Community-wide stable isotope analysis reveals two distinct trophic groups in a service-providing carabid community.

Disentangling trophic interactions among species is important for elucidating mechanisms underlying ecosystem functioning and services. Carabid beetles are an important guild of predators that may regulate pest populations in arable landscapes, but their generalist feeding behavior hinders predictions about their actual contribution to pest control. In order to assess carabids' potential for pest control, we simultaneously analyzed the carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of a community of 45 co-occurring species in wheat and oilseed rape fields. With the expectation to identify distinct trophic groups based on the mean and the variance of carabid isotopic signatures, we observed a high degree of overlap in trophic positions between species. However, we also observed that species could be successfully categorized into two groups according to whether or not their carbon signatures varied independently from variations in the crop baseline. We interpret these results as differential primary resource uptake or by differential mobility aptitude in foraging. Accordingly, we propose that the isotopic signal can inform us on the presence/absence of links between generalist predators and cultivated plants through the trophic networks they belong to, and consequently on their potential role as pest natural enemies. We therefore suggest the complementarity of stable isotope analysis for obtaining a time-integrated assessment of carabid trophic behavior that may be combined with more direct molecular diet analysis allowing the simultaneous quantification of specific trophic links within agricultural landscapes.

The evaluation of cognitive skills and the quality of life between Parkinson Disease patients and healthy aged people above 60 years old.

In the 21st century mankind has made a huge progress in the health care system, so the average life expectancy has increased significantly compared to the previous centuries. The managing of healthy ageing of the population represents one of the main actual problems of the national health care systems around the world as the aged population is increasing, so, for instance, it is estimated that there will be over 2 billion people worldwide over the age of 65 by the year 2050 [36]. In particular, the age-related neurological diseases such as Parkinson Disease (PD) have seen a dramatic increase in international prevalence. Projections suggest that the neurodegenerative diseases like PD will surpass cancer as the leading cause of death by the year 2040 [36]; thus presenting an ever-growing challenge to maintain an optimal quality of life of the patients. In healthy ageing, cognitive skills impair naturally due to natural brain atrophy; in PD these processes are rather accelerated, so that, overwhelming clinical studies showed that dementia eventually develops in up to 80-85 % of patients with PD [1, 39]. This article is focuses on evaluating the health related quality of life measurements of PD patients such as cognitive status, anxiety and stress levels as well as it aims to suggest a possible future strategy to improve the quality of life of the patients.