Search or filter publications

Filter by type:

Filter by publication type

Filter by year:

to

Results

  • Showing results for:
  • Reset all filters

Search results

  • Journal article
    Liu M, Prentice IC, Menviel L, Harrison SPet al., 2025,

    Correction to: Past rapid warmings as a constraint on greenhouse-gas climate feedbacks (Communications Earth & Environment, (2022), 3, 1, (196), 10.1038/s43247-022-00536-0)

    , Communications Earth and Environment, Vol: 6

    Correction to:Communications Earth & Environmenthttps://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00536-0, published online 30 August 2022 In the version of this article originally published, three estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from different sources were used to convert feedback strength into the unitless measure – gain – on the assumption that these were independent. In fact, these were not independent, and so combining them yields a too-narrow uncertainty range. The authors decided to only use the “very likely” (instead of “likely”) range from IPCC WG1 AR6 and treat it as a 90% confidence interval. Additionally, the gain is not normally distributed but is highly asymmetric, as it is the negative of the ratio of two approximately normally distributed variables, feedback strength (c) and the net feedback parameter (αnet), with a non-zero centre. There is no standard way to derive confidence intervals from standard error for such a variable. Therefore, in the correct version, only the standard error of the gain is provided, instead of giving confidence intervals. Besides, since calculating standard error by the error propagation rule requires the input variables to be at least approximately normally distributed, the gain was calculated directly from the net feedback parameter (αnet, which is assumed to be normally distributed) corresponding to ECS (which is not normally distributed). The changes implemented have no impact on the calculated feedback strengths, but they do have an impact on the estimated gains. Since confidence intervals are no longer provided for the gains, the comparison is focused on the feedback strengths. The authors would like to thank Dr. B. B. Cael from the National Oceanography Centre for bringing this issue to their attention with advice about the choice of ECS and how the very likely range should be interpreted into confidence interval. The manuscript has now been corrected i

  • Journal article
    Moulick D, Santra SC, Majumdar A, Das A, Chowardhara B, Saha B, Ghosh D, Majumdar J, Upadhyay MK, Yadav P, Sarkar S, Garai S, Dhar A, Dey S, Mandal S, Choudhury S, Pattnaik BK, Dash GK, Repalli SK, Hossain Aet al., 2025,

    Efficacy of Seed Priming Technology in Ameliorating Metals and Metalloids Toxicity in Crops: Prospective and Issues

    , REVIEWS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION AND TOXICOLOGY, Vol: 263, ISSN: 0179-5953
  • Journal article
    Herzog MK-M, Peters A, Shayya N, Cazzaniga M, Kaka Bra K, Arora T, Barthel M, Gül E, Maurer L, Kiefer P, Christen P, Endhardt K, Vorholt JA, Frankel G, Heimesaat MM, Bereswill S, Gahan CGM, Claesson MJ, Domingo-Almenara X, Hardt W-Det al., 2025,

    Comparing Campylobacter jejuni to three other enteric pathogens in OligoMM12 mice reveals pathogen-specific host and microbiota responses.

    , Gut Microbes, Vol: 17

    Campylobacter jejuni, non-typhoidal Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes and enteropathogenic/enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EPEC/EHEC) are leading causes of food-borne illness worldwide. Citrobacter rodentium has been used to model EPEC and EHEC infection in mice. The gut microbiome is well-known to affect gut colonization and host responses to many food-borne pathogens. Recent progress has established gnotobiotic mice as valuable models to study how microbiota affect the enteric infections by S. Typhimurium, C. rodentium and L. monocytogenes. However, for C. jejuni, we are still lacking a suitable gnotobiotic mouse model. Moreover, the limited comparability of data across laboratories is often negatively affected by variations between different research facilities or murine microbiotas. In this study, we applied the standardized gnotobiotic OligoMM12 microbiota mouse model and compared the infections in the same facility. We provide evidence of robust colonization and significant pathological changes in OligoMM12 mice following infection with these pathogens. Moreover, we offer insights into pathogen-specific host responses and metabolite signatures, highlighting the advantages of a standardized mouse model for direct comparisons of factors influencing the pathogenesis of major food-borne pathogens. Notably, we reveal for the first time that C. jejuni stably colonizes OligoMM12 mice, triggering inflammation. Additionally, our comparative approach successfully identifies pathogen-specific responses, including the detection of genes uniquely associated with C. jejuni infection in humans. These findings underscore the potential of the OligoMM12 model as a versatile tool for advancing our understanding of food-borne pathogen interactions.

  • Journal article
    Schulte to Bühne H, Tobias JA, Durant SM, Pettorelli Net al., 2025,

    Land use configuration shapes climate change vulnerability of gallery forests in a savannah ecosystem

    , Global Ecology and Conservation, Vol: 59, ISSN: 2351-9894

    Interactions between anthropogenic pressures make it difficult to predict biodiversity change and plan conservation interventions. Climate change is expected to drive widespread ecological change in the tropics over the coming decades, but it is unclear where and when these changes are going to intensify, or reduce, the impacts of additional pressures from human land use. To address this uncertainty, we apply a novel vulnerability assessment framework to show how land use configuration modifies the extent of potential harms arising from climate change to gallery forests, an important vegetation type in tropical savannahs. We highlight how the spatial distribution of climate change (specifically, change in annual rainfall) interacts with the spatial distribution of land use (specifically, cropland), as well as the biophysical context of the study site (the W-Arly-Pendjari transboundary protected area in West Africa), to shape the vulnerability of gallery forests to changes in rainfall in the region. Due to the pathways by which rainfall change and land use interact, vulnerability is especially elevated in core protected areas, warranting particular attention from conservation managers. Overall, our work illustrates how unexpected patterns in potential negative consequences can arise through interactions between pressures on biodiversity, highlighting the importance of considering mechanistic pathways for predicting biodiversity outcomes under multifaceted global environmental change.

  • Journal article
    Meccariello A, 2025,

    A self-limiting sterile insect technique alternative for Ceratitis capitata

    , BMC Biology, ISSN: 1741-7007
  • Journal article
    Cooke R, Outhwaite CL, Bladon AJ, Millard J, Rodger JG, Dong Z, Dyer EE, Edney S, Murphy JF, Dicks LV, Hui C, Jones JI, Newbold T, Purvis A, Roy HE, Woodcock BA, Isaac NJBet al., 2025,

    Integrating multiple evidence streams to understand insect biodiversity change.

    , Science, Vol: 388

    Insects dominate animal species diversity yet face many threats from anthropogenic drivers of change. Many features of insect ecology make them a challenging group, and the fragmented state of knowledge compromises our ability to make general statements about their status. In this Review, we discuss the challenges of assessing insect biodiversity change. We describe how multiple lines of evidence-time series, spatial comparisons, experiments, and expert opinion-can be integrated to provide a synthesis overview of how insect biodiversity responds to drivers. Applying this approach will generate testable predictions of insect biodiversity across space, time, and changing drivers. Given the urgency of accelerating human impacts across the environment, this approach could yield a much-needed rapid assessment of insect biodiversity change.

  • Journal article
    Chan AHH, Putra P, Schupp H, Köchling J, Straßheim J, Renner B, Schroeder J, Pearse WD, Nakagawa S, Burke T, Griesser M, Meltzer A, Lubrano S, Kano Fet al., 2025,

    YOLO-Behaviour: A simple, flexible framework to automatically quantify animal behaviours from videos

    , Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Vol: 16, Pages: 760-774

    Manually coding behaviours from videos is essential to study animal behaviour but it is labour-intensive and susceptible to inter-rater bias and reliability issues. Recent developments of computer vision tools enable the automatic quantification of behaviours, supplementing or even replacing manual annotation. However, widespread adoption of these methods is still limited, due to the lack of annotated training datasets and domain-specific knowledge required to optimize these models for animal research. Here, we present YOLO-Behaviour, a flexible framework for identifying visually distinct behaviours from video recordings. The framework is robust, easy to implement, and requires minimal manual annotations as training data. We demonstrate the flexibility of the framework with case studies for event-wise detection in house sparrow nestling provisioning, Siberian jay feeding, human eating behaviours and frame-wise detections of various behaviours in pigeons, zebras and giraffes. Our results show that the framework reliably detects behaviours accurately and retrieve comparable accuracy metrics to manual annotation. However, metrics extracted for event-wise detection were less correlated with manual annotation, and potential reasons for the discrepancy between manual annotation and automatic detection are discussed. To mitigate this problem, the framework can be used as a hybrid approach of first detecting events using the pipeline and then manually confirming the detections, saving annotation time. We provide detailed documentation and guidelines on how to implement the YOLO-Behaviour framework, for researchers to readily train and deploy new models on their own study systems. We anticipate the framework can be another step towards lowering the barrier of entry for applying computer vision methods in animal behaviour.

  • Journal article
    Brose U, Hirt MR, Ryser R, Rosenbaum B, Berti E, Gauzens B, Hein AM, Pawar S, Schmidt K, Wootton K, Kéfi Set al., 2025,

    Embedding information flows within ecological networks.

    , Nat Ecol Evol, Vol: 9, Pages: 547-558

    Natural communities form networks of species linked by interactions. Understanding the structure and dynamics of these ecological networks is pivotal to predicting species extinction risks, community stability and ecosystem functioning under global change. Traditionally, ecological network research has focused on interactions involving the flow of matter and energy, such as feeding or pollination. In nature, however, species also interact by intentionally or unintentionally exchanging information signals and cues that influence their behaviour and movement. Here we argue that this exchange of information between species constitutes an information network of nature-a crucial but largely neglected aspect of community organization. We propose to integrate information with matter flow interactions in multilayer networks. This integration reveals a novel classification of information links based on how the senders and receivers of information are embedded in food web motifs. We show that synthesizing information and matter flow interactions in multilayer networks can lead to shorter pathways connecting species and a denser aggregation of species in fewer modules. Ultimately, this tighter interconnectedness of species increases the risk of perturbation spread in natural communities, which undermines their stability. Understanding the information network of nature is thus crucial for predicting community dynamics in the era of global change.

  • Journal article
    Pearse WD, Davies TJ, Wolkovich EM, 2025,

    How to Define, Use, and Interpret Pagel's λ$$ \lambda $$ (Lambda) in Ecology and Evolution

    , Global Ecology and Biogeography, Vol: 34, ISSN: 1466-822X

    <jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>Aim</jats:title><jats:p>Pagel's (lambda) is a useful tool in ecology and evolution for describing trait evolution, imputing missing species' data, and generalising ecological relationships beyond their study system. Here, we review the various applications and interpretations of , highlight common misconceptions, and show how confusion in defining and using can mislead our interpretation of ecological and evolutionary processes.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Innovation</jats:title><jats:p>We highlight that: (1) as an index of phylogenetic signal applied to continuous traits, typically (but not always) ranges between 0 and 1, and is a rate‐independent measure of the degree to which closely‐related species resemble one‐another relative to a Brownian motion expectation. (2) estimated on incompletely sampled clades assumes random species sampling, which is rarely the case in ecological data sets, and likely has large uncertainty. (3) High is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for phylogenetic imputation. (4) in Phylogenetic Generalised Least Squares (PGLS) models is estimated using model residuals and is not (in most cases) an index of phylogenetic signal of measured traits. (5) New hierarchical methods including intra‐specific variation return metrics such as that are similar but not identical to ; we show how these disparate approaches can be unified within a single framework.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Main Conclusions</jats:title><jats:p>Phylogenetic methods are increasingly integrated into ecological and evolutionary analyses. Pagel's , a phylogenetic scaling parameter that describes how shared evolutionary history structures species similarities and differences, is commonly used as both a metric of ‘phylogenetic signal’ and as a statistical correction

  • Journal article
    Gilestro GF, 2025,

    Refining the sleep circuits one neuron at a time.

    , PLoS Biol, Vol: 23

    The neural basis of sleep regulation remains elusive. A new study in PLOS Biology refines the key neuronal circuits involved in the regulation of sleep in fruit flies, confirming Drosophila melanogaster as the model of choice for unraveling the systems neuroscience of such a mysterious phenomenon.

  • Journal article
    Christophides GK, 2025,

    Malaria vectors with leaky guts.

    , Nat Microbiol, Vol: 10, Pages: 817-818
  • Journal article
    Bell T, 2025,

    Replicating community dynamics reveals how initial composition shapes the functional outcomes of bacterial communities

    , Nature Communications, ISSN: 2041-1723
  • Journal article
    Keeping TR, ZHOU B, Cai W, Shepherd TG, Prentice IC, Van Der Wiel K, Harrison Set al., 2025,

    Present and Future Interannual Variability in Wildfire Occurrence: A Large Ensemble Application to the United States

    , Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, ISSN: 2624-893X
  • Journal article
    Kientega M, Morianou I, Traoré N, Kranjc N, Kaboré H, Zongo ON, Millogo A-A, Epopa PS, Yao FA, Belem AMG, Burt A, Diabaté Aet al., 2025,

    Correction: Genomic analyses revealed low genetic variation In the Intron-exon boundary of the doublesex gene within the natural populations of An. gambiae s.l. in Burkina Faso.

    , BMC Genomics, Vol: 26
  • Journal article
    Dias Fernandes L, Hintzen R, Thompson S, Barychka T, Tittensor D, Harfoot M, Newbold T, Rosindell Jet al., 2025,

    Species Richness and Speciation Rates for all Terrestrial Animals Emerge from a Synthesis of Ecological Theories

    , Systematic Biology, ISSN: 1063-5157
  • Journal article
    Rocco C, Suzuki M, Vilar R, Garcia-España E, Blasco S, Larrouy-Maumus G, Turnbull C, Wissuwa M, Cao X, Weiss Det al., 2025,

    Enhancing Zinc Bioavailability in Rice Using the Novel Synthetic Siderophore Ligand Proline-2'-Deoxymugineic Acid (PDMA): Critical Insights from Metal Binding Studies and Geochemical Speciation Modeling.

    , J Agric Food Chem

    Bioavailable ligands that bind metals mediate their uptake in plants, leading to the study of artificial ligands as potential fertilizers. Proline-2'-deoxymugineic acid (PDMA) has shown a high affinity for FeIII, enhancing iron uptake in rice and suggesting that it could be used for improving zinc uptake. This work studied chemical solution parameters, i.e., redox potential, ion strength, pH, and ligand/metal concentrations controlling ZnII-PDMA complex formation in rice-producing soils using geochemical speciation modeling. We show that PDMA is generally selective for ZnII in reducing, saline, and alkaline soil solutions. Comparison with a recent micronutrient uptake study in rice suggests that free PDMA should be added in reducing conditions to avoid competition with CuII and FeIII or as the ZnII-PDMA complex at pH below 9. The Zn/M ratios (M = CuII, FeIII) needed to form stable ZnII-PDMA complexes were also identified. This study shows the promise of PDMA as a fertilizer to overcome zinc deficiencies in alkaline and flooded soils.

  • Journal article
    Mansfield C, 2025,

    ‘We have learning objectives, not enjoyment objectives': the role of enjoyment in Life Sciences teaching and learning

    , Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education

    <jats:p>Positive emotions such as enjoyment are often overlooked in higher education (HE) despite being important and prioritised in school-level policy. Enjoyment has been reported to have a positive impact on multiple aspects of learning – it can facilitate deep-learning strategies, boost confidence and encourage long-term interest. Many educators recognise the value of positive emotions in everyday life and for wellbeing. In addition, staff enjoyment of teaching is often overlooked in favour of a student-only perspective that may limit a holistic understanding of emotion in HE, given strong links between staff and student emotion and empathy. In the current HE climate, where students face huge pressure to achieve, and staff workloads are increasing, a focus on enjoyment could bring substantial benefits.This study provides a STEM-specific context and focuses on staff and student enjoyment of teaching and learning at a research-intensive university. Through interviews with teaching staff and Life Sciences students, this study explores what contributes to staff and student enjoyment of teaching and learning. Commonalities between staff and student enjoyment were identified and include the importance of relational pedagogy and positive relationships, as well as the freedom to be creative and explore a subject. Both themes have implications for learning development and teaching practice, including more intentional design of groupwork and small group teaching, and level of choice around topics and pedagogic approaches within programmes. Recommendations from this study include working towards relational and ‘emotionally literate’ pedagogy with potential implications for education practitioners and students in STEM and across HE.</jats:p>

  • Journal article
    Jordan S, Frankel G, Mishra V, 2025,

    Citrobacter rodentium.

    , Trends Microbiol
  • Journal article
    Worsley MZ, Schroeder J, Dixit T, 2025,

    How animals discriminate between stimulus magnitudes: a meta-analysis

    , Behavioral Ecology, ISSN: 1045-2249

    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>To maximize their fitness, animals must often discriminate between stimuli differing in magnitude (such as size, intensity, or number). Weber’s Law of proportional processing states that stimuli are compared based on the proportional difference in magnitude, rather than the absolute difference. Weber’s Law implies that when stimulus magnitudes are higher, it becomes harder to discriminate small differences between stimuli, leading to more discrimination errors. More generally, we can refer to a correlation between stimulus magnitude and discrimination error frequency as a magnitude effect, with Weber’s law being a special case of the magnitude effect. However, the strength and prevalence of the magnitude effect across species have never previously been examined. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to quantify the strength of the magnitude effect across studies, finding that, on average, perception followed Weber’s Law. However, the strength of the magnitude effect varied widely, and this variation was not explained by any biological or methodological differences between studies that we examined. Our findings suggest that although its strength varies considerably, the magnitude effect is commonplace, and this sensory bias is therefore likely to affect signal evolution across diverse systems. Better discrimination at lower magnitudes might result in signalers evolving lower magnitude signals when being discriminated is beneficial, and higher magnitude signals when being discriminated is costly. Furthermore, selection for higher magnitude signals (e.g. sexual ornaments) may be weakened, because receivers are less able to discriminate as signal magnitudes increase.</jats:p>

  • Journal article
    Zhang H, Wang H, Wright IJ, Prentice IC, Harrison SP, Smith NG, Westerband AC, Rowland L, Plavcova L, Morris H, Reich PB, Jansen S, Keenan T, Nguyen NBet al., 2025,

    Thermal acclimation of stem respiration implies a weaker carbon-climate feedback

    , Science
  • Journal article
    Beeby M, Daum B, 2025,

    How Does the Archaellum Work?

    , Biomolecules, Vol: 15, Pages: 465-465

    <jats:p>The archaellum is the simplest known molecular propeller. An analogue of bacterial flagella, archaella are long helical tails found in Archaea that are rotated by cell-envelope-embedded rotary motors to exert thrust for cell motility. Despite their simplicity, however, they are less well studied, and how they work remains only partially understood. Here we describe four key aspects of their function: assembly, the transition from assembly to rotation, the mechanics of rotation, and how rotation generates thrust. We outline future research directions that will enhance our understanding of archaellar function.</jats:p>

  • Journal article
    ZHOU B, Cai W, Zhu Z, Wang H, Harrison SP, Prentice ICet al., 2025,

    A general model for the seasonal to decadal dynamics of leaf area

    , Global Change Biology, ISSN: 1354-1013
  • Journal article
    Rice AJ, Sword TT, Chengan K, Mitchell DA, Mouncey NJ, Moore SJ, Bailey CBet al., 2025,

    Cell-free synthetic biology for natural product biosynthesis and discovery.

    , Chem Soc Rev

    Natural products have applications as biopharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and other high-value chemicals. However, there are challenges in isolating natural products from their native producers (e.g. bacteria, fungi, plants). In many cases, synthetic chemistry or heterologous expression must be used to access these important molecules. The biosynthetic machinery to generate these compounds is found within biosynthetic gene clusters, primarily consisting of the enzymes that biosynthesise a range of natural product classes (including, but not limited to ribosomal and nonribosomal peptides, polyketides, and terpenoids). Cell-free synthetic biology has emerged in recent years as a bottom-up technology applied towards both prototyping pathways and producing molecules. Recently, it has been applied to natural products, both to characterise biosynthetic pathways and produce new metabolites. This review discusses the core biochemistry of cell-free synthetic biology applied to metabolite production and critiques its advantages and disadvantages compared to whole cell and/or chemical production routes. Specifically, we review the advances in cell-free biosynthesis of ribosomal peptides, analyse the rapid prototyping of natural product biosynthetic enzymes and pathways, highlight advances in novel antimicrobial discovery, and discuss the rising use of cell-free technologies in industrial biotechnology and synthetic biology.

  • Journal article
    Duchêne DA, Chowdhury A-A, Yang J, Iglesias-Carrasco M, Stiller J, Feng S, Bhatt S, Gilbert MTP, Zhang G, Tobias JA, Ho SYWet al., 2025,

    Drivers of avian genomic change revealed by evolutionary rate decomposition.

    , Nature

    Modern birds have diversified into a striking array of forms, behaviours and ecological roles. Analyses of molecular evolutionary rates can reveal the links between genomic and phenotypic change1-4, but disentangling the drivers of rate variation at the whole-genome scale has been difficult. Using comprehensive estimates of traits and evolutionary rates across a family-level phylogeny of birds5,6, we find that genome-wide mutation rates across lineages are predominantly explained by clutch size and generation length, whereas rate variation across genes is driven by the content of guanine and cytosine. Here, to find the subsets of genes and lineages that dominate evolutionary rate variation in birds, we estimated the influence of individual lineages on decomposed axes of gene-specific evolutionary rates. We find that most of the rate variation occurs along recent branches of the tree, associated with present-day families of birds. Additional tests on axes of rate variation show rapid changes in microchromosomes immediately after the Cretaceous-Palaeogene transition. These apparent pulses of evolution are consistent with major changes in the genetic machineries for meiosis, heart performance, and RNA splicing, surveillance and translation, and correlate with the ecological diversity reflected in increased tarsus length. Collectively, our analyses paint a nuanced picture of avian evolution, revealing that the ancestors of the most diverse lineages of birds underwent major genomic changes related to mutation, gene usage and niche expansion in the early Palaeogene period.

  • Journal article
    Youn T, Kim G, Hariharan P, Li X, Ahmed W, Byrne B, Liu X, Guan L, Chae PSet al., 2025,

    Improved Pendant-Bearing Glucose-Neopentyl Glycols for Membrane Protein Stability.

    , Bioconjug Chem

    Membrane proteins are biologically and pharmaceutically significant, and determining their 3D structures requires a membrane-mimetic system to maintain protein stability. Detergent micelles are widely used as membrane mimetics; however, their dynamic structures often lead to the denaturation and aggregation of encapsulated membrane proteins. To address the limitations of classical detergents in stabilizing membrane proteins, we previously reported a class of glucose-neopentyl glycols (GNGs) and their pendant-bearing versions (P-GNGs), several of which proved more effective than DDM in stabilizing membrane proteins. In this study, we synthesized additional GNG derivatives by varying the lengths of the pendant (P-GNGs), and by introducing hemifluorinated pendants to the GNG scaffold (fluorinated pendant-bearing GNGs or FP-GNGs). The synthetic flexibility of the GNG chemical architecture allowed us to create a diverse range of derivatives, essential for the effective optimization of detergent properties. When tested with two model membrane proteins (a transporter and a G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR)), most of the new (F)P-GNGs demonstrated superior stabilization of these membrane proteins compared to DDM, the original GNG (OGNG)), and a previously developed P-GNG (i.e., GNG-3,14). Notably, several P-GNGs synthesized in this study were as effective as or even better than lauryl maltose neopentyl glycol (LMNG) in stabilizing a human GPCR, beta2 adrenergic receptor (β2AR). Enhanced protein stability was particularly observed for the P-GNGs with a butyl (C4) or pentyl (C5) pendant, indicating that these pendant sizes are optimal for membrane protein stability. The volumes of these pendants appear to minimize the empty spaces in the micelle interiors, thereby enhancing detergent-detergent interactions in micelles complexed with the membrane proteins. Additionally, we identified one FP-GNG that was more efficient at extracting the transporter and more effective at st

  • Journal article
    Yang J, Yang C, Lin H-W, Lees AC, Tobias JAet al., 2025,

    Elevational constraints on flight efficiency shape global gradients in avian wing morphology.

    , Curr Biol

    Wings with an elongated shape or larger surface area are associated with increased flight efficiency in a wide range of animals from insects to birds.1,2,3,4 Inter- and intra-specific variation in these attributes of wing shape is determined by a range of factors-including foraging ecology, migration, and climatic seasonality5,6,7,8-all of which may drive latitudinal gradients in wing morphology.9,10 A separate hypothesis predicts that wing shape should also follow an elevational gradient5,11 because air density declines with altitude,12 altering the aerodynamics of flight and driving the evolution of more efficient wings in high-elevation species to compensate for reduced lift.13,14,15 Although previous analyses have shown a tendency for longer or larger wings at higher elevations, at least locally,16,17,18,19,20 it is difficult to rule out a range of alternative explanations since we currently lack a global synthesis of elevational gradients in wing shape for any taxonomic group. In this study, we use phylogenetic models to explore elevational effects on metrics of wing morphology linked to aerodynamic function in 9,982 bird species while simultaneously controlling for multiple climatic factors and ecological attributes of species. We found that relative wing elongation (hand-wing index) and wing area increase with elevation, even when accounting for latitude, temperature seasonality, body mass, habitat, aerial lifestyle, and altitudinal migration. These results confirm a pervasive elevational gradient in avian wing morphology and suggest that aerodynamic constraints linked to air density, perhaps coupled with oxygen deficiency, contribute to global patterns of trait evolution in flying animals.

  • Journal article
    Sadaf A, Yun HS, Lee H, Stanfield S, Lan B, Salomon K, Woubshete M, Kim S, Ehsan M, Bae H, Byrne B, Loland CJ, Liu X, Guan L, Im W, Chae PSet al., 2025,

    Multiple Pendants-Bearing Triglucosides for Membrane Protein Studies: Effects of Pendant Length and Number on Micelle Interior Hydration and Protein Stability.

    , Biomacromolecules

    Membrane proteins play central roles in cell physiology and are the targets of over 50% of FDA-approved drugs. In the present study, we prepared single alkyl-chained triglucosides decorated with multiple pendants, designated multiple pendant-bearing glucosides (MPGs), to enhance membrane protein stability. The new detergents feature two and four pendants of varying size at the hydrophilic-lipophilic interfaces, designated MPG-Ds and MPG-Ts, respectively. When tested with model membrane proteins, including the human adrenergic receptor (β2AR), the tetra-pendant-bearing MPGs (MPG-Ts) demonstrated superior performance compared to the dipendant analogs (MPG-Ds) and the gold standard DDM. All-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations results reveal that the four-pendant configuration of this detergent is remarkably effective in excluding water from the hydrophobic micelle interiors compared to the dipendant MPGs and DDM, an unprecedented feature of this new detergent. Our findings provide a novel strategy for designing water-resistant detergents, advancing the field of membrane protein research.

  • Journal article
    Dodds IL, Watts EC, Schuster M, Buscaill P, Tumas Y, Holton NJ, Song S, Stuttmann J, Joosten MHAJ, Bozkurt T, van der Hoorn RALet al., 2025,

    Immunity gene silencing increases transient protein expression in Nicotiana benthamiana.

    , Plant Biotechnol J
  • Journal article
    Potapova N, Whitford H, Hodge J, Price Eet al., 2025,

    Optimal Weight Loss of Pink Pigeon (Nesoenas mayeri) Eggs During Incubation

    , Zoo Biology, ISSN: 0733-3188
  • Journal article
    Franks NP, Wisden W, 2025,

    Reply to: A curious concept of CNS clearance.

    , Nat Neurosci

This data is extracted from the Web of Science and reproduced under a licence from Thomson Reuters. You may not copy or re-distribute this data in whole or in part without the written consent of the Science business of Thomson Reuters.

Request URL: http://www.imperial.ac.uk:80/respub/WEB-INF/jsp/search-t4-html.jsp Request URI: /respub/WEB-INF/jsp/search-t4-html.jsp Query String: id=1200&limit=30&resgrpMemberPubs=true&respub-action=search.html Current Millis: 1745226638576 Current Time: Mon Apr 21 10:10:38 BST 2025

Postgraduate research

Interested in studying a PhD at the Department of Life Sciences? Find out more about postgraduate research opportunties.