Transmission of Mental Disorders in Adolescent Peer Networks.

Importance: Previous research indicates that mental disorders may be transmitted from one individual to another within social networks. However, there is a lack of population-based epidemiologic evidence that pertains to the full range of mental disorders. Objective: To examine whether having classmates with a mental disorder diagnosis in the ninth grade of comprehensive school is associated with later risk of being diagnosed with a mental disorder. Design, Setting, and Participants: In a population-based registry study, data on all Finnish citizens born between January 1, 1985, and December 31, 1997, whose demographic, health, and school information were linked from nationwide registers were included. Cohort members were followed up from August 1 in the year they completed ninth grade (approximately aged 16 years) until a diagnosis of mental disorder, emigration, death, or December 31, 2019, whichever occurred first. Data analysis was performed from May 15, 2023, to February 8, 2024. Exposure: The exposure was 1 or more individuals diagnosed with a mental disorder in the same school class in the ninth grade. Main Outcomes and Measures: Being diagnosed with a mental disorder during follow-up. Results: Among the 713 809 cohort members (median age at the start of follow-up, 16.1 [IQR, 15.9-16.4] years; 50.4% were males), 47 433 had a mental disorder diagnosis by the ninth grade. Of the remaining 666 376 cohort members, 167 227 persons (25.1%) received a mental disorder diagnosis during follow-up (7.3 million person-years). A dose-response association was found, with no significant increase in later risk of 1 diagnosed classmate (HR, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.00-1.02), but a 5% increase with more than 1 diagnosed classmate (HR, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.04-1.06). The risk was not proportional over time but was highest during the first year of follow-up, showing a 9% increase for 1 diagnosed classmate (HR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.04-1.14), and an 18% increase for more than 1 diagnosed classmate (HR, 1.18; 95% CI, 1.13-1.24). Of the examined mental disorders, the risk was greatest for mood, anxiety, and eating disorders. Increased risk was observed after adjusting for an array of parental, school-level, and area-level confounders. Conclusions and Relevance: The findings of this study suggest that mental disorders might be transmitted within adolescent peer networks. More research is required to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the possible transmission of mental disorders.

Both stronger and weaker cerebro-cerebellar functional connectivity patterns during processing of spoken sentences in autism spectrum disorder.

Cerebellar differences have long been documented in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet the extent to which such differences might impact language processing in ASD remains unknown. To investigate this, we recorded brain activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) while ASD and age-matched typically developing (TD) children passively processed spoken meaningful English and meaningless Jabberwocky sentences. Using a novel source localization approach that allows higher resolution MEG source localization of cerebellar activity, we found that, unlike TD children, ASD children showed no difference between evoked responses to meaningful versus meaningless sentences in right cerebellar lobule VI. ASD children also had atypically weak functional connectivity in the meaningful versus meaningless speech condition between right cerebellar lobule VI and several left-hemisphere sensorimotor and language regions in later time windows. In contrast, ASD children had atypically strong functional connectivity for in the meaningful versus meaningless speech condition between right cerebellar lobule VI and primary auditory cortical areas in an earlier time window. The atypical functional connectivity patterns in ASD correlated with ASD severity and the ability to inhibit involuntary attention. These findings align with a model where cerebro-cerebellar speech processing mechanisms in ASD are impacted by aberrant stimulus-driven attention, which could result from atypical temporal information and predictions of auditory sensory events by right cerebellar lobule VI.

Where in the brain do internally generated and externally presented visual information interact?

Conscious experiences normally result from the flow of external input into our sensory systems. However, we can also create conscious percepts independently of sensory stimulation. These internally generated percepts are referred to as mental images, and they have many similarities with real visual percepts. Consequently, mental imagery is often referred to as "seeing in the mind's eye". While the neural basis of imagery has been widely studied, the interaction between internal and external sources of visual information has received little interest. Here we examined this question by using fMRI to record brain activity of healthy human volunteers while they were performing visual imagery that was distracted with a concurrent presentation of a visual stimulus. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to identify the brain basis of this interaction. Visual imagery was reflected in several brain areas in ventral temporal, lateral occipitotemporal, and posterior frontal cortices, with a left-hemisphere dominance. The key finding was that imagery content representations in the left lateral occipitotemporal cortex were disrupted when a visual distractor was presented during imagery. Our results thus demonstrate that the representations of internal and external visual information interact in brain areas associated with the encoding of visual objects and shapes.

Hippocampus-Centered Network Is Associated With Positive Symptom Alleviation in Patients With First-Episode Psychosis.

BACKGROUND: Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have reported widespread brain functional connectivity alterations in patients with psychosis. These studies have mostly used either resting-state or simple-task paradigms, thereby compromising experimental control or ecological validity, respectively. Additionally, in a conventional functional magnetic resonance imaging intrasubject functional connectivity analysis, it is difficult to identify which connections relate to extrinsic (stimulus-induced) and which connections relate to intrinsic (non-stimulus-related) neural processes. METHODS: To mitigate these limitations, we used intersubject functional connectivity (ISFC) to analyze longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging data collected while 36 individuals with first-episode psychosis (FEP) and 29 age- and sex-matched population control participants watched scenes from the fantasy movie Alice in Wonderland at baseline and again at 1-year follow-up. Furthermore, to allow unconfounded comparison and to overcome possible circularity of ISFC, we introduced a novel approach wherein ISFC in both the FEP and population control groups was calculated with respect to an independent group of participants (not included in the analyses). RESULTS: Using this independent-reference ISFC approach, we found an interaction effect wherein the independent-reference ISFC in individuals with FEP, but not in the control group participants, was significantly stronger at baseline than at follow-up in a network centered in the hippocampus and involving thalamic, striatal, and cortical regions, such as the orbitofrontal cortex. Alleviation of positive symptoms, particularly delusions, from baseline to follow-up was correlated with decreased network connectivity in patients with FEP. CONCLUSIONS: These findings link deviation of naturalistic information processing in the hippocampus-centered network to positive symptoms.

Atypical cortical processing of bottom-up speech binding cues in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly display speech processing abnormalities. Binding of acoustic features of speech distributed across different frequencies into coherent speech objects is fundamental in speech perception. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the cortical processing of bottom-up acoustic cues for speech binding may be anomalous in ASD. We recorded magnetoencephalography while ASD children (ages 7-17) and typically developing peers heard sentences of sine-wave speech (SWS) and modulated SWS (MSS) where binding cues were restored through increased temporal coherence of the acoustic components and the introduction of harmonicity. The ASD group showed increased long-range feedforward functional connectivity from left auditory to parietal cortex with concurrent decreased local functional connectivity within the parietal region during MSS relative to SWS. As the parietal region has been implicated in auditory object binding, our findings support our hypothesis of atypical bottom-up speech binding in ASD. Furthermore, the long-range functional connectivity correlated with behaviorally measured auditory processing abnormalities, confirming the relevance of these atypical cortical signatures to the ASD phenotype. Lastly, the group difference in the local functional connectivity was driven by the youngest participants, suggesting that impaired speech binding in ASD might be ameliorated upon entering adolescence.

Lipreading a naturalistic narrative in a female population: Neural characteristics shared with listening and reading.

INTRODUCTION: Few of us are skilled lipreaders while most struggle with the task. Neural substrates that enable comprehension of connected natural speech via lipreading are not yet well understood. METHODS: We used a data-driven approach to identify brain areas underlying the lipreading of an 8-min narrative with participants whose lipreading skills varied extensively (range 6-100%, mean = 50.7%). The participants also listened to and read the same narrative. The similarity between individual participants' brain activity during the whole narrative, within and between conditions, was estimated by a voxel-wise comparison of the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal time courses. RESULTS: Inter-subject correlation (ISC) of the time courses revealed that lipreading, listening to, and reading the narrative were largely supported by the same brain areas in the temporal, parietal and frontal cortices, precuneus, and cerebellum. Additionally, listening to and reading connected naturalistic speech particularly activated higher-level linguistic processing in the parietal and frontal cortices more consistently than lipreading, probably paralleling the limited understanding obtained via lip-reading. Importantly, higher lipreading test score and subjective estimate of comprehension of the lipread narrative was associated with activity in the superior and middle temporal cortex. CONCLUSIONS: Our new data illustrates that findings from prior studies using well-controlled repetitive speech stimuli and stimulus-driven data analyses are also valid for naturalistic connected speech. Our results might suggest an efficient use of brain areas dealing with phonological processing in skilled lipreaders.

State-like changes in the salience network correlate with delusion severity in first-episode psychosis patients.

BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS: Delusions are characteristic of psychotic disorders; however, the brain correlates of delusions remain poorly known. Imaging studies on delusions typically compare images across individuals. Related confounding of inter-individual differences beyond delusions may be avoided by comparing delusional and non-delusional states within individuals. STUDY DESIGN: We studied correlations of delusions using intra-subject correlation (intra-SC) and inter-subject correlation of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal time series, obtained during a movie stimulus at baseline and follow-up. We included 27 control subjects and 24 first-episode psychosis patients, who were free of delusions at follow-up, to calculate intra-SC between fMRI signals obtained during the two time points. In addition, we studied changes in functional connectivity at baseline and during the one-year follow-up using regions where delusion severity correlated with intra-SC as seeds. RESULTS: The intra-SC correlated negatively with the baseline delusion severity in the bilateral anterior insula. In addition, we observed a subthreshold cluster in the anterior cingulate. These three regions constitute the cortical salience network (SN). Functional connectivity between the bilateral insula and the precuneus was weaker in the patients at baseline than in patients at follow-up or in control subjects at any time point. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that intra-SC is a powerful tool to study brain correlates of symptoms and highlight the role of the SN and internetwork dysconnectivity between the SN and the default mode network in delusions.

Magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography can both detect differences in cortical responses to vibrotactile stimuli in individuals on the autism spectrum.

Autism Spectrum (AS) is defined primarily by differences in social interactions, with impairments in sensory processing also characterizing the condition. In the search for neurophysiological biomarkers associated with traits relevant to the condition, focusing on sensory processing offers a path that is likely to be translatable across populations with different degrees of ability, as well as into animal models and across imaging modalities. In a prior study, a somatosensory neurophysiological signature of AS was identified using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Specifically, source estimation results showed differences between AS and neurotypically developing (NTD) subjects in the brain response to 25-Hz vibrotactile stimulation of the right fingertips, with lower inter-trial coherence (ITC) observed in the AS group. Here, we examined whether these group differences can be detected without source estimation using scalp electroencephalography (EEG), which is more commonly available in clinical settings than MEG, and therefore offers a greater potential for clinical translation. To that end, we recorded simultaneous whole-head MEG and EEG in 14 AS and 10 NTD subjects (age 15-28 years) using the same vibrotactile paradigm. Based on the scalp topographies, small sets of left hemisphere MEG and EEG sensors showing the maximum overall ITC were selected for group comparisons. Significant differences between the AS and NTD groups in ITC at 25 Hz as well as at 50 Hz were recorded in both MEG and EEG sensor data. For each measure, the mean ITC was lower in the AS than in the NTD group. EEG ITC values correlated with behaviorally assessed somatosensory sensation avoiding scores. The results show that information about ITC from MEG and EEG signals have substantial overlap, and thus EEG sensor-based ITC measures of the AS somatosensory processing biomarker previously identified using source localized MEG data have a potential to be developed into clinical use in AS, thanks to the higher accessibility to EEG in clinical settings.

Altered maturation and atypical cortical processing of spoken sentences in autism spectrum disorder.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with widespread receptive language impairments, yet the neural mechanisms underlying these deficits are poorly understood. Neuroimaging has shown that processing of socially-relevant sounds, including speech and non-speech, is atypical in ASD. However, it is unclear how the presence of lexical-semantic meaning affects speech processing in ASD. Here, we recorded magnetoencephalography data from individuals with ASD (N = 22, ages 7-17, 4 females) and typically developing (TD) peers (N = 30, ages 7-17, 5 females) during unattended listening to meaningful auditory speech sentences and meaningless jabberwocky sentences. After adjusting for age, ASD individuals showed stronger responses to meaningless jabberwocky sentences than to meaningful speech sentences in the same left temporal and parietal language regions where TD individuals exhibited stronger responses to meaningful speech. Maturational trajectories of meaningful speech responses were atypical in temporal, but not parietal, regions in ASD. Temporal responses were associated with ASD severity, while parietal responses were associated with aberrant involuntary attentional shifting in ASD. Our findings suggest a receptive speech processing dysfunction in ASD, wherein unattended meaningful speech elicits abnormal engagement of the language system, while unattended meaningless speech, filtered out in TD individuals, engages the language system through involuntary attention capture.

Inferior parietal lobule and early visual areas support elicitation of individualized meanings during narrative listening.

INTRODUCTION: When listening to a narrative, the verbal expressions translate into meanings and flow of mental imagery. However, the same narrative can be heard quite differently based on differences in listeners' previous experiences and knowledge. We capitalized on such differences to disclose brain regions that support transformation of narrative into individualized propositional meanings and associated mental imagery by analyzing brain activity associated with behaviorally assessed individual meanings elicited by a narrative. METHODS: Sixteen right-handed female subjects were instructed to list words that best described what had come to their minds while listening to an eight-minute narrative during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI data were analyzed by calculating voxel-wise intersubject correlation (ISC) values. We used latent semantic analysis (LSA) enhanced with Wordnet knowledge to measure semantic similarity of the produced words between subjects. Finally, we predicted the ISC with the semantic similarity using representational similarity analysis. RESULTS: We found that semantic similarity in these word listings between subjects, estimated using LSA combined with WordNet knowledge, predicting similarities in brain hemodynamic activity. Subject pairs whose individual semantics were similar also exhibited similar brain activity in the bilateral supramarginal and angular gyrus of the inferior parietal lobe, and in the occipital pole. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate, using a novel method to measure interindividual differences in semantics, brain mechanisms giving rise to semantics and associated imagery during narrative listening. During listening to a captivating narrative, the inferior parietal lobe and early visual cortical areas seem, thus, to support elicitation of individual meanings and flow of mental imagery.

Contextual knowledge provided by a movie biases implicit perception of the protagonist.

We are constantly categorizing other people as belonging to our in-group ('one of us') or out-group ('one of them'). Such grouping occurs fast and automatically and can be based on others' visible characteristics such as skin color or clothing style. Here we studied neural underpinnings of implicit social grouping not often visible on the face, male sexual orientation. A total of 14 homosexuals and 15 heterosexual males were scanned in functional magnetic resonance imaging while watching a movie about a homosexual man, whose face was also presented subliminally before (subjects did not know about the character's sexual orientation) and after the movie. We discovered significantly stronger activation to the man's face after seeing the movie in homosexual but not heterosexual subjects in medial prefrontal cortex, frontal pole, anterior cingulate cortex, right temporal parietal junction and bilateral superior frontal gyrus. In previous research, these brain areas have been connected to social perception, self-referential thinking, empathy, theory of mind and in-group perception. In line with previous studies showing biased perception of in-/out-group faces to be context dependent, our novel approach further demonstrates how complex contextual knowledge gained under naturalistic viewing can bias implicit social perception.

Early-latency categorical speech sound representations in the left inferior frontal gyrus.

Efficient speech perception requires the mapping of highly variable acoustic signals to distinct phonetic categories. How the brain overcomes this many-to-one mapping problem has remained unresolved. To infer the cortical location, latency, and dependency on attention of categorical speech sound representations in the human brain, we measured stimulus-specific adaptation of neuromagnetic responses to sounds from a phonetic continuum. The participants attended to the sounds while performing a non-phonetic listening task and, in a separate recording condition, ignored the sounds while watching a silent film. Neural adaptation indicative of phoneme category selectivity was found only during the attentive condition in the pars opercularis (POp) of the left inferior frontal gyrus, where the degree of selectivity correlated with the ability of the participants to categorize the phonetic stimuli. Importantly, these category-specific representations were activated at an early latency of 115-140 ms, which is compatible with the speed of perceptual phonetic categorization. Further, concurrent functional connectivity was observed between POp and posterior auditory cortical areas. These novel findings suggest that when humans attend to speech, the left POp mediates phonetic categorization through integration of auditory and motor information via the dorsal auditory stream.

Previous exposure to intact speech increases intelligibility of its digitally degraded counterpart as a function of stimulus complexity.

Recent studies have shown that acoustically distorted sentences can be perceived as either unintelligible or intelligible depending on whether one has previously been exposed to the undistorted, intelligible versions of the sentences. This allows studying processes specifically related to speech intelligibility since any change between the responses to the distorted stimuli before and after the presentation of their undistorted counterparts cannot be attributed to acoustic variability but, rather, to the successful mapping of sensory information onto memory representations. To estimate how the complexity of the message is reflected in speech comprehension, we applied this rapid change in perception to behavioral and magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiments using vowels, words and sentences. In the experiments, stimuli were initially presented to the subject in a distorted form, after which undistorted versions of the stimuli were presented. Finally, the original distorted stimuli were presented once more. The resulting increase in intelligibility observed for the second presentation of the distorted stimuli depended on the complexity of the stimulus: vowels remained unintelligible (behaviorally measured intelligibility 27%) whereas the intelligibility of the words increased from 19% to 45% and that of the sentences from 31% to 65%. This increase in the intelligibility of the degraded stimuli was reflected as an enhancement of activity in the auditory cortex and surrounding areas at early latencies of 130-160ms. In the same regions, increasing stimulus complexity attenuated mean currents at latencies of 130-160ms whereas at latencies of 200-270ms the mean currents increased. These modulations in cortical activity may reflect feedback from top-down mechanisms enhancing the extraction of information from speech. The behavioral results suggest that memory-driven expectancies can have a significant effect on speech comprehension, especially in acoustically adverse conditions where the bottom-up information is decreased.

Facilitated early cortical processing of nude human bodies.

Functional brain imaging has identified specialized neural systems supporting human body perception. Responses to nude vs. clothed bodies within this system are amplified. However, it remains unresolved whether nude and clothed bodies are processed by same cerebral networks or whether processing of nude bodies recruits additional affective and arousal processing areas. We recorded simultaneous MEG and EEG while participants viewed photographs of clothed and nude bodies. Global field power revealed a peak ∼145ms after stimulus onset to both clothed and nude bodies, and ∼205ms exclusively to nude bodies. Nude-body-sensitive responses were centered first (100-200ms) in the extrastriate and fusiform body areas, and subsequently (200-300ms) in affective-motivational areas including insula and anterior cingulate cortex. We conclude that visibility of sexual features facilitates early cortical processing of human bodies, the purpose of which is presumably to trigger sexual behavior and ultimately ensure reproduction.

Enhanced neural synchrony between left auditory and premotor cortex is associated with successful phonetic categorization.

The cortical dorsal auditory stream has been proposed to mediate mapping between auditory and articulatory-motor representations in speech processing. Whether this sensorimotor integration contributes to speech perception remains an open question. Here, magnetoencephalography was used to examine connectivity between auditory and motor areas while subjects were performing a sensorimotor task involving speech sound identification and overt repetition. Functional connectivity was estimated with inter-areal phase synchrony of electromagnetic oscillations. Structural equation modeling was applied to determine the direction of information flow. Compared to passive listening, engagement in the sensorimotor task enhanced connectivity within 200 ms after sound onset bilaterally between the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and ventral premotor cortex (vPMC), with the left-hemisphere connection showing directionality from vPMC to TPJ. Passive listening to noisy speech elicited stronger connectivity than clear speech between left auditory cortex (AC) and vPMC at ~100 ms, and between left TPJ and dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC) at ~200 ms. Information flow was estimated from AC to vPMC and from dPMC to TPJ. Connectivity strength among the left AC, vPMC, and TPJ correlated positively with the identification of speech sounds within 150 ms after sound onset, with information flowing from AC to TPJ, from AC to vPMC, and from vPMC to TPJ. Taken together, these findings suggest that sensorimotor integration mediates the categorization of incoming speech sounds through reciprocal auditory-to-motor and motor-to-auditory projections.

Enhanced early-latency electromagnetic activity in the left premotor cortex is associated with successful phonetic categorization.

Sensory-motor interactions between auditory and articulatory representations in the dorsal auditory processing stream are suggested to contribute to speech perception, especially when bottom-up information alone is insufficient for purely auditory perceptual mechanisms to succeed. Here, we hypothesized that the dorsal stream responds more vigorously to auditory syllables when one is engaged in a phonetic identification/repetition task subsequent to perception compared to passive listening, and that this effect is further augmented when the syllables are embedded in noise. To this end, we recorded magnetoencephalography while twenty subjects listened to speech syllables, with and without noise masking, in four conditions: passive perception; overt repetition; covert repetition; and overt imitation. Compared to passive listening, left-hemispheric N100m equivalent current dipole responses were amplified and shifted posteriorly when perception was followed by covert repetition task. Cortically constrained minimum-norm estimates showed amplified left supramarginal and angylar gyri responses in the covert repetition condition at ~100ms from stimulus onset. Longer-latency responses at ~200ms were amplified in the covert repetition condition in the left angular gyrus and in all three active conditions in the left premotor cortex, with further enhancements when the syllables were embedded in noise. Phonetic categorization accuracy and magnitude of voice pitch change between overt repetition and imitation conditions correlated with left premotor cortex responses at ~100 and ~200ms, respectively. Together, these results suggest that the dorsal stream involvement in speech perception is dependent on perceptual task demands and that phonetic categorization performance is influenced by the left premotor cortex.

Inheritance of vertebral number in the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus).

Intraspecific variation in the number of vertebrae is taxonomically widespread, and both genetic and environmental factors are known to contribute to this variation. However, the relative importance of genetic versus environmental influences on variation in vertebral number has seldom been investigated with study designs that minimize bias due to non-additive genetic and maternal influences. We used a paternal half-sib design and animal model analysis to estimate heritability and causal components of variance in vertebral number in three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). We found that both the number of vertebrae (h(2) = 0.36) and body size (h(2) = 0.42) were moderately heritable, whereas the influence of maternal effects was estimated to be negligible. While the number of vertebrae had a positive effect on body size, no evidence for a genetic correlation between body size and vertebral number was detected. However, there was a significant positive environmental correlation between these two traits. Our results support the generalization--in accordance with results from a review of heritability estimates for vertebral number in fish, reptiles and mammals--that the number of vertebrae appears to be moderately to highly heritable in a wide array of species. In the case of the three-spined stickleback, independent evolution of body size and number of vertebrae should be possible given the low genetic correlation between the two traits.

Increasing melanism along a latitudinal gradient in a widespread amphibian: local adaptation, ontogenic or environmental plasticity?

BACKGROUND: The thermal benefits of melanism in ectothermic animals are widely recognized, but relatively little is known about population differentiation in the degree of melanism along thermal gradients, and the relative contributions of genetic vs. environmental components into the level of melanism expressed. We investigated variation in the degree of melanism in the common frog (Rana temporaria; an active heliotherm thermoregulator) by comparing the degree of melanism (i) among twelve populations spanning over 1500 km long latitudinal gradient across the Scandinavian Peninsula and (ii) between two populations from latitudinal extremes subjected to larval temperature treatments in a common garden experiment. RESULTS: We found that the degree of melanism increased steeply in the wild as a function of latitude. Comparison of the degree of population differentiation in melanism (PST) and neutral marker loci (FST) revealed that the PST >FST, indicating that the differences cannot be explained by random genetic drift alone. However, the latitudinal trend observed in the wild was not present in the common garden data, suggesting that the cline in nature is not attributable to direct genetic differences. CONCLUSIONS: As straightforward local adaptation can be ruled out, the observed trend is likely to result from environment-driven phenotypic plasticity or ontogenetic plasticity coupled with population differences in age structure. In general, our results provide an example how phenotypic plasticity or even plain ontogeny can drive latitudinal clines and result in patterns perfectly matching the genetic differences expected under adaptive hypotheses.

Recombination rate between sex chromosomes depends on phenotypic sex in the common frog.

We show that the recombination rate between the sex chromosomes is controlled by phenotypic, rather than genotypic, sex in sex-reversed common frogs. This supports the recent hypothesis that in ectothermic vertebrates sex reversal can prevent the progressive accumulation of mutations to nonrecombining Y chromosomes and their subsequent evolutionary decay.

Passerine extrapair mating dynamics: a bayesian modeling approach comparing four species.

In many socially monogamous animals, females engage in extrapair copulation (EPC), causing some broods to contain both within-pair and extrapair young (EPY). The proportion of all young that are EPY varies across populations and species. Because an EPC that does not result in EPY leaves no forensic trace, this variation in the proportion of EPY reflects both variation in the tendency to engage in EPC and variation in the extrapair fertilization (EPF) process across populations and species. We analyzed data on the distribution of EPY in broods of four passerines (blue tit, great tit, collared flycatcher, and pied flycatcher), with 18,564 genotyped nestlings from 2,346 broods in two to nine populations per species. Our Bayesian modeling approach estimated the underlying probability function of EPC (assumed to be a Poisson function) and conditional binomial EPF probability. We used an information theoretical approach to show that the expected distribution of EPC per female varies across populations but that EPF probabilities vary on the above-species level (tits vs. flycatchers). Hence, for these four passerines, our model suggests that the probability of an EPC mainly is determined by ecological (population-specific) conditions, whereas EPF probabilities reflect processes that are fixed above the species level.