliminated by the immune system, for example."

To gain this insight into the important loading mechanism of the injectisome, the researchers had to apply new techniques. "Conventional methods, which are normally used to detect that proteins bind to each other, did not work to answer this question - possibly because the effectors are only bound for a short time and then immediately injected," explains Andreas Diepold, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute and co-leader of the study. "That's why we had to analyse this binding in situ in the living bacteria.”

“To measure these transient interactions we made use of two novel approaches that work in living cells, proximity labeling and single-particle tracking,” adds Ulrike Endesfelder, whose group worked on the study in three different locations – the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, Carnogie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and at the University in Bonn. Proximity labeling, in which a protein marks its immediate neighbors like a paintbrush, enabled them to show that the effectors in the bacterium bind to the mobile injectisome components. This binding was examined in more detail using single particle tracking, a high-resolution microscopy method that can follow individual proteins in cells. These methods, which the team refers to as "in situ biochemistry", i.e. biochemical investigations on site, made the breakthrough possible.

The researchers next want to use their method to investigate other mechanisms that bacteria use to cause infections. "The more we know about how bacteria use these systems during an infection, the better we can understand how we can influence them - be it to prevent infections or to modify the systems in order to use them in the fields of medicine or biotechnology,” says Andreas Diepold.

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JOURNAL

Nature Microbiology

DOI

10.1038/s41564-023-01545-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

Cytosolic sorting platform complexes shuttle type III secretion system effectors to the injectisome in Yersinia enterocolitica.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Jan-2024

 

Early primates likely lived in pairs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

Primates – and this includes humans – are thought of as highly social animals. Many species of monkeys and apes live in groups. Lemurs and other Strepsirrhines, often colloquially referred to as “wet-nosed” primates, in contrast, have long been believed to be solitary creatures, and it has often been suggested that other forms of social organization evolved later. Previous studies have therefore attempted to explain how and when pair-living evolved in primates.

More recent research, however, indicates that many nocturnal Strepsirrhines, which are more challenging to investigate, are not in fact solitary but live in pairs of males and females. But what does this mean for the social organization forms of the ancestors of all primates? And why do some species of monkey live in groups, while others are pair-living or solitary?

Different forms of social organization

Researchers at the Universities of Zurich and Strasbourg have now examined these questions. For their study, Charlotte Olivier from the Hubert Curien Pluridisciplinary Institute collected detailed information on the composition of social units in primate populations in the wild. Over several years, the researchers built a detailed database, which covered almost 500 populations from over 200 primate species, from primary field studies.

More than half of the primate species recorded in the database exhibited more than one form of social organization. “The most common social organization were groups in which multiple females and multiple males lived together, for example chimpanzees or macaques, followed by groups with only one male and multiple females – such as in gorillas or langurs,” says last author Adrian Jaeggi from the University of Zurich. “But one-quarter of all species lived in pairs.”

Smaller ancestors coupled up

Taking into account several socioecological and life history variables such as body size, diet or habitat, the researchers calculated the probability of different forms of social organization, including for our ancestors who lived some 70 million years ago. The calculations were based on complex statistical models developed by Jordan Martin at UZH’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine.

To reconstruct the ancestral state of primates, the researchers relied on fossils, which showed that ancestral primates were relatively small-bodied and arboreal – factors that strongly correlate with pair-living. “Our model shows that the ancestral social organization of primates was variable and that pair-living was by far the most likely form,” says Martin. Only about 15 percent of our ancestors were solitary, he adds. “Living in larger groups therefore only evolved later in the history of primates.”

Pairs with benefits

In other words, the social structure of early primates was likely more similar to that of humans today than previously assumed. “Many, but by no means all of us, live in pairs while also being a part of extended families and larger groups and societies,” Jaeggi says. However, pair-living among early primates did not equate to sexual monogamy or cooperative infant care, he adds. “It is more likely that a specific female and a specific male would be seen together for most of the time and share the same home range and sleeping site, which was more advantageous to them than solitary living,” explains last author Carsten Schradin from Strasbourg. This enabled them to fend off competitors or keep each other warm, for example.

Literature:

Charlotte-Anaïs Olivier, Jordan Martin, et al. Primate Social Organization Evolved from a Flexible Pair-Living Ancestor, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 28 December 2023. Doi: 10.1073/pnas.2215401120.

 

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2215401120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Primate Social Organization Evolved from a Flexible Pair-Living Ancestor