Archives

reine termite

How do termite queens and kings stay healthy for decades?

Reproductive and worker castes of termites differ greatly in their morphology and behavior but also in their fertility and longevity. Kings and queens of the highly social termite, Macrotermes natalensis, live for decades, with the queen laying thousands of eggs per day. Workers are sterile and only live a few weeks. In our HFSP project, we investigated the regulatory mechanisms involved in generating such diverse phenotypes. Our previous results indicate that well-regulated transcription allows reproductive castes to overcome simultaneously several well-known hallmarks of aging.

“EcoEvo” Department, “ESEAE” Team, Published!, Research news
Lire la suite / Read more
Juvénile de Zootoca vivipara

Lizards from warm and declining populations are born with extremely short telomeres

This study unraveled the impacts of accelerated aging pace as a corollary of climate-driven population decline. We found transgenerational accumulation of telomere shortening implying that offspring were already born “old”. We suggest that this process may exacerbate across generations, leading to an aging loop in the population. This model posits that telomere dynamics should represent a molecular biomarker of extirpation, and likely a central cause and promising solution for future biodiversity managing actions.

“EcoEvo” Department, “EPE” Team, “VPA” Team, CNRS, Published!, Research news, Tutors news
Lire la suite / Read more
Ver plat - Diversibipalium_multilineatum#/media/Fichier:Figure_11_(PeerJ_4672)_-_Diversibipalium_multilineatum wikipedia

The invasion of hammerhead flatworms is not over yet

In the the last years, predatory land flatworms have been introduced in many locations because of the trade of exotic plants. In this article published in Diversity and Distributions, a collaboration between iEES Paris, the National Museum of Natural History and James Cook University aimed to model the global invasion risk of these species. It turns out that they have not colonised all regions at risk yet, which demonstrates a need for increased vigilance in these areas.

"DCFE" Department, “BioDIS” Team, Paris Est Créteil University, Published!, Research news
Lire la suite / Read more
agroforesterie

Cirad – Crop diversification enhances yields, biodiversity and ecosystem services

The article, published in Global Change Biology on 18 July 2021, assembles for the first time a substantial body of empirical evidence on the positive impacts of cultivated biodiversity on agroecosystems.
Crop diversification was found to enhance crop production by 14% and associated biodiversity by almost 25%. Water quality was improved by 50%, pest and disease control by over 63% and soil quality by 11%.

"DCFE" Department, “EMS” Team, INRAE, Published!, Research news
Lire la suite / Read more
mésange

A stressful life in the city affects birds’ genes

Great tits living in cities are genetically different from great tits in the countryside. This is what researchers have found in a unique study, where they examined populations of great tits in nine large European cities.

The researchers compared the city bird genes with the genes of their relatives in the countryside. It did not matter if the great tits lived in Milan, Malmö or Madrid: in order to handle an environment created by humans, the birds evolved in a similar way.

“EcoEvo” Department, “EPE” Team, Published!, Research news, Sorbonne University
Lire la suite / Read more
papillon

Habitat fragmentation prevents species from tracking climate change

Climate changeaffectsbiodiversity globally, by forcing species to shift their distribution to track the changes in temperature. An international collaboration between scientists from France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland shows, in an article published in the journal Ecology Letters,that habitat fragmentation caused by human activity affects distribution shifts in butterfly species and, hence, their capacity to cope with climate change.

"DCFE" Department, “BioDIS” Team, Paris Est Créteil University, Published!, Research news
Lire la suite / Read more