Higher developmental temperature increases queen production and decreases worker body size in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris

Climate change and increasing average temperatures are now affecting most ecosystems. Social insects such as bumblebees are especially impacted because these changes create spatial, temporal and morphological mismatches that could impede their ability to find food resources and mate. However, few studies have assessed how the colony and life cycle are affected when temperatures rise above optimal rearing temperature. It has become imperative to understand how heat stress affects the life history traits of insect pollinators as well as how changes in life history interact with other traits like morphology. For example, a decrease in the number of foraging workers could be balanced by producing larger workers, able to forage at longer distances and gather more resources. Here, we investigated the impact of temperature on colony production and body size in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. Colonies were exposed to two temperatures: 25 °C, which is around the optimal temperature for larval development and 33 °C, which is slightly above the set-point that is considered stressful for bumblebees. Although the production of males and workers wasn’t significantly affected by these different temperatures, queen production and reproductive investment were much higher for colonies placed in 33 °C than in 25 °C. We also found that, in agreement with the temperature-size rule, workers were significantly smaller in the higher temperature. The decrease in worker body size could affect resource collection and pollination if their foraging distance and the quantity of food they are taking back to the colony decreases. While in our controlled conditions the bumblebees were fed ad libitum, the decrease of resource collection in field conditions could prevent colonies from producing as many queens as in our study. Together with the decrease of worker body size, our results suggest that elevated temperatures could ultimately have a negative impact on bumblebee colony fitness. Indeed, smaller workers are known to have weaker flight performance which could affect foraging performance and consequently colony development.

PSIX-22 Assessment of the influence of IGF2 gene polymorphism in boars on economically significant traits

Studies of polymorphism in the IGF2 gene are of interest due to their association with economically useful traits in pigs. The aim of this work was to study the effect of IGF2 polymorphism on the variability of meat and fattening traits in pigs and to control the preservation of high reproductive qualities. The genotyping was performed using RT-PCR approaches were generated on the genetic resource collection of the L.K. Ernst Federal Research Center for Animal Husbandry. The total of 272 Large White (LW) and 301 Landrace (L) boars was investigated. Genotypes have been identified: at LW AA 73.5%, AG 23.2%, GG 3.3%; for L AA 10.3%, AG 35.2%, GG 54.5%. Reproductive performance evaluated on 22082 farrows from these boars. Analysis of productivity data was performed taking advantage of the model: y=μ+Breed+IGF2+Breed×IGF2+e, where y is the productivity index (for traits: weight at start of the test (BWs), weight at the end of the test (BWe), age of reaching 100 kg (AGE100), average daily gain (ADG), fat thickness (BF), litter size (LS), live-born (LB) and stillborn piglets (SB), the number of weaned piglets (Wean), the weaning weight (WWT), µ is the total average for a sample of n animals; Breed - the influence of the breed factor; IGF2 - gene factor effect; Breed×IGF2 - factor interaction effect; e - error. A significant effect of the IGF2 gene on variability was revealed at P < 0.001 BWe, ADG, LS, LB, Wean, WWT, at P < 0.01 on BWs, AGE100; when factors interact at P < 0.001 on ADG, AGE100, Wean, WWT, at P < 0.05 on LB. Revealed animals with genotype AA showed the best results in terms of meat and feeding qualities, as well as reproductive qualities. This research was supported by the Ministry of science and higher education No 0445-2021-0008.

Pyro Geography and Indian Quest during Anthropocene to COVID-19

Taming fire by homosapiens was one of the foremost technological advancement in the history of evolution. The homosapiens tried to tame the wild fire by locating, preserving, using as tools for hunt game, food preparation, rituals and religion, and protecting them from predators. The modern men in Anthropocene in Pyroxene period, the fire have been used for domestic, industrial, and pioneering researches to concur the earth. The type of ignition to our vast deciduous forests can be natural, accidental, out of negligence, deliberate, incendiary, agriculture purposes, resource collection, and at times cultural. Present assessment embraces the changes that occurred in the wildfire due to weather-related and anthropogenic ignited. The wild fire deaths in towns, factories and mines have been reduced for the last six years. But during the pandemic COVID-19 under the locks, shutdowns and curfews, the numbers of crowdie and industrial fires in India has abridged, but dependence on forest products for livelihood by the aboriginal people and global warming had increased numbers of forest fire in India. There are also increased electrocution fatalities in different hospitals in India due to oxygen enriched surroundings during the present Pandemic.

Selective recruitment for pollen and nectar sources in honeybees

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) use cues and signals to recruit nestmates to profitable food sources. Here we investigate whether the type of resource advertised within the colony (i.e., pollen or nectar) correlates with the recruits’ choices at the feeding site. We observed that pollen recruits preferred to collect pollen once arrived for the first time at the feeding site, while nectar recruits preferred to forage sucrose solutions. Bees recruited by foragers carrying both resources show intermediate preferences. Studying the plasticity of this response, we found that nectar recruits have a low probability of switching to pollen collection, yet pollen recruits were likely to switch to sucrose solution of increasing concentrations. Our results show that cues associated with the advertised resource type correlate with recruits foraging tendency for pollen and sucrose solution, a feature that would guarantee an efficient resource collection.

The endangered Himalayan Red Panda: first photographic evidence from its westernmost distribution range

An endangered species, the Himalayan Red Panda Ailurus fulgens is one of the most iconic and sought-after species in the world. Although a symbolic species of the Himalayas, it is threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation, and poaching. The data collection was carried out in accordance with the Red Panda community-based monitoring protocol. Threats to the Himalayan Red Panda within the study area are reported based on key informant interviews and direct field observation. This paper provides new evidence for the presence of Himalayan Red Pandas beyond their previously-known westernmost limit (81.687778°E) across its distribution range. An average encounter rate of 0.92 signs/km was recorded from the surveyed community forests. Trees were the most preferred substrates used for defecation. Extensive resource collection, poaching, overgrazing and forest fires are identified as some of the most significant threats. In general, the study contributes to the conservation of the Himalayan Red Panda in western distribution ranges.

EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF E-RESOURCES

The concept of 'library management' has been changing dramatically with the increase in the demand of academic inputs in education, policy planning, advocacy and day to day life. Shifting from 'print resource collection' to 'e-resource collection' no doubt makes the library more users friendly but on'the other hand it also emerges as a challenge before the library professionals to manage these resources due to its rapid adoption. E-resources management is one of the important components of library development. After automation and digitisation of library resources, there is a challenge for library professional to manage this tremendous increase ofc-resources. The voluminous e-resonrce can easily be managed through ERM system.

Selective network discovery via deep reinforcement learning on embedded spaces

Complex networks are often either too large for full exploration, partially accessible, or partially observed. Downstream learning tasks on these incomplete networks can produce low quality results. In addition, reducing the incompleteness of the network can be costly and nontrivial. As a result, network discovery algorithms optimized for specific downstream learning tasks given resource collection constraints are of great interest. In this paper, we formulate the task-specific network discovery problem as a sequential decision-making problem. Our downstream task is selective harvesting, the optimal collection of vertices with a particular attribute. We propose a framework, called network actor critic (NAC), which learns a policy and notion of future reward in an offline setting via a deep reinforcement learning algorithm. The NAC paradigm utilizes a task-specific network embedding to reduce the state space complexity. A detailed comparative analysis of popular network embeddings is presented with respect to their role in supporting offline planning. Furthermore, a quantitative study is presented on various synthetic and real benchmarks using NAC and several baselines. We show that offline models of reward and network discovery policies lead to significantly improved performance when compared to competitive online discovery algorithms. Finally, we outline learning regimes where planning is critical in addressing sparse and changing reward signals.

Evaluating capital assets in governing protected area co-management in the Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh

Co-management in the Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary was evaluated to assess how fairly capital assets were considered in the beneficiary selection, and to what extent it affected vegetation cover. A semi-structured questionnaire survey was employed to collect necessary information along with satellite images. The study revealed that many variables of social capital and a few variables of natural and financial capital played a significant role in the participant selection process. Analysis of dependency showed that the participants did not rely significantly on the forest both in terms of resource collection and their monetary value implying that the most dependent people were not adequately represented in the co-management team. The dominance of local leaders suppressed the voices of others in the management venture. An increase in forest vegetation cover was observed during the project period, although shortly after the end of co-management projects a slight deterioration of forest cover was noted. The findings of the study can serve as a guide in the future application of community forestry programmes in protected areas of Bangladesh and elsewhere in the world within similar socio-physiographic settings.

Can Animals Refer? Meta-Positioning Studies of Animal Semantics

This meta-study applies a socio-semiotic framework combining five basic communicational aspects, form, content, act, time, and space, developed to help answering the question Can animals refer? It further operates with four levels, sign, utterance, genre, and lifeworld, studying relations between utterance and genre in particular. Semantic key terms found in an excerpted ‘resource collection’ consisting of three anthologies, two academic journals, and a monography, studying content in animal communication, are inspected, and discussed, especially information, functional reference, and reference. Since a temporary inspection concluded that the field seems unable to give convincing joint answers, the scope of the meta-study was extended to include critical investigations of implicit communicational epistemologies applied in the sources. Two major challenges were brought to surface. Firstly, the problem of conflicting interrelatedness in animal utterances (parts versus whole). Positioning analyses revealed that theories and project-designs were mostly dyadic, prioritising form/content, content/function, or function/form, and rarely form/content/function, as a whole. The second concerned the issue of functional openness of animal communication systems. The meta-study found that more recent studies tend to reduce an essentialist search for ‘clear’ categories in favor of more complex designs, where focus is less on references in utterances as such and more on a species’ communicational system. This shift in turn leads to a problematisation of the role of context, kinds of communication (life-genres) and semantic levels in animal utterances, in other words, on animal communication for particular species as a whole.