Latest Articles

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  Section: Ecology ; Topics: Ecology

  Are all waterholes equal from a lion’s view? Exploring the role of prey abundance and catchability in waterhole visitation patterns in a savannah ecosystem

  Dejeante, Romain;   Loveridge, Andrew J.; Macdonald, David W.; Madhlamoto, Daphine; Chamaillé-Jammes, Simon;   Valeix, Marion  

  10.24072/pcjournal.705 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article no. e32

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  Prey abundance and catchability shape the spatial ecology of predators. Predators can select habitats where prey are more abundant to maximize encounter rate with prey or habitats where prey are more catchable to maximize prey capture. These hypotheses are commonly referred to as prey-abundance and prey-catchability hypotheses. Although these hypotheses are often tested at the landscape scale, little is known about how between-patch variations in prey abundance and catchability determine the space use of predators. In many savannah ecosystems, large herbivores aggregate around waterholes, which become hotspots of prey and their selection by predators is classically interpreted as supporting the prey-abundance hypothesis. Here, we investigated whether between-waterhole variations in prey abundance and catchability influence the frequency and duration of lion visits to waterholes, testing the prey-abundance and prey-catchability hypotheses at the resource-patch scale. We combined datasets on (1) lion movements recorded from GPS collars deployed on 20 adult males and 16 adult females between 2002 and 2015, (2) prey abundance evaluated from long-term, regular monitoring of waterholes and (3) prey catchability evaluated from remote-sensing satellite imagery of vegetation cover around waterholes in Hwange National Park (Zimbabwe). Lions did not use all waterholes in their territory equally: there was a high variability in the frequency and duration of visits. Surprisingly, between-waterhole variations in prey abundance and catchability only slightly explained these variations in frequency – and even less in duration – of lion visits to waterholes. Yet, the frequency of lion visits to waterholes decreased with the number of waterholes within their territory, and male lions more frequently visited the waterholes surrounded by more open habitats. We discuss the limits of our work, but also the ecological mechanisms that may explain these findings. First, lions and their prey are involved in a ‘shell-game’ that leads them to adopt unpredictable movement strategies. Second, lions have only access to a limited number of waterholes amongst which to distribute their hunting effort. Lastly, lions visit waterholes not only to hunt but also to interact with social mates and competitors. This work challenges the implicit assumption that all waterholes are the same from a lion’s view and calls for further studies investigating the drivers of the variability in lion visits at the resource-patch scale.

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  Section: Microbiology ; Topics: Microbiology

  Cenote-Taker 3 for fast and accurate virus discovery and annotation of the virome

  Tisza, Michael J.;   Varsani, Arvind;   Petrosino, Joseph F.;   Cregeen, Sara J. Javornik  

  10.24072/pcjournal.706 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article no. e31

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  Viruses are abundant across all Earth's environments and infect all classes of cellular life. Despite this, viruses are something of a black box for genomics scientists. Their genetic diversity is greater than all other lifeforms combined, their genomes are often overlooked in sequencing datasets, they encode polyproteins, and no function can be inferred for a large majority of their encoded proteins. For these reasons, scientists need robust, performant, well-documented, extensible tools that can be deployed to conduct sensitive and specific analyses of sequencing data to discover virus genomes - even those with high divergence from known references - and annotate their genes. Here, we present Cenote-Taker 3. This command line interface tool processes genome assemblies and/or metagenomic assemblies with modules for virus discovery, prophage extraction, and annotation of genes and other genetic features. Benchmarks show that Cenote-Taker 3 outperforms most tools for virus gene annotation in both speed (wall time) and accuracy. For virus discovery benchmarks, Cenote-Taker 3 performs well compared to geNomad, and these tools produce complementary results. Cenote-Taker 3 is freely available on Bioconda, and its open-source code is maintained on GitHub (https://github.com/mtisza1/Cenote-Taker3).

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  Section: Registered Reports ; Topics: Psychological and cognitive sciences

  Higher Pitch, Slower Tempo, and Greater Stability in Singing than in Conversation among Mandarin speakers in Auckland: A Registered Report Replicating Ozaki et al. (2024)

  Jia, Zixuan;   Purdy, Suzanne C.;   Savage, Patrick E.  

  10.24072/pcjournal.698 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article no. e30

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  Cross-cultural research led by Ozaki et al. (2024) has revealed that songs exhibit higher pitch, lower tempo, and more stable pitches than speech. However, this research relied on solo recordings, while most singing and speaking occurs in group contexts. The present study examined the acoustic features of speech and songs among Mandarin speakers in group settings. We addressed two questions: 1 [confirmatory]) Do singing and conversation in group contexts show similar acoustic patterns to those reported by Ozaki et al. (2024)? 2 [exploratory]) Does musicianship relate to the acoustic differences between speech and song? Three groups of native Mandarin speakers (n = 20) in Auckland participated in the singing and conversation tasks (both of which involved taking turns alternating singing/speaking). We analyzed three acoustic features (pitch height, temporal rate, pitch stability) to test the confirmatory question and examined correlations between musicianship and effect sizes for the exploratory question. Our confirmatory analyses replicated and extended the findings of Ozaki et al. (2024), showing that singing exhibited significantly higher pitch (D = 1.21), slower tempo (D = 2.07), and more stable pitch (D = 0.57) than conversation among Mandarin speakers. Exploratory results suggested a trend whereby individuals with higher musicianship tended to produce greater acoustic differentiation between speech and song; additional data are needed to confirm this effect. In future work, our team will integrate data from up to 26 languages/sites included in the Stage 1 Programmatic Registered Report protocol and conduct meta-analyses to provide more comprehensive estimates of cross-cultural relationships between speech and song.

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  Section: Animal Science ; Topics: Health sciences

  Evaluation of the Collaborative Process of Public-Private Partnerships in the veterinary domain: the case of the Sanitary Mandate in Tunisia

  Dhaoui, Anissa;   Poupaud, Mariline;   Zargouni , Salma; Dieuzy-Labaye, Isabelle; Ferchiou, Ahmed ; Peyre, Marisa

  10.24072/pcjournal.655 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article no. e29

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  Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the veterinary sector are a recent development compared to human health, yet they hold significant potential for strengthening public veterinary services. Recognising this potential, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) launched the "Public Private Progress" initiative. It aims to study and promote the use of PPPs in national veterinary services. As part of this initiative, CIRAD developed a tool for assessing the quality of PPP processes, which was applied in Tunisia to evaluate the sanitary mandate, a public-private partnership, through a participatory approach. The evaluation, requested by Tunisia's General Directorate of Veterinary Services (DGSV), was conducted jointly by WOAH and CIRAD. It aimed to understand the partnership process and was based on semi-structured interviews (n=9) and group discussions (n=6) with 22 key public and private stakeholders at national and regional levels. It took place both nationally and in two governorates of central Tunisia: Sfax and Sidi Bouzid. This was the first evaluation of the sanitary mandate since its implementation in 2006, and it involved stakeholder mapping, collaborative process analysis, and the partnership’s impacts and benefits identification. The findings highlighted the PPP’s importance in achieving veterinary service strategies. However, it revealed gaps, including misalignment with the current epidemiological context and communication issues. Recommendations included enhancing regional veterinarians’ involvement in decision-making, increasing training frequency and duration, and addressing governance constraints, especially regarding financial dependency on the state for the sanitary mandate's expansion. This study underlines the importance of evaluating PPPs’ collaborative processes through participatory approaches. Such evaluations not only identify functional and organisational limitations but also support evidence-based recommendations for improving partnership performance. Stakeholder engagement in the evaluation enhances the acceptability of findings and reinforces commitment to the veterinary mandate.