Since the introduction of sunbleak (Leucaspius delineatus) to southern England in 1986, its life history characteristics (such as reproductive behaviour, early sexual maturity and an unusually small adult size) have contributed to its rapid dispersal. This study examines the length-weight relationships and age of this non-indigenous cyprinid to highlight the potential threat to native 0+ cyprinids. Sunbleak populations demonstrated an unusual growth pattern for a cyprinid, with an average of 42 % of its maximum growth occurring in the first year, followed by extremely low annual growth until death. Very few significant differences were found between the mean length of several sunbleak age groups and the length of native 0+ bream Abramis brama, roach Rutilus rutilus, bleak Alburnus alburnus and rudd Scardinius erythrophthalmus. We have also found that young-of-the-year of these cyprinids share the same food and habitat with all sunbleak year class, which in some places has had a detrimental impact on the recruitment of native species.
It is unknown whether physiological ageing also goes along with electromechanical asynchrony of contraction. Aim of the study was to evaluate synchrony of contraction in older people with (“non-healthy”) or without (”healthy”) evidence for structural cardiac disease. In 547 persons (age 76.7±5.5 years, 306 male, 241 female) recruited from a population-based cohort of the ActiFE-Ulm study including a random sample of people ≥65 years old living in the region of Ulm, Germany, various PW- and TDI-Doppler based markers for asynchrony were obtained by echocardiography. Within a subgroup of 84 healthy subjects, at most minimal systolic and diastolic asynchrony was found. Concerning systolic asynchrony, similar observations were made within the non-healthy subgroup. However, extent of diastolic left ventricular intraventricular asynchrony and also – by tendency –
diastolic interventricular asynchrony was increased in comparison to the healthy subgroup. To conclude, no evidence that physiological ageing might go along with relevant left or right ventricular systolic or diastolic electromechanical asynchrony was found in our study. Furthermore, our population-based data support the results from other clinical studies with rather selected cohorts that structural heart diseases might go along with increased diastolic asynchrony.
We studied the genetic architecture of the differences in the longevity between lines selected for postponed senescence and a control population of the seed beetle Acanthoscelides obtectus maintained on two hosts. By using lines with increased longevity, which were obtained by selection on natural variation in longevity, we showed that the genetic architecture of seed beetle longevity is complex, with sex-specific effects and variation attributable to many interacting genes, whose expression depend on the host on which the beetles were reared. The nonadditive genetic effects were more strongly expressed when reared on chickpeas, a novel host, than on beans. Outbreeding depression, with respect to longevity, was a consequence of both the intrinsic effect of interactions between genes from different parental sources (disruption of coadapted gene complexes) and the genotype × host interaction (loss of local adaptation).