bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Prioritizing lean practices for implementation in IT support services
Authors: Kundu Goutam Kumar , Manohar Murali 
Published: October 2016

Purpose
– The purpose of this study is to capture the perception of the IT support service practitioners regarding the applicability of the lean practices and prioritize them after analyzing the gaps with respect to current usage and importance from practitioners’ perspective.

Design/methodology/approach
– It involved development of an instrument to capture the perceptions of the IT support service practitioners. The data collected was quantitatively analyzed by using statistical techniques and it involved testing of the hypotheses.

Findings
– The study conducted a gap analysis on the perceived current usage of the lean practices versus the perceived ideal usages of the lean practices from practitioners’ perspective. The gap analysis report revealed that gaps of all practices are not same from the practitioners’ viewpoint. This gap analysis was useful for prioritizing of the practices and resource allocation.

Originality/value
– This study was conducted in a relatively new domain, where mature empirically based studies are scarce. This study set out to determine the practitioners’ perception of the applicability of lean practices in IT support service organizations. It provides a sound basis for further research on lean implementation in IT support service area.
Efficacy and safety of ixekizumab treatment for Japanese patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, erythrodermic psoriasis and generalized pustular psoriasis: Results from a 52‐week, open‐label, phase 3 study (UNCOVER‐J)
Authors: Saeki Hidehisa , Nakagawa Hidemi , Nakajo Ko , Ishii Taeko , Morisaki Yoji , Aoki Takehiro , Cameron Gregory S. , Osuntokun Olawale O. ,   the Japanese Ixekizumab Study Group
Published: October 2016

AbstractPsoriasis, a chronic, immune‐mediated skin disease characterized by red, scaly plaques, affects approximately 0.3% of the population in Japan. The aim of this open‐label study was to evaluate the long‐term efficacy and safety of ixekizumab, a humanized, anti‐interleukin‐17A monoclonal antibody, in Japanese patients with plaque psoriasis (n = 78, including 11 psoriatic arthritis), erythrodermic psoriasis (n = 8) and generalized pustular psoriasis (n = 5). Ixekizumab was administrated s.c. at baseline (week 0, 160 mg), from weeks 2 to 12 (80 mg every 2 weeks), and from weeks 16 to 52 (80 mg every 4 weeks). At week 52, 92.3% of patients with plaque psoriasis achieved Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) 75, 80.8% achieved PASI 90, 48.7% achieved PASI 100, and 52.6% had remission of plaques (by static Physician Global Assessment, sPGA [0]). Difficult to treat areas of psoriasis (nail or scalp) also responded to ixekizumab. All patients with psoriatic arthritis who were assessed (5/5) achieved an American College of Rheumatology 20 response. Most patients with erythrodermic psoriasis or generalized pustular psoriasis responded to ixekizumab and the clinical outcome was maintained over 52 weeks (75% and 60% of patients achieved sPGA [0, 1] at week 52, respectively). Mostly mild or moderate treatment‐emergent adverse events were reported by 79 of 91 patients; the most common were nasopharyngitis, eczema, seborrheic dermatitis, urticaria and injection site reactions. In conclusion, 52‐week ixekizumab treatment was efficacious and well tolerated in Japanese patients with plaque psoriasis. Efficacy was also observed in patients with erythrodermic psoriasis, generalized pustular psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.
Metabolic rates, and not hormone levels, are a likely mediator of between‐individual differences in behaviour: a meta‐analysis
Authors: Holtmann Benedikt , Lagisz Malgorzata , Nakagawa Shinichi 
Published: October 2016

Summary

Consistent individual differences in hormone levels and metabolic rates have been proposed to be potential state variables underlying consistent individual differences in behaviour (i.e. animal personality). However, it remains unclear whether either one alone or both of these potential state variables could be an underlying driver of animal personality.

We address this question using meta‐analyses of published data from bird species. We hypothesized that state variables that mediate individual differences in behaviour would display similar or higher repeatability estimates than behavioural traits. To test this hypothesis, we quantified repeatability estimates of hormone levels, metabolic rates and behavioural traits.

We found moderate to high mean repeatability estimates for both metabolic rates and behavioural traits, but low repeatability estimates for hormone levels. These findings indicate that metabolic rates likely represent an important mechanism for generating adaptive personality differences in behaviour.

We also show that: (i) for hormones and behaviour, repeatability decreased with increasing interval time between two measurements; (ii) males and females differed in repeatability for behavioural traits; (iii) stress‐induced hormone levels were more repeatable than baseline levels.

Future studies are now required to determine the direction of the association between metabolic rates and behavioural traits. At the same time, these studies should try to investigate which of the proposed mechanisms is responsible for the relationship between state variable and state‐dependent behaviour.

In addition, we encourage researchers to report the coefficient of variation for between‐individual variance (CVB) along with repeatability estimates because these two indices carry different information. We discuss how CVB may better facilitate future comparative studies, including meta‐analyses.

A lay summary is available for this article.
Aphid as a network creator for the plant‐associated arthropod community and its consequence for plant reproductive success
Authors: Ando Yoshino , Utsumi Shunsuke , Ohgushi Takayuki 
Published: October 2016

Summary

Ecological communities consist of antagonistic and mutualistic interactions that can vary in their strength. Indirect effects act among species within or across trophic levels through multiple pathways in an interaction network. Although there are many studies showing indirect effects in ecological communities, we know little about how indirect effects impact the wider community by linking other direct and indirect interactions.

Herbivore‐induced indirect effects are ubiquitous and powerful forces in structuring ecological communities. In a plant‐associated network, aphids have the potential to connect multiple interactions through ant‐ and plant‐mediated indirect effects on co‐occurring and/or temporally separated species.

We examined how aphids affect the interaction network on tall goldenrod, Solidago altissima, based on data of arthropod species on it with and without the aphid, Uroleucon nigrotuberculatum, using structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis.

The presence of aphids greatly changed the strength of several species interactions throughout the season. In the early season, aphids had negative indirect effects on leafhoppers and moth caterpillars through ants. On the other hand, aphid‐induced leaf regrowth decreased scale insects but increased grasshoppers in the late season, when the aphid was no longer present. Moreover, the aphid‐generated interactions increased seed production of tall goldenrods, due to indirect pathways through the leaf regrowth.

The aphid thus played a critical role as a network creator in determining the interaction network by generating ant‐ and plant‐mediated indirect effects. In particular, the aphid‐induced leaf regrowth contributed to interaction diversity (i.e. total number of positive/negative interactions and link density per each species) by connecting arthropod species in the early and late seasons.

We disentangled the complexity of direct and indirect pathways generated by the aphid (i.e. keystone herbivore), which largely determines community structure of associated arthropods and plant reproductive success. Our study combining ant‐ and plant‐mediated indirect interactions mediated by the aphid provides a basis of better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of how the impact of the keystone herbivore can spread through plant‐based insect networks via direct and indirect pathways.

A lay summary is available for this article.
Linear reaction norms of thermal limits in Drosophila: predictable plasticity in cold but not in heat tolerance
Authors: Schou Mads Fristrup , Mouridsen Marie Brandt , Sørensen Jesper Givskov , Loeschcke Volker 
Published: October 2016

Summary

Thermal limits of ectotherms have been studied extensively and are believed to be evolutionarily constrained, leaving ectotherms at risk under future climate change. Phenotypic plasticity may extend the thermal limits, but we lack detailed characterizations of thermal limit reaction norms as well as an understanding of the interspecific variation in these reaction norms.

Here, we investigated the interspecific variation in phenotypic plasticity of thermal limits in 13 Drosophila species. We obtained high‐resolution reaction norms for upper and lower thermal limits across the permissive developmental thermal range (12·5–30 °C). The estimated phenotypes were then associated (while accounting for phylogeny) with climatic parameters from the species’ distributional range.

All species showed linear reaction norms for cold tolerance (CTmin) and heat tolerance (CTmax) across developmental acclimation temperatures. We observed strong beneficial cold acclimation to lower temperatures in all species. Conversely, the heat acclimation response was non‐existent in some species, and decreasing or increasing with increasing developmental acclimation temperatures in other species. The degree of phenotypic plasticity of CTmin and CTmax was related neither to the basal thermal limits (trade‐off hypothesis) nor to climatic parameters connected to latitudinal distributions (latitudinal hypothesis).

A substantial and linear developmental plasticity of lower thermal limits is a general characteristic of Drosophila species, which allows for straightforward application in species distribution models. In general, upper thermal limits also show linear norms of reaction, but their adaptive significance is limited and highly variable among species, making general predictions across species rather impossible.

High‐resolution estimates of norms of reaction of thermal limits can considerably increase our understanding of the capacity of ectotherms to acclimate to different thermal environments. However, our understanding of the environmental drivers of the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and thus of the interspecific differences remains ambiguous, potentially constrained by limited microclimate information.

A lay summary is available for this article.
The specialization continuum in pollination systems: diversity of concepts and implications for ecology, evolution and conservation
Authors: Armbruster William Scott 
Published: October 2016

SummarySpecialization in plant–pollinator relationships is a core concept in discussions of plant evolution and ecology; it is central to our thinking, not just about the ecology of plant–pollinator interactions and pollinator services, but also about reproductive isolation, speciation, extinction and assembly of communities. However, as reviewed here, the concept ‘plant–pollinator specialization’ has multiple definitions and uses, and these disparate uses have engendered confusion in the literature. Organizing these disparate uses into a comprehensive framework is an overdue task, prior efforts notwithstanding.This contribution attempts to make clear the variation in meaning and usage of plant–pollinator specialization, including distinguishing between ecological specialization (interacting with few partners or resources), evolutionary specialization (genetic change associated with increased specialization) and phenotypic specialization (having specialized or derived phenotypic traits), with application of all three concepts to both plants and flower‐visiting animals. These variations in interpretation of specialization affect how we view evolutionary and biogeographical trends, as well as extinction risk.In the light of this conceptual diversity, I evaluate the relationships between specialization and possible trends in floral evolution and rates of speciation and extinction. I also address several implications of specialization for community ecology and resilience of pollination services in the face of environmental disturbance.Alay summaryis available for this article.
Integrating intraspecific variation in community ecology unifies theories on body size shifts along climatic gradients
Authors: Classen Alice , Steffan‐Dewenter Ingolf , Kindeketa William J. , Peters Marcell K. 
Published: October 2016

Summary

Physiological and energetic mechanisms have been proposed to constrain body sizes of organisms along climatic gradients; however, these provide contrasting predictions. While Bergmann's rule predicts increases in body sizes in cooler climates resulting from physiological constraints, energy‐based community assembly rules suggest declines in the mean body size of species caused by increased extinction probabilities for large‐bodied species in low‐energy habitats.

We tested these contrasting hypotheses by quantifying trait distributions in bee communities along a 3·6‐km elevational gradient at Mt. Kilimanjaro. Traditionally, intra‐ and interspecific trait shifts along environmental gradients have been investigated in isolation. However, a surge of theoretical approaches and studies on plants demonstrated that the explicit integration of trait variation among and within species can be essential for identifying the mechanisms that shape traits and related ecosystem functions along environmental gradients. We therefore studied variation in body size and related morphological traits at both the intra‐ and interspecific level.

We found support for both physiological constraints and energy‐based community assembly rules as drivers of trait distribution in bee communities along elevational gradients, which, however, affected different levels of biotic organization, that is the population and community level. While the number of bee species with large body sizes declined with elevation, individuals within species became on average larger, resulting in contrasting trends in morphometric parameters at the community versus population level.

Furthermore, body size within bee communities became less variable at higher elevations, largely as a result of a non‐random, directive loss of species, but paralleled by a decline in intraspecific variance, suggesting intensified filtering effects with increasing elevation. Similar patterns were found for other functional traits related to the foraging ecology of bees (tongue length, relative forewing length).

We conclude that along climatic gradients both physiological and energetic constraints shape trait distributions of pollinators, but at different levels of biological organization.

A lay summary is available for this article.
Spatial behaviour of Rayleigh waves in layered half‐spaces under active surface sources
Authors: Chai Hua‐You , Li Tian‐Bin , Phoon Kok‐Kwang , Chen Elton J. , Zhang Dian‐Ji 
Published: October 2016

ABSTRACTIn the free state, Rayleigh waves are assumed to travel in the form of planar wavefronts. Under such an assumption, the propagation behaviour of the modes of Rayleigh waves in layered half‐spaces is only frequency dependent. The frequency behaviour, which is often termed as dispersion, is determined by the shear wave velocity profile of layered soils within the depth related to wavelength (or frequency). According to this characteristic, the shear wave velocity profile can be back‐analysed from the dispersion. The technique is widely used in the surface wave testing. However, the wavefronts of Rayleigh waves activated by the surface sources are non‐planar. The geometric discrepancy could result in Rayleigh waves manifesting distance‐dependent behaviour, which is referred to as spatial behaviour in this paper. Conventional analysis ignoring this spatial behaviour could introduce unexpected errors. In order to take the effects of sources on the propagation behaviour into account, a new mathematical model is established for Rayleigh waves in layered elastic media under vertical disc‐like surface sources using the thin‐layer method. The spatial behaviour of the activated modes and the apparent phase velocity, which is the propagation velocity of Rayleigh waves superposed by the multiple modes, are then analysed. Aspects of the spatial behaviour investigated in this paper include the equilibrium path, the particle orbit, and the geometric attenuation of the activated Rayleigh waves. The results presented in this paper can provide some guidelines for developing new inverse mathematical models and algorithms.
Accounting for genetic differences among unknown parents in microevolutionary studies: how to include genetic groups in quantitative genetic animal models
Authors: Wolak Matthew E. , Reid Jane M. 
Published: October 2016

Summary

Quantifying and predicting microevolutionary responses to environmental change requires unbiased estimation of quantitative genetic parameters in wild populations. ‘Animal models’, which utilize pedigree data to separate genetic and environmental effects on phenotypes, provide powerful means to estimate key parameters and have revolutionized quantitative genetic analyses of wild populations.

However, pedigrees collected in wild populations commonly contain many individuals with unknown parents. When unknown parents are non‐randomly associated with genetic values for focal traits, animal model parameter estimates can be severely biased. Yet, such bias has not previously been highlighted and statistical methods designed to minimize such biases have not been implemented in evolutionary ecology.

We first illustrate how the occurrence of non‐random unknown parents in population pedigrees can substantially bias animal model predictions of breeding values and estimates of additive genetic variance, and create spurious temporal trends in predicted breeding values in the absence of local selection. We then introduce ‘genetic group’ methods, which were developed in agricultural science, and explain how these methods can minimize bias in quantitative genetic parameter estimates stemming from genetic heterogeneity among individuals with unknown parents.

We summarize the conceptual foundations of genetic group animal models and provide extensive, step‐by‐step tutorials that demonstrate how to fit such models in a variety of software programs. Furthermore, we provide new functions in r that extend current software capabilities and provide a standardized approach across software programs to implement genetic group methods.

Beyond simply alleviating bias, genetic group animal models can directly estimate new parameters pertaining to key biological processes. We discuss one such example, where genetic group methods potentially allow the microevolutionary consequences of local selection to be distinguished from effects of immigration and resulting gene flow.

We highlight some remaining limitations of genetic group models and discuss opportunities for further development and application in evolutionary ecology. We suggest that genetic group methods should no longer be overlooked by evolutionary ecologists, but should become standard components of the toolkit for animal model analyses of wild population data sets.
Shading impacts by coastal infrastructure on biological communities from subtropical rocky shores
Authors: Pardal‐Souza André Luiz , Dias Gustavo Muniz , Jenkins Stuart Rees , Ciotti Áurea Maria , Christofoletti Ronaldo Adriano 
Published: October 2016

Summary

Artificial shading has been highlighted as an important human disturbance, affecting both productivity and community organization. However, studies of shading have been poorly explored from an environmental impact perspective.

We compared community structure on subtropical rocky shores in areas shaded by human constructions with those in unshaded areas. We then implemented a manipulative field experiment to determine the effects of shading on the macrobenthic community, biofilm biomass and larval recruitment.

Shading consistently affected the biological community of rocky shores. The biomass and cover of macroalgae and the size of most sedentary grazers were smaller in shaded habitat. In the infralittoral fringe, we recorded a shift in dominance from macroalgae in unshaded habitats to invertebrate filter feeders in shaded ones. In a similar way, the community from the mesolittoral was also affected by shading but not at all locations.

Experimental manipulation of shading led to a total loss of macroalgae from the infralittoral fringe and no community replacement over a period of 220 days. In the mesolittoral, oysters became more abundant in shaded conditions, while barnacles decreased in abundance. Larval recruitment was also affected, with oysters and barnacles recruiting more in shaded habitats.

Synthesis and applications. We demonstrate a clear impact of shading by artificial human‐made structures on patterns and processes regulating biodiversity on rocky shores and thus consequences for coastal ecosystem functioning. We argue that shading by artificial coastal structures, such as those proposed in the port expansion in our study site in south‐eastern Brazil, is potentially underestimated. Our work emphasizes the importance of careful evaluations of artificial structures in order to promote sustainable coastal development. As a result, we do not recommend the proposed expansion by suspended structures of the port of São Sebastião, as the consequent shading will negatively affect the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of the Araçá Bay and surrounding areas.
Photoprotective and antioxidant responses to light spectrum and intensity variations in the coastal diatom Skeletonema marinoi
Authors: Smerilli Arianna , Orefice Ida , Corato Federico , Gavalás Olea Antonio , Ruban Alexander V. , Brunet Christophe 
Published: October 2016

SummaryPhotosynthesis is known to produce reactive oxygen species together with the transformation of light into biochemical energy. To fill the gap of the knowledge on the protective antioxidant network of microalgae, a series of experiments to explore the role of spectral composition and intensity of light in the modulation of the photodefence mechanisms developed by the coastal diatom Skeletonema marinoi were performed. The modulation of the total phenolic content, ascorbic acid and the enzymes glutathione reductase, catalase, ascorbate peroxidase and superoxide dismutase together with xanthophyll cycle and non‐photochemical quenching in response to variations in the light environment were analysed. Most of the enzymes' activity was promptly affected by the red light. Yet, the monochromatic high intensity blue light enhanced the synthesis of total phenolic content and ascorbic acid in parallel to the xanthophyll cycle activity. This study reveals the dual effects of spectral composition and intensity of light on the modulation of photoprotective mechanisms. Diatoms developed a complementary and/or alternative tuning processes to cope with the variable light environment they experience in the water column. They also provided valuable insights into light manipulation regimes for diatom cultivation that will help to maximize production of bioactive molecules.