The Effects of Anthropogenic Stressors on Above- and Belowground Phytochemical Diversity of the Wetland Grass, .

Coastal wetlands face threats from climate change-induced flooding and biological invasions. Plants respond to these stressors through changes in their phytochemical metabolome, but it is unclear whether stressors affecting one tissue compartment (e.g.

Low sodium availability in hydroponically manipulated host plants promotes cannibalism in a lepidopteran herbivore.

As an abundant element in the Earth's crust, sodium plays an unusual role in food webs. Its availability in terrestrial environments is highly variable, but it is nonessential for most plants, yet essential for animals and most decomposers. Accordingly, sodium requirements are important drivers of various animal behavioural patterns and performance levels.

Metabolomic Evenness Underlies Intraspecific Differences Among Lineages of a Wetland Grass.

The metabolome represents an important functional trait likely important to plant invasion success, but we have a limited understanding of whether the entire metabolome or targeted groups of compounds confer an advantage to invasive as compared to native taxa. We conducted a lipidomic and metabolomic analysis of the cosmopolitan wetland grass Phragmites australis. We classified features into metabolic pathways, subclasses, and classes.

Global response of conservationists across mass media likely constrained bat persecution due to COVID-19.

Most people lack direct experience with wildlife and form their risk perception primarily on information provided by the media. The way the media frames news may substantially shape public risk perception, promoting or discouraging public tolerance towards wildlife. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, bats were suggested as the most plausible reservoir of the virus, and this became a recurrent topic in media reports, potentially strengthening a negative view of this ecologically important group.

Developmental stage-dependent response and preference for host plant quality in an insect herbivore.

Larval-derived nutritional reserves are essential in shaping insects' adult fitness. Early larval instars of many Lepidopteran species are often sessile, and the conditions experienced by these larvae are often highly dependent on the mother's oviposition choice. Later larval stages are more mobile and therefore can choose their food whenever alternatives are available.

Differential phenotypic and genetic expression of defence compounds in a plant-herbivore interaction along elevation.

Elevation gradients impose large differences in abiotic and biotic conditions over short distances, in turn, likely driving differences in gene expression more than would genetic variation , as natural selection and drift are less likely to fix alleles at such a narrow spatial scale. As elevation increases, the pressure exerted on plants by herbivores and on arthropod herbivores by predators decreases, and organisms spanning the elevation gradient are thus expected to show lower levels of defence at high elevation. The alternative hypothesis, based on the optimal defence theory, is that defence allocation should be higher in low-resource habitats such as those at high elevation, due to higher costs associated with tissue replacement.

Insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR) in the differentiation of patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and healthy individuals.

Context: Due to its good correlation to glycemic clamp, HOMA-IR has been widely utilized as insulin resistance index in clinical and epidemiological studies involving non-alcoholic fatty liver disease carriers. However, values used for this parameter have shown large variability.

Objective: To identify the HOMA-IR cut value that best distinguishes non-diabetic non-alcoholic fatty liver disease patients from a control group.