Signaling and priming communication: Independent roles in the reproductive isolation of spatially-separated populations of rodents

Summary This research concerned the relative potential for signaling and priming incompatibilities to promote reproductive isolation in rodents. Signaling is defined here as involving behavioral responses, while priming involves endocrine responses. Compatibility of both types of communications was tested between two widely separated and markedly diverging populations of deermice, and between equally separated but much less divergent populations of house mice. Signaling compatibility was assessed by comparing the amount of aggression toward young females by adult males when the two sexes were of the same vs the different stock of the same species. Priming compatibility was tested by measuring the relative amounts of uterine growth induced in young females by exposure to adult males.No signaling or priming incompatibilities were detected during cross-testing of the house mouse stocks. A degree of developing reproductive isolation was observed between the two deermouse populations, however, and this isolation was reinforced by independently occurring incompatibilities of both the signaling and the priming type. The signaling incompatibility was particularly dramatic, manifesting itself in the killing of young females by adult males.The present results provide the first demonstration of a priming incompatibility supporting reproductive isolation in diverging populations of a mammal. Furthermore, our results suggest that signaling and priming systems are independently subject to evolutionary change even when both systems probably operate through the same sensory modality.     

Adjustment costs from environmental change

The paper is concerned with the case whereby the distribution of a firm's productivity shocks changes without the knowledge of the firm. Over time the firm learns about the nature and extent of the change in the distribution of the shock and adjusts, incurring adjustment costs in the process. The long-run loss in profits (±) due to the shift in the distribution we term the equilibrium response. The transitory loss in profits, incurred while the firm is learning about the distribution shift, is termed the adjustment cost. The theory is then applied to the problem of measuring adjustment costs in the face of imperfectly observed climate change in agriculture. The empirical part of the paper involves estimating a restricted profit function for agricultural land in a five-state region of the Midwest US as a function of prices, land characteristics, actual weather realizations and expected weather. We then simulate the effect of an unobserved climate shock, where learning about the climate shock is by observing the weather and updating prior knowledge using Bayes Rule. We find adjustment costs to climate change are 1.4% of annual land rents.     

Can gestational dates routinely derived from very early ultrasound be used to interpret maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein measurements?

This study assesses the reliability of estimating gestational age via crown-rump or gestational sac measurements obtained at 8 weeks' gestation or earlier as part of routine physician office practice. To accomplish this, we studied 88 pregnancies managed at 45 different sites in which both an early first-trimester ultrasonically-derived gestational age estimate and a second-trimester biparietal diameter (BPD) estimate were available. The first-and second-trimester determinations were highly correlated, but the first-trimester determinations were, on average, 0.43 weeks earlier than the second. The first-trimester estimates were satisfactory for use in interpreting maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein (MSAFP) screening measurements, but second-trimester BPD measurements obtained prior to MSAFP screening should be the method of choice for interpreting MSAFP values, due to the increased sensitivity for detecting open spina bifida.