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- Culina, Antica, et al.
(författare)
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Connecting the data landscape of long-term ecological studies : The SPI-Birds data hub
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Animal Ecology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0021-8790 .- 1365-2656. ; 90:9, s. 2147-2160
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)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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2. |
- Hudson, Lawrence N, et al.
(författare)
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The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ecology and Evolution. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2045-7758. ; 7:1, s. 145-188
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)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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3. |
- Junker, Robert R., et al.
(författare)
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Covariation and phenotypic integration in chemical communication displays : Biosynthetic constraints and eco-evolutionary implications
- 2018
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Ingår i: New Phytologist. - : Wiley. - 0028-646X .- 1469-8137. ; 220:3, s. 739-749
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Chemical communication is ubiquitous. The identification of conserved structural elements in visual and acoustic communication is well established, but comparable information on chemical communication displays (CCDs) is lacking. We assessed the phenotypic integration of CCDs in a meta-analysis to characterize patterns of covariation in CCDs and identified functional or biosynthetically constrained modules. Poorly integrated plant CCDs (i.e. low covariation between scent compounds) support the notion that plants often utilize one or few key compounds to repel antagonists or to attract pollinators and enemies of herbivores. Animal CCDs (mostly insect pheromones) were usually more integrated than those of plants (i.e. stronger covariation), suggesting that animals communicate via fixed proportions among compounds. Both plant and animal CCDs were composed of modules, which are groups of strongly covarying compounds. Biosynthetic similarity of compounds revealed biosynthetic constraints in the covariation patterns of plant CCDs. We provide a novel perspective on chemical communication and a basis for future investigations on structural properties of CCDs. This will facilitate identifying modules and biosynthetic constraints that may affect the outcome of selection and thus provide a predictive framework for evolutionary trajectories of CCDs in plants and animals.
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4. |
- Stefanic, Sasa, et al.
(författare)
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Xenosurveillance proof-of-principle : Detection of Toxoplasma gondii and SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in mosquito blood meals by (pan)-specific ELISAs
- 2022
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Ingår i: Current research in parasitology & vector-borne diseases. - : Elsevier. - 2667-114X. ; 2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Blood-fed insects can be used to analyse the host blood for circulating vertebrate pathogens or antibodies directed against them. We tested whether naturally acquired antibodies in different host species can be detected by host-specific and pan-specific ELISAs in mosquito blood meals. Cat- and alpaca-specific ELISAs could detect antibodies against Toxoplasma gondii or SARS-CoV-2 in blood meals of Aedes japonicus for 48 and at least 24 h, respectively. In the pan-specific ELISA, a conjugated protein A/G and anti-IgY were used to detect antibodies of mammalian and bird hosts. Thus, Toxoplasma antibodies could be detected in mosquitoes fed on blood from humans, chicken, pig, and sheep up to 72 h after the blood meal. The results, however, demonstrated differences in sensitivities between different host species, and the assay requires further evaluation. Xenosurveillance with antibody detection in mosquito blood meals can be an additional surveillance tool that would especially be helpful when it is difficult to sample the potential animal reservoirs.
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