Catalog and distribution atlas of the Scarabaeoidea (Insecta: Coleoptera) of El Salvador

Menos del 1% de la literatura sobre la biodiversidad de El Salvador es sobre invertebrados terrestres, lo que limita nuestro conocimiento de la diversidad, riqueza y distribución de este grupo en el territorio. Los Scarabaeoidea son megadiversos en múltiples ecosistemas y cumplen muchas funciones. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo catalogar los Scarabaeoidea en El Salvador. Se realizó una revisión exhaustiva de la literatura publicada y se revisaron numerosas colecciones entomológicas con material relevante. Se construyeron mapas para visualizar la distribución conocida de cada especie en el país. Existen 295 especies de escarabajos (incluyendo 19 nuevos registros en el país) representando 106 géneros en 7 familias en El Salvador. Se conocen seis especies precursoras. Veintidós especies se descartan como presentes en El Salvador, ya sea porque no son especies válidas o por identificaciones erróneas o registros dudosos. Este trabajo es la primera aproximación al conocimiento de los Scarabaeoidea en El Salvador, un territorio que usualmente se considera de nula importancia para la conservación de la biodiversidad regional debido a su reducida superficie, alta tasa de deforestación y sobrepoblación. Los resultados de este trabajo refuerzan la necesidad de realizar prospección biológica en el territorio para conocer, conservar y proteger la biodiversidad remanente. 2023 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Todos los derechos reservados.Less than 1% of the literature on El Salvador s biodiversity is about terrestrial invertebrates, which limits our knowledge of this group s diversity, richness, and distribution in the territory. Scarabaeoidea are megadiverse in multiple ecosystems and perform many functions. This work aims to catalog the Scarabaeoidea in El Salvador. We conducted an exhaustive review of published literature and reviewed numerous entomological collections with relevant material. Maps were constructed to visualize the known distribution of each species in the country. There are 295 scarab beetle species (including 19 new country records) representing 106 genera in 7 families in El Salvador. Six precinctive species are known. Twenty-Two species are discarded as occurring in El Salvador, either because they are not valid species or because of misidentifications or dubious records. This work is the first approach to knowing the Scarabaeoidea in El Salvador, a territory that is usually considered of no importance for the conservation of regional biodiversity due to its small area, high rate of deforestation, and overpopulation. The results of this work reinforce the need for biological prospecting in the territory to know, conserve, and protect the remaining biodiversity. © 2023 Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. All rights reserved

Molecular Chemistry to the Fore: New Insights into the Fascinating World of Photoactive Colloidal Semiconductor Nanocrystals

Colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals possess unique properties that are unmatched by other chromophores such as organic dyes or transition-metal complexes. These versatile building blocks have generated much scientific interest and found applications in bioimaging, tracking, lighting, lasing, photovoltaics, photocatalysis, thermoelectrics, and spintronics. Despite these advances, important challenges remain, notably how to produce semiconductor nanostructures with predetermined architecture, how to produce metastable semiconductor nanostructures that are hard to isolate by conventional syntheses, and how to control the degree of surface loading or valence per nanocrystal. Molecular chemists are very familiar with these issues and can use their expertise to help solve these challenges. In this Perspective, we present our group\u27s recent work on bottom-up molecular control of nanoscale composition and morphology, low-temperature photochemical routes to semiconductor heterostructures and metastable phases, solar-to-chemical energy conversion with semiconductor-based photocatalysts, and controlled surface modification of colloidal semiconductors that bypasses ligand exchange

Effect of sitagliptin on cardiovascular outcomes in type 2 diabetes

BACKGROUND: Data are lacking on the long-term effect on cardiovascular events of adding sitagliptin, a dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitor, to usual care in patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. METHODS: In this randomized, double-blind study, we assigned 14,671 patients to add either sitagliptin or placebo to their existing therapy. Open-label use of antihyperglycemic therapy was encouraged as required, aimed at reaching individually appropriate glycemic targets in all patients. To determine whether sitagliptin was noninferior to placebo, we used a relative risk of 1.3 as the marginal upper boundary. The primary cardiovascular outcome was a composite of cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for unstable angina. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 3.0 years, there was a small difference in glycated hemoglobin levels (least-squares mean difference for sitagliptin vs. placebo, -0.29 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.32 to -0.27). Overall, the primary outcome occurred in 839 patients in the sitagliptin group (11.4%; 4.06 per 100 person-years) and 851 patients in the placebo group (11.6%; 4.17 per 100 person-years). Sitagliptin was noninferior to placebo for the primary composite cardiovascular outcome (hazard ratio, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.88 to 1.09; P<0.001). Rates of hospitalization for heart failure did not differ between the two groups (hazard ratio, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.20; P = 0.98). There were no significant between-group differences in rates of acute pancreatitis (P = 0.07) or pancreatic cancer (P = 0.32). CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease, adding sitagliptin to usual care did not appear to increase the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events, hospitalization for heart failure, or other adverse events

A review of zoonotic infection risks associated with the wild meat trade in Malaysia.

The overhunting of wildlife for food and commercial gain presents a major threat to biodiversity in tropical forests and poses health risks to humans from contact with wild animals. Using a recent survey of wildlife offered at wild meat markets in Malaysia as a basis, we review the literature to determine the potential zoonotic infection risks from hunting, butchering and consuming the species offered. We also determine which taxa potentially host the highest number of pathogens and discuss the significant disease risks from traded wildlife, considering how cultural practices influence zoonotic transmission. We identify 51 zoonotic pathogens (16 viruses, 19 bacteria and 16 parasites) potentially hosted by wildlife and describe the human health risks. The Suidae and the Cervidae families potentially host the highest number of pathogens. We conclude that there are substantial gaps in our knowledge of zoonotic pathogens and recommend performing microbial food safety risk assessments to assess the hazards of wild meat consumption. Overall, there may be considerable zoonotic risks to people involved in the hunting, butchering or consumption of wild meat in Southeast Asia, and these should be considered in public health strategies

Demographic inference under a spatially continuous coalescent model

In contrast with the classical population genetics theory that models population structure as discrete panmictic units connected by migration, many populations exhibit heterogeneous spatial gradients in population connectivity across semi-continuous habitats. The historical dynamics of such spatially structured populations can be captured by a spatially explicit coalescent model recently proposed by Etheridge (2008) and Barton et al. (2010a, 2010b) and whereby allelic lineages are distributed in a two-dimensional spatial continuum and move within this continuum based on extinction and coalescent events. Though theoretically rigorous, this model, which we here refer to as the continuum model, has not yet been implemented for demographic inference. To this end, here we introduce and demonstrate a statistical pipeline that couples the coalescent simulator of Kelleher et al. (2014) that simulates genealogies under the continuum model, with an approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) framework for parameter estimation of neighborhood size (that is, the number of locally breeding individuals) and dispersal ability (that is, the distance an offspring can travel within a generation). Using empirically informed simulations and simulation-based ABC cross-validation, we first show that neighborhood size can be accurately estimated. We then apply our pipeline to the South African endemic shrub species Berkheya cuneata to use the resulting estimates of dispersal ability and neighborhood size to infer the average population density of the species. More generally, we show that spatially explicit coalescent models can be successfully integrated into model-based demographic inference

Environmental influences on the mating system of the common morning glory

ABSTRACTThe balance between selfing and outcrossing is a life history trait of major concern with deep evolutionary consequences in mixed mating species. Yet, our current understanding of the proximate and ultimate determinants of species’ mating system is still unsatisfactory and largely theoretical. Indeed, evolutionary biologists are still puzzled by the often dramatic variation of mating strategies within single species. Of particular concern is the extent to which environmental conditions shape patterns of variation and covariation of mating system components within species. Here, we address this concern in the common morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) by taking advantage of an extensive dataset of floral traits, genetic estimates of selfing and inbreeding, and relevant environmental factors compiled for 22 populations of this species distributed along a disparate set of environments along Southeast and Midwest USA. Combining a powerful array of parametric and model-free statistical approaches, we robustly identify a set of natural and anthropogenic environmental factors underlying population-level variation in selfing, inbreeding, and flower morphology. Remarkably, individual mating system components are found to be associated with different environmental factors and only loosely associated with each other, and thus potentially under multiple different selective pressures. These results not only corroborate theoretical expectations of the significant role the environment plays in the local determination of mating systems, but also provide compelling evidence of complex underlying interactions between multiple evolutionary processes.</jats:p

Hierarchical genetic structure shaped by topography in a narrow-endemic montane grasshopper

[Background]: Understanding the underlying processes shaping spatial patterns of genetic structure in free-ranging organisms is a central topic in evolutionary biology. Here, we aim to disentangle the relative importance of neutral (i.e. genetic drift) and local adaptation (i.e. ecological divergence) processes in the evolution of spatial genetic structure of the Morales grasshopper (Chorthippus saulcyi moralesi), a narrow-endemic taxon restricted to the Central Pyrenees. More specifically, we analysed range-wide patterns of genetic structure and tested whether they were shaped by geography (isolation-by-distance, IBD), topographic complexity and present and past habitat suitability models (isolation-byresistance, IBR), and environmental dissimilarity (isolation-by-environment, IBE).[Results]: Different clustering analyses revealed a deep genetic structure that was best explained by IBR based on topographic complexity. Our analyses did not reveal a significant role of IBE, a fact that may be due to low environmental variation among populations and/or consequence of other ecological factors not considered in this study are involved in local adaptation processes. IBR scenarios informed by current and past climate distribution models did not show either a significant impact on genetic differentiation after controlling for the effects of topographic complexity, which may indicate that they are not capturing well microhabitat structure in the present or the genetic signal left by dispersal routes defined by habitat corridors in the past.[Conclusions]: Overall, these results indicate that spatial patterns of genetic variation in our study system are primarily explained by neutral divergence and migration-drift equilibrium due to limited dispersal across abrupt reliefs, whereas environmental variation or spatial heterogeneity in habitat suitability associated with the complex topography of the region had no significant effect on genetic discontinuities after controlling for geography. Our study highlights the importance of considering a comprehensive suite of potential isolating mechanisms and analytical approaches in order to get robust inferences on the processes promoting genetic divergence of natural populations.VN was supported by a FPI pre-doctoral scholarship (BES-2012-053741) from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. JO was supported by Severo Ochoa (SEV-2012-0262) and Ramón y Cajal (RYC-2013-12501) research fellowships. This work received financial support from research grants CGL2011-25053 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and European Social Fund), POII10-0197-0167, PEII-2014-023-P (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha and European Social Fund) and UNCM08-1E-018 (European Regional Development Fund).We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).Peer reviewe