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Section: Infections ; Topics: Ecology, Environmental sciences

Green cities and the risk for vector-borne disease transmission for humans and animals: a scoping review

Mercat, Mathilde; Bartholomee, Colombine; Fournet, Florence; Alcover Amengual, Magdalena; Bourquia, Maria; Bouhsira, Emilie; Cornel, Anthony; Fernandez-Cassi, Xavier; Fontenille, Didier; Ibanez-Justicia, Adolfo; Marti, Renaud; Moiroux, Nicolas; Niang, El Hadji; Smith, Woutrina; Spitzen, Jeroen; Visser, Tessa M.; Koenraadt, Constantianus J.M.; Simard, Frédéric

10.24072/pcjournal.641 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e121
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Greening cities is a nature-based strategy for sustainable urban development that integrates natural elements like plants or water bodies, to mitigate climate change impacts and enhance human well-being. However, urban green infrastructures (UGIs) can influence the distribution of disease vectors, potentially affecting vector-borne diseases (VBDs). UGIs may provide new suitable environments for urban vectors, while also creating opportunities to mitigate VBD risks through predation, competition, and dilution effects. This article examined the relationships between UGIs, vectors, and associated pathogens, impacting both human and animal health, highlighting knowledge gaps and identifying research priorities to support VBD risk mitigation measures and to guide smart urban planning and design. A systematic literature search was conducted following PRISMA guidelines in three databases (Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science). Selected articles involved (i) any aspect of a urban vector system, (ii) in UGIs, and (iii) statistical analysis of the effects of UGIs on VBD risk. Methods employed to characterize UGIs and VBDs were described and the identified impacts were summarized by vector group. Among the 98 articles reviewed, most addressed mosquito-pathogen systems (66), tick-pathogen systems (29), and few other vector-borne pathogen systems (3), with studies often confined to a single city or several cities within the same country and focused on one vector group. Urban vegetation generally appeared to heighten the risk of tick-borne diseases. In contrast, the influence of UGIs on the risk of mosquito-borne diseases varied depending on the vector system and on the environmental and climatic context. The diversity of indicators used to assess UGIs and VBD risks may affect the observed impact on VBD risk. Given the increasing popularity of urban greening, it is crucial to investigate its potential implications for public health, and thereby urban planning decisions. However, the lack of standardized protocols complicates the accurate assessment of the effects of UGIs on the risk for VBD emergence and transmission and consequently, on potential mitigation measures.
Section: Microbiology ; Topics: Ecology, Microbiology

Family life and cadmium ingestion independently shape offspring microbiomes in a subsocial insect

Cheutin, Marie-Charlotte; Honorio, Romain; Meunier, Joël

10.24072/pcjournal.642 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e120
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Symbiotic microbes are essential for host health and fitness. In family-living species, these microbes are often acquired through vertical transmission from parents and horizontal transmission from siblings. However, it is unclear how environmental stressors, such as chemical pollution, influence these contributions to the juvenile microbiome. Here, we tested the independent and interactive effects of social environment and cadmium ingestion - a highly toxic and common heavy metal pollutant - on the microbiome of juvenile European earwigs. We reared 900 juveniles either alone, with siblings or with siblings plus the mother. We exposed them to cadmium-enriched food at 0, 25 or 100mg.L^-1, and analysed their microbiome composition and diversity at the end of the family life period. Our results showed that both social environment and cadmium exposure shaped the juvenile microbial community composition (phylogenetic beta-diversity), with no evidence of an interaction between these factors. In contrast, the microbial local richness (alpha-diversity) remained unaffected by either factor or their interaction. Notably, several specific bacterial taxa, including putatively pathogenic (Serratia) and mutualistic (Lactobacillus) symbionts, were more abundant in juveniles reared with family members than in those reared in isolation, reflecting classical patterns observed in social species. Overall, our findings suggest that while both social environment and cadmium shape the microbiome of earwig juveniles, family life neither amplifies nor mitigates the effects of chemical exposure. This highlights the robustness of microbial sharing within families, even under strong environmental stress.
Section: Archaeology ; Topics: Agricultural sciences, Archaeology

Convolutional neural networks and outline analyses for archaeobotanical studies of domestication and subspecific identification

Bonhomme, Vincent; Bouby, Laurent; Claude, Julien; Dham, Camille; Gros-Balthazard, Muriel; Ivorra, Sarah; Jeanty, Angèle; Pagnoux, Clémence; Pastor, Thierry; Terral, Jean-Frédéric; Evin, Allowen

10.24072/pcjournal.647 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e119
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The identification of archaeological fruits and seeds is crucial for understanding the relationships between humans and plants within the cultural and biological history of both wild and cultivated species. We compared the relative performance of a deep learning approach, namely convolutional neural networks (CNN), and outline analyses via geometric morphometrics using elliptical Fourier transforms (EFT) at identifying pairs of plant taxa. We used their seeds and fruit stones that are the most abundant organs in archaeobotanical assemblages, and whose morphological identification, chiefly between wild and domesticated types, allows to document their domestication and biogeographical history. We used existing modern datasets of four plant taxa (barley, olive, date palm and grapevine) corresponding to photographs of two orthogonal views of their seeds that were analysed separately to offer a larger spectrum of shape diversity. Sample sizes ranged from 473 to 1,769 seeds per class, which constitute a relatively small dataset for training CNNs models yet typical within archaeobotanical research. On these eight datasets, we compared the performance of CNN and EFT coupled with linear discriminant analyses. Our objectives were twofold: i) to test whether CNN can beat geometric morphometrics in taxonomic identification and if so, ii) to test which minimal sample size is required. We ran simulations on the full datasets and also on subsets, starting from 50 images in each binary class. For the CNN network, we deliberately used a candid approach relying on pre-parameterised VGG19 network. For EFT, we used a state-of-the art morphometrical pipeline. The main difference rests in the data used by each model: our CNN used bare photographs where EFT used outline coordinates. This “pre-distilled” geometrical description of seed outlines is often the most time-consuming part of morphometric studies. Results show that our CNN beats EFT in most cases, even for very small datasets. We finally discuss the potential of CNNs for archaeobotany, and how bioarchaeological studies could embrace both approaches, used in a complementary way, to better assess and understand the past history of species.
Section: Evolutionary Biology ; Topics: Ecology, Evolution, Genetics/genomics

Experimental evidence for short term directional selection of epigenetic trait variation

Pujol, Benoit; Latutrie, Mathieu; Luviano-Aparicio, Nelia; Mouginot, Pierick; Piquet, Jésaëlle; Marin, Sara; Maury, Stéphane

10.24072/pcjournal.583 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e118
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Evolution by natural selection can occur when organisms harbor genetically inherited phenotypic variation, and phenotypic variants have differential fitness. Stable transgenerational epigenetic variation also exists for fitness-related traits and theory predicts that selection can act on this variation alone without a contribution of genetic variation. Here, we artificially selected for divergent biomass, rosette size, flowering time and height at first silique in experimental Arabidopsis thaliana populations harboring DNA methylation polymorphism in an identical genetic background. We found significant epi-allele frequency changes in response to selection. Our results show how selection rapidly changed population trait values and their epigenetic basis, over one generation of selection. Our results imply the role of the transgenerational epigenetic variation of populations as an additional source of short-term adaptive potential

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The network image was drawn by Martin Grandjean: A force-based network visualization CC BY-SA