Publications related to Holocene extinction

A landmark environmental law looks ahead

In late December 1973, the United States enacted what some would come to call “the pitbull of environmental laws.” In the 50 years since, the formidable regulatory teeth of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been credited with considerable successes, ob ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2023

Atlas Narratives of Anthropogenic Transformations across the Vietnamese Mekong Delta's Urban-Rural Territories: Water Ecosystems as Subject for the Social Ecological Transition

Sylvie Tram Nguyen

Well beyond the impact of climate change, anthropogenic modifications of the Vietnam Mekong Delta's ecosystems have resulted in environmental degradation and subsequent loss in ecosystems. The environmental impacts include but are not limited to accelerate ...

EPFL2023

Blunted Glucocorticoid Responsiveness to Stress Causes Behavioral and Biological Alterations That Lead to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Vulnerability

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Jocelin Grosse, Olivia Zanoletti, Simone Astori, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Sophie Elizabeth Walker, Silvia Monari

Background: Understanding why only a subset of trauma-exposed individuals develop posttraumatic stress disorder is critical for advancing clinical strategies. A few behavioral (deficits in fear extinction) and biological (blunted glucocorticoid levels, sma ...

2023

Coupled carbon and nitrogen cycling regulates the cnidarian–algal symbiosis

Anders Meibom, Stéphane Laurent Escrig, Nils Rädecker

Efficient nutrient recycling underpins the ecological success of cnidarian-algal symbioses in oligotrophic waters. In these symbioses, nitrogen limitation restricts the growth of algal endosymbionts in hospite and stimulates their release of photosynthates ...

Nature Research2023

Genetic selection for low glucocorticoid responsiveness recapitulates PTSD-related phenotypes: a behavioral, neuroimaging and sleep-physiology study

Silvia Monari

Humans show inter-individual differences in vulnerability to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following exposure to trauma. Several critical biobehavioral features have been consistently described in PTSD patients, including blunted cortisol l ...

EPFL2022

Untersuchung der ökomorphologischen Wirksamkeit von Sedimentzugaben unterhalb von Talsperren [Assessment of the eco-morphological effectiveness of sediment augmentation downstream of dams]

Giovanni De Cesare, Christian Mörtl

The regulation of discharge and the retention of sediments in reservoirs disturb the natural water dynamics in residual flow stretches below reservoirs. However, a dynamic river morphology as well as near-natural hydrological hydrographs are fundamental ...

ETH2021

A birth-death-migration model for life in astrophysical environments

Claudio Grimaldi

To assess the number of life-bearing worlds in astrophysical environments, it is necessary to take the intertwined processes of abiogenesis (birth), extinction (death), and transfer of life (migration) into account. We construct a mathematical model that i ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2021

Species conservation in the face of global environmental changes: surface-based modelling of geo-environmental data to identify vulnerable populations

Estelle Rochat

Human activities are resulting in many land-use changes, particularly due to urbanisation and intensification of agricultural practices. Because of these changes, in addition to climate change, many species are facing habitat degradation. In order to avoid ...

EPFL2020

Adapt or Perish: Evolutionary Rescue in a Gradually Deteriorating Environment

Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol, Loïc Marrec

We investigate the evolutionary rescue of a microbial population in a gradually deteriorating environment, through a combination of analytical calculations and stochastic simulations. We consider a population destined for extinction in the absence of mutan ...

2020

Microlensing Analysis for the Gravitational Lens Systems SDSS0924+0219, Q1355-2257, and SDSS1029+2623

Karina Alexandra Rojas Olate

We use spectroscopic observations of the gravitationally lensed systems SDSS0924+0219(BC), Q1355-2257(AB), and SDSS1029+2623(BC) to analyze microlensing and dust extinction in the observed components. We detect chromatic microlensing effects in the continu ...

2020

A pathwise approach to the extinction of branching processes with countably many types

Sophie Myriam Hautphenne

We consider the extinction events of Galton-Watson processes with countably infinitely many types. In particular, we construct truncated and augmented Galton-Watson processes with finite but increasing sets of types. A pathwise approach is then used to sho ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV2019

On the probabilistic nature of the species-area relation

Andrea Rinaldo, Andrea Giometto, Jonathan Giezendanner, Silvia Zaoli, Amos Maritan

The Species-Area Relation (SAR), which describes the increase in the number of species S with increasing area A, is under intense scrutiny in contemporary ecology, in particular to probe its reliability in predicting the number of species going extinct as ...

2019

A New Look at Civic Design: Park Systems in America

Matthew Skjonsberg

A New Look at Civic Design reflects on the nature of the various crises facing the very idea of democracy today, explicitly in relation to climate change - namely mass extinctions, water scarcity and overabundance, and in general widespread and increasing ...

EPFL2018

Spread of proliferative kidney disease in fish along stream networks: A spatial metacommunity framework

Andrea Rinaldo, Enrico Bertuzzo, Lorenzo Mari, Luca Carraro, Marino Gatto

Proliferative kidney disease (PKD) is a high-mortality pathology that critically affects freshwater salmonid populations. Infection is caused by the endoparasitic myxozoan Tetracapsuloides bryosalmonae, which exploits freshwater bryozoans as primary hosts. ...

2018

Quantifying the effects of land use and climate on Holocene vegetation in Europe

Jed Oliver Kaplan

Early agriculture can be detected in palaeovegetation records, but quantification of the relative importance of climate and land use in influencing regional vegetation composition since the onset of agriculture is a topic that is rarely addressed. We prese ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2017

Two sides of the same coin: A population genetics perspective on lethal mutagenesis and mutational meltdown

Jeffrey David Jensen, Claudia Bank, Sebastian Matuszewski, Nicky Louise Ormond

The extinction of RNA virus populations upon application of a mutagenic drug is frequently referred to as evidence for the existence of an error threshold, above which the population cannot sustain the mutational load. To explain the extinction process aft ...

Oxford Univ Press2017

The Combined Effect of Oseltamivir and Favipiravir on Influenza A Virus Evolution

Jeffrey David Jensen, Claudia Bank, Sebastian Matuszewski, Nicky Louise Ormond

Influenza virus inflicts a heavy death toll annually and resistance to existing antiviral drugs has generated interest in the development of agents with novel mechanisms of action. Favipiravir is an antiviral drug that acts by increasing the genome-wide mu ...

Oxford University Press (OUP)2017

Emergence in extinction of enhanced and persistent responding to ambiguous aversive cues is associated with high MAOA activity in the prelimbic cortex

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Guillaume Poirier

There is a great deal of individual variability in the emotional outcomes of potentially traumatic events, and the underlying mechanisms are only beginning to be understood. In order to further our understanding of individual trajectories to trauma, its vu ...

2016

Late Holocene climate: Natural or anthropogenic?

Jed Oliver Kaplan

For more than a decade, scientists have argued about the warmth of the current interglaciation. Was the warmth of the preindustrial late Holocene natural in origin, the result of orbital changes that had not yet driven the system into a new glacial state? ...

Amer Geophysical Union2016

An experimental evaluation of drug-induced mutational meltdown as an antiviral treatment strategy

Jeffrey David Jensen, Claudia Bank, Matthieu Foll, Sebastian Matuszewski, Hyunjin Shim

The rapid evolution of drug resistance remains a critical public health concern. The treatment of influenza A virus (IAV) has proven particularly challenging, due to the ability of the virus to develop resistance against current antivirals and vaccines. He ...

Wiley-Blackwell2016