Garden and landscape-scale correlates of moths of differing conservation status: significant effects of urbanization and habitat diversity

Moths are abundant and ubiquitous in vegetated terrestrial environments and are pollinators, important herbivores of wild plants, and food for birds, bats and rodents. In recent years, many once abundant and widespread species have shown sharp declines that have been cited by some as indicative of a widespread insect biodiversity crisis. Likely causes of these declines include agricultural intensification, light pollution, climate change, and urbanization; however, the real underlying cause(s) is still open to conjecture. We used data collected from the citizen science Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to explore the spatial association between the abundance of 195 widespread British species of moth, and garden habitat and landscape features, to see if spatial habitat and landscape associations varied for species of differing conservation status. We found that associations with habitat and landscape composition were species-specific, but that there were consistent trends in species richness and total moth abundance. Gardens with more diverse and extensive microhabitats were associated with higher species richness and moth abundance; gardens near to the coast were associated with higher richness and moth abundance; and gardens in more urbanized locations were associated with lower species richness and moth abundance. The same trends were also found for species classified as increasing, declining and vulnerable under IUCN (World Conservation Union) criteria

Laboratory-based evaluation of legionellosis epidemiology in Ontario, Canada, 1978 to 2006

BACKGROUND: Legionellosis is a common cause of severe community acquired pneumonia and respiratory disease outbreaks. The Ontario Public Health Laboratory (OPHL) has conducted most testing for Legionella species in the Canadian province of Ontario since 1978, and represents a multi-decade repository of population-based data on legionellosis epidemiology. We sought to provide a laboratory-based review of the epidemiology of legionellosis in Ontario over the past 3 decades, with a focus on changing rates of disease and species associated with legionellosis during that time period. METHODS: We analyzed cases that were submitted and tested positive for legionellosis from 1978 to 2006 using Poisson regression models incorporating temporal, spatial, and demographic covariates. Predictors of infection with culture-confirmed L. pneumophila serogroup 1 (LP1) were evaluated with logistic regression models. Results: 1,401 cases of legionellosis tested positive from 1978 to 2006. As in other studies, we found a late summer to early autumn seasonality in disease occurrence with disease risk increasing with age and in males. In contrast to other studies, we found a decreasing trend in cases in the recent decade (IRR 0.93, 95% CI 0.91 to 0.95, P-value = 0.001); only 66% of culture-confirmed isolates were found to be LP1. CONCLUSION: Despite similarities with disease epidemiology in other regions, legionellosis appears to have declined in the past decade in Ontario, in contrast to trends observed in the United States and parts of Europe. Furthermore, a different range of Legionella species is responsible for illness, suggesting a distinctive legionellosis epidemiology in this North American region

Exploring the Ecological History of a Tropical Agroforestry Landscape Using Fossil Pollen and Charcoal Analysis from Four Sites in Western Ghats, India

Contrary to expectations, some human-modified landscapes are considered to sustain both human activities and biodiversity over the long-term. Agroforestry systems are among these landscapes where crops are planted under native shade trees. In this context, ancient agroforestry systems can provide insight into how farmers managed the landscape over time. Such insight can help to quantify the extent to which tropical forests (especially habitat-specialist trees) are responding to local and landscape-level management. Here, we extracted fossil pollen (indicator of past vegetation changes) and macroscopic charcoal (indicator of biomass burning) from four forest hollows’ sedimentary sequences in an ancient agroforestry system in Western Ghats, India. We used a mixed-modelling approach and a principal components analysis (PCA) to determine past trajectories of forest change and species composition dynamics for the last 900 years. In addition, we reconstructed the long-term forest canopy dynamics and examined the persistence of habitat-specialist trees over time. Our results show that the four sites diverged to a surprising degree in both taxa composition and dynamics. However, despite these differences, forest has persisted over 900 years under agricultural activities within agroforestry systems. This long-term analysis highlights the importance of different land-use legacies as a framework to increase the effectiveness of management across tropical agricultural lands

Author Correction: Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases

Emmanuelle Souzeau, who contributed to analysis of data, was inadvertently omitted from the author list in the originally published version of this Article. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Serum iron levels and the risk of Parkinson disease: a Mendelian randomization study

BACKGROUND: Although levels of iron are known to be increased in the brains of patients with Parkinson disease (PD), epidemiological evidence on a possible effect of iron blood levels on PD risk is inconclusive, with effects reported in opposite directions. Epidemiological studies suffer from problems of confounding and reverse causation, and mendelian randomization (MR) represents an alternative approach to provide unconfounded estimates of the effects of biomarkers on disease. We performed a MR study where genes known to modify iron levels were used as instruments to estimate the effect of iron on PD risk, based on estimates of the genetic effects on both iron and PD obtained from the largest sample meta-analyzed to date. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used as instrumental variables three genetic variants influencing iron levels, HFE rs1800562, HFE rs1799945, and TMPRSS6 rs855791. Estimates of their effect on serum iron were based on a recent genome-wide meta-analysis of 21,567 individuals, while estimates of their effect on PD risk were obtained through meta-analysis of genome-wide and candidate gene studies with 20,809 PD cases and 88,892 controls. Separate MR estimates of the effect of iron on PD were obtained for each variant and pooled by meta-analysis. We investigated heterogeneity across the three estimates as an indication of possible pleiotropy and found no evidence of it. The combined MR estimate showed a statistically significant protective effect of iron, with a relative risk reduction for PD of 3% (95% CI 1%-6%; p = 0.001) per 10 microg/dl increase in serum iron. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that increased iron levels are causally associated with a decreased risk of developing PD. Further studies are needed to understand the pathophysiological mechanism of action of serum iron on PD risk before recommendations can be mad

Population-based identity-by-descent mapping combined with exome sequencing to detect rare risk variants for schizophrenia

Genome‐wide association studies (GWASs) are highly effective at identifying common risk variants for schizophrenia. Rare risk variants are also important contributors to schizophrenia etiology but, with the exception of large copy number variants, are difficult to detect with GWAS. Exome and genome sequencing, which have accelerated the study of rare variants, are expensive so alternative methods are needed to aid detection of rare variants. Here we re‐analyze an Irish schizophrenia GWAS dataset (n = 3,473) by performing identity‐by‐descent (IBD) mapping followed by exome sequencing of individuals identified as sharing risk haplotypes to search for rare risk variants in coding regions. We identified 45 rare haplotypes (>1 cM) that were significantly more common in cases than controls. By exome sequencing 105 haplotype carriers, we investigated these haplotypes for functional coding variants that could be tested for association in independent GWAS samples. We identified one rare missense variant in PCNT but did not find statistical support for an association with schizophrenia in a replication analysis. However, IBD mapping can prioritize both individual samples and genomic regions for follow‐up analysis but genome rather than exome sequencing may be more effective at detecting risk variants on rare haplotypes