| 1. |
- Hudson, Lawrence N, et al.
(author)
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The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project
- 2017
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In: Ecology and Evolution. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2045-7758. ; 7:1, s. 145-188
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)-has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity.
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| 2. |
- Locke, Adam E, et al.
(author)
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Genetic studies of body mass index yield new insights for obesity biology.
- 2015
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In: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 518:7538, s. 197-401
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Obesity is heritable and predisposes to many diseases. To understand the genetic basis of obesity better, here we conduct a genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI), a measure commonly used to define obesity and assess adiposity, in up to 339,224 individuals. This analysis identifies 97 BMI-associated loci (P < 5 × 10(-8)), 56 of which are novel. Five loci demonstrate clear evidence of several independent association signals, and many loci have significant effects on other metabolic phenotypes. The 97 loci account for ∼2.7% of BMI variation, and genome-wide estimates suggest that common variation accounts for >20% of BMI variation. Pathway analyses provide strong support for a role of the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and implicate new genes and pathways, including those related to synaptic function, glutamate signalling, insulin secretion/action, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.
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| 3. |
- Ip, H. F., et al.
(author)
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Genetic association study of childhood aggression across raters, instruments, and age
- 2021
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In: Translational Psychiatry. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2158-3188. ; 11:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Childhood aggressive behavior (AGG) has a substantial heritability of around 50%. Here we present a genome-wide association metaanalysis (GWAMA) of childhood AGG, in which all phenotype measures across childhood ages from multiple assessors were included. We analyzed phenotype assessments for a total of 328 935 observations from 87 485 children aged between 1.5 and 18 years, while accounting for sample overlap. We also meta-analyzed within subsets of the data, i.e., within rater, instrument and age. SNP-heritability for the overall meta-analysis (AGGoverall) was 3.31% (SE= 0.0038). We found no genome-wide significant SNPs for AGG(overall). The gene-based analysis returned three significant genes: ST3GAL3 (P= 1.6E-06), PCDH7 (P= 2.0E-06), and IPO13 (P= 2.5E-06). All three genes have previously been associated with educational traits. Polygenic scores based on our GWAMA significantly predicted aggression in a holdout sample of children (variance explained = 0.44%) and in retrospectively assessed childhood aggression (variance explained = 0.20%). Genetic correlations (rg) among rater-specific assessment of AGG ranged from r(g)= 0.46 between self- and teacher-assessment to r(g)d= 0.81 between mother- and teacher-assessment. We obtained moderate-to-strong rgs with selected phenotypes from multiple domains, but hardly with any of the classical biomarkers thought to be associated with AGG. Significant genetic correlations were observed with most psychiatric and psychological traits (range r(g): 0.19-1.00), except for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Aggression had a negative genetic correlation (r(g)=-0.5) with cognitive traits and age at first birth. Aggression was strongly genetically correlated with smoking phenotypes (range |r(g)| : 0.46-0.60). The genetic correlations between aggression and psychiatric disorders were weaker for teacher-reported AGG than for mother- and self-reported AGG. The current GWAMA of childhood aggression provides a powerful tool to interrogate the rater-specific genetic etiology of AGG.
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| 4. |
- Hudson, Lawrence N., et al.
(author)
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The PREDICTS database : a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts
- 2014
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In: Ecology and Evolution. - : Wiley. - 2045-7758. ; 4:24, s. 4701-4735
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - ). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.
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| 5. |
- Werren, John H, et al.
(author)
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Functional and evolutionary insights from the genomes of three parasitoid Nasonia species.
- 2010
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 327:5963, s. 343-8
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We report here genome sequences and comparative analyses of three closely related parasitoid wasps: Nasonia vitripennis, N. giraulti, and N. longicornis. Parasitoids are important regulators of arthropod populations, including major agricultural pests and disease vectors, and Nasonia is an emerging genetic model, particularly for evolutionary and developmental genetics. Key findings include the identification of a functional DNA methylation tool kit; hymenopteran-specific genes including diverse venoms; lateral gene transfers among Pox viruses, Wolbachia, and Nasonia; and the rapid evolution of genes involved in nuclear-mitochondrial interactions that are implicated in speciation. Newly developed genome resources advance Nasonia for genetic research, accelerate mapping and cloning of quantitative trait loci, and will ultimately provide tools and knowledge for further increasing the utility of parasitoids as pest insect-control agents.
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| 6. |
- Ivanova, M. Y., et al.
(author)
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Effects of individual differences, society, and culture on youth-rated problems and strengths in 38 societies
- 2022
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In: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. - : Wiley. - 0021-9630 .- 1469-7610. ; 63:11, s. 1297-1307
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Clinicians increasingly serve youths from societal/cultural backgrounds different from their own. This raises questions about how to interpret what such youths report. Rescorla et al. (2019, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 28, 1107) found that much more variance in 72,493 parents' ratings of their offspring's mental health problems was accounted for by individual differences than by societal or cultural differences. Although parents' reports are essential for clinical assessment of their offspring, they reflect parents' perceptions of the offspring. Consequently, clinical assessment also requires self-reports from the offspring themselves. To test effects of individual differences, society, and culture on youths' self-ratings of their problems and strengths, we analyzed Youth Self-Report (YSR) scores for 39,849 11-17 year olds in 38 societies. Methods: Indigenous researchers obtained YSR self-ratings from population samples of youths in 38 societies representing 10 culture cluster identified in the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavioral Effectiveness study. Hierarchical linear modeling of scores on 17 problem scales and one strengths scale estimated the percent of variance accounted for by individual differences (including measurement error), society, and culture cluster. ANOVAs tested age and gender effects. Results: Averaged across the 17 problem scales, individual differences accounted for 92.5% of variance, societal differences 6.0%, and cultural differences 1.5%. For strengths, individual differences accounted for 83.4% of variance, societal differences 10.1%, and cultural differences 6.5%. Age and gender had very small effects. Conclusions: Like parents' ratings, youths' self-ratings of problems were affected much more by individual differences than societal/cultural differences. Most variance in self-rated strengths also reflected individual differences, but societal/cultural effects were larger than for problems, suggesting greater influence of social desirability. The clinical significance of individual differences in youths' self-reports should thus not be minimized by societal/cultural differences, which-while important-can be taken into account with appropriate norms, as can gender and age differences.
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| 7. |
- Ivanova, M.Y, et al.
(author)
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Testing Syndromes of Psychopathology in Parent and Youth Ratings Across Societies
- 2019
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In: Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1537-4416 .- 1537-4424. ; 48:4, s. 596-609
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- As societies become increasingly diverse, mental health professionals need instruments for assessing emotional, behavioral, and social problems in terms of constructs that are supported within and across societies. Building on decades of research findings, multisample alignment confirmatory factor analyses tested an empirically based 8-syndrome model on parent ratings across 30 societies and youth self-ratings across 19 societies. The Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 6–18 and Youth Self-Report for Ages 11–18 were used to measure syndromes descriptively designated as Anxious/ Depressed, Withdrawn/Depressed, Somatic Complaints, Social Problems, Thought Problems, Attention Problems, Rule-Breaking Behavior, and Aggressive Behavior. For both parent ratings (N = 61,703) and self-ratings (N = 29,486), results supported aggregation of problem items into 8 first-order syndromes for all societies (configural invariance), plus the invariance of item loadings (metric invariance) across the majority of societies. Supported across many societies in both parent and self-ratings, the 8 syndromes offer a parsimonious phenotypic taxonomy with clearly operatio- nalized assessment criteria. Mental health professionals in many societies can use the 8 syndromes to assess children and youths for clinical, training, and scientific purposes.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Ruoqing, Chen, 1985-, et al.
(author)
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No association between hair cortisol or cortisone and brain morphology in children
- 2016
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In: Psychoneuroendocrinology. - : Pergamon Press. - 0306-4530 .- 1873-3360. ; 74:101, s. 101-110
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Little is known about the relationship between the long-term hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functioning and brain structure in children. Glucocorticoid in hair has emerged as an important biomarker of HPA activity. In this study, we investigated the associations of hair cortisol and cortisone concentrations with brain morphology in young children. We included 219 children aged 6-10 years from the Generation R Study in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. We examined cortisol and cortisone concentrations by hair analysis using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, and assessed brain morphometric measures with structural magnetic resonance imaging. The relationships of hair cortisol and cortisone concentrations with brain volumetrics, cortical thickness, cortical surface area and gyrification were analyzed separately after adjustment for several potential confounding factors. We observed a positive association between cortisol concentrations and cortical surface area in the parietal lobe, positive associations of cortisone concentrations with thalamus volume, occipital lobe volume and cortical surface area in the parietal lobe, and a negative association between cortisone concentrations and cortical surface area in the temporal lobe in the regions of interest analyses. A negative association between cortisol or cortisone concentrations and hippocampal volume was observed in children with behavioral problems. The whole brain vertex-wise analyses did however not show any association between cortisol or cortisone concentration and brain morphometric measures after correction for multiple testing. Although some associations are noted in region of interest analyses, we do not observe clear association of hair cortisol or cortisone with brain morphometric measures in typically developing young children.
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| 11. |
- Culina, Antica, et al.
(author)
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Connecting the data landscape of long-term ecological studies : The SPI-Birds data hub
- 2021
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In: Journal of Animal Ecology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0021-8790 .- 1365-2656. ; 90:9, s. 2147-2160
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long-term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and ecological processes in the wild. Furthermore, their number and global distribution provides a unique opportunity to assess the generality of patterns and to address broad-scale global issues (e.g. climate change). To solve data integration issues and enable a new scale of ecological and evolutionary research based on long-term studies of birds, we have created the SPI-Birds Network and Database ()-a large-scale initiative that connects data from, and researchers working on, studies of wild populations of individually recognizable (usually ringed) birds. Within year and a half since the establishment, SPI-Birds has recruited over 120 members, and currently hosts data on almost 1.5 million individual birds collected in 80 populations over 2,000 cumulative years, and counting. SPI-Birds acts as a data hub and a catalogue of studied populations. It prevents data loss, secures easy data finding, use and integration and thus facilitates collaboration and synthesis. We provide community-derived data and meta-data standards and improve data integrity guided by the principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR), and aligned with the existing metadata languages (e.g. ecological meta-data language). The encouraging community involvement stems from SPI-Bird's decentralized approach: research groups retain full control over data use and their way of data management, while SPI-Birds creates tailored pipelines to convert each unique data format into a standard format. We outline the lessons learned, so that other communities (e.g. those working on other taxa) can adapt our successful model. Creating community-specific hubs (such as ours, COMADRE for animal demography, etc.) will aid much-needed large-scale ecological data integration.
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| 12. |
- De Palma, Adriana, et al.
(author)
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Predicting bee community responses to land-use changes : effects of geographic and taxonomic biases
- 2016
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In: Scientific Reports. - : Nature Publishing Group. - 2045-2322. ; 6, s. 1-14
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Europe, overrepresenting bumblebees and raising concerns that model results may not be generalizable to other regions and taxa. To assess whether the geographic and taxonomic biases of data could undermine effectiveness of models for conservation policy, we have collated from the published literature a global dataset of bee diversity at sites facing land-use change and intensification, and assess whether bee responses to these pressures vary across 11 regions (Western, Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe; North, Central and South America; Australia and New Zealand; South East Asia; Middle and Southern Africa) and between bumblebees and other bees. Our analyses highlight strong regionally-based responses of total abundance, species richness and Simpson's diversity to land use, caused by variation in the sensitivity of species and potentially in the nature of threats. These results suggest that global extrapolation of models based on geographically and taxonomically restricted data may underestimate the true uncertainty, increasing the risk of ecological surprises.
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| 13. |
- Kleijn, David, et al.
(author)
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Delivery of crop pollination services is an insufficient argument for wild pollinator conservation.
- 2015
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In: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation. However, it is unclear how much biodiversity is needed to deliver ecosystem services in a cost-effective way. Here we show that, while the contribution of wild bees to crop production is significant, service delivery is restricted to a limited subset of all known bee species. Across crops, years and biogeographical regions, crop-visiting wild bee communities are dominated by a small number of common species, and threatened species are rarely observed on crops. Dominant crop pollinators persist under agricultural expansion and many are easily enhanced by simple conservation measures, suggesting that cost-effective management strategies to promote crop pollination should target a different set of species than management strategies to promote threatened bees. Conserving the biological diversity of bees therefore requires more than just ecosystem-service-based arguments.
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| 14. |
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