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Many bird species are vulnerable to environmental change, so knowledge of their diet and its variation can help understand population status and flexibility to respond to change. Insectivorous species are predicted to have a flexible diet within and between individuals, which can respond to naturally fluctuating prey abundance, thus allowing opportunistic exploitation of available resources. We analysed the diet of a nocturnal, aerial insectivore, the European Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus, using high-throughput metabarcoding. We quantified diet diversity and composition of 130 faecal samples from nests and roosts on a northern breeding site in the UK from 2015 to 2018, and compared differences among individuals and years. Although dominated by moths, diet varied significantly between individual faecal samples and between years and months. Prey species composition varied between years, and was more variable between samples in 2017 than in other years. Faecal samples were significantly more likely to contain moth species with a wingspan of > 60 mm and less likely to contain moth species of

The isolation of antimicrobial resistant bacteria (ARB) from wildlife living adjacent to humans has led to the suggestion that such antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is anthropogenically driven by exposure to antimicrobials and ARB. However, ARB have also been detected in wildlife living in areas without interaction with humans. Here, we investigated patterns of resistance in Escherichia coli isolated from 408 wild bird and mammal faecal samples. AMR and multi-drug resistance (MDR) prevalence in wildlife samples differed significantly between a Sewage Treatment Plant (STP; wastes of antibiotic-treated humans) and a Farm site (antibiotic-treated livestock wastes) and Central site (no sources of wastes containing anthropogenic AMR or antimicrobials), but patterns of resistance also varied significantly over time and between mammals and birds. Over 30% of AMR isolates were resistant to colistin, a last-resort antibiotic, but resistance was not due to the mcr-1 gene. ESBL and AmpC activity were common in isolates from mammals. Wildlife were, therefore, harbouring resistance of clinical relevance. AMR E. coli, including MDR, were found in diverse wildlife species, and the patterns and prevalence of resistance were not consistently associated with site and therefore different exposure risks. We conclude that AMR in commensal bacteria of wildlife is not driven simply by anthropogenic factors, and, in practical terms, this may limit the utility of wildlife as sentinels of spatial variation in the transmission of environmental AMR.

Background: Neurocognitive impairments are a core feature of schizophrenia (ScZ) contributing to ongoing psychopathology and poor psychosocial functioning. These deficits have been consistently observed before illness onset in individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) suggesting that they may be an endophenotype of the disorder. Traditional CHR studies have recruited exclusively using clinical pathways however, it has been recently reported that the majority of individuals who present with a first episode of psychosis have not been seen by specialised prodromal services suggesting that these studies only capture a subgroup of CHR individuals (Ajnakina et al., 2017). Few studies have included CHR individuals recruited from community pathways who may differ from those recruited clinically in the degree of neurocognitive impairment and clinical trajectory. Neurocognitive functioning in CHR individuals may also be influenced by the high prevalence of comorbid non-psychotic disorders experienced by the population. So far, few studies have addressed this question which may provide valuable information to improve functional and clinical outcome in those at-risk. Aim 1: To explore the degree of neurocognitive impairment in CHR-participants recruited from the general population and identify their relationship with positive symptom severity and functioning. Aim 2: To investigate the influence of comorbid non-psychotic disorders on neurocognitive functioning in CHR-participants by identifying the degree of neurocognitive impairment in a CHR-negative group who scored below the CHR threshold but are characterised by non-psychotic disorders Aim 3: To explore the association between baseline neurocognitive functioning and clinical outcome at 12 months. Methods: The Youth Mental Health and Resilience Study (You-R) recruited CHR- and CHR-negative participants from the general population using a unique web-based screening tool. At baseline neuropsychological tests together with functioning assessments were administered to healthy controls (N = 57), CHR-negative participants (N = 43), community recruited CHR- (N = 110) and clinically recruited CHR-participants (N = 12). CHR-participants received follow-up assessments at 3 or 6 month intervals. At the 12 month assessment participants were categorised as remitters (CHR-R; N = 33), non-remitters (CHR-NR; N = 16) or converters (N = 1) depending on the change of their attenuated psychotic symptom status from the baseline to follow-up assessment. Results 1: Community recruited CHR-participants presented with small to moderate sized impairments in motor speed, processing speed, emotion recognition (response time) and attention by comparison to healthy controls. Within the community recruited CHR group emotion recognition (RT) predicted positive symptom severity while verbal memory, emotion recognition (RT) and the neurocomposite score significantly predicted functioning. Results 2: CHR-negative participants were not impaired by comparison to HC in any of the neuropsychology tests and they had a statistically significant better performance in processing speed by comparison to the CHR-positive group. Results 3: Overall, there was a high number of non-transitions and remissions at 12 months. Comparisons of baseline neurocognitive functioning revealed that non-remitters were statistically significantly more impaired in motor speed and emotion recognition (RT) than remitters. Moreover, remitters but not non-remitters performed similarly to healthy controls in a number of neuropsychological tests at baseline. Conclusions: Community recruited CHR-participants presented with neurocognitive impairments by comparison to healthy controls in domains highlighted by previous research using clinically recruited populations. These impairments were more pronounced in CHR individuals who had ongoing attenuated psychotic symptoms at 12 months compared to those who remitted. However, the high number of non-transitions and remissions questions if this was a group enriched for psychosis risk. Additionally, although the CHR-negative group presented with preserved neurocognitive functioning they had a lower prevalence of comorbid non-psychotic disorders than the CHR-positive group so the influence of comorbid non-psychotic disorders remains largely unknown.