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Infectious diseases can have devastating impacts on wildlife populations and are of particular concern for small, inbred populations. Identifying specific pathogens that are linked to morbidity and mortality in inbred individuals is a priority for the conservation of small populations, but opportunities to examine them in the wild are rare. Here, we examined the relationship between heterozygosity and infectious disease in American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), a species that engages in close inbreeding, focusing on three pathogens common in Davis, California, USA: West Nile virus (WNV), Plasmodium spp. (avian malaria), and Campylobacter jejuni. We found that low heterozygosity at a panel of 33 microsatellite loci was associated with two vector‐borne infectious diseases (WNV and avian malaria), but not with infection by the bacterial gut pathogen C. jejuni. Reasons for this association with vector‐borne pathogens are unclear, but might include behavioral factors and immunological differences associated with inbreeding. Overall, these data are consistent with the idea that inbred individuals may be more susceptible to both novel and endemic vector‐borne pathogens, underscoring the importance of protecting genetic diversity within populations and buffering small populations against infectious diseases.

Common names of species are important for communicating with the general public. In principle, these names should provide an accessible way to engage with and identify species. The common names of species have historically been labile without standard guidelines, even within a language. Currently, there is no systematic assessment of how often common names communicate identifiable and biologically relevant characteristics about species. This is a salient issue in ornithology, where common names are used more often than scientific names for species of birds in written and spoken English, even by professional researchers. To gain a better understanding of the types of terminology used in the English-language common names of bird species, a group of 85 professional ornithologists and non-professional contributors classified unique descriptors in the common names of all recognized species of birds. In the AvianLexiconAtlas database produced by this work, each species’ common name is assigned to one of ten categories associated with aspects of avian biology, ecology, or human culture. Across 10,906 species of birds, 89% have names describing the biology of the species, while the remaining 11% of species have names derived from human cultural references, human names, or local non-English languages. Species with common names based on features of avian biology are more likely to be related to each other or be from the same geographic region. The crowdsourced data collection also revealed that many common names contain specialized or historic terminology unknown to many of the data collectors, and we include these terms in a glossary and gazetteer alongside the dataset. The AvianLexiconAtlas can be used as a quantitative resource to assess the state of terminology in English-language common names of birds. Future research using the database can shed light on historical approaches to nomenclature and how people engage with species through their names.

Natal dispersal is a crucial life-history event which, at the individual level, represents an opportunity to move to high-quality breeding space associated with increased survival and reproductive success, and at the population level, underlies species distribution, population persistence, and gene flow. Despite its importance, dispersal is often treated as a random process owing to difficulties in monitoring movements of wild animals. Variation in dispersal is primarily driven by the balance between its costs and benefits, with benefits needing to outweigh costs of energetics, exposure to predators and competitors, and finding mates. This tradeoff is pronounced in cooperatively breeding species, in which offspring often delay dispersing from the natal territory. To investigate this complex behavior, I studied variation in natal dispersal and its components in an intensively studied population of Florida scrub-jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens), a cooperatively breeding species that specializes in a rare, fire-maintained oak scrub habitat endemic to Florida. By combining over 35 years of historical data and 5 years of field-collected data, I aimed to understand the drivers and consequences of natal dispersal in this population. I first summarized available data on dispersal patterns in this population, focusing on social and environmental factors related to variation in dispersal timing and distance. I then examined a previously overlooked pattern of dispersal called “staging” in which offspring disperse to join unrelated groups as nonbreeders. This behavioral variation explained some of the patterns previously uncovered, and exposed some proximate and ultimate drivers of dispersal. Next, using field methods along with laboratory work, I studied the physiological costs of prospecting, or information-gathering movements that precede dispersal. I found that prospecting results in oxidative damage, which is also regulated by early-life morphology and condition. Last, I quantified pre-breeding movements using newly developed tracking technology to understand how Florida scrub-jays explore their surroundings prior to dispersal. Combined, my chapters describe intraspecific movement and dispersal patterns, as well as some of their fitness consequences. Ultimately, my study of dispersal variation sheds new light on the complex nature of pre-breeding movement in a cooperatively breeding bird species, and contributes to the growing body of field and theoretical studies of this important life-history stage.

Common names of species are important for communicating with the general public. In principle, these names should provide an accessible way to engage with and identify species. The common names of species have historically been labile without standard guidelines, even within a language. Currently, there is no systematic assessment of how often common names communicate identifiable and biologically relevant characteristics about species. This is a particular issue in ornithology, where common names are used more often than scientific names for species of birds in written and spoken English, even by professional researchers. To gain a better understanding of the types of terminology used in the common names of bird species and their frequency of use, we used a crowdsourcing approach and recruited 85 professional ornithologists and non-professional participants to classify unique descriptors in the English-language common names of all recognized bird species from around the world. Each species' common name was assigned to one of ten categories associated with aspects of avian biology, ecology, or human culture. Across 10,906 species of birds, 89% have names describing the biology of the species, while the remaining 11% of species have names derived from human cultural references or local non-English languages. Species with common names based on features of avian biology are more likely to be related to each other or be from the same geographic region. The crowdsourced data collection also revealed that many common names contained specialized or historic terminology unknown to many of the data collectors, and this was documented in a glossary and gazetteer alongside the dataset. As the first comprehensive assessment of the state of terminology in English-language common names of birds, the AvianLexiconAtlas database sheds light on historical approaches to nomenclature and provides insight into how the general public currently engages with species through their names.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.Footnotes* The title, abstract, introduction, and conclusion have been updated to present the new dataset, glossary, and gazetteer produced during this research as a research database, now called the AvianLexiconAtlas. Researchers from across academic fields can use the resources in this database to study the history of English-language bird names from a quantitative perspective. In the text we clarify the utility of this database as a resource, but have not changed any of the methods, analyses, figures, or supplemental files.* https://github.com/ajshultz/AvianLexiconAtlas

Prospecting is an understudied yet pivotal information-gathering process often preceding natal dispersal. While prospecting may enable individuals to optimise dispersal outcomes and obtain high quality territories, it is also likely to incur costs stemming from energy expenditure and predation risks. This trade-off may drive individual differences in prospecting effort. We tested for evidence of costs of prospecting behaviour in a wild population of Florida scrub-jays, Aphelocoma coerulescens, which prospect as nonbreeding helpers. Using random sampling across all helpers, we compared prospecting effort—approximated by frequency, distance, and activity level—with body mass changes and oxidative stress levels. We tested if prospecting incurred costs and if early-life body condition predicted subsequent prospecting effort. Prospecting frequency was positively linked to oxidative damage but not to any loss in body mass during the breeding season, suggesting that extra-territorial movement costs manifest unevenly. Early-stage body condition did not affect subsequent prospecting effort across a large set of helpers, but early-stage body condition and morphometric measures did correlate with subsequent oxidative status of those sampled. Our results suggest that prospecting movement carries some physiological costs, perhaps contributing to individual differences in prospecting. This research highlights how body condition plays a role in trade-offs between information gathering movement and physiological costs of movement itself, ultimately providing insight on the evolution of prospecting in social species. Prospecting prior to breeding enables informed dispersal but incurs cost We tested whether prospecting by nonbreeding Florida scrub-jays results in physiological costs or varies with initial condition We measured oxidative status using assays testing antioxidant capacity and oxidative damage Frequent prospecting was linked to subsequent oxidative damage Early-stage body condition and wing length affected subsequent oxidative status

Metastable phases—kinetically favoured structures—are ubiquitous in nature 1 , 2 . Rather than forming thermodynamically stable ground-state structures, crystals grown from high-energy precursors often initially adopt metastable structures depending on the initial conditions, such as temperature, pressure or crystal size 1 , 3 , 4 . As the crystals grow further, they typically undergo a series of transformations from metastable phases to lower-energy and ultimately energetically stable phases 1 , 3 , 4 . Metastable phases sometimes exhibit superior physicochemical properties and, hence, the discovery and synthesis of new metastable phases are promising avenues for innovations in materials science 1 , 5 . However, the search for metastable materials has mainly been heuristic, performed on the basis of experiences, intuition or even speculative predictions, namely ‘rules of thumb’. This limitation necessitates the advent of a new paradigm to discover new metastable phases based on rational design. Such a design rule is embodied in the discovery of a metastable hexagonal close-packed (hcp) palladium hydride (PdH x ) synthesized in a liquid cell transmission electron microscope. The metastable hcp structure is stabilized through a unique interplay between the precursor concentrations in the solution: a sufficient supply of hydrogen (H) favours the hcp structure on the subnanometre scale, and an insufficient supply of Pd inhibits further growth and subsequent transition towards the thermodynamically stable face-centred cubic structure. These findings provide thermodynamic insights into metastability engineering strategies that can be deployed to discover new metastable phases. A metastable palladium hydride is synthesized where the unique environment in the liquid cell, namely the limited quantity of Pd precursors and the continuous supply of H, resulted in the formation of the hcp phase.

Light element identification is necessary in materials research to obtain detailed insight into various material properties. However, reported techniques, such as scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM)-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) have inadequate detection limits, which impairs identification. In this study, we achieved light element identification with nanoscale spatial resolution in a multi-component metal alloy through unsupervised machine learning algorithms of singular value decomposition (SVD) and independent component analysis (ICA). Improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the STEM-EDS spectrum images was achieved by combining SVD and ICA, leading to the identification of a nanoscale N-depleted region that was not observed in as-measured STEM-EDS. Additionally, the formation of the nanoscale N-depleted region was validated using STEM–electron energy loss spectroscopy and multicomponent diffusional transformation simulation. The enhancement of SNR in STEM-EDS spectrum images by machine learning algorithms can provide an efficient, economical chemical analysis method to identify light elements at the nanoscale.

We investigated the period of postoperative exodrift during follow-up and clinical factors that affect the rate of exodrift after surgery in the patients with intermittent exotropia (IXT). A retrospective review of medical records of patients with exodrift who underwent bilateral rectus recession for IXT was performed. Exodrift was defined as angle of deviation greater than 10 prism diopters (PD) at distance and near. The median survival period of postoperative exodrift was analyzed using Kaplan Meier survival analysis. The patients were divided into two groups according to the median period of postoperative exodrift (early and late group). The weighted Cox’s proportional hazards regression analysis to investigate the risk factors that affect rate of postoperative exodrift was performed. A total of 108 patients was included. The preoperative angle of deviation at distance and near were 30.3 ± 7.2 PD and 29.5 ± 8.6 PD, respectively. The median survival period of postoperative exodrift was 24 months (range, 6–48 months).The angle of deviation at postoperative day 1 in early and late group were − 3.8 ± 5.5 PD (range, − 16–8 PD) and − 7.7 ± 4.6 PD (range, − 16–4 PD) ( p  < 0.01). Minus value means esodeviation. In regression analysis, the angle of deviation at postoperative day 1 was the significantly related with rate of exodrift ( p  < 0.01). The median period of exodrift after surgery was 24 months, angle of deviation at postoperative day 1 could affect the rate of exodrift in patients with IXT.

There has been limited evidence for the association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and the incidence of lung cancer among never smokers. We aimed to estimate the risk of lung cancer incidence in never smokers with COPD, and to compare it with the risk associated with smoking. This cohort study involved 338 548 subjects, 40 to 84 years of age with no history of lung cancer at baseline, enrolled in the National Health Insurance Service National Sample Cohort. During 2 355 005 person-years of follow-up (median follow-up 7.0 years), 1834 participants developed lung cancer. Compared with never smokers without COPD, the fully-adjusted hazard ratios (95% CI) for lung cancer in never smokers with COPD, ever smokers without COPD, and ever smokers with COPD were 2.67 (2.09 to 3.40), 1.97 (1.75 to 2.21), and 6.19 (5.04 to 7.61), respectively. In this large national cohort study, COPD was also a strong independent risk factor for lung cancer incidence in never smokers, implying that COPD patients are at high risk of lung cancer, irrespective of smoking status.