How animals explore and acquire knowledge from the environment is a key question in movement ecology. For pollinators that feed on multiple small replenishing nectar resources, the challenge is to learn efficient foraging routes while dynamically acquiring spatial information about new resource locations. Here, we use the behavioural mapping t-Stochastic Neighbouring Embedding algorithm and Shannon entropy to statistically analyse previously published sampling patterns of bumblebees feeding on artificial flowers in the field. We show that bumblebees modulate foraging excursions into distinctive behavioural strategies, characterizing the trade-off dynamics between (i) visiting and exploiting flowers close to the nest, (ii) searching for new routes and resources, and (iii) exploiting learned flower visitation sequences. Experienced bees combine these behavioural strategies even after they find an optimal route minimizing travel distances between flowers. This behavioural variability may help balancing energy costs–benefits and facilitate rapid adaptation to changing environments and the integration of more profitable resources in their routes.

10.1098/rsif.2019.0103

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A fast and inexpensive genotyping system for the simultaneous analysis of human and Aedes albopictus short tandem repeats

Parasites & Vectors (2023)

Andreu Albó Timor Federica Lucati Frederic Bartumeus Jenny Caner Santi Escartín

Determination of the interactions between hematophagous mosquitoes and their human hosts is of great importance for better understanding the transmission dynamics of mosquito-borne arboviruses and developing effective strategies to mitigate risk. Genetic analysis of human and mosquito DNA can play a key role in this, but commercial kits for human short tandem repeat (STR) genotyping are expensive and do not allow for the simultaneous STR analysis of host and vector DNA. Here, we present an inexpensive and straightforward STR-loci multiplex system capable of simultaneously amplifying Aedes albopictus and human STRs from blood-fed mosquitoes. Additionally, we examine the effect of storage methods and post-feeding time on the integrity of host DNA.Thirty-five STRs (16 human and 19 Ae. albopictus STRs) subdivided in three multiplexes were tested for amplification and scoring reliability. Under laboratory conditions we compared the efficacy of two preservation methods (absolute ethanol vs lysis buffer) on the integrity of host DNA in Ae. albopictus blood meals. We also evaluated the effect of post-feeding time by sacrificing blood-fed mosquitoes at different time intervals after feeding, and we assessed our ability to detect multiple feedings. To determine if the system can be employed successfully under field conditions, we carried out a preliminary study using field-collected Ae. albopictus.All 35 STRs amplified consistently in the laboratory. Lysis buffer performed better than absolute ethanol in terms of allele peak height and clarity of electropherograms. Complete human DNA profiles could be obtained up to 48 h following the blood meal. Analysis of multiple feedings confirmed that peak heights can be used as a proxy to determine post-feeding time and thus derive the number of different people bitten by a mosquito. In the field trial, amplification was successful for 32 STRs. We found human DNA signal in 38 of the 61 field-collected mosquitoes (62%), of which 34 (89%) had ingested a single blood meal, while four (11%) contained double meals.Our new genotyping system allows fast and reliable screening of both host and vector species, and can be further adapted to other mosquito species living in close contact with humans.

Aedes albopictus

Blood meal

STR analysis

Multiplex

10.1186/s13071-023-05977-w

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Bringing people´s (sensitive) data back to the people: navigating privacy, ownership, accessibility, and fitness-for-use when making volunteered geographic information public in the context of public health emergency

John R.B. Palmer Aitana Oltra Jaume Piera Frederic Bartumeus

Citizen Science Association Conference (CitSci2017), 17-20 May 2017, Twin Cities, Minnesota

Volunteered Geographic Information

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Towards a comprehensive visualization of structure in data

arXiv (Cornell University) (2021)

Joan Garriga Frederic Bartumeus

Dimensional data reduction methods are fundamental to explore and visualize large data sets. Basic requirements for unsupervised data exploration are simplicity, flexibility and scalability. However, current methods show complex parameterizations and strong computational limitations when exploring large data structures across scales. Here, we focus on the t-SNE algorithm and show that a simplified parameter setup with a single control parameter, namely the perplexity, can effectively balance local and global data structure visualization. We also designed a chunk\&mix protocol to efficiently parallelize t-SNE and explore data structure across a much wide range of scales than currently available. Our parallel version of the BH-tSNE, namely pt-SNE, converges to good global embedding, comparable to state-of-the-art solutions, though the chunk\&mix protocol adds little noise and decreases the accuracy at the local scale. Nonetheless, we show that simple post-processing can efficiently restore local scale visualization, without any loss of precision at the global scales. We expect the same approach to apply to faster embedding algorithms other than BH-tSNE, like FIt-SNE or UMAP, thus, extending the state-of-the-art and leading to more comprehensive data structure visualization and analysis.

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Data For Paper: Citizen Science Against Globalized Mosquito-Borne Diseases

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2016)

John R.B. Palmer Aitana Oltra Francisco Collantes Juan A. Delgado Javier Lucientes

Dataset used in Citizen Science Against Globalized Mosquito-Borne Diseases.

Citizen Science

10.5281/zenodo.154354

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