image: This is a companion picture of a clever honeybee which relates to a PLoS ONE manuscript entitled: "Honeybee Associative Learning Performance and Metabolic Stress Resilience Are Positively Associated." view more
Credit: Adam Siegel
Honeybee Associative Learning Performance and Metabolic Stress Resilience Are Positively Associated
Background: Social-environmental influences can affect animal cognition and health. Also, human socio-economic status is a covariate factor connecting psychometric test-performance (a measure of cognitive ability), educational achievement, lifetime health, and survival. The complimentary hypothesis, that mechanisms in physiology can explain some covariance between the same traits, is disputed. Possible mechanisms involve metabolic biology affecting integrity and stability of physiological systems during development and ageing. Knowledge of these relationships is incomplete, and underlying processes are challenging to reveal in people. Model animals, however, can provide insights into connections between metabolic biology and physiological stability that may aid efforts to reduce human health and longevity disparities.
Results: We document a positive correlation between a measure of associative learning performance and the metabolic stress resilience of honeybees. This relationship is independent of social factors, and may provide basic insights into how central nervous system (CNS) function and metabolic biology can be associated. Controlling for social environment, age, and learning motivation in each bee, we establish that learning in Pavlovian conditioning to an odour is positively correlated with individual survival time in hyperoxia. Hyperoxia induces oxidative metabolic damage, and provides a measure of metabolic stress resistance that is often related to overall lifespan in laboratory animals. The positive relationship between Pavlovian learning ability and stress resilience in the bee is not equally established in other model organisms so far, and contrasts with a genetic cost of improved associative learning found in Drosophila melanogaster.
Conclusions: Similarities in the performances of different animals need not reflect common functional principles. A correlation of honeybee Pavlovian learning and metabolic stress resilience, thereby, is not evidence of a shared biology that will give insight about systems integrity in people. Yet, the means to resolve difficult research questions often come from findings in distant areas of science while the model systems that turn out to be valuable are sometimes the least predictable. Our results add to recent findings indicating that honeybees can become instrumental to understanding how metabolic biology influences life outcomes.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Funding: This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway (#175413, 180504, 185306, and 191699), the National Institute on Aging (NIA P01AG22500), The PEW Charitable Trust, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Contacts:
Gro Amdam
Arizona State University
Gro.Amdam@asu.edu
Jen Laloup
Public Library of Science
jlaloup@plos.org
415-624-1220
Citation: Amdam GV, Fennern E, Baker N, Rasco´n B (2010) Honeybee Associative Learning Performance and Metabolic Stress Resilience Are Positively Associated. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9740. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009740
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009740
FOR A PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE FULL ARTICLE, VISIT THE FOLLOWING URL:: http://www.plos.org/press/pone-05-03-amdam.pdf
[Related images/movies for press use: http://www.plos.org/press/pone-05-03-amdam.jpg Title: Honeybee Credit "Adam Siegel"]
Generous Leaders and Selfish Underdogs: Pro-Sociality in Despotic Macaques
Actively granting food to a companion is called pro-social behavior and is considered to be part of altruism. Recent findings show that some non-human primates behave pro-socially. However, pro-social behavior is not expected in despotic species, since the steep dominance hierarchy will hamper pro-sociality. We show that some despotic long-tailed macaques do grant others access to food. Moreover, their dominance hierarchy determines pro-social behavior in an unexpected way: highranking individuals grant, while low-ranking individuals withhold their partner access to food. Surprisingly, pro-social behavior is not used by subordinates to obtain benefits from dominants, but by dominants to emphasize their dominance position. Hence, Machiavellian macaques rule not through ''fear above love'', but through ''be feared when needed and loved when possible''.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist
Funding: This research was supported by an Evolution and Behaviour grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, www.nwo.nl). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Contacts:
Elisabeth Sterck
Utrecht University
E-mail: E.H.M.Sterck@uu.nl
Jen Laloup
Public Library of Science
jlaloup@plos.org
415-624-1220
Citation: : Massen JJM, van den Berg LM, Spruijt BM, Sterck EHM (2010) Generous Leaders and Selfish Underdogs: Pro-Sociality in Despotic Macaques. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9734. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009734
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009734
FOR A PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE FULL ARTICLE, VISIT THE FOLLOWING URL:: http://www.plos.org/press/pone-05-03-sterck.pdf
Benthic Composition of a Healthy Subtropical Reef: Baseline Species-Level Cover, with an Emphasis on Algae, in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) are considered to be among the most pristine coral reef ecosystems remaining on the planet. These reefs naturally contain a high percent cover of algal functional groups with relatively low coral abundance and exhibit thriving fish communities dominated by top predators. Despite their highly protected status, these reefs are at risk from both direct and indirect anthropogenic sources.
This study provides the first comprehensive data on percent coverage of algae, coral, and non-coral invertebrates at the species level, and investigates spatial diversity patterns across the archipelago to document benthic communities before further environmental changes occur in response to global warming and ocean acidification. Monitoring studies show that non-calcified macroalgae cover a greater percentage of substrate than corals on many high latitude reef sites. Forereef habitats in atoll systems often contain high abundances of the green macroalga Microdictyon setchellianum and the brown macroalga Lobophora variegata, yet these organisms were uncommon in forereefs of non-atoll systems.
Species of the brown macroalgal genera Padina, Sargassum, and Stypopodium and the red macroalgal genus Laurencia became increasingly common in the two northernmost atolls of the island chain but were uncommon components of more southerly islands. Conversely, the scleractinian coral Porites lobata was common on forereefs at southern islands but less common at northern islands. Currently accepted paradigms of what constitutes a ''healthy'' reef may not apply to the subtropical NWHI, and metrics used to gauge reef health (e.g., high coral cover) need to be reevaluated.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Funding: Funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED) for scientific expeditions to the Northwestern Hawai'ian Islands was provided through NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Contacts:
Peter Vroom
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research
Peter.Vroom@noaa.gov
Jen Laloup
Public Library of Science
jlaloup@plos.org
415-624-1220
Citation: Vroom PS, Braun CL (2010) Benthic Composition of a Healthy Subtropical Reef: Baseline Species-Level Cover, with an Emphasis on Algae, in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9733. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009733
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009733
FOR A PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE FULL ARTICLE, VISIT THE FOLLOWING URL:: http://www.plos.org/press/pone-05-03-vroom.pdf
Bridgehead Effect in the Worldwide Invasion of the Biocontrol Harlequin Ladybird
Recent studies of the routes of worldwide introductions of alien organisms suggest that many widespread invasions could have stemmed not from the native range, but from a particularly successful invasive population, which serves as the source of colonists for remote new territories. We call here this phenomenon the invasive bridgehead effect. Evaluating the likelihood of such a scenario is heuristically challenging. We solved this problem by using approximate Bayesian computation methods to quantitatively compare complex invasion scenarios based on the analysis of population genetics (microsatellite variation) and historical (first observation dates) data. We applied this approach to the Harlequin ladybird Harmonia axyridis (HA), a coccinellid native to Asia that was repeatedly introduced as a biocontrol agent without becoming established for decades. We show that the recent burst of worldwide invasions of HA followed a bridgehead scenario, in which an invasive population in eastern North America acted as the source of the colonists that invaded the European, South American and African continents, with some admixture with a biocontrol strain in Europe. This demonstration of a mechanism of invasion via a bridgehead has important implications both for invasion theory (i.e., a single evolutionary shift in the bridgehead population versus multiple changes in case of introduced populations becoming invasive independently)and for ongoing efforts to manage invasions by alien organisms (i.e., heightened vigilance against invasive bridgeheads).
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-06-BDIV-008-01 and ANR-09-BLAN-0145-01). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Contacts:
Arnaud Estoup
NRA UMR Centre de
Biologie et de Gestion des Populations
estoup@supagro.inra.fr
Jen Laloup
Public Library of Science
jlaloup@plos.org
415-624-1220
Citation: Lombaert E, Guillemaud T, Cornuet J-M, Malausa T, Facon B, et al. (2010) Bridgehead Effect in the Worldwide Invasion of the Biocontrol Harlequin Ladybird. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9743. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009743
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009743
FOR A PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE FULL ARTICLE, VISIT THE FOLLOWING URL:: http://www.plos.org/press/pone-05-03-estoup.pdf
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