The morphological allometry of four closely related and coexisting insect species reveals adaptation to the mean and variability of the resource size.

The size of organisms may result from various, sometimes antagonistic forces operating on distinct traits, within an evolutionary framework that may also be constraining. Morphological allometry, referring to the way trait size scales with body size, has been shown to reflect ecological adaptation to the mean size of the resource exploited. We examined the allometric relationships between rostrum and body size among four insect (Curculio spp.) specialists of oak acorns. In all four species, weevil females drill a hole with their rostrum prior depositing one or a few eggs inside the seed. The four weevil species, that coexist on the same individual trees, displayed partitioned egg-laying periods in the year, thereby encountering acorns of different size and maturation stage. We found marked differences in the allometric slope among females: species laying eggs late in the season had a steeper slope, leading to increasingly longer rostrum relative to body length, along with the mean size of the growing acorns. Females of the smallest species had the longest oviposition period and also had the steepest slope, which provided them with the most variable rostrum length, thereby matching the variable size of the resource through time. Our work highlights the need to consider not only the average size but also the degree of variability in resource size to understand the adaptive value of allometric relationships.

The challenges, coping mechanisms, and recovery from the initial waves of the COVID-19 pandemic among academic radiographers.

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Europe in March 2020 and created major challenges across healthcare provision and for healthcare education programmes as well as having a major impact on society. Within the profession of Radiography changes in medical imaging, radiotherapy, and teaching practices have been reported along with the negative impact on radiographers and students. The aim of this study was to investigate key challenges relating to academic practice during the COIVD-19 pandemic; how radiography academics have coped and to identify recommendations for further support required to facilitate recovery of the academic faculty as the pandemic ebbs. METHODS: A survey was circulated using SurveyMonkey™ via personal, national and international networks, including the European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS), to reach as many academic radiographers as possible. Open questions relating to the challenges of providing radiography education during the COVID-19 pandemic and the and coping strategies used were included. Thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo (QSR International, MA). RESULTS: 533 academic radiographers responded to the whole survey from 43 different countries, with 340 responses relating to challenges and 327 for coping strategies. The main themes for the challenges were clinical practice, communication with colleagues, lack of face to face, managing change, students (support), and staff support. The coping strategy themes were communication with colleagues, physical exercise, self-care and wellbeing. CONCLUSION: These data demonstrate a multitude of challenges for academic radiographers and the pressure they worked under during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was clear. However, the majority employed healthy coping strategies to help them deal with the pressure, uncertainty and trauma of the situation. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: COVID-19 had a significant impact on academic radiographers and while many reported good strategies for coping, the level of pressure is unsustainable. This study highlights the need to support academic radiographers to ensure a sustainable workforce.

The risk of burnout in academic radiographers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic created major challenges across society, healthcare provision and also for those delivering healthcare education programmes. Clinical placements were disrupted and, in many incidences cancelled. Higher education institutions were required to move completely to online delivery methods with little notice. This created significant additional workload, stress and the need to learn new skills at a time of great uncertainty. This study explored the risks of burnout in academic radiographers during the first 12 months of the pandemic. METHODS: A survey was circulated using SurveyMonkey™ via personal, national and international networks, including the European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS), to reach as many academic radiographers as possible. Disengagement and exhaustion were measured using the Oldenburg burnout inventory. Descriptive statistics and a one-way ANOVA were used to analyse the quantitative data using STATA V16 (Statacorp, TA). RESULTS: 533 academic radiographers responded to the survey from 43 different countries. Mean disengagement was in the medium range and exhaustion was high for the total dataset. In a subset of countries with 10 or more responses, there was significant variation between countries, with the UK having highest mean exhaustion score and the UK, Ireland and France sharing the highest mean disengagement score. In the total dataset, 86% agreed workload had increased during the pandemic and 35% had considered leaving academia in the last year. CONCLUSION: These data demonstrate the stark reality of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic radiographers' workload, wellbeing, and intention to leave their roles. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: COVID-19 has had a significant impact on academic radiographers and this study highlights the urgent need for remedial measures to better support academic radiographers in order to ensure a sufficient, and sustainable workforce.

Spatially heterogeneous stochasticity and the adaptive diversification of dormancy.

Diversified bet-hedging, a strategy that leads several individuals with the same genotype to express distinct phenotypes in a given generation, is now well established as a common evolutionary response to environmental stochasticity. Life-history traits defined as diversified bet-hedging (e.g. germination or diapause strategies) display marked differences between populations in spatial proximity. In order to find out whether such differences can be explained by local adaptations to spatially heterogeneous environmental stochasticity, we explored the evolution of bet-hedging dormancy strategies in a metapopulation using a two-patch model with patch differences in stochastic juvenile survival. We found that spatial differences in the level of environmental stochasticity, restricted dispersal, increased fragmentation and intermediate survival during dormancy all favour the adaptive diversification of bet-hedging dormancy strategies. Density dependency also plays a major role in the diversification of dormancy strategies because: (i) it may interact locally with environmental stochasticity and amplify its effects; however, (ii) it can also generate chaotic population dynamics that may impede diversification. Our work proposes new hypotheses to explain the spatial patterns of bet-hedging strategies that we hope will encourage new empirical studies of this topic.

Unexpected male choosiness for mates in a spider.

Sexual selection theory traditionally considers choosiness for mates to be negatively related to intra-sexual competition. Males were classically considered to be the competing, but not the choosy, sex. However, evidence of male choosiness is now accumulating. Male choosiness is expected to increase with an individual's competitive ability, and to decrease as intra-sexual competition increases. However, such predictions have never been tested in field conditions. Here, we explore male mate choice in a spider by studying size-assortative pairing in two natural sites that strongly differ in the level of male-male competition. Unexpectedly, our results demonstrate that mate choice shifts from opportunism to high selectivity as competition between males increases. Males experiencing weak competition did not exhibit size-related mating preferences. By contrast, when competition was intense we found strong size-assortative pairing due to male choice: while larger, more competitive males preferentially paired with larger, more fecund females, smaller males chose smaller females. Thus, we show that mating preferences of males vary with their competitive ability. The distinct preferences exhibited by males of different sizes seem to be an adaptive response to the lower reproductive opportunities arising from increased competition between males.

Web-building behaviour in the orb-weaving spider Zygiella x-notata: influence of experience.

Zygiella x-notata is an orb-weaving spider that often renews its trap daily. Web building has associated costs and benefits, and building successive webs may have consequences for lifetime reproductive success. In the laboratory, we tested the ability of Z. x-notata to modify its building behaviour in response to various stages in predation (prey detection, capture and ingestion) experienced with a previous web. We determined which stages provided information for the spiders. Spiders that detected, captured and ingested prey and then rebuilt their web used less silk and made a smaller capture area than in the previous web. There was no effect of prey detection alone on the next web. Capture without feeding gave the same results as capture followed by feeding. The spiders that ate prey without detection and capture (feeding by hand) had the same energetic gains as spiders that caught prey but delayed building a new web. The spiders thus showed plasticity in web-building behaviour and in the amount of silk used (energetic investment) in the short term (from one web to the next). Changes in body condition may therefore influence web construction. Moreover, information gained during prey capture appeared to influence the size and structure of the next web. This ability should enable spiders to adapt their web building to maximize their fitness. Copyright 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.