Frailty syndrome is a medical condition that is characterised by a functional decline, usually from 65 years old on, and creates the need for assistance to perform daily living activities. As the population ages, the need for specialised geriatric care will increase immensely, and consequently, the need for specialised services for the care of these people will increase accordingly. From a nutritional point of view, to control or balance the nutritional status of residents will be essential in order to prevent sarcopenia and, consequently, frailty development. In this line, previous studies have highlighted the association among low energy intake, inadequate intake of protein and vitamin D, and an increased risk of frailty development. However, there is a lack of intervention studies on frail patients, especially in the realm of quality clinical trials. The few studies performed to date seem to indicate that there is a protective role of protein supplementation against frailty syndrome. In this regard, it is tempting to suggest daily 30 g protein supplements to prevent frailty. However, it is well established that excess protein can also be harmful; therefore, specific individual characteristics should be considered before prescribing these supplements. On the other hand, the relevance of other nutritional interventions, such as vitamin D, omega-3, and medium-chain triglycerides, is much more scarce in the literature. Therefore, we encourage the development of new clinical trials to carry out effective therapies to prevent frailty development.
1. Theoretical models indicate that the structure of plant-pollinator networks has important implications for the reproduction and survival of species. However, despite the growing information on the mechanisms underlying such a structure, it is still difficult to predict the functional consequences of species' structural positions in these networks. From the plant perspective, species position and roles in pollination networks might be related to traits describing flower attractiveness, availability and dependence on pollinators. In turn, both network metrics and plant traits might influence plant species fitness.
Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus develop in the same aquatic sites where they encounter microorganisms that influence their life history and capacity to transmit human arboviruses. Some bacteria such as Wolbachia are currently being considered for the control of Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika. Yet little is known about the dynamics and diversity of Aedes -associated bacteria, including larval habitat features that shape their tempo-spatial distribution. We applied large-scale 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to 960 adults and larvae of both Ae . aegypti and Ae . albopictus mosquitoes from 59 sampling sites widely distributed across nine provinces of Panama. We find both species share a limited, yet highly variable core microbiota, reflecting high stochasticity within their oviposition habitats. Despite sharing a large proportion of microbiota, Ae . aegypti harbours higher bacterial diversity than Ae . albopictus , primarily due to rarer bacterial groups at the larval stage. We find significant differences between the bacterial communities of larvae and adult mosquitoes, and among samples from metal and ceramic containers. However, we find little support for geography, water temperature and pH as predictors of bacterial associates. We report a low incidence of natural Wolbachia infection for both Aedes and its geographical distribution. This baseline information provides a foundation for studies on the functions and interactions of Aedes -associated bacteria with consequences for bio-control within Panama.
Background The long-distance dispersal of the invasive disease vectors Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus has introduced arthropod-borne viruses into new geographical regions, causing a significant medical and economic burden. The used-tire industry is an effective means of Aedes dispersal, yet studies to determine Aedes occurrence and the factors influencing their distribution along local transport networks are lacking. To assess infestation along the primary transport network of Panama we documented all existing garages that trade used tires on the highway and surveyed a subset for Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus . We also assess the ability of a mass spectrometry approach to classify mosquito eggs by comparing our findings to those based on traditional larval surveillance. Results Both Aedes species had a high infestation rate in garages trading used tires along the highways, providing a conduit for rapid dispersal across Panama. However, generalized linear models revealed that the presence of Ae. aegypti is associated with an increase in road density by a log-odds of 0.44 (0.73 ± 0.16; P = 0.002), while the presence of Ae. albopictus is associated with a decrease in road density by a log-odds of 0.36 (0.09 ± 0.63; P = 0.008). Identification of mosquito eggs by mass spectrometry depicted similar occurrence patterns for both Aedes species as that obtained with traditional rearing methods. Conclusions Garages trading used tires along highways should be targeted for the surveillance and control of Aedes -mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit. The identification of mosquito eggs using mass spectrometry allows for the rapid evaluation of Aedes presence, affording time and cost advantages over traditional vector surveillance; this is of importance for disease risk assessment. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13071-019-3522-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Understanding the effects of landscape fragmentation on global bumblebee declines requires going beyond estimates of abundance and richness and evaluating changes in community composition and trophic and competitive interactions. We studied the effects of forest fragmentation in a Scandinavian landscape that combines temperate forests and croplands. for that, we evaluated how forest fragmentation features (patch size, isolation and shape complexity, percentage of forest in the surroundings) as well as local flowering communities influenced bumblebee abundance, richness and community composition in 24 forest patches along a fragmentation gradient. In addition, we assessed the effect of fragmentation on bumblebee-plant network specialization (H 2 ′), and potential inter-and intraspecific competition via shared plants. Patch isolation was associated with lower bumblebee abundance, whereas flower density was positively related to both bumblebee abundance and richness. overall, forest fragmentation reduced the abundance of forest-specialists while increasing the abundance of open-habitat species. Patches with complex shapes and few flowers showed more generalized bumblebee-plant networks (i.e., fewer specific interactions). Patch shape complexity and the percentage of forest also modified inter-and intraspecific competitive interactions, with habitat generalists outcompeting forest specialists in fragmented areas. Understanding these mechanisms is necessary to anticipate to the impact of forest fragmentation on bumblebee decline.
Maintaining the diversity of wild bees is a priority for preserving ecosystem function and promoting stability and productivity of agroecosystems. However, wild bee communities face many threats and beekeeping could be one of them, because honey bees may have a strong potential to outcompete wild pollinators when placed at high densities. Yet, we still know little about how beekeeping intensity affects wild bee diversity and their pollinator interactions. Here, we explore how honey bee density relates to wild bee diversity and the structure of their pollination networks in 41 sites on 13 Cycladic Islands (Greece) with similar landscapes but differing in beekeeping intensity. Our large‐scale study shows that increasing honey bee visitation rate had a negative effect on wild bee species richness and abundance, although the latter effect was relatively weak compared to the effect of other landscape variables. Competition for flowering resources (as indicated by a resource sharing index) increased with the abundance of honey bees, but the effect was more moderate for wild bees in family Apidae than for bees in other families, suggesting a stronger niche segregation in Apidae in response to honey bees. Honey bees also influenced the structure of wild bee pollination networks indirectly, through changes in wild bee richness. Low richness of wild bees in sites with high honey bee abundance resulted in wild bee networks with fewer links and lower linkage density. Our results warn against beekeeping intensification in these islands and similar hotspots of bee diversity, and shed light on how benefits to pollination services of introducing honey bees may be counterbalanced by detriments to wild bees and their ecosystem services.
Understanding how pollination services can be maintained in increasingly anthropogenic landscapes is a current challenge for basic and applied ecology. The stability of plant-pollinator communities might increase in heterogeneous landscapes with a high diversity of species and alternative habitats, both through larger independent fluctuations of populations (portfolio effect) and increased species asynchrony. However, how the drivers of stability (portfolio effect and synchrony) vary along land-use gradients remains largely unknown. Using independent samplings for plants, pollinators and their interactions in Mediterranean communities along a gradient of landscape heterogeneity, we assessed the relationships between within-year stability and its drivers, and between the drivers of stability, landscape heterogeneity and species diversity. In addition, we evaluated the relationship between the stability of plant-pollinator interactions (temporal mean/SD of pairwise interactions) and the structure of mutualistic networks (modularity, nestedness, connectance). As expected, stability increased with larger portfolio effects and asynchronies. Interaction stability was positively related to pollinator stability, but not to plant stability. Landscape evenness increased the stability of plants, pollinators and their interactions, through increased portfolio effects. However, for plants and pollinators, the effect was detected at a smaller scale (1-km) than for interactions (2-km); and for pollinators and interactions, the effect was only evident from medium-to-high levels of landscape evenness. Temporal synchrony of species/pairwise interactions was an important driver of stability, tightly linked to species/interaction diversity. More asynchronous communities showed a larger portfolio effect and were also those with higher species evenness for all plants, pollinators and their interactions; while synchrony was also weakly positively related to species richness for plants. Interestingly, more modular mutualistic network structures conferred enhanced overall community stability, through higher portfolio effect and asynchrony. Preserving diverse communities within the heterogeneous Mediterranean landscapes may help maintain the stability of pollination services, both through effects on synchrony and the portfolio effect.
There is an urgent need in multinational studies for efficient and sensitive tests for the evaluation of dementias. These tests are used to investigate the regional characteristics of dementias, providing possible insight into the different etiologies of the disorders. These tests are also utilized to assess the outcome of treatment interventions at multinational levels. We validated and standardized the Syndrom Kurztest, a brief European neuropsychological test, in a population of elderly Chileans, possessing high levels of illiteracy. In our sample, the SKT was found to be an effective instrument for the diagnosis of dementias, and for differentiating mild-moderate from severe degrees of the disease. There was a good correlation between the scores on the SKT and the age of the participants, but the gender and the years of schooling had no effect. The test is a useful contribution to the study of dementias, found in the aging developing world, particularly because it can be used in illiterate populations.
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