New Species of Grotea (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae, Labeninae) from Ecuador, with New Records and a Key to the Neotropical Species.

Here we describe two new Grotea species from Ecuador, G. akakana Mazón & Bordera sp. nov., and G. romeri Mazón sp. nov., as well as the male of G. cundinamarquesa Herrera-Flórez 2018. G. akakana sp. nov. is characterized by the combination of a postgenal process long, a 45-flagellomeres antenna without a white band and a mesopleuron black with two yellow spots separated by a red one. On the other hand, G. romeri sp. nov. is characterized by the combination of a postgenal process very short, a 36-flagellomeres antenna without a white band, a propodeum with a long and narrow area lateralis, uninterrupted yellow-colored orbits and a mesopleuron black with a yellow spot in the middle. The species G. santandereana Herrera-Flórez 2018 and G. surinamese Herrera-Flórez 2019 are recorded from Ecuador for the first time. This brings the total of described Grotea species to 31, all from the New World, with 27 of these exclusively Neotropical. A key for the identification of Neotropical species is included.

A comprehensive dataset of the geophilid centipedes of the south-eastern Alps (Chilopoda, Geophilomorpha, Geophilidae s.l.).

Background: Centipedes of the family Geophilidae s.l. are widespread in the Holarctic, with the south-eastern part of the European Alps standing out as one of the most investigated regions. However, retrieving the published records for this taxon, even for this region, is challenging, since most of them are sparse in the specialised literature and interpreting them is hampered by the many taxonomic and nomenclatorial changes occurred in the past and recent times. New information: We assembled and released a dataset of occurrence records of the geophilid species in the south-eastern Alps, including all the published records and many other records present in unpublished catalogues of scientific collections. For each record, we integrated information from all the sources about: locality, date of collection, the taxonomic identifications, number and sex of individuals and available sequences of molecular markers. For all the records, we estimated geographic coordinates of the locality, when not originally provided, based on the information available. We also estimated the accuracy of the position.The dataset includes 3293 records referred to 39 species, obtained since the first half of the 19th century and up to 2022; 52% of these records have been released publicly for the first time in the dataset here described.

[What Charles Darwin owed to Joseph Banks]. / Ce que Charles Darwin doit à Joseph Banks.

History has remembered Joseph Banks as the explorer-botanist of the first voyage of James Cook. Yet, shortly after his return, he got elected president of the Royal Society and, for over 40 years, he then played in Great Britain an eminent role in reorganizing natural sciences and advocating an "economic botany". He actively intervened in acclimatization and varietal selection of plants and animals in Great Britain as in the future English colonies. Thus he built an intellectual environment which will promote the emergence of Charles Darwin's thoughts.

L'histoire retient Joseph Banks comme l'explorateur-botaniste du premier voyage de James Cook. Pourtant, peu de temps après son retour, il se fait élire président de la Royal Society et joue alors, pendant plus de 40 ans, un rôle éminent en Grande-Bretagne en réorganisant les sciences naturalistes et en prônant une « botanique économique ¼ . Il intervient activement pour l'acclimatation et la sélection variétale de plantes et d'animaux en Grande-Bretagne comme dans les futures colonies anglaises. Ainsi il construit un environnement intellectuel qui favorisera l'émergence de la pensée de Charles Darwin.

From heterosis to outbreeding depression: genotype-by-environment interaction shifts hybrid fitness in opposite directions.

In F1 hybrids, phenotypic values are expected to be near the parental means under additive effects or close to one parent under dominance. However, F1 traits can fall outside the parental range, and outbreeding depression occurs when inferior fitness is observed in hybrids. Another possible outcome is heterosis, a phenomenon that interspecific hybrids or intraspecific crossbred F1s exhibit improved fitness compared to both parental species or strains. As an application of heterosis, hybrids between channel catfish females and blue catfish males are superior in feed conversion efficiency, carcass yield, and harvestability. Over twenty years of hybrid catfish production in experimental settings and farming practices generated abundant phenotypic data, making it an ideal system to investigate heterosis. In this study, we characterized fitness in terms of growth and survival longitudinally, revealing environment-dependent heterosis. In ponds, hybrids outgrow both parents due to an extra rapid growth phase of 2∼4 months in year 2. This bimodal growth pattern is unique to F1 hybrids in pond culture environments only. In sharp contrast, the same genetic types cultured in tanks display outbreeding depression, where hybrids perform poorly, while channel catfish demonstrate superiority in growth throughout development. Our findings represent the first example, known to the authors, of opposite fitness shifts in response to environmental changes in interspecific vertebrate hybrids, suggesting a broader fitness landscape for F1 hybrids. Future genomic studies based on this experiment will help understand genome-environment interaction in shaping the F1 progeny fitness in the scenario of environment-dependent heterosis and outbreeding depression.

Invasion on So Grand a Scale: Darwin, Lyell, and Invasive Species.

The importance of naturalization-the establishment of species introduced into foreign places-to the early development of Darwin's theory of evolution deserves historical attention. Introduced and invasive European species presented Darwin with interpretive challenges during his service as naturalist on the HMS Beagle. Species naturalization and invasive species strained the geologist Charles Lyell's creationist view of the organic world, a view which Darwin adopted during the voyage of the Beagle but came to question afterward. I suggest that these phenomena primed Darwin to question the "stability of species." I then examine the role of introduced and invasive species in Darwin's early theorizing and negotiation with Lyell's ideas, recorded in his post-voyage "transmutation notebooks." Therein, the subject was an inflection point in his contention with Lyell's views and moreover, his theorizing on invasive species occasioned some of his earliest inklings of natural selection. Finally, I examine how naturalization was crucial to Lyell's own eventual conversion to evolutionism. I conclude with brief reflections on the implications of this narrative for our understanding of Darwin's reasoning, his intellectual relationship to Lyell, and the historical context that shaped his theory.

Darwin and the White Shipwrecked Sailor: Beyond Blending Inheritance and the Jenkin Myth.

This paper revisits Fleeming Jenkin's anonymous review of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, published in the North British Review in June 1867. This review is usually revered for its impact on Darwin's theory of descent with modification. Its classical interpretation states that Jenkin, a Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, made a compelling case against natural selection based on the fact of "blending inheritance" and the "swamping" of advantageous variations. Those themes, however, are strikingly absent from Jenkin's text. They were later read into Jenkin's text by scholars trying to explain how Darwinian selection was reconciled with Mendelian genes and the birth of the Modern Synthesis. While many scholars have tried to measure Jenkin's effect on Darwin, the value of the 1867 review remains unclear. This paper re-examines its content and concludes that Jenkin's "able review" was in fact written by an engineer whose competencies in biology were very low. Focusing on the figure of the shipwrecked white sailor isolated on an island inhabited by Black people, this paper also underlines the racial assumptions behind Jenkin's review. "Blending inheritance" is thus a theme linked to theoretical reworkings on the question of race and skin colors, taking its root in Galton's typology of heredity. Darwin was probably mostly unimpressed by Jenkin's review. The problems raised by the review were not so much "blending inheritance" and "swamping" but a conundrum of problems related to the effects of intercrossing on variation and reversion.

Darwin vai ao divã: Uma revisão sistemática de literatura em publicações brasileiras / Darwin goes to the couch: A systematic literature review in brazilian publications

Este artigo objetiva identificar, contextualizar e analisar evidências e impacto do evolucionismo darwiniano na obra de Sigmund Freud, na literatura especializada nacional nas últimas duas décadas. Uma revisão sistemática da literatura foi empreendida, em conformidade com as orientações metodológicas PRISMA, valendo-se, para tanto, de palavras-chave selecionadas, posteriormente empregadas na pesquisa conduzida em sete base de dados distintas. Após seleção, chegou-se a uma amostra final composta por dezesseis artigos de relevância. De acordo com os resultados, evidencia-se: evolucionismo darwiniano como um recurso na escrita da obra freudiana; utilização da história evolutiva ou história filogenética como justificativa das elaborações de Freud; teoria darwiniana como meio para compreensão da origem de sintomas e estados psíquicos; uso da figura representativa de Darwin.

This paper aims to identify, contextualize, and analyze the evidence and impact of Darwinian evolutionism in the work of Sigmund Freud, in the national specialized literature in the last of two decades. A systematic review of the literature was carried out, in accordance to the PRISMA methodological guidelines, using selected keywords, which were later used in the research conducted in seven different databases. After selection, a final sample was made up of sixteen articles of relevance. According to the results, it is evidenced: Darwinian evolutionism as a resource in the writing of Freud's work; use of the evolutionary history or phylogenetic history as justification for Freud's elaborations; Darwinian theory as a means for understanding the origin of symptoms and psychic states; use of the representative figure of Darwin.

It Ain't Necessarily So: Ludwig Boltzmann's Darwinian Notion of Entropy.

Ludwig Boltzmann's move in his seminal paper of 1877, introducing a statistical understanding of entropy, was a watershed moment in the history of physics. The work not only introduced quantization and provided a new understanding of entropy, it challenged the understanding of what a law of nature could be. Traditionally, nomological necessity, that is, specifying the way in which a system must develop, was considered an essential element of proposed physical laws. Yet, here was a new understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that no longer possessed this property. While it was a new direction in physics, in other important scientific discourses of that time-specifically Huttonian geology and Darwinian evolution, similar approaches were taken in which a system's development followed principles, but did so in a way that both provided a direction of time and allowed for non-deterministic, though rule-based, time evolution. Boltzmann referred to both of these theories, especially the work of Darwin, frequently. The possibility that Darwin influenced Boltzmann's thought in physics can be seen as being supported by Boltzmann's later writings.

Evolutionary feedback from the environment shapes mechanisms that generate genome variation.

Darwin recognized that 'a grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation.' However, because the Modern Synthesis assumes that the intrinsic probability of any individual mutation is unrelated to that mutation's potential adaptive value, attention has been focused on selection rather than on the intrinsic generation of variation. Yet many examples illustrate that the term 'random' mutation, as widely understood, is inaccurate. The probabilities of distinct classes of variation are neither evenly distributed across a genome nor invariant over time, nor unrelated to their potential adaptive value. Because selection acts upon variation, multiple biochemical mechanisms can and have evolved that increase the relative probability of adaptive mutations. In effect, the generation of heritable variation is in a feedback loop with selection, such that those mechanisms that tend to generate variants that survive recurring challenges in the environment would be captured by this survival and thus inherited and accumulated within lineages of genomes. Moreover, because genome variation is affected by a wide range of biochemical processes, genome variation can be regulated. Biochemical mechanisms that sense stress, from lack of nutrients to DNA damage, can increase the probability of specific classes of variation. A deeper understanding of evolution involves attention to the evolution of, and environmental influences upon, the intrinsic variation generated in gametes, in other words upon the biochemical mechanisms that generate variation across generations. These concepts have profound implications for the types of questions that can and should be asked, as omics databases become more comprehensive, detection methods more sensitive, and computation and experimental analyses even more high throughput and thus capable of revealing the intrinsic generation of variation in individual gametes. These concepts also have profound implications for evolutionary theory, which, upon reflection it will be argued, predicts that selection would increase the probability of generating adaptive mutations, in other words, predicts that the ability to evolve itself evolves.

Peto's "Paradox" and Six Degrees of Cancer Prevalence.

Peto's paradox and the epidemiologic observation of the average six degrees of tumor prevalence are studied and hypothetically solved. A simple consideration, Petho's paradox challenges our intuitive understanding of cancer risk and prevalence. Our simple consideration is that the more a cell divides, the higher the chance of acquiring cancerous mutations, and so the larger or longer-lived organisms have more cells and undergo more cell divisions over their lifetime, expecting to have a higher risk of developing cancer. Paradoxically, it is not supported by the observations. The allometric scaling of species could answer the Peto paradox. Another paradoxical human epidemiology observation in six average mutations is necessary for cancer prevalence, despite the random expectations of the tumor causes. To solve this challenge, game theory could be applied. The inherited and random DNA mutations in the replication process nonlinearly drive cancer development. The statistical variance concept does not reasonably describe tumor development. Instead, the Darwinian natural selection principle is applied. The mutations in the healthy organism's cellular population can serve the species' evolutionary adaptation by the selective pressure of the circumstances. Still, some cells collect multiple uncorrected mutations, adapt to the extreme stress in the stromal environment, and develop subclinical phases of cancer in the individual. This process needs extensive subsequent DNA replications to heritage and collect additional mutations, which are only marginal alone. Still, together, they are preparing for the first stage of the precancerous condition. In the second stage, when one of the caretaker genes is accidentally mutated, the caused genetic instability prepares the cell to fight for its survival and avoid apoptosis. This can be described as a competitive game. In the third stage, the precancerous cell develops uncontrolled proliferation with the damaged gatekeeper gene and forces the new game strategy with binary cooperation with stromal cells for alimentation. In the fourth stage, the starving conditions cause a game change again, starting a cooperative game, where the malignant cells cooperate and force the cooperation of the stromal host, too. In the fifth stage, the resetting of homeostasis finishes the subclinical stage, and in the fifth stage, the clinical phase starts. The prevention of the development of mutated cells is more complex than averting exposure to mutagens from the environment throughout the organism's lifetime. Mutagenic exposure can increase the otherwise random imperfect DNA reproduction, increasing the likelihood of cancer development, but mutations exist. Toxic exposure is more challenging; it may select the tolerant cells on this particular toxic stress, so these mutations have more facility to avoid apoptosis in otherwise collected random mutational states.

Urban living can rescue Darwin's finches from the lethal effects of invasive vampire flies.

Human activity changes multiple factors in the environment, which can have positive or negative synergistic effects on organisms. However, few studies have explored the causal effects of multiple anthropogenic factors, such as urbanization and invasive species, on animals and the mechanisms that mediate these interactions. This study examines the influence of urbanization on the detrimental effect of invasive avian vampire flies (Philornis downsi) on endemic Darwin's finches in the Galápagos Islands. We experimentally manipulated nest fly abundance in urban and non-urban locations and then characterized nestling health, fledging success, diet, and gene expression patterns related to host defense. Fledging success of non-parasitized nestlings from urban (79%) and non-urban (75%) nests did not differ significantly. However, parasitized, non-urban nestlings lost more blood, and fewer nestlings survived (8%) compared to urban nestlings (50%). Stable isotopic values (δ15 N) from urban nestling feces were higher than those from non-urban nestlings, suggesting that urban nestlings are consuming more protein. δ15 N values correlated negatively with parasite abundance, which suggests that diet might influence host defenses (e.g., tolerance and resistance). Parasitized, urban nestlings differentially expressed genes within pathways associated with red blood cell production (tolerance) and pro-inflammatory response (innate immunological resistance), compared to parasitized, non-urban nestlings. In contrast, parasitized non-urban nestlings differentially expressed genes within pathways associated with immunoglobulin production (adaptive immunological resistance). Our results suggest that urban nestlings are investing more in pro-inflammatory responses to resist parasites but also recovering more blood cells to tolerate blood loss. Although non-urban nestlings are mounting an adaptive immune response, it is likely a last effort by the immune system rather than an effective defense against avian vampire flies since few nestlings survived.

George Howard Darwin and the "public" interpretation of The Tides.

Processes of adapting complex information for broad audiences became a pressing concern by the turn of the twentieth century. Channels of communication ranged from public lectures to printed books designed to serve a social class eager for self-improvement. Through analyzing a course of public lectures given by George Howard Darwin (1845-1912) for the Lowell Institute in Boston and the monograph he based on these, The Tides and Kindred Phenomena of the Solar System (1898), this article connects the important practices of public lecturing and book production-two aspects of knowledge dissemination that tend to be studied as separate entities. Darwin, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge and son of the famous naturalist, relied on a diverse material culture when lecturing and producing a book. Giving a new account of Darwin's scientific work through exploring his adaption of it for broader audiences, this article connects the diverse material culture Darwin employed in talks to the practice of producing a published book. The content of objects demonstrated and the lantern slides projected during Darwin's lectures evolved to form a book designed to engage broad sectors of society in Europe and the United States. Darwin's lectures were attended at full capacity, while The Tides was soon printed in numerous English editions and translated into German, Italian, Hungarian, and Spanish.

Behavioral Modification of Leucauge mariana Induced by an Ichneumonid Spider-Parasitoid, Hymenoepimecis castilloi, in the Colombian Andes.

Hymenoepimecis is a genus of Darwin wasps in the Polysphincta group of genera (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Pimplinae) known as ectoparasitoids of a broad spectrum of spiders. The parasitoid induces production of a web known as cocoon web, which provides shelter and support for the wasp pupa. In this study, we describe for the first time the interaction between Hymenoepimecis castilloi Pádua & Sääksjärvi (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) and its host spider Leucauge mariana (Taczanowski) (Araneae: Tetragnathidae) in the Colombian Andes, provide new records of wasp genus distribution, and described the behavioral modifications induced in the spider. Web modifications occurred in the webs of both solitary and aggregated individuals. Adhesive spirals were lacking, and webs were connected to vegetation by multiple threads in all cocoon webs, which was not seen attached to webs of non-parasitized spiders. All parasitoid cocoons were observed hanging on a vertical line in the hub of the cocoon web. As previously described for other species, we believe that this modified web design results in increased web strength and favors parasitoid development during the pupal stage.

Speciation by physiological selection of environmentally acquired traits.

A chance mutation affecting a single or extremely few individuals in a continuous population will be quickly diluted through interbreeding. Charles Darwin fully appreciated this difficulty with relying on natural selection alone, and suggested an enabling role for geographical isolation in the origin of species. However, Darwin also believed in evolution by the inheritance of acquired traits and in populations of interbreeding animals, both of which would need a different isolating mechanism to overcome dilution and play a role in animal evolution. Historically disputed, the inheritance of acquired characters is now increasingly accepted as a phenomenon, and Charles Darwin himself is acknowledged as closely pre-empting the type of physiology necessary to mediate it in his hypothesis of 'pangenesis'. In this article, we question how the inheritance of acquired traits might overcome the problem of dilution by interbreeding and contribute to evolution. Specifically, we describe how Darwin's young protégé, George Romanes, developed ideas he discussed with Darwin and extended pangenesis to include a conceivable solution published after Darwin's death: physiological selection of fertility. In light of the 'rediscovery' of pangenesis, here we recount physiological selection as a testable hypothesis to explain how environmentally acquired characteristics could become coupled to the generation of species.

A "Mean Quarrelsome Spirit:" Controversy in British Systematics, 1822-1836.

British systematics was distinctly marked by a raft of vituperative controversies around the turn of the 1830s. After the local collapse of broad consensus in the Linnaean system by 1820, the emergence of new schemes of classification-most notably, the "quinarian" system of William Sharp Macleay-brought with it an unprecedented register of public debate among zoologists in Britain, one which a young Charles Darwin would bitterly describe to his friend John Stevens Henslow in October 1836 as possessing a "mean quarrelsome spirit," conducted in "a manner anything but like that of gentlemen." This article aims to provide a social and conceptual account of the remarkable tenor of zoological discourse in Britain in the late 1820s and early 1830s, with joint attention to the philosophical and interpersonal commitments at play. In doing so, it analyzes the three of the period's most striking public controversies, each of which counted key advocates of the quinarian system as central participants.

Bubbling beyond the barrier: exosomal RNA as a vehicle for soma-germline communication.

'Weismann's barrier' has restricted theories of heredity to the transmission of genomic variation for the better part of a century. However, the discovery and elucidation of epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation such as DNA methylation and histone modifications has renewed interest in studies on the inheritance of acquired traits and given them mechanistic plausibility. Although it is now clear that these mechanisms allow many environmentally acquired traits to be transmitted to the offspring, how phenotypic information is communicated from the body to its gametes has remained a mystery. Here, we discuss recent evidence that such communication is mediated by somatic RNAs that travel inside extracellular vesicles to the gametes where they reprogram the offspring epigenome and phenotype. How gametes learn about bodily changes has implications not only for the clinic, but also for evolutionary theory by bringing together intra- and intergenerational mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity and adaptation.

Darwin's feathers: Eco-evolutionary biology, predictions and policy.

The scientific community is often asked to predict the future state of the environment and, to do so, the structure (biodiversity) and the functions (ecosystem functioning) of the investigated systems must be described and understood. In his "handful of feathers" metaphor, Charles Darwin explained the difference between simple and predictable systems, obeying definite laws, and complex (and unpredictable) systems, featured by innumerable components and interactions among them. In order not to waste efforts in impossible enterprises, it is crucial to ascertain if accurate predictions are possible in a given domain, and to what extent they might be reliable. Since ecology and evolution (together forming "natural history") deal with complex historical systems that are extremely sensitive to initial conditions and to contingencies or 'black swans', it is inherently impossible to accurately predict their future states. Notwithstanding this impossibility, policy makers are asking the community of ecological and evolutionary biologists to predict the future. The struggle for funding induces many supposed naturalists to do so, also because other types of scientists (from engineers to modellers) are keen to sell predictions (usually in form of solutions) to policy makers that are willing to pay for them. This paper is a plea for bio-ecological realism. The "mission" of ecologists and evolutionary biologists (natural historians) is not to predict the future state of inherently unpredictable systems, but to convince policy makers that we must live with uncertainties. Natural history, however, can provide knowledge-based wisdom to face the uncertainties about the future. Natural historians produce scenarios that are of great help in figuring out how to manage our relationship with the rest of nature.

Aligning Standards Communities for Omics Biodiversity Data: Sustainable Darwin Core-MIxS Interoperability.

The standardization of data, encompassing both primary and contextual information (metadata), plays a pivotal role in facilitating data (re-)use, integration, and knowledge generation. However, the biodiversity and omics communities, converging on omics biodiversity data, have historically developed and adopted their own distinct standards, hindering effective (meta)data integration and collaboration. In response to this challenge, the Task Group (TG) for Sustainable DwC-MIxS Interoperability was established. Convening experts from the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) alongside external stakeholders, the TG aimed to promote sustainable interoperability between the Minimum Information about any (x) Sequence (MIxS) and Darwin Core (DwC) specifications. To achieve this goal, the TG utilized the Simple Standard for Sharing Ontology Mappings (SSSOM) to create a comprehensive mapping of DwC keys to MIxS keys. This mapping, combined with the development of the MIxS-DwC extension, enables the incorporation of MIxS core terms into DwC-compliant metadata records, facilitating seamless data exchange between MIxS and DwC user communities. Through the implementation of this translation layer, data produced in either MIxS- or DwC-compliant formats can now be efficiently brokered, breaking down silos and fostering closer collaboration between the biodiversity and omics communities. To ensure its sustainability and lasting impact, TDWG and GSC have both signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on creating a continuous model to synchronize their standards. These achievements mark a significant step forward in enhancing data sharing and utilization across domains, thereby unlocking new opportunities for scientific discovery and advancement.

R WE ready for reimbursement? A round up of developments in real-world evidence relating to health technology assessment: part 13.

In this latest update we highlight a report from the European Medicines Agency on their use of real-world evidence (RWE) in decision making, RWE reporting guidance from the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health and highlight some new data demonstrating the value medicines for spinal muscular atrophy have brought patients.