scholarly journals Behaviour, morphology and microhabitat use: what drives individual niche variation?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 20190266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul Costa-Pereira ◽  
Jonathan Pruitt
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Microhabitat Use ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Niche Variation ◽  
Key Driver

Generalist populations are often composed of individuals each specialized on only a subset of the resources exploited by the entire population. However, the traits underlying such niche variation remain underexplored. Classically, ecologists have focused on understanding why populations vary in their degree of intraspecific niche variation, with less attention paid to how individual-level traits lead to intraspecific differences in niches. We investigated how differences in behaviour, morphology and microhabitat affect niche variation between and within individuals in two species of spider Anelosimus studiosus and Theridion murarium . Our results convey that behaviour (i.e. individual aggressiveness) was a key driver of intraspecific trophic variation in both species. More aggressive individuals capture more prey, but particularly more Coleoptera, Hymenoptera and Diptera. These findings suggest that behavioural traits play a critical role in determining individuals' diet and that behaviour can be a powerful force in driving intraspecific niche variation.

Trust in scientists in times of pandemic: Panel evidence from 12 countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (40) ◽  
pp. e2108576118
Author(s):  
Yann Algan ◽  
Daniel Cohen ◽  
Eva Davoine ◽  
Martial Foucault ◽  
Stefanie Stantcheva
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Individual Support ◽  
Compliant Behavior ◽  
Paradoxical Effects ◽  
The Government ◽  
Nonpharmaceutical Interventions

This article analyzes the specific and critical role of trust in scientists on both the support for and compliance with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit large-scale, longitudinal, and representative surveys for 12 countries over the period from March to December 2020, and we complement the analysis with experimental data. We find that trust in scientists is the key driving force behind individual support for and compliance with NPIs and for favorable attitudes toward vaccination. The effect of trust in government is more ambiguous and tends to diminish support for and compliance with NPIs in countries where the recommendations from scientists and the government were not aligned. Trust in others also has seemingly paradoxical effects: in countries where social trust is high, the support for NPIs is low due to higher expectations that others will voluntary social distance. Our individual-level longitudinal data also allows us to evaluate the effects of within-person changes in trust over the pandemic: we show that trust levels and, in particular, trust in scientists have changed dramatically for individuals and within countries, with important subsequent effects on compliant behavior and support for NPIs. Such findings point out the challenging but critical need to maintain trust in scientists during a lasting pandemic that strains citizens and governments.

scholarly journals Evolutionary rescue and the coexistence of generalist and specialist competitors: an experimental test

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1821) ◽  
pp. 20151932 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Bono ◽  
Catharine L. Gensel ◽  
David W. Pfennig ◽  
Christina L. Burch
Keyword(s):  
Resource Use ◽  
Competitive Exclusion ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sufficient Time ◽  
Adaptive Diversification ◽  
Evolutionary Rescue ◽  
Novel Host ◽  
Key Driver ◽  
Competition For Resources

Competition for resources is thought to play a critical role in both the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. Although numerous laboratory evolution experiments have confirmed that competition can be a key driver of adaptive diversification, few have demonstrated its role in the maintenance of the resulting diversity. We investigate the conditions that favour the origin and maintenance of alternative generalist and specialist resource-use phenotypes within the same population. Previously, we confirmed that competition for hosts among φ 6 bacteriophage in a mixed novel (non-permissive) and ancestral (permissive) host microcosm triggered the evolution of a generalist phenotype capable of infecting both hosts. However, because the newly evolved generalists tended to competitively exclude the ancestral specialists, coexistence between the two phenotypes was rare. Here, we show that reducing the relative abundance of the novel host slowed the increase in frequency of the generalist phenotype, allowing sufficient time for the specialist to further adapt to the ancestral host. This adaptation resulted in ‘evolutionary rescue’ of the specialists, preventing their competitive exclusion by the generalists. Thus, our results suggest that competition promotes both the origin and maintenance of biodiversity when it is strong enough to favour a novel resource-use phenotype, but weak enough to allow adaptation of both the novel and ancestral phenotypes to their respective niches.

scholarly journals Retraction: Behaviour, morphology and microhabitat use: what drives individual niche variation?

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 20200588
Author(s):  
Raul Costa-Pereira ◽  
Jonathan Pruitt
Keyword(s):  
Microhabitat Use ◽  
Niche Variation

INVASIVE YET INEVITABLE? PRIVACY NORMALIZATION TRENDS IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sejin Paik ◽  
Kate K. Mays ◽  
Rebecca F. Giovannetti ◽  
James E. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Technology Acceptance ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Dna Collection ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Using Data

In the last few years, smart security and physical identification technologies have grown exponentially; people are increasingly installing smart video devices to monitor their homes and buying DNA kits to collect and analyze their genetics. As the number of users and profits of these businesses increase, so too does the potential for privacy violations and exploitation. To explore these dynamics of privacy in emerging technology, we conducted a U.S. nationally representative survey (N=1,587) and asked respondents for their perceptions of a number of emerging technologies such as facial recognition, DNA collection and biometrics monitoring. We also measured individual-level traits that have been found to influence technology acceptance. The results show that the actor wielding the technology matters for people’s acceptance. Respondents were overall more comfortable with public officials and airlines using more invasive technologies to guarantee people’s safety, as compared to private companies or non-profits using data for research. When keeping the actor constant across privacy technologies, there was an overwhelming preference for less invasive means of privacy data sharing. These findings indicate how the concept of normalization, social context and agents of control play a critical role in the way people accept emerging technology into their lives.

scholarly journals School Effectiveness in Multilingual Education: A Review of Success Factors

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Laura Kirss ◽  
Ülle Säälik ◽  
Äli Leijen ◽  
Margus Pedaste
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Student Success ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
School Effectiveness ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
School Level ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Multilingual Education ◽  
School Effectiveness Research

School effectiveness research (SER) and bi/multilingual education research have been largely developed as separate research paradigms. Hence, SER research does not facilitate clear conclusions on bi/multilingual (the term ‘multilingual’ is used henceforth) education and its effectiveness. Despite the intensification of multilingual education research over the last four decades, only a few authors and studies have focused on offering a compact overview of what factors need to be in place for the programs to be effective. These works are neither recent nor systematic. In this article, we aim to contribute to this research gap by systematically reviewing the research evidence on specific factors explaining multilingual student success in multilingual education programs. The findings of this systematic literature review integrate the current evidence regarding the critical factors conducive to student success in multilingual education. The results reveal that the reviewed studies mostly discussed school level factors and only occasionally talked about state/regional or individual level factors. We also underscore the critical role of leadership in making multilingual education successful. The implications of this review are twofold: by using a conceptual framework to discuss the success factors, the interdependence of the variables shaping multilingual education is highlighted, while the results collect the latest evidence for decision makers in multilingual education.

scholarly journals Is the German Academic Profession on Metrification Autopilot? A Study of 25 Years of Publication Outputs

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Schneijderberg ◽  
Lars Müller ◽  
Nicolai Götze
Keyword(s):  
Academic Culture ◽  
Academic Profession ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Key Driver ◽  
Voluntary Commitment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control

Given their constitutionally guaranteed academic freedom, German academics are not forced by law to metrify their research outputs, but they do still practice metrification – one could say on autopilot. The metrification autopilot mode captures the voluntary commitment of a substantial part of the German academic profession to socio-calculative valuation, evaluation and valorization practices in the governance and control of higher education institutions (HEI), of disciplines and at the individual level. The effects of the metrification autopilot, in terms of auto-metrification in individual academics’ publication behavior, are studied empirically using three surveys (1992, 2007 and 2018). On the individual level, the metrification autopilot is observed as a trend among all full professors. Among non-full professors, the most metrified publication outputs are produced by academics who have been in their positions for more than 13 years. Accordingly, socialization into metrified status/reputation-seeking and status/reputation-keeping academic culture seems to take about 12 years. On the organizational level, we observe the metrification autopilot trend on the basis of the correlation between journal articles and HEIs’ policy of strong metrified performance recognition. On the discipline level, the metrification autopilot trend is observable in the way that humanities and social sciences scholars adapt to the peer-reviewed journal publication paradigm of the natural sciences, which is a key driver for transforming science and HEIs into a “socio-calculative environment” (Vormbusch 2012) of valuation, evaluation and valorization.

Conceptualizing intragroup and intergroup dynamics within a controlled crowd evacuation

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terra Elzie, ME ◽  
Erika Frydenlund, MS ◽  
Andrew J. Collins, PhD ◽  
R. Michael Robinson, PhD
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Group Behavior ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Crowd Modeling ◽  
The Individual

Social dynamics play a critical role in successful pedestrian evacuations. Crowd modeling research has made progress in capturing the way individual and group dynamics affect evacuations; however, few studies have simultaneously examined how individuals and groups interact with one another during egress. To address this gap, the researchers present a conceptual agent-based model (ABM) designed to study the ways in which autonomous, heterogeneous, decision-making individuals negotiate intragroup and intergroup behavior while exiting a large venue. A key feature of this proposed model is the examination of the dynamics among and between various groupings, where heterogeneity at the individual level dynamically affects group behavior and subsequently group/group interactions. ABM provides a means of representing the important social factors that affect decision making among diverse social groups. Expanding on the 2013 work of Vizzari et al., the researchers focus specifically on social factors and decision making at the individual group and group/group levels to more realistically portray dynamic crowd systems during a pedestrian evacuation. By developing a model with individual, intragroup, and intergroup interactions, the ABM provides a more representative approximation of real-world crowd egress. The simulation will enable more informed planning by disaster managers, emergency planners, and other decision makers. This pedestrian behavioral concept is one piece of a larger simulation model. Future research will build toward an integrated model capturing decision-making interactions between pedestrians and vehicles that affect evacuation outcomes.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AS A POLITICAL RESOURCE: REVISITING THE KOREAN DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-98
Author(s):  
Joon Nak Choi ◽  
Ji Yeon Hong
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Party System ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Political Party System

AbstractIn this paper, we study how political parties react to democratic transitions. We find that the structure of legislators’ social networks plays a critical role in shaping their political interactions during the transition period, and consequently, the post-transition party systems that emerge. We focus on the Korean case, where the incumbent authoritarian party merged with one of its pro-democracy opponents to create a powerful and enduring conservative party under democratic rule. Using a novel individual-level dataset on all legislative members during the transition, we find that the merger was facilitated by dense social networks linking members of the merged parties, which increased trust across the parties and reduced the difficulty of a merger. Conversely, we find that the paucity of ties linking pro-democracy parties hindered their long-term cooperation, despite their shared ideologies and policy goals. The study complements existing theories by providing a network-based explanation for the weakly institutionalized political party system that has characterized Korean politics since democratization.

scholarly journals Deep integrative models for large-scale human genomics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnor Ingi Sigurdsson ◽  
David Westergaard ◽  
Ole Winther ◽  
Ole Lund ◽  
Søren Brunak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Measurement Data ◽  
Risk Scores ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Automatic Integration ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Clinical Measurements

Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are expected to play a critical role in achieving precision medicine. PRS predictors are generally based on linear models using summary statistics, and more recently individual- level data. However, these predictors generally only capture additive relationships and are limited when it comes to what type of data they use. Here, we develop a deep learning framework (EIR) for PRS prediction which includes a model, genome-local-net (GLN), we specifically designed for large scale genomics data. The framework supports multi-task (MT) learning, automatic integration of clinical and biochemical data and model explainability. GLN outperforms LASSO for a wide range of diseases, particularly autoimmune disease which have been researched for interaction effects. We showcase the flexibility of the framework by training one MT model to predict 338 diseases simultaneously. Furthermore, we find that incorporating measurement data for PRSs improves performance for virtually all (93%) diseases considered (ROC-AUC improvement up to 0.36) and that including genotype data provides better model calibration compared to measurements alone. We use the framework to analyse what our models learn and find that they learn both relevant disease variants and clinical measurements. EIR is open source and available at https://github.com/arnor-sigurdsson/EIR.

scholarly journals Religion and Death in the United States: A Meta-Regression Comparative Assessment of Between-County Mortality Heterogeneity in the United States

2022 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 757
Author(s):  
Frances Sissamis ◽  
Karina Villalba ◽  
Jordan Garcia ◽  
Vickie Melus ◽  
Emily J. Markentell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Population Health ◽  
Clinical Care ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Population Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Health Factors ◽  
Meta Regression

Religion can have a favorable impact on individual-level health. The influence of religion on population health, however, remains less clear. This study investigated the association between religion and mortality at the population-level. Using county data, a meta-regression was performed to examine between-county mortality heterogeneity. The percent heterogeneity associated with religion variables were compared to demographics (i.e., place, race, language, age, and gender) and health factors (i.e., individual behaviors, clinical care, social and economic, and physical environment) as predictors of mortality. Religion was measured in terms of adherence (i.e., prevalence attending/belonging to a congregation), congregation density, and the diversity of adherents and congregation by denominations. Results showed counties with lower mortality were associated with higher proportions of religion adherents and a greater diversity of adherents and congregations. Counties with higher mortality were associated with higher religion congregation density. Religion, as a parsimonious multivariate model with all demographic and health factor predictors, had less added value when controlled for individual variables or constructs. The direction of association between religion and mortality was consistent, even when controlling for demographics and health factors, and thus merits further consideration as a population health determinant, as it may play a critical role in understanding other population health outcomes.

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