CAERvest® – a novel endothermic hypothermic device for core temperature cooling: safety and efficacy testing

Introduction. Cooling of the body is used to treat hyperthermic individuals with heatstroke or to depress core temperature below normal for neuroprotection. A novel, chemically activated, unpowered cooling device, CAERvest®, was investigated for safety and efficacy. Methods. Eight healthy male participants (body mass 79.9?±?1.9?kg and body fat percentage 16.1?±?3.8%) visited the laboratory (20 °C, 40% relative humidity) on four occasions. Following 30-min rest, physiological and perceptual measures were recorded. Participants were then fitted with the CAERvest® proof of concept (PoC) or prototype 1 (P1), 2 (P2) or 3 (P3) for 60 min. Temperature, cardiovascular and perceptual measures were recorded every 5 min. After cooling, the CAERvest® was removed and the torso checked for cold-related injuries. Results. Temperature measures significantly (p?Conclusion. This study demonstrates that the CAERvest® is an effective device for reducing body temperature in healthy normothermic individuals without presence of cold injury. Further research in healthy and clinical populations is warranted.     

Collaborative Implementation for Ecological Restoration on US Public Lands: Implications for Legal Context,Accountability, and Adaptive Management

The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), established in 2009, encourages collaborative landscape scale ecosystem restoration efforts on United States Forest Service (USFS) lands. Although the USFS employees have experience engaging in collaborative planning, CFLRP requires collaboration in implementation, a domain where little prior experience can be drawn on for guidance. The purpose of this research is to identify the ways in which CFLRP’s collaborative participants and agency personnel conceptualize how stakeholders can contribute to implementation on landscape scale restoration projects, and to build theory on dynamics of collaborative implementation in environmental management. This research uses a grounded theory methodology to explore collaborative implementation from the perspectives and experiences of participants in landscapes selected as part of the CFLRP in 2010. Interviewees characterized collaborative implementation as encompassing three different types of activities: prioritization, enhancing treatments, and multiparty monitoring. The paper describes examples of activities in each of these categories and then identifies ways in which collaborative implementation in the context of CFLRP (1) is both hindered and enabled by overlapping legal mandates about agency collaboration, (2) creates opportunities for expanded accountability through informal and relational means, and, (3) creates feedback loops at multiple temporal and spatial scales through which monitoring information, prioritization, and implementation actions shape restoration work both within and across projects throughout the landscape creating more robust opportunities for adaptive management.     

Sensory ecology in a changing world: salinity alters conspecific recognition in an amphidromous fish, Pseudomugil signifer

Group fission and fusion processes are driven by state dependence, risk and the availability of information from others. Yet the availability of information changes under different environmental conditions, thus aiding or inhibiting group formation and maintenance. Chemical cues provide information on the location of individuals and can act as a mechanism for individuals to group together, although they can be greatly affected by environmental conditions. Using a flow channel, we studied how one shoaling fish species, the Pacific blue-eye (Pseudomugil signifer), responds to conspecific chemical cues (CCCs) in different environmental conditions (salinities). This species lives in estuarine environments, ranging in salinity from fresh to fully marine. P. signifer responded to CCCs in freshwater but not in saltwater. Furthermore, P. signifer did not respond to saltwater with CCCs added from freshwater. It took significantly longer for fish in saltwater, than in freshwater, to locate and join a shoal when only CCCs from the shoal were present. Finally, fish formed more cohesive shoals in freshwater than in brackish or saltwater. These results suggest that these fish do not rely on chemical cues in saltwater to locate conspecific shoals. Furthermore, the reduced amounts of these cues in saltwater may inhibit the maintenance of tight shoal structures. We suggest that fish utilise different sensory modalities in fresh or saltwater in order to locate one another, or the social structure of these groups is fundamentally different between these two water types. The importance of this study in relation to understanding how animals utilise and change different sensory modalities in varying environmental conditions is discussed.     

Rising costs of care make spiny chromis discerning parents

When the costs of parental care do not scale with the number of offspring being cared for, inclusion of non-descendant young into broods can be advantageous, leading to systems of alloparental care. However, if the cost of care scales with the number of offspring, selection may act against misdirected parental care. The spiny chromis, Acanthochromis polyacanthus, is a marine fish with extended biparental care, and broods that increase in size over the care period strongly suggest that alloparental care occurs in this species. However, A. polyacanthus parents directly provision their offspring by producing ectodermal mucus for their fry to feed on. The costs of such provisioning may scale with brood size, potentially increasing the costs of parental care. Using wild A. polyacanthus pairs, we tested whether foreign offspring are accepted into established broods, and measured how brood defence effort and mucal feeding scale with brood size. We found that A. polyacanthus discriminate between their own and foreign young, vigorously expelling experimentally introduced foreign offspring. Although defensive effort did not scale with brood size, mucal feeding was strongly dependent on brood size, and this increasing cost of care likely acts as the primary selective force on parental discrimination and rejection of foreign fry in A. polyacanthus.