Long Interspersed Element 1 (L1) is a retrotransposon that comprises approximately 17% of the human genome. Despite its abundance in mammalian genomes, relatively little is understood about L1 ...retrotransposition in vivo. To study the timing and tissue specificity of retrotransposition, we created transgenic mouse and rat models containing human or mouse L1 elements controlled by their endogenous promoters. Here, we demonstrate abundant L1 RNA in both germ cells and embryos. However, the integration events usually occur in embryogenesis rather than in germ cells and are not heritable. We further demonstrate L1 RNA in preimplantation embryos lacking the L1 transgene and L1 somatic retrotransposition events in blastocysts and adults lacking the transgene. Together, these data indicate that L1 RNA transcribed in male or female germ cells can be carried over through fertilization and integrate during embryogenesis, an interesting example of heritability of RNA independent of its encoding DNA. Thus, L1 creates somatic mosaicism during mammalian development, suggesting a role for L1 in carcinogenesis and other disease.
The ability to recognize kin has important impacts on fitness because it can allow for kin-biased affiliative behaviours and avoidance of mating with close kin. While the presence and effects of kin ...biases have been widely studied, less is known about the process by which animals recognize close kin. Here we investigate potential cues that white-faced capuchin monkeys, Cebus capucinus, may use to detect half siblings and closer kin. We focus on the first year of life in a sample of 130 infant (N=65 infant females) wild capuchins from the Lomas Barbudal population in Costa Rica. We show that (1) infant relatedness to juvenile and adult males at the level of half sibling and higher can be predicted by male alpha status, spatial proximity and age proximity, and that (2) infant relatedness to juvenile and adult females at the level of half sibling or higher can be predicted by spatial proximity (but not age proximity). Furthermore, (1) the identities of infants' fathers can also be predicted by male alpha status and the spatial proximity between infants and adult males, and (2) age proximity (but not spatial proximity) is predictive of paternal sibship. These results suggest that infant capuchins have access to multiple cues to close relatedness and paternal kinship, although whether infants use these cues later in life remains to be explored in future research.
•We examined cues available to infant capuchins for detecting close relatives.•Male alpha status predicted paternity and close relatedness.•Age proximity predicted paternal sibship.•Spatial proximity predicted paternity and close relatedness.
It is rare in studies of long-lived animals to know enough about the personalities and early experiences of individuals to use this information to predict their behaviour during major life ...transitions in adolescence and adulthood. Here, we examine how personality traits and early experiences predict age of natal emigration and timing of first ascent to alpha status in 169 wild male white-faced capuchins studied at Lomas Barbudal, Costa Rica, 75 of whom emigrated and 23 of whom acquired alpha status. Males were more likely to delay natal emigration if they were more extraverted, more neurotic, if their fathers co-resided longer with them, and if there were fewer alpha male turnovers. More extraverted males attained alpha status sooner.
La lectura es una herramienta que estimula la actividad cerebral, aumentando su reserva cognitiva y proporcionando innumerables beneficios como el estímulo de la empatía, la concentración o el ...desarrollo del lenguaje. Su promoción desde etapas muy tempranas ayuda al correcto aprendizaje de la misma. Sin embargo, las desigualdades sociales hacen que en entornos de bajo nivel socioeconómico, social o cultural esta práctica se realice en menor medida. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue evaluar el resultado de una intervención de promoción de la lectura en una zona de exclusión social desde las consultas de atención primaria, informando a los padres, proporcionando libros a las familias e incluyendo estos en sus preferencias de juego.
Estudio de intervención no aleatorizado en el que participaron niños nacidos en el 2015 adscritos a un centro de salud. Se realizó una intervención de promoción de la lectura a los 4, 6, 12 y 18 meses de edad y se evaluó a los 24 meses el posicionamiento de la lectura entre sus preferencias de ocio.
Se incluyeron 342 niños, 154 en el grupo intervención y 188 en el control. Se encontró un mejor posicionamiento de la lectura con respecto a otras alternativas de ocio en el grupo intervención con respecto al control (18,8% de posicionamiento en último lugar vs. 33,9%; p=0,003). En el análisis multivariante, las variables que influyeron en el posicionamiento de la lectura fueron no haber recibido la intervención, odds ratio (OR): 2,06 (1,19-3,58) y etnia gitana, OR: 2,37 (1,38-4,09).
Los resultados revelan una discreta mejoría en la preferencia de la lectura como actividad a la que se dedican los niños del programa.
Reading is a tool that stimulates brain activity, increasing its cognitive reserve and providing innumerable benefits such as the stimulation of empathy, concentration or language development. Promoting reading at a very early age helps develop reading skills correctly. However, social inequalities can result in this practice being carried out less in groups of low socioeconomic, social or cultural levels. The purpose of this study was to assess the outcomes of a promoting reading habits intervention in a primary health care center located in a social transformation district by talking to the parents, providing books to families and encouraging books to become a part of children's play preferences.
A non-random intervention study in which children born in 2015 and registered in a particular health center took part. A reading promotion intervention was carried out at the ages of 4, 6, 12 and 18 months and at 24 months their preference for reading activities was assessed in relation to other leisure activities.
Three hundred forty-two subjects were included, 154 allocated in the intervention group and 188 in the control group. The children in the intervention group exhibited a greater preference for reading as a leisure activity as compared to those in the control group (reading ranked in last position of favourite activities in 18.8 vs. 33.9%; p=0.003). The variables found on multivariate analysis to have a greater influence on reading position in the ranking of favorite activities were not having participated in the intervention OR: 2.06 (1.19-3.58) and gipsy ethnicity, OR: 2.37 (1.38-4.09).
Results reveal a slight improvement in the preference for reading as an activity in the children that took part in the literacy program.
Cooperative Learning, the pedagogic use of structured group work in educational settings (from kindergarten to university) highlights the learning/teaching process as
a social endeavour. Autonomy, on ...the other hand, is the ability to control one’s own learning
and is perceived, therefore, as an individual process.
This article aims at corroborating the links between Cooperative Learning techniques and
autonomy, since the former can help develop the latter thanks to the conditions included in
its implementation and analysed throughout the article: anxiety reduction, increase of motivation and the explicit attention to learning styles
El Aprendizaje Cooperativo, enfoque de trabajo en grupos estructurados utilizado en todos los niveles educativos, concibe el proceso de enseñanza/aprendizaje como un
fenómeno eminentemente social. La autonomía, por otro lado, es la capacidad de controlar
el propio aprendizaje y, por lo tanto, un proceso individual.
Este artículo persigue reforzar los vínculos que unen las técnicas de Aprendizaje Cooperativo y la autonomía, alegando que aquellas pueden llegar a desarrollar esta última gracias a los
siguientes factores presentes en su puesta en marcha: la reducción de la ansiedad, el aumento
de la motivación y la atención a los estilos de aprendizaje.
In humans, being more socially integrated is associated with better physical and mental health and/or with lower mortality. This link between sociality and health may have ancient roots: sociality ...also predicts survival or reproduction in other mammals, such as rats, dolphins, and non-human primates. A key question, therefore, is which factors influence the degree of sociality over the life course. Longitudinal data can provide valuable insight into how environmental variability drives individual differences in sociality and associated outcomes. The first year of life-when long-lived mammals are the most reliant on others for nourishment and protection-is likely to play an important role in how individuals learn to integrate into groups. Using behavioral, demographic, and pedigree information on 376 wild capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator) across 20 years, we address how changes in group composition influence spatial association. We further try to determine the extent to which early maternal social environments have downstream effects on sociality across the juvenile and (sub)adult stages. We find a positive effect of early maternal spatial association, where female infants whose mothers spent more time around others also later spent more time around others as juveniles and subadults. Our results also highlight the importance of kin availability and other aspects of group composition (e.g., group size) in dynamically influencing spatial association across developmental stages. We bring attention to the importance of-and difficulty in-determining the social versus genetic influences that parents have on offspring phenotypes. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Having more maternal kin (mother and siblings) is associated with spending more time near others across developmental stages in both male and female capuchins. Having more offspring as a subadult or adult female is additionally associated with spending more time near others. A mother's average sociality (time near others) is predictive of how social her daughters (but not sons) become as juveniles and subadults (a between-mother effect). Additional variation within sibling sets in this same maternal phenotype is not predictive of how social they become later relative to each other (no within-mother effect).
Various aspects of sociality in mammals (e.g., dyadic connectedness) are linked with measures of biological fitness (e.g., longevity). How within- and between-individual variation in relevant social ...traits arises in uncontrolled wild populations is challenging to determine but is crucial for understanding constraints on the evolution of sociality. We use an advanced statistical method, known as the 'animal model', which incorporates pedigree information, to look at social, genetic, and environmental influences on sociality in a long-lived wild primate. We leverage a longitudinal database spanning 20 years of observation on individually recognized white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus imitator), with a multi-generational pedigree. We analyze two measures of spatial association, using repeat sampling of 376 individuals (mean: 53.5 months per subject, range: 6-185 months per subject). Conditioned on the effects of age, sex, group size, seasonality, and El Niño-Southern Oscillation phases, we show low to moderate long-term repeatability (across years) of the proportion of time spent social (posterior mode 95% Highest Posterior Density interval: 0.207 0.169, 0.265) and of average number of partners (0.144 0.113, 0.181) (latent scale). Most of this long-term repeatability could be explained by modest heritability (h
: 0.152 0.094, 0.207; h
: 0.113 0.076, 0.149) with small long-term maternal effects (m
: 0.000 0.000, 0.045; m
: 0.000 0.000, 0.041). Our models capture the majority of variance in our behavioral traits, with much of the variance explained by temporally changing factors, such as group of residence, highlighting potential limits to the evolvability of our trait due to social and environmental constraints.
An important extension to our understanding of evolutionary processes has been the discovery of the roles that individual and social learning play in creating recurring phenotypes on which selection ...can act. Cultural change occurs chiefly through invention of new behavioral variants combined with social transmission of the novel behaviors to new practitioners. Therefore, understanding what makes some individuals more likely to innovate and/or transmit new behaviors is critical for creating realistic models of culture change. The difficulty in identifying what behaviors qualify as new in wild animal populations has inhibited researchers from understanding the characteristics of behavioral innovations and innovators. Here, we present the findings of a long-term, systematic study of innovation (10 y, 10 groups, and 234 individuals) in wild capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus) in Lomas Barbudal, Costa Rica. Our methodology explicitly seeks novel behaviors, requiring their absence during the first 5 y of the study to qualify as novel in the second 5 y of the study. Only about 20% of 187 innovations identified were retained in innovators’ individual behavioral repertoires, and 22% were subsequently seen in other group members. Older, more social monkeys were more likely to invent new forms of social interaction, whereas younger monkeys were more likely to innovate in other behavioral domains (foraging, investigative, and self-directed behaviors). Sex and rank had little effect on innovative tendencies. Relative to apes, capuchins devote more of their innovations repertoire to investigative behaviors and social bonding behaviors and less to foraging and comfort behaviors.
Documenting inbreeding and its potential costs in wild populations is a complicated matter. Early infant death before genetic samples can be collected limits the ability of researchers to measure ...fitness costs, and pedigree information is necessary to accurately estimate relatedness between breeding individuals. Using data from 25 years of research from the Lomas Barbudal Capuchin Monkey Project, and a sample of 109 females that have given birth, we find that despite frequent co-residency of adult opposite-sexed individuals, capuchins produce offspring with close kin (i.e., related at the halfsibling level or higher) less often than would be expected in the absence of inbreeding avoidance. We do not find support for alternative, non-behavioral explanations for this pattern and thus argue for mate choice. Furthermore, we find evidence for fitness costs among inbred animals in the form of delayed female age at first birth but not significantly higher juvenile mortality. Further research is necessary in order to determine the mechanisms by which individuals develop sexual aversion to close kin. Through a combination of demographic records, maternal pedigrees, and genetically determined paternity, this study provides a detailed study of inbreeding and inbreeding avoidance in a well-studied mammal population. This study provides (1) evidence that capuchin monkeys avoid mating with close kin at both the level of parent-offspring and half sibling and (2) evidence of fitness costs to inbreeding in the form of delayed first age at reproduction.
PDF
