Search

Abstract Deciding when to depart on long‐distance, sometimes global, movements can be especially important for flying species. Adverse weather conditions can affect energetic flight costs and navigational ability. While departure timings and conditions have been well‐studied for migratory flights to and from the breeding range, few studies have focussed on flights within the non‐breeding season. Yet in some cases, overwintering ranges can be large enough that ecological barriers, and a lack of resting sites en route, may resist movement, especially in unfavorable environmental conditions. Understanding the conditions that will enable or prohibit flights within an overwintering range is particularly relevant in light of climate change, whereby increases in extreme weather events may reduce the connectivity of sites. We tracked 495 (n = 251 in 2019; n = 244 in 2020) overwintering red knots (Calidris canutus islandica) in the Dutch Wadden Sea and investigated how many departed towards the UK (on westward relocation flights), which requires flying over the North Sea. For those that departed, we used a resource selection model to determine the effect of environmental conditions on the timing of relocation flights. Specifically, we investigated the effects of wind, rain, atmospheric pressure, cloud cover, and migratory timing relative to sunset and tidal cycle, which have all been shown to be crucial to migratory departure conditions. Approximately 37% (2019) and 36% (2020) of tagged red knots departed on westward relocation flights, indicating differences between individuals' space use within the overwintering range. Red knots selected for departures between 1 and 2.5 h after sunset, approximately 4 h before high tide, with tailwinds and little cloud cover. However, rainfall and changes in atmospheric pressure appear unimportant. Our study reveals environmental conditions that are important for relocation flights across an ecological barrier, indicating potential consequences of climate change on connectivity.

Federated learning (FL) is a method used for training artificial intelligence models with data from multiple sources while maintaining data anonymity, thus removing many barriers to data sharing. Here we used data from 20 institutes across the globe to train a FL model, called EXAM (electronic medical record (EMR) chest X-ray AI model), that predicts the future oxygen requirements of symptomatic patients with COVID-19 using inputs of vital signs, laboratory data and chest X-rays. EXAM achieved an average area under the curve (AUC) >0.92 for predicting outcomes at 24 and 72 h from the time of initial presentation to the emergency room, and it provided 16% improvement in average AUC measured across all participating sites and an average increase in generalizability of 38% when compared with models trained at a single site using that site's data. For prediction of mechanical ventilation treatment or death at 24 h at the largest independent test site, EXAM achieved a sensitivity of 0.950 and specificity of 0.882. In this study, FL facilitated rapid data science collaboration without data exchange and generated a model that generalized across heterogeneous, unharmonized datasets for prediction of clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19, setting the stage for the broader use of FL in healthcare.

Abstract Tracking animal movement is important for understanding how animals interact with their (changing) environment, and crucial for predicting and explaining how animals are affected by anthropogenic activities. The Wadden Sea is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a region of global importance for millions of shorebirds. Due to climate change and anthropogenic activity, understanding and predicting movement and space-use in areas like the Wadden Sea is increasingly important. Monitoring and predicting animal movement, however, requires high-resolution tracking of many individuals. While high-resolution tracking has been made possible through GPS, trade-offs between tag weight and battery life limit its use to larger species. Here, we introduce WATLAS (the Wadden Sea deployment of the ATLAS tracking system) capable of monitoring the movements of hundreds of (small) birds simultaneously in the Dutch Wadden Sea. WATLAS employs an array of receiver stations that can detect and localize small, low-cost tags at fine spatial (metres) and temporal resolution (seconds). From 2017 to 2021, we tracked red knots, sanderlings, bar-tailed godwits, and common terns. We use parts of these data to give four use-cases revealing its performance and demonstrating how WATLAS can be used to study numerous aspects of animal behaviour, such as, space-use (both intra- and inter-specific), among-individual variation, and social networks across levels of organization: from individuals, to species, to populations, and even communities. After describing the WATLAS system, we first illustrate space-use of red knots across the study area and how the tidal environment affects their movement. Secondly, we show large among-individual differences in distances travelled per day, and thirdly illustrate how high-throughput WATLAS data allows calculating a proximity-based social network. Finally, we demonstrate that using WATLAS to monitor multiple species can reveal differential space use. For example, despite sanderlings and red knots roosting together, they foraged in different areas of the mudflats. The high-resolution tracking data collected by WATLAS offers many possibilities for research into the drivers of bird movement in the Wadden Sea. WATLAS could provide a tool for impact assessment, and thus aid nature conservation and management of the globally important Wadden Sea ecosystem.

This music score was submitted for the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library.

This music score was submitted for the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library.

This music score was submitted for the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library.

Memories about the spatial environment, such as the locations of foraging patches, are expected to affect how individuals move around the landscape. However, individuals differ in the ability to remember spatial locations (spatial cognitive ability) and evidence is growing that these inter-individual differences influence a range of fitness proxies. Yet empirical evaluations directly linking inter-individual variation in spatial cognitive ability and the development and structure of movement paths are lacking. We assessed the performance of young pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) on a spatial cognition task before releasing them into a novel, rural landscape and tracking their movements. We quantified changes in the straightness and speed of their transitory paths over one month. Birds with better performances on the task initially made slower transitory paths than poor performers but by the end of the month, there was no difference in speed. In general, birds increased the straightness of their path over time, indicating improved efficiency independent of speed, but this was not related to performance on the cognitive task. We suggest that initial slow movements may facilitate more detailed information gathering by better performers and indicates a potential link between an individual's spatial cognitive ability and their movement behaviour.

Individuals likely vary in how quickly they learn, how many different associations they may be able to maintain, and how long they can remember previously learned associations. However, it is unclear whether capacities for these cognitive processes are consistent within individuals, or whether individual performance differs when presented with novel variants of tasks, or across tasks that assess different cognitive abilities. We investigate associative learning and long-term reference memory in young (3-8 week-old) pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) using a series of visual binary discrimination problems that were presented at different intervals of time. Birds were sequentially presented with five novel color pairs, where they could learn that one color of each pair was consistently rewarded. After experiencing these learning trials, subjects were re-tested on each discrimination problem, but at different intervals (0-27 days), to assess their memory. Subjects’ learning performance improved within 50 trials of each discrimination problem. We found no differences in performance between final learning sessions and initial memory sessions across the different time intervals, suggesting that pheasants retained the previously learned associations of multiple color pairs over at least a 27-day interval. Moreover, proactive interference did not impede their ability to recall subsequently learned color contingencies. Although individual learning and memory performance correlated positively, we found no evidence that individuals’ performances were consistent across task variants. Our findings illuminate capacities for associative learning and long-term reference memory in pheasants.

The relationship between neuronal density and verbal memory in left and right hippocampal subfields was investigated in patients who underwent surgery for alleviation of temporal lobe epilepsy. The surgery consisted of unilateral partial removal of the hippocampus along with the anterior temporal lobe and amygdala. Study 1 looked at post-surgical explicit versus implicit verbal memory for lists of words while Study 2 looked at pre- and post-surgical explicit memory for word pairs. Left subfield CA1 appeared to be the most consistently involved in explicit and implicit memory. The results of the two studies confirm presence of hemispheric asymmetry in verbal memory. The notion that hippocampal control of memory is most apparent in post-surgical performance is discussed.

Memory for pairs of unfamiliar children's faces was investigated in 29 children and adolescents suffering from left (LTLE) or right (RTLE) temporal-lobe epilepsy, before and after temporal-lobe surgery. Both immediate and delayed memory were tested. Before surgery, RTLE subjects performed worse than either LTLE subjects or normal children. After surgery, RTLE subjects improved significantly. Overall (after surgery), there was no significant LTLE-RTLE difference, but on delayed memory, the RTLE group was worse than the LTLE group. The results suggest specialization for facial memory in the right hemisphere of young patients, as in adults, despite early brain damage.

Tom Dawe. New and Collected Poems. St. John's: Breakwater Books, 2019. ISBN 978-1-550-81755-3 In 'Grand Canyon,' from his 2019 collection Pilgrim, Tom Dawe recalls Don Marquis, who 'once said / [...]

Individual differences in performances on cognitive tasks have been found to differ according to social rank across multiple species. However, it is not clear whether an individual’s cognitive performance is flexible and the result of their current social rank, modulated by social interactions (social state dependent hypothesis), or if it is determined prior to the formation of the social hierarchy and indeed influences an individual’s rank (prior attributes hypothesis). We separated these two hypotheses by measuring learning performance of male pheasants, Phasianus colchicus, on a spatial discrimination task as chicks and again as adults. We inferred adult male social rank from observing agonistic interactions while housed in captive multi-male multi-female groups. Learning performance of adult males was assayed after social rank had been standardised; by housing single males with two or four females. We predicted that if cognitive abilities determine social rank formation we would observe: consistency between chick and adult performances on the cognitive task and chick performance would predict adult social rank. We found that learning performances were consistent from chicks to adults for task accuracy, but not for speed of learning and chick learning performances were not related to adult social rank. Therefore, we could not support the prior attributes hypothesis of cognitive abilities aiding social rank formation. Instead, we found that individual differences in learning performances of adults were predicted by the number of females a male was housed with; males housed with four females had higher levels of learning performance than males housed with two females; and their most recent recording of captive social rank, even though learning performance was assayed while males were in a standardized, non-competitive environment. This does not support the hypothesis that direct social pressures are causing the inter-individual variation in learning performances that we observe. Instead, our results suggest that there may be carry-over effects of aggressive social interactions on learning performance. Consequently, whether early life spatial learning performances influence social rank is unclear but these performances are modulated by the current social environment and a male’s most recent social rank.

Fine scale sexual segregation outside of the mating season is common in sexually dimorphic and polygamous species, particularly in ungulates. A number of hypotheses predict sexual segregation but these are often contradictory with no agreement as to a common cause, perhaps because they are species specific. We explicitly tested three of these hypotheses which are commonly linked by a dependence on sexual dimorphism for animals which exhibit fine-scale sexual segregation; the Predation Risk Hypothesis, the Forage Selection Hypothesis, and the Activity Budget Hypothesis, in a single system the pheasant, Phasianus colchicus; a large, sedentary bird that is predominantly terrestrial and therefore analogous to ungulates rather than many avian species which sexually segregate. Over four years we reared 2,400 individually tagged pheasants from one day old and after a period of 8–10 weeks we released them into the wild. We then followed the birds for 7 months, during the period that they sexually segregate, determined their fate and collected behavioural and morphological measures pertinent to the hypotheses. Pheasants are sexually dimorphic during the entire period that they sexually segregate in the wild; males are larger than females in both body size and gut measurements. However, this did not influence predation risk and predation rates (as predicted by the Predation Risk Hypothesis), diet choice (as predicted by the Forage Selection Hypothesis), or the amount of time spent foraging, resting or walking (as predicted by the Activity Budget Hypothesis). We conclude that adult sexual size dimorphism is not responsible for sexual segregation in the pheasant in the wild. Instead, we consider that segregation may be mediated by other, perhaps social, factors. We highlight the importance of studies on a wide range of taxa to help further the knowledge of sexual segregation.

The ordeal of mourning, being so much harder than any thought its experience may deliver, bears out the impression developed in Julia Kristeva’s opening to The Severed Head—that thought is swift. She has recognized as well as anyone the interplay of blindness and insight. Nothing brings all this into starker evidence than the premature death of a loved other, a friend, or a true assistant in life and thought. There is a reminder in this that the new narratives of subjectivity on which Kristeva places a high value, and certainly the long life of meaning in the world, come at the price of the loss and mourning of our loved others. Pleshette DeArmitt’s book, The Right to Narcissism: A Case for an Im-possible Self-Love, has given the condition of narcissism an intricate place in this difficult if promising work.

The paper is a reading of Julia Kristeva, The Severed Head. It first interprets a dual historical element in Kristeva's text on "capital visions," her selection of exemplars of the artistic representation of severed heads. On the one hand, there are the aesthetic trajectories themselves, from skull art to artistic modernism. On the other hand, there is an implicit history of "horror" in psychoanalysis in this text, going from Freud through Lacan to Kristeva. The paper then indicates the tone of possibility and invitation that inhabits Kristeva’s treatment of horror in capital visions, which suggests that she does not divide aesthetics off from ethics. Finally, I underline the note of humor that enters into the psychoanalytic and aesthetic treatment of horror, once Kristeva has linked it to the feminine.