Sex evolution

Sex-limited polymorphism has evolved in many species including our own. Yet, we lack a detailed understanding of the underlying genetic variation and evolutionary processes at work. The brood parasitic common cuckoo ( Cuculus canorus ) is a prime example of female-limited color polymorphism, where adult males are monochromatic gray and females exhibit either gray or rufous plumage. This polymorphism has been hypothesized to be governed by negative frequency-dependent selection whereby the rarer female morph is protected against harassment by males or from mobbing by parasitized host species...

After nearly a decade of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) rollout in sub-Saharan Africa, there has been limited study of PrEP messaging in news media. We selected twenty South African newspapers with the highest circulation volumes to retrieve articles published in 2012-2021 mentioning PrEP ( N  = 249). Using inductive content analysis, we developed a structured codebook to characterise PrEP-related content and sentiments, as well as their evolution over time, in the South African press. Many articles espoused favourable attitudes towards PrEP (52%), but a sizeable fraction espoused unfavourable attitudes (11%)...

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity is influenced by multiple factors, such as age, underlying medical conditions, individual immunity, infecting variant, and clinical practice. The highly transmissible Omicron variants resulted in decreased COVID-19 screening capacity, which limited disease severity surveillance. OBJECTIVE: To report on the temporal evolution of disease severity among patients admitted to Québec hospitals due to COVID-19 between January 2, 2022, and April 23, 2022, which corresponded to the peak period of hospitalizations due to Omicron...

BACKGROUND: Different patterns of sex chromosome differentiation are seen in Palaeognathae birds, a lineage that includes the ratites (Struthioniformes, Rheiformes, Apterygiformes, Casuariiformes, and the sister group Tinamiformes). While some Tinamiform species have well-differentiated W chromosomes, both Z and W of all the flightless ratites are still morphologically undifferentiated. Here, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of the ZW differentiation in birds using a combination of cytogenetic, genomic, and bioinformatic approaches...

Silene latifolia and S. dioica are model systems in studies of plant reproduction, chromosome evolution and sexual dimorphism, but sexing of plants based on morphology is only possible from flowering stage onwards. Both species show homogametic females (XX) and heterogametic males (XY).•Here we developed two assays (primer pairs ss816 and ss441 ) for molecular sexing of S. latifolia and S. dioica , targeting length polymorphisms between the X and Y-linked copies of the spermidine synthase gene.The two assays were successful in identifying known (flowering-stage) males and females from UK and Spanish populations, with an error rate of 3...

With disease-modifying treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD) associated with variants in the glucocerebrosidase gene (GBA1) under way, the challenge to design clinical trials with non-PD-manifest GBA mutation carriers (GBA1NMC ) comes within close reach. To delineate trajectories of motor and non-motor markers as well as serum neurofilament light (sNfL) levels and to evaluate clinical endpoints as outcomes for clinical trials in GBA1NMC , longitudinal data of 56 GBA1NMC carriers and 112 age- and sex-matched GBA1 wildtype participants (GBA1wildtype ) with up to 9 years of follow-up was analyzed using linear mixed-effects models (LMEM) and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of clinical endpoints for motor and cognitive function...

OBJECTIVE: This cohort study used Sankey plots and exponential bar plots for visualizing the fluctuating nature and trajectory of post-COVID pain in previously hospitalized COVID-19 survivors. METHODS: A cohort of 1266 subjects hospitalised because of COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic were scheduled for a telephone interview at 8.4 (T1), 13.2 (T2), and 18.3 (T3) months in average after hospitalization for collecting data about post-COVID pain. Patients were asked for about pain symptomatology that was attributed to the infection...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether anti-PL7 and anti-PL12 autoantibodies are associated with a greater extent of the fibrotic component of ILD in ASSD patients. METHODS: Patients with ILD-ASSD who were positive for one of the following autoantibodies: anti-Jo1, anti-PL7, anti-PL12, and anti-EJ were included. Clinical manifestations, CPK levels, pulmonary function tests, and HCRT assessments were prospectively collected according to the Goh index. The fibrotic, inflammatory, and overall extension of the Goh index and DLCO were assessed by multiple linear analyses and compared between ASSD antibody subgroups...

Evolutionary maintenance of dioecy is a complex phenomenon and varies by species and underlying pathways. Also, different sexes may exhibit variable resource allocation (RA) patterns among the vegetative and reproductive functions. Such differences are reflected in the extent of sexual dimorphism. Though rarely pursued, investigation on plant species harbouring intermediate sexual phenotypes may reveal useful information on the strategy pertaining to sex-ratios and evolutionary pathways. We studied H. rhamnoides ssp...

AbstractThe mechanisms underlying the divergence of reproductive strategies between closely related species are still poorly understood. Additionally, it is unclear which selective factors drive the evolution of reproductive behavioral variation and how these traits coevolve, particularly during early divergence. To address these questions, we quantified behavioral differences in a recently diverged pair of Nova Scotian three-spined stickleback ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ) populations, which vary in parental care, with one population displaying paternal care and the other lacking this...

The clade Pseudosuchia appeared 250 million years ago. The exclusively semi-aquatic Crocodylia, which includes crocodiles, alligators, caimans, and gharials is the only surviving subgroup. Investigating Crocodylia biology is pivotal for inferring traits of extinct pseudosuchians. Alligator femur length is widely used for modeling pseudosuchian body mass, but the regression is influenced by sex and captivity status, leading to potential accuracy problems. An alternative model results from the correlation between alligator femur volume and body mass, which is unaffected by those covariates...

INTRODUCTION: Awareness influences the evolution of neurodegenerative dementias. We gathered participants' and caregivers assessments of dependence in daily activities and we studied how each score would be related to next year participant autonomy, independently of other explicative variables. METHOD: We retrospectively analyzed data from mildly demented participants with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 186) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD, n = 29) and their relatives...

Wolves are assumed to be ungulate obligates, however, a recently described pack on Pleasant Island, Alaska USA, is persisting on sea otters and other marine resources without ungulate prey, violating this long-held assumption. We address questions about these wolves regarding their origin and fate, degree of isolation, risk of inbreeding depression, and diet specialization by individual and sex. We applied DNA metabarcoding and genotyping by amplicon sequencing using 957 scats collected from 2016 to 2022, and reduced representation sequencing of tissue samples to establish a detailed understanding of Pleasant Island wolf ecology and compare them with adjacent mainland wolves...

Hybridization allows adaptations to be shared among lineages and may trigger the evolution of new species1,2 . However, convincing examples of homoploid hybrid speciation remain rare because it is challenging to demonstrate that hybridization was crucial in generating reproductive isolation3 . Here we combine population genomic analysis with quantitative trait locus mapping of species-specific traits to examine a case of hybrid speciation in Heliconius butterflies. We show that Heliconius elevatus is a hybrid species that is sympatric with both parents and has persisted as an independently evolving lineage for at least 180,000 years...

Introduction Eukaryotic genomes consist of both single and repetitive sequences, including Satellite DNAs (satDNA), which are non-coding sequences arranged in tandem arrays. These sequences play a crucial role in genomic functions and innovations, influencing processes such as nuclear material maintenance, heterochromatin formation, and sex chromosome differentiation. In this genomic era, advancements in next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic tools have facilitated the comprehensive cataloging of repetitive elements in genomes, particularly in non-model species...

PURPOSE: To investigate sex-related differences in the clinical presentation of multiple system atrophy (MSA) through a literature review and an analysis of a retrospective cohort. METHODS: The PubMed database was searched for articles including sex-related information in MSA. In a retrospective Innsbruck cohort, we investigated the baseline to last available follow-up clinical-demographic differences between men and women with MSA in a univariate fashion, followed by multivariable binary regression analysis...

Animals that co-occur in a region (sympatry) may share the same environment (syntopy), and niche differentiation is expected among closely related species competing for resources. The masked booby ( Sula dactylatra ) and smaller congeneric red-footed booby ( Sula sula ) share breeding grounds. In addition to the inter-specific size difference, females of both species are also larger than the respective males (reversed sexual size dimorphism). Although both boobies consume similar prey, sometimes in mixed-species flocks, each species and sex may specialize in terms of their diet or foraging habitats...

BACKGROUND: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are associated with many adverse health conditions. Among the main effects is carcinogenicity in humans, which deserves to be further clarified. An evident association has been reported for kidney cancer and testicular cancer. In 2013, a large episode of surface, ground and drinking water contamination with PFAS was uncovered in three provinces of the Veneto Region (northern Italy) involving 30 municipalities and a population of about 150,000...

Harvesting and culling are methods used to monitor and manage wildlife diseases. An important consequence of these practices is a change in the genetic dynamics of affected populations that may threaten their long-term viability. The effective population size ( N e ) is a fundamental parameter for describing such changes as it determines the amount of genetic drift in a population. Here, we estimate N e of a harvested wild reindeer population in Norway. Then we use simulations to investigate the genetic consequences of management efforts for handling a recent spread of chronic wasting disease, including increased adult male harvest and population decimation...

A basic hypothesis is that cultural evolutionary processes sustain differences between groups, these differences have evolutionary relevance and they would not otherwise occur in a system without cultural transmission. The empirical challenge is that groups vary for many reasons, and isolating the causal effects of culture often requires appropriate data and a quasi-experimental approach to analysis. We address this challenge with historical data from the final Soviet census of 1989, and our analysis is an example of the epidemiological approach to identifying cultural variation...