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The interest in understanding scaling limits of magnetic textures such as domain walls spans the entire field of magnetism from its physical fundamentals to applications in information technologies. Here, we explore antiferromagnetic CuMnAs in which imaging by x-ray photoemission reveals the presence of magnetic textures down to nanoscale, reaching the detection limit of this established microscopy in antiferromagnets. We achieve atomic resolution by using differential phase-contrast imaging within aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy. We identify abrupt domain walls in the antiferromagnetic film corresponding to the Néel order reversal between two neighboring atomic planes. Our work stimulates research of magnetic textures at the ultimate atomic scale and sheds light on electrical and ultrafast optical antiferromagnetic devices with magnetic field-insensitive neuromorphic functionalities., This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic grants LNSM-LNSpin and LM2018140, the Czech Science Foundation grant nos. 19-18623Y and 21-28876J, the University of Nottingham EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account grant no. EP/K503800/1, the EU FET Open RIA grant no. 766566, the Max Planck Partner Group grant, the Neuron Endowment Fund grant, and the National Grid Infrastructure MetaCentrum provided under the program “Projects of Large Research, Development, and Innovations Infrastructures” (CESNET LM2015042) and Innovations project IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center–LM2015070. We also thank Diamond Light Source for the provision beam time under proposal number MM22437. The atomically resolved DPC-STEM experiments and the lamellae preparation were supported by the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science User Facility, and also by the CzechNanoLab project LM2018110, CEITEC Nano Research Infrastructure. We acknowledge the Swedish Research Council, Carl Trygger’s foundation, and Olle Engkvist’s foundation for financial support. Multislice calculations were enabled by resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant agreement no. 2018-05973. We also acknowledge MAX IV Laboratory for time on Beamline NanoMAX under proposal 20190533. Research conducted at MAX IV, a Swedish national user facility, is supported by the Swedish Research Council under contract 2018-07152, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems under contract 2018-04969, and Formas under contract 2019-02496., With funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000917-S).

Understanding the full diet of natural enemies is necessary for evaluating their role as biocontrol agents, because many enemy species do not only feed on pests but also on other natural enemies. Such intraguild predation can compromise pest control if the consumed enemies are actually better for pest control than their predators. In this study, we used gut metabarcoding to quantify diets of all common arachnid species in Swedish and Spanish apple orchards. For this purpose, we designed new primers that reduce amplification of arachnid predators while retaining high amplification of all prey groups. Results suggest that most arachnids consume a large range of putative pest species on apple but also a high proportion of other natural enemies, where the latter constitute almost a third of all prey sequences. Intraguild predation also varied between regions, with a larger content of heteropteran bugs in arachnid guts from Spanish orchards, but not between orchard types. There was also a tendency for cursorial spiders to have more intraguild prey in the gut than web spiders. Two groups that may be overlooked as important biocontrol agents in apple orchards seem to be theridiid web spiders and opilionids, where the latter had several small-bodied pest species in the gut. These results thus provide important guidance for what arachnid groups should be targets of management actions, even though additional information is needed to quantify all direct and indirect interactions occurring in the complex arthropod food webs in fruit orchards., The project was funded through Carl Trygger's Foundation for Scientific Research and the BiodivERsA/FACCE JPI joint call (agreement BiodivERsA-FACCE 2014–74), with the Swedish national funder Formas (grant 2014–1784) and the Spanish funder MinECo (grant CGL2015–68963-C2–2-R).

Large-scale multigene datasets used in phylogenomics and comparative genomics often contain sequence errors inherited from source genomes and transcriptomes. These errors typically manifest as stretches of non-homologous characters and derive from sequencing, assembly, and/or annotation errors. The lack of automatic tools to detect and remove sequence errors leads to the propagation of these errors in large-scale datasets. PREQUAL is a command line tool that identifies and masks regions with non-homologous adjacent characters in sets of unaligned homologous sequences. PREQUAL uses a full probabilistic approach based on pair hidden Markov models. On the front end, PREQUAL is user-friendly and simple to use while also allowing full customization to adjust filtering sensitivity. It is primarily aimed at amino acid sequences but can handle protein-coding nucleotide sequences. PREQUAL is computationally efficient and shows high sensitivity and accuracy. In this chapter, we briefly introduce the motivation for PREQUAL and its underlying methodology, followed by a description of basic and advanced usage, and conclude with some notes and recommendations. PREQUAL fills an important gap in the current bioinformatics tool kit for phylogenomics, contributing toward increased accuracy and reproducibility in future studies. II acknowledges the support from a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación postdoctoral fellowship (IJCI-2016-29566) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Competitiveness (MINECO). This work in the lab of FB is supported by a fellowship from Science for Life Laboratory. SW thanks the Carl Tryggers Stiftelse and Uppsala University for support.

Ionizing radiation can damage organic molecules, causing detrimental effects on human and wildlife health. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (1986) represents the largest release of radioactive material to the environment. An accurate estimation of the current exposure to radiation in wildlife, often reduced to ambient dose rate assessments, is crucial to understand the long-term impact of radiation on living organisms. Here, we present an evaluation of the sources and variation of current exposure to radiation in breeding Eastern tree frogs (Hyla orientalis) males living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Total absorbed dose rates in H. orientalis were highly variable, although generally below widely used thresholds considered harmful for animal health. Internal exposure was the main source of absorbed dose rate (81% on average), with Sr being the main contributor (78% of total dose rate, on average). These results highlight the importance of assessing both internal and external exposure levels in order to perform a robust evaluation of the exposure to radiation in wildlife. Further studies incorporating life-history, ecological, and evolutionary traits are needed to fully evaluate the effects that these exposure levels can have in amphibians and other taxa inhabiting radio-contaminated environments., This work was supported by the Swedish Radiation Protection Agency-SSM (SSM2018-2038), the FP7-EURATOM COordination and iMplementation of a pan-European instrumenT for radioecology-COMET project (EU- 604974), and by Carl Tryggers Foundation (CT 16:344). Carl Tryggers Foundation scholarship (CT 16:344) and Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship (METAGE-797879) supported PB, an IRSN doctoral fellowship supported CC, the Institute for Radioecological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) supported JMB, and the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Ramón y Cajal program, RYC-2016-20656) supported GO.

ABX3 compounds with perovskite structure have been intensively and extensively studied in the last decades in view of their structural richness and amazing variety of interesting properties, such as piezoelectricity, ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, magnetoresistance, multiferroicity, etc. In this chapter, we recompile well established chemical and structural concepts in pure inorganic perovskites (mainly oxidic perovskites), and extend them to the young family of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. Our final goal is to help understanding the relationships among composition, crystal structure and properties in this new family of compounds, for inspiring further the design of novel materials., This work was financially supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and EU-FEDER under the project MAT2017 -86453-R and Xunta de Galicia under the project ED431 G/09. A. García-Fernández acknowledges Carl Tryggers Stiftelse for a Postdoctoral Fellowship.

This review comes from a themed issue on Biotic interactions., Autophagy is a highly conserved degradation and recycling process that controls cellular homeostasis, stress adaptation, and programmed cell death in eukaryotes. Emerging evidence indicates that autophagy is a key regulator of plant innate immunity and contributes with both pro-death and pro-survival functions to antimicrobial defences, depending on the pathogenic lifestyle. In turn, several pathogens have co-opted and evolved strategies to manipulate host autophagy pathways to the benefit of infection, while some eukaryotic microbes require their own autophagy machinery for successful pathogenesis. In this review, we present and discuss recent advances that exemplify the important role of pro- and antimicrobial autophagy in plant–pathogen interactions., This work was funded by grants from the Knut-and-Alice Wallenberg and Carl-Tryggers foundations to D.H, the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Ramón y Cajal 2014-16158, AGL2016-78002-R) to N.S.C., a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council (201506910068, CSC, China) to L.L. We acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad for the ‘Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2016-2019′ award SEV-2015-0533 and by the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya and the COST Action Transautophagy (CA15138) from the European Union.

In Brief Melo et al. show that geosmin mediates egg laying in the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti, which associates geosmin with microbes present in the larval aquatic habitat. The authors further show that geosmin can be used as bait in oviposition traps and that geosmin can be substituted by beetroot peel for mosquito trapping in developing countries., Graphical Abstract

According to the competitive exclusion principle, species with low competitive abilities should be excluded by more efficient competitors; yet, they generally remain as rare species. Here, we describe the positive and negative spatial association networks of 326 disparate assemblages, showing a general organization pattern that simultaneously supports the primacy of competition and the persistence of rare species. Abundant species monopolize negative associations in about 90% of the assemblages. On the other hand, rare species are mostly involved in positive associations, forming small network modules. Simulations suggest that positive interactions among rare species and microhabitat preferences are the most probable mechanisms underpinning this pattern and rare species persistence. The consistent results across taxa and geography suggest a general explanation for the maintenance of biodiversity in competitive environments., J.C. is supported by the Carl Tryggers Foundation for Scientific Research (no. CTS 16:384). E.A. is supported by a postdoctoral grant (no. CT39/17) funded by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. C.J.M. is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. SNSF-31003A-144162). R.B.-M. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation predoctoral fellowship no. BES-2013-065753. M.S., J.A.B.-C. and J.M.-G. acknowledge support from the University of Geneva (project: C-CIA; no. 309354). X.A. is supported by a Ramón y Cajal research contract by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, no. RYC-2015-18448). M.R. is supported by the Swedish Research Council grant no. 2016-00796. J.A.N. was supported by a Colombian COLCIENCIAS doctoral scholarship (no. 617-2013). F.A.-M. is grateful to CAPES for a doctoral scholarship (no. 120147/2016-01). A.L., P.F. and J.M.-G. were funded by the AGORA Project (MINECO, no. CGL2016-77417-P). C.M.-M. was supported by an IdEx Bordeaux Postdoctoral Fellowship (VECLIMED project). A.H. was supported by the University of Alcalá own research programme 2018 postdoctoral grant and Basque Country Government funding support to FisioClimaCO2 (IT1022-16) research group. L.J. received productivity grants from of CNPq (process no. 307597/2016-4).

How the hand and digits originated from fish fins during the Devonian fin-to-limb transition remains unsolved. Controversy in this conundrum stems from the scarcity of ontogenetic data from extant lobe-finned fishes. We report the patterning of an autopod-like domain by hoxa13 during fin development of the Australian lungfish, the most closely related extant fish relative of tetrapods. Differences from tetrapod limbs include the absence of digit-specific expansion of hoxd13 and hand2 and distal limitation of alx4 and pax9, which potentially evolved through an enhanced response to shh signaling in limbs. These developmental patterns indicate that the digit program originated in postaxial fin radials and later expanded anteriorly inside of a preexisting autopod-like domain during the evolution of limbs. Our findings provide a genetic framework for the transition of fins into limbs that supports the significance of classical models proposing a bending of the tetrapod metapterygial axis., J.M.W. is supported by funds from the University of Konstanz, the Young Scholar Fund (YSF) of the University of Konstanz and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant WO-2165/2-1. I.I. was supported by postdoctoral fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1150725), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO ALTF 440-2013), and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Competitiveness (MINECO) (IJCI-2016-29566). R.E. was supported by Carl Tryggers Stiftelse (CTS 04:97 and CTS 07:98). P.S. was supported by the Italian Ministry of Instruction, University and Research (FIRB RBFR12QW4I). A.M. was supported by an ERC Advance grant (“GenAdap” no. 293700), the University of Konstanz, and several grants of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Strain tuning emerged as an appealing tool for tuning of fundamental optical properties of solid-state quantum emitters. In particular, the wavelength and fine structure of quantum dot states can be tuned using hybrid semiconductor-piezoelectric devices. Here, we show how an applied external stress can directly impact the polarization properties of coupled InAs quantum dot-micropillar cavity systems. In our experiment, we find that we can reversibly tune the anisotropic polarization splitting of the fundamental microcavity mode by approximately 60 μeV. We discuss the origin of this tuning mechanism, which arises from an interplay between elastic deformation and the photoelastic effect in our micropillar. Finally, we exploit this effect to tune the quantum dot polarization optomechanically via the polarization-anisotropic Purcell effect. Our work paves the way for optomechanical and reversible tuning of the polarization and spin properties of light-matter-coupled solid-state systems., We acknowledge funding by the DFG within the Projects No. SCHN1376-5.1 and No. PR1749/1-1. Further, we acknowledge financial support by the State of Bavaria and the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the project Q.Link.X (FKZ 16KIS0871). Project HYPER-U-P-S has received funding from the QuantERA ERA-NET Cofund in Quantum Technologies implemented within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme. A.P. would like to thank the Swedish Research Council and Carl Tryggers Stiftelse. J.M.-S. acknowledges financial support from the Ramón y Cajal Program from the Government of Spain (RYC2018-026196-I) and the ClarínProgramme from the Government of the Principality of Asturias and a Marie Curie-COFUND Grant (PA-18-ACB17-29).

International audience; One of the most attractive characteristics of some Prussian blue derivatives is the sensitivity of their magnetic properties to the irradiation with light. In this work photoinduced effects in the (Fe0.2Cr0.8)1.5[Cr(CN)6]·15H2O PBA have been studied by means of X-ray-based spectroscopies and magnetometry. It is found that the photosensitivity of this compound is mostly centred on the Fe cations: the exposure to green light induces a transfer of electrons from them to the Cr that provokes a reversal of the previously existing linkage isomerization and increases the elastic strain caused by the misfit of the unit cells of the Fe–NC–Cr and Cr–NC–Cr sublattices. The green light also quenches the magnetism of the FeII high-spin (HS) ions present in the sample and reduces the magnetic moments of most of the Cr cations except for CrII HS. Our study highlights the important role played by the mismatch between the unit cells of the coexisting sub-lattices in ternary Prussian blue analogues.

15 pages; International audience; How food webs are structured has major implications for their stability and dynamics. While poorly studied to date, arctic food webs are commonly assumed to be simple in structure, with few links per species. If this is the case, then different parts of the web may be weakly connected to each other, with populations and species united by only a low number of links. We provide the first highly resolved description of trophic link structure for a large part of a high-arctic food web. For this purpose, we apply a combination of recent techniques to describing the links between three predator guilds (insectivorous birds, spiders, and lepidopteran parasitoids) and their two dominant prey orders (Diptera and Lepidoptera). The resultant web shows a dense link structure and no compartmentalization or modularity across the three predator guilds. Thus, both individual predators and predator guilds tap heavily into the prey community of each other, offering versatile scope for indirect interactions across different parts of the web. The current description of a first but single arctic web may serve as a benchmark toward which to gauge future webs resolved by similar techniques. Targeting an unusual breadth of predator guilds, and relying on techniques with a high resolution, it suggests that species in this web are closely connected. Thus, our findings call for similar explorations of link structure across multiple guilds in both arctic and other webs. From an applied perspective, our description of an arctic web suggests new avenues for understanding how arctic food webs are built and function and of how they respond to current climate change. It suggests that to comprehend the community-level consequences of rapid arctic warming, we should turn from analyses of populations, population pairs, and isolated predator-prey interactions to considering the full set of interacting species.

International audience; The actinorhizal bacterium Frankia expresses nitrogenase and can therefore convert molecular nitrogen into ammonia and the by-product hydrogen. However, nitrogenase is inhibited by oxygen. Consequently, Frankia and its actinorhizal hosts have developed various mechanisms for excluding oxygen from their nitrogen-containing compartments. These include the expression of oxygen-scavenging uptake hydrogenases, the formation of hopanoid-rich vesicles, enclosed by multi-layered hopanoid structures, the lignification of hyphal cell walls, and the production of haemoglobins in the symbiotic nodule. In this work, we analysed the expression and structure of the so-called uptake hydrogenase (Hup), which catalyses the in vivo dissociation of hydrogen to recycle the energy locked up in this 'waste' product. Two uptake hydrogenase syntons have been identified in Frankia: synton 1 is expressed under free-living conditions while synton 2 is expressed during symbiosis. We used qPCR to determine synton 1 hup gene expression in two Frankia strains under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. We also predicted the 3D structures of the Hup protein subunits based on multiple sequence alignments and remote homology modelling. Finally, we performed BLAST searches of genome and protein databases to identify genes that may contribute to the protection of nitrogenase against oxygen in the two Frankia strains. Our results show that in Frankia strain ACN14a, the expression patterns of the large (HupL1) and small (HupS1) uptake hydrogenase subunits depend on the abundance of oxygen in the external environment. Structural models of the membrane-bound hydrogenase subunits of ACN14a showed that both subunits resemble the structures of known [NiFe] hydrogenases (Volbeda et al. 1995), but contain fewer cysteine residues than the uptake hydrogenase of the Frankia DC12 and Eu1c strains. Moreover, we show that all of the investigated Frankia strains have two squalene hopane cyclase genes (shc1 and shc2). The only exceptions were CcI3 and the symbiont of Datisca glomerata, which possess shc1 but not shc2. Four truncated haemoglobin genes were identified in Frankia ACN14a and Eu1f, three in CcI3, two in EANpec1 and one in the Datisca glomerata symbiont (Dg).

Initially found to be critically involved in inflammation and apoptosis, caspases have since then been implicated in the regulation of various signaling pathways in animals. How caspases and caspase-mediated processes evolved is a topic of great interest and hot debate. In fact, caspases are just the tip of the iceberg, representing a relatively small group of mostly animal-specific enzymes within a broad family of structurally related cysteine proteases (family C14 of CD clan) found in all kingdoms of life. Apart from caspases, this family encompasses para- and metacaspases, and all three groups of proteases exhibit significant variation in biochemistry and function in vivo. Notably, metacaspases are present in all eukaryotic lineages with a remarkable absence in animals. Thus, metacaspases and caspases must have adapted to operate under distinct cellular and physiological settings. Here we discuss biochemical properties and biological functions of metacaspases in comparison to caspases, with a major focus on the regulation of developmental aspects in plants versus animals., Research in our laboratories is supported by grants from Carl Tryggers Foundation (to EAM), the Swedish Research Council (to HT and PVB), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (to PVB), Olle Engkvist Foundation (to PVB), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (to PVB), the Trees and Crops for the Future (TC4F) programme (to PVB), Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (projects AGL2016-78002, RyC 2014-1658 SEV‐2015‐0533; to NSC) and the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya (to NSC).

ISI Document Delivery No.: 035MX Times Cited: 2; Grain protein content in wheat has been shown to be affected by the NAM-B1 gene where the wildtype allele confers high levels of protein and micronutrients but can reduce yield. Two known non-functional alleles instead increase yield but lead to lower levels of protein and micronutrients. The wildtype allele in hexaploid bread wheat is so far mainly known from historical specimens and a few lines with an emmer wheat introgression. Here we report a screening for the wildtype allele in wheats of different origin. First, a worldwide core collection of 367 bread wheats with worldwide origin was screened and five accessions carrying the wildtype NAM-B1 allele were found. Several of these could be traced to a Fennoscandian origin and the wildtype allele was more frequent in spring wheat. These findings, together with the late maturation of spring wheat, suggested that the faster maturation caused by the wildtype allele might have preserved it in areas with a short growing season. Thus a second set consisting of 138 spring wheats of a northern origin was screened and as many as 33 % of the accessions had the wildtype allele, all of a Fennoscandian origin. The presence of the wildtype allele in landraces and cultivars is in agreement with the use of landraces in Fennoscandian wheat breeding. Last, 22 spelt wheats, a wheat type previously suggested to carry the wildtype allele, were screened and five wildtype accessions found. The wildtype NAM-B1 accessions found could be a suitable material for plant breeding efforts directed towards increasing the nutrient content of bread wheat.

Background Ribonucleotide reduction is the only de novo pathway for synthesis of deoxyribonucleotides, the building blocks of DNA. The reaction is catalysed by ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs), an ancient enzyme family comprised of three classes. Each class has distinct operational constraints, and are broadly distributed across organisms from all three domains, though few class I RNRs have been identified in archaeal genomes, and classes II and III likewise appear rare across eukaryotes. In this study, we examine whether this distribution is best explained by presence of all three classes in the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), or by horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of RNR genes. We also examine to what extent environmental factors may have impacted the distribution of RNR classes. Results Our phylogenies show that the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) possessed a class I RNR, but that the eukaryotic class I enzymes are not directly descended from class I RNRs in Archaea. Instead, our results indicate that archaeal class I RNR genes have been independently transferred from bacteria on two occasions. While LECA possessed a class I RNR, our trees indicate that this is ultimately bacterial in origin. We also find convincing evidence that eukaryotic class I RNR has been transferred to the Bacteroidetes, providing a stunning example of HGT from eukaryotes back to Bacteria. Based on our phylogenies and available genetic and genomic evidence, class II and III RNRs in eukaryotes also appear to have been transferred from Bacteria, with subsequent within-domain transfer between distantly-related eukaryotes. Under the three-domains hypothesis the RNR present in the last common ancestor of Archaea and eukaryotes appears, through a process of elimination, to have been a dimeric class II RNR, though limited sampling of eukaryotes precludes a firm conclusion as the data may be equally well accounted for by HGT. Conclusions Horizontal gene transfer has clearly played an important role in the evolution of the RNR repertoire of organisms from all three domains of life. Our results clearly show that class I RNRs have spread to Archaea and eukaryotes via transfers from the bacterial domain, indicating that class I likely evolved in the Bacteria. However, against the backdrop of ongoing transfers, it is harder to establish whether class II or III RNRs were present in the LUCA, despite the fact that ribonucleotide reduction is an essential cellular reaction and was pivotal to the transition from RNA to DNA genomes. Instead, a general pattern of ongoing horizontal transmission emerges wherein environmental and enzyme operational constraints, especially the presence or absence of oxygen, are likely to be major determinants of the RNR repertoire of genomes.

Clotting is critical in limiting hemolymph loss and initiating wound healing in insects as in vertebrates. It is also an important immune defense, quickly forming a secondary barrier to infection, immobilizing bacteria and thereby promoting their killing. However, hemolymph clotting is one of the least understood immune responses in insects. Here, we characterize fondue (fon; CG15825), an immune-responsive gene of Drosophila melanogaster that encodes an abundant hemolymph protein containing multiple repeat blocks. After knockdown of fon by RNAi, bead aggregation activity of larval hemolymph is strongly reduced, and wound closure is affected. fon is thus the second Drosophila gene after hemolectin (hml), for which a knockdown causes a clotting phenotype. In contrast to hml-RNAi larvae, clot fibers are still observed in samples from fon-RNAi larvae. However, clot fibers from fon-RNAi larvae are more ductile and longer than in wt hemolymph samples, indicating that Fondue might be involved in cross-linking of fiber proteins. In addition, fon-RNAi larvae exhibit melanotic tumors and constitutive expression of the antifungal peptide gene Drosomycin (Drs), while fon-RNAi pupae display an aberrant pupal phenotype. Altogether, our studies indicate that Fondue is a major hemolymph protein required for efficient clotting in Drosophila.

We present results of a theoretical investigation of the phonon-mediated decay of metal surface states. The calculated energy- and temperature-dependent lifetime broadening of a hole as well as the electron-phonon coupling parameter for the surface-state band on Al(100), Ag(111), Cu(111) and Au(111) are given. A detailed analysis of the Eliashberg spectral function shows that the intraband scattering is of minor importance for these systems. The surface Rayleigh phonon mode is shown to be crucial for the surface-state decay on the noble metal surfaces, in particular for energies close to the Fermi level where the Rayleigh mode is responsible for the major part of the phonon induced lifetime broadening., We acknowledge financial support from the Basque Government, the Max Planck Research Award Funds, the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia (MEC), the Basque Country Univesity, and the Carl Tryggers Foundation.

We present a comprehensive theoretical investigation of the electron-phonon contribution to the lifetime broadening of the surface states on Cu(111) and Ag(111), in comparison with high-resolution photoemission results. The calculations, including electron and phonon states of the bulk and the surface, resolve the relative importance of the Rayleigh mode, being dominant for the lifetime at small hole binding energies. Including the electron-electron interaction, the theoretical results are in excellent agreement with the measured binding energy and temperature dependent lifetime broadening., We acknowledge financial support from the Basque Government, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 277), the Carl Tryggers Foundation and the Max Planck Research Award Funds