Biology subjects

Rodrigo, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Rodrigo, A..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2021

Dinosaur bonebed amber from an original swamp forest soil

Dinosaur bonebeds with amber content, yet scarce, offer a superior wealth and quality of data on ancient terrestrial ecosystems. However, the preserved palaeodiversity and/or taphonomic characteristics of these exceptional localities had hitherto limited their palaeobiological potential. Here we describe the amber from the Lower Cretaceous dinosaur bonebed of Arino (Teruel, Spain) using a multidisciplinary approach. Amber is found in both a root layer with amber strictly in situ and a litter layer namely composed of aerial pieces unusually rich in bioinclusions, encompassing 11 insect orders, arachnids, and a few plant and vertebrate remains, including a feather. Additional palaeontological data - charophytes, palynomorphs, ostracods- are provided. Arino arguably represents the most prolific and palaeobiologically diverse locality in which fossiliferous amber and a dinosaur bonebed have been found in association, and the only one known where the vast majority of the palaeontological assemblage suffered no or low-grade pre-burial transport. That has enabled unlocking unprecedentedly complete and reliable palaeoecological data out of two complementary windows of preservation from the same site.

paleontology↗

bioRxiv2021

Daily Patterns of Foraging and Aggressive Behaviors in Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) at an Urban Patch with Availability or Absence of Resources

The Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) seems to take advantage of inhospitable environments such as cities. However, it is not yet fully understood how these birds exploit hostile environments to their advantage. Casual observation seems to suggest that this species can obtain resources of biological importance such as food or nesting material from the trash. As a first approach to the problem, we located a patch outside a residential building, in a high-density urban area, where the residents left their trash for pick-up, and a group of wild Great-tailed grackles was identified as regular visitors. In total, 25 days were recorded at the site (November 2017 - January 2018). Events such as foraging, number of subjects present at the foraging site, aggressive behaviors between members of the group, and their relation with the presence or absence of the garbage collector truck were registered. The results show a higher number of grackles at the observation site and a higher frequency of foraging behaviors in the presence of garbage collection than in its absence. In its presence, the distribution of foraging during the day follows a normal distribution. In the absence, the distribution shows more variability towards the day. The highest frequency of interactions occurred between two grackles, yet there were records of up to eight subjects. The highest number of aggressions registered took place in the absence of garbage collection than in its presence. Moreover, the focal subject exhibits fewer agonistic behaviors compared to other members of the group, a result expected if the producer-scrounger game literature is considered. The outcome is explained in terms of deprivation and availability of resources. Finally, we conclude that grackles can exploit hazardous environments such as cities due to the highly social behaviors exhibited during foraging.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2021

The draft genome sequence of Eucalyptus polybractea based on hybrid assembly with short- and long-reads reads

Eucalyptus polybractea is a small, multi-stemmed tree, which is widely cultivated in Australia for the production of Eucalyptus oil. We report the hybrid assembly of the E. polybractea genome utilizing both short- and long-read technology. We generated 44 Gb of Illumina HiSeq short reads and 8 Gb of Nanopore long reads, representing approximately 83x and 15x genome coverage, respectively. The hybrid-assembled genome, after polishing, contained 24,864 scaffolds with an accumulated length of 523 Mb (N50 = 40.3 kb; BUSCO-calculated genome completeness of 94.3%). The genome contained 35,385 predicted protein-coding genes detected by combining homology-based and de novo approaches. We have provided the first assembled genome based on hybrid sequences from the highly diverse Eucalyptus subgenus Symphyomyrtus, and revealed the value of including long-reads from Nanopore technology for enhancing the contiguity of the assembled genome, as well as for improving its completeness. We anticipate that the E. polybractea genome will be an invaluable resource supporting a range of studies in genetics, population genomics and evolution of related species in Eucalyptus.

genomics↗