Universidade Federal Do Para

A massive study of rainforest species across three regions of the world finds striking similarities in how animals spend their days. How do animals in the wild use their time? A researcher at Rice University is part of a new study that shows what motivates the daily ramble of tropical populations. The study by an international team that includes Rice bioscientist Lydia Beaudrot and is led by Andrea Vallejo-Vargas, a graduate student at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and currently a visiting scholar at Rice, found that communities of mammals across the wet tropics divide their days in similar ways, all generally geared toward finding their next meal. (Or avoiding being the next meal.) Using millions of images from camera trap networks in 16 protected forests around the world, they examined the relationship of mammal activities to body sizes and feeding routines to find common characteristics among diverse populations. Their open-access study in Nature Communications confirms that despite their diversity, similar patterns dominate the days of wildlife in Africa, Asia and the Americas. The study showed that the activity of herbivores and insectivores was largely influenced by temperature in the environment (in study-speak, "thermoregulatory constraints"). For instance, large African herbivores are seven times more likely to be nocturnal than smaller herbivores. Interactions between predators and prey were primarily dominated by the time of day. Within that regime, the researchers found "top-down" activities that dominate the days of prey naturally focus on not getting eaten. They avoid exposure when predators are most likely to be on the hunt. In this regard, size also matters: Small carnivores, for instance, alter their activities to reduce their encounters with large carnivores. Conversely, "bottom-up" strategies affect how predators adjust their activities to maximize encounters with prey. "As you think about a food chain, top-down refers to how higher tropic levels -- that is, predators -- affect their prey, whereas bottom-up refers to how lower trophic levels -- food sources including plants and insects -- affect the animals that eat them," said Beaudrot, an assistant professor of biosciences. "This paper is a prime example of how important it is to have standardized data collection replicated over large spatial extents," she said. "By analyzing data collected in the same way in national parks throughout the tropics, we have been able to identify similarities in behavioral activity that were previously unable to be quantified." Beaudrot provided feedback throughout the development of the research project and manuscript and advised the team on specifics of working with the camera-trap data based on her experience. She said all cameras were located well within the national parks and were set up in the best possible way to assess tropical wildlife with the least human impact. "None of the protected areas are free from human influences, but they give us the greatest chance of measuring similarities in wildlife among regions," Beaudrot said. She noted that even though species in different regions have evolved in isolation from each other, the study provides solid evidence that similar environmental conditions in rainforests around the world result in consistent activity patterns among wildlife. "This suggests that there has been convergence in animal behavior in response to rainforest environments," Beaudrot said. Co-authors of the paper are Rice visiting scholar Asunción Semper-Pascual; Douglas Sheil of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the Center for International Forestry Research Indonesia; Robert Bitariho of Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda; Jorge Ahumada of the Moore Center for Science, Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia; Emmanuel Akampurira of Ghent University, Belgium, and Mbarara University; Santiago Espinosa of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, Quito; Vittoria Estienne of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Republic of Congo; Patrick Jansen of Wageningen and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama; Charles Kayijamahe of the International Gorilla Conservation Program, Kigali, Rwanda; Emanuel Martin of the College of African Wildlife Management, Tanzania; Marcela Guimarães Moreira Lima of the Federal University of Pará, Brazil; Badru Mugerwa of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, and the Technical University of Berlin; Francesco Rovero of the University of Florence and the Science Museum of Trento, Italy; Julia Salvador of the Wildlife Conservation Society of Ecuador; Fernanda Santos of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém Pará, Brazil; Wilson Roberto Spironello of the National Institute of Amazonian Research, Brazil; Eustrate Uzabaho of the International Gorilla Conservation Program; and Richard Bischof of the Norwegian Institute of Life Sciences. The Research Council of Norway (NFR301075) and the National Science Foundation (DEB-2213568) funded the research.

An unusual type of antibody that even at miniscule levels neutralizes the Zika virus and renders the virus infection undetectable in preclinical models has been identified. An unusual type of antibody that even at miniscule levels neutralizes the Zika virus and renders the virus infection undetectable in preclinical models has been identified by a team led by Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and National Institutes of Health (NIH) investigators. Because Zika can cause birth defects when passed from a pregnant person to their fetus, this discovery could lead to the development of therapies to protect babies from the potentially devastating effects of this disease. In research published Nov. 18 in Cell, the investigators isolated an ultrapotent immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibody -- a five-armed immune protein that latches onto the virus -- using blood cells taken from pregnant people infected with Zika. In experiments with mice, they determined that the antibody not only protected the animals from otherwise lethal infections, but also suppressed the virus to the point that it could not be detected in their blood. Zika is currently circulating at low levels in many tropical countries, but that will inevitably change, according to co-senior author Dr. Sallie Permar, the Nancy C. Paduano Professor in Pediatrics and chair of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine and pediatrician-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children's Hospital. Dr. Mattia Bonsignori, chief of the Translational Immunobiology Unit of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, is a co-senior author. "The important thing is that we've got to be ready for another outbreak of Zika," Dr. Permar said. At this point, doctors have no approved vaccines or treatments to offer patients. With further research, this antibody has the potential to help fill that gap, according to Dr. Permar. "There are two potential ways it could be used: To quickly reduce levels of Zika in the blood of pregnant people who have become infected, or as a preventative measure given to those at risk of contracting the virus during an outbreak." Transmitted by infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the Zika virus usually causes a mild illness in adults. However, Zika virus infection in pregnant people can cause severe birth defects, including abnormally small heads and brain damage in their babies. During a Zika outbreak that began in 2015, researchers in Brazil, led by co-authors Dr. Reynaldo Dietze, of Global Health and Tropical Medicine and the Federal University of Espίrito Santo, and Dr. Camila Giuberti, also of the Federal University of Espίrito Santo, collected blood samples from pregnant people who had infections. The team decided to focus on those who were infected with Zika, but had given birth to babies that appeared healthy, because they suspected these patients might harbor antibodies capable of preventing the congenital infection. One of these patients gave birth to an apparently healthy baby even after having Zika detectable in their blood for nearly two months, an unusually long period. The laboratory teams, led by first author Dr. Tulika Singh, a former graduate student at Duke University Medical Center where Dr. Permar's lab was located during part of this study and now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, found that their B cells produced an IgM antibody with a potent ability to prevent viral particles from invading cells. The identity of this antibody, called DH1017.IgM, surprised the investigators because it belongs to a typically weaker, less mature type of antibody that is produced early in an infection. However, in this case, the potent function of this antibody depended on it being an IgM antibody. When the collaborators examined its molecular structure when binding to the virus, they found that multiple arms could latch onto a viral particle simultaneously. The findings suggest that IgM antibodies might be especially effective to protect against Zika virus and possibly other viruses, the authors suggest. To develop the antibody into a therapy, the researchers plan to begin testing its safety and how effectively it can prevent transmission to a fetus in additional preclinical models. Recalling how pregnant people were left out of COVID-19 vaccine trials, Dr. Permar emphasized that when human studies for new preventive or therapeutic treatments are done for Zika, they must be included. "Pregnant people are the exact population that needs vaccines or immunotherapies for Zika," she said. "It's crucial to get anti-Zika vaccines and therapies that are safe in pregnancy rolled out as soon as there is evidence of an outbreak." This research was supported by NIAID grant R21-AI123677.