Eduardo E Zattara

National Scientific and Technical Research Council | conicet · INIBIOMA Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medio Ambiente

Regeneration, the ability to replace lost body structures, and agametic asexual reproduction, such as fission and budding, are post-embryonic developmental capabilities widely distributed yet highly variable across animals. Regeneration capabilities vary dramatically both within and across phyla, but the evolution of regeneration ability has rarely...

Sexual dimorphisms fuel significant intraspecific variation and evolutionary diversification. Yet the developmental-genetic mechanisms underlying sex-specific development remain poorly understood. Here, we focus on the conserved sex-determination gene doublesex (dsx) and the mechanisms by which it mediates sex-specific development in a horned beetl...

Animals vary widely in their ability to regenerate, suggesting that regenerative ability has a rich evolutionary history. However, our understanding of this history remains limited because regenerative ability has only been evaluated in a tiny fraction of species. Available comparative regeneration studies have identified losses of regenerative abi...

Nutrition-responsive development is a ubiquitous and highly diversified example of phenotypic plasticity, yet its underlying molecular and developmental mechanisms and modes of evolutionary diversification remain poorly understood. We measured genome-wide transcription in three closely related species of horned beetles exhibiting strikingly diverse...

Wild and managed bees are key pollinators, ensuring or enhancing the reproduction of a large fraction of the world's wild flowering plants and the yield of ∼85% of all cultivated crops. Recent reports of wild bee decline and its potential consequences are thus worrisome. However, evidence is mostly based on local or regional studies; the global sta...

Los arroyos son ecosistemas altamente dependientes del cli-ma, la topografía y la cuenca de drenaje que los rodea. Sus dinámicas físico-químicas y biológicas están determinadas por el régimen del caudal. Los arroyos andino-norpatagónicos se caracterizan por un incremento del cau-dal en la primavera, ser oligotróficos y drenar cuencas con un bajo im...

Background Historical reconstructions within Podocarpaceae have provided valuable information to disentangle biogeographic scenarios that begun 65 Mya. However, early molecular phylogenies of Podocarpaceae failed to agree on the intergeneric relationships within the family. The aims of this study were to test whether plastome organization is stable...

Ecological communities are structured by combinations of biotic and abiotic factors acting at different spatial scales. However, the relative influence of the different scale‐related variables on assemblage composition is poorly understood, despite being key to the effective and efficient management of fluvial ecosystems. We took advantage of the r...

Human activities that alter natural environments, causing shifts in land use, agrochemical contamination, habitat fragmentation, unsustainable exploitation of environmental resources, and global climate change, among others, pose threats to most living beings inhabiting our planet. Among them are pollinators, several groups of animals that visit fl...

Aim Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in the geographic distributions of species. However, biases in these data present challenges for statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower‐visiting...

I. Background: Historical reconstructions within Podocarpaceae have provided valuable information to disentangle biogeographic scenarios that begun 65 Mya. However, early molecular phylogenies of Podocarpaceae failed to agree on the intergeneric relationships within the family. The aims of this study were to test whether plastome organization is st...

Ecological communities are structured by combinations of factors known as habitat templates. These templates work as a filter allowing only species with particular traits or phenotypes to establish and persist excluding all others. Defining which habitat variables and spatial scales drive the assembly of freshwater communities is key to effective a...

Whole-body regeneration, the ability to reconstruct complete individuals from small fragments, is rare among ribbon worms (phylum Nemertea) but present in the pilidiophoran species Lineus sanguineus . This species can regenerate complete individuals from a tiny midbody section, and even from a quarter of a piece, provided it retains a fragment of a...

Biodiversity assessments are critical for setting conservation priorities, understanding ecosystem function and establishing a baseline to monitor change. Surveys of marine biodiversity that rely almost entirely on sampling adult organisms underestimate diversity because they tend to be limited to habitat types and individuals that can be easily su...

Adequate pollination is fundamental to optimize reproduction and yield of most flowering plants, including many staple food crops. Plants depending on insect pollination rely heavily on many wild species of solitary and social bees, and declines or absence of bees often hampers crop productivity, prompting supplementation of pollination services wi...

Aim: Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in species’ distributions. However, biases in these data present challenges for robust statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower-visiting taxa: be...

Background Understanding the relationship between macroevolutionary diversity and variation in organism development is an important goal of evolutionary biology. Variation in the morphology of several plant and animal lineages is attributed to pedomorphosis, a case of heterochrony, where an ancestral juvenile shape is retained in an adult descendan...

A Contagem Cronometrada de Visitantes Florais (daqui em diante denominaremos de FIT Count) é um protocolo de ciência cidadã simples que tem como objetivo coletar dados sobre visitação de flores por toda a gama de grupos de polinizadores, incluindo mamangavas, abelhas sem ferrão, abelhas melíferas, moscas e beija‑flores. Cada FIT Count é padronizado...

El Conteo Cronometrado de Visitantes Florales (de aquí en adelante denominado como FIT Count) es un sencillo protocolo de ciencia ciudadana que tiene como objetivo colectar datos sobre eventos de visita en flores por una amplia gama de polinizadores, incluyendo abejorros, abejas sin aguijón, abejas melíferas, moscas y picaflores. Cada FIT Count est...

La topografía y el uso de la tierra modulan la hidrología y la exportación de nutrientes en dos arroyos andino patagónicos.

Fluvial dynamics are driven by multiple environmental factors and scales. Studies coupling hydrological and nutrient dynamics of mountain streams are almost non-existent in the Northern Patagonian region; which is characterised by a temperate-cold climate. We studied two adjacent streams with contrasting drainage basins: Casa de Piedra (41°07′30.11...

The mechanisms supporting regeneration and successful recovery of function have fascinated scientists and the general public for quite some time, with the earliest description of regeneration occurring in the 8th century BC through the Greek mythological story of Prometheus. While most animals demonstrate the capacity for wound-healing, the ability...

Eutrophication is a key human-induced stressor in streams and often a consequence of intensified land use. We characterised how population density influences dissolved nutrients and its ratio in Patagonian Andean streams during the baseflow hydrological period. Research was conducted at stream Gutiérrez drainage basin (41°09′36.18′′S 71°24′37.19′′W...

There is more to bees than honey: wild bees ensure efficient pollination of most flowering plants and food crops. Yet a recent study counting the number of species recorded worldwide every year from 1946 to 2015 suggests a bleak picture, finding a steep reduction in the number of species in recent years. Although changes in how we record bees could...

Habitat fragmentation and loss threaten freshwater biodiversity worldwide. Habitats that are essential as fish spawning and nursery sites are critical, and must be identified for conservation purposes. Littoral zones within Patagonian lakes, especially shallow vegetated areas, represent important areas for the Creole perch, Percichthys trucha. Spaw...

Many species of aquatic worms, including members of the phyla Nemertea, Annelida, Platyhelminthes, and Xenacoelomorpha, can regenerate large parts of their body after amputation. In most species, cell proliferation plays key roles in the reconstruction of lost tissues. For example, in annelids and flatworms, inhibition of cell proliferation by irra...

We characterized how land use influenced dissolved nutrients and periphytic algal biomass in an Andean basin from Northwest Patagonia. Nutrient export, especially dissolved inorganic nitrogen increased with human population density. However, no correlation between nutrient concentration and algal biomass was found, which could instead be limited by...

Wild and managed bees are key pollinators, providing ecosystem services to a large fraction of the world’s flowering plants, including ~85% of all cultivated crops. Recent reports of wild bee decline and its potential consequences are thus worrisome. However, evidence is mostly based on local or regional studies; global status of bee decline has no...

Understanding how ecosystem processes influencing fish distribution operate across spatial scales is important to understand biological invasions. Salmonids, originally from the Northern Hemisphere, have been repeatedly introduced throughout the world, making them an ideal group to test hypotheses about factors driving invasions. We assessed the in...

Annelida is one of the three phyla presenting a segmented body plan, composed of repeated morphological units, and the only lophotrochozoan group with this type of organization. Furthermore, while arthropods and vertebrates also show segmental organization, annelids are the only phylum where segment formation continues well beyond embryonic develop...

Axial regeneration, the ability to regrow structures along the main body axis, is a widespread, likely ancestral trait of metazoans. Despite its assumed adaptive value, regenerative ability has decreased, disappeared and regained many times during the evolution animal lineages. In most animals capable of regeneration, the process comprises three ma...

Background: Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Their diversity stems in part from variations on a conserved body plan, resulting from and recorded in adaptive changes in the genome. Dissection of the genomic record of sequence change enables broad questions regarding gen...

Wild and managed bees are key pollinators, providing ecosystem services to a large fraction of the world’s flowering plants, including ~85% of all cultivated crops. Recent reports of wild bee decline and its potential consequences are thus worrisome. However, evidence is mostly based on local or regional studies; global status of bee decline has no...

In this research work, biology of Creole perch, Percichthys trucha, the largest top predator in the North Patagonia’s freshwater communities, in a deep oligotrophic lake in the region, focusing on (i) the differential use of littoral depth strata by age, (ii) age at maturity and spawning season and (iii) occurrence of reproductive migrations to veg...

Waterways act as integrators of ecosystems, their dynamics driven by multiple environmental factors and scales. To elucidate factors affecting hydrological and nutrient dynamics in Andean streams, we characterized two adjacent North Patagonian streams with contrasting drainage basins: Casa de Piedra (CP), originating in a small mountain lake and ru...

Animals vary widely in their ability to regenerate, suggesting that regenerative abilities have a rich evolutionary history. However, our understanding of this history remains limited because regeneration ability has only been evaluated in a tiny fraction of species. Available comparative regeneration studies have identified losses of regenerative...

Background Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Their diversity stems in part from variations on a conserved body plan, resulting from and recorded in adaptive changes in the genome. Dissection of the genomic record of sequence change enables broad questions regarding genom...

Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to cope with rapid environmental change. Yet exactly when during ontogeny plastic responses are elicited, whether plastic responses produced in one generation influence phenotypic variation and fitness in subsequent generations, and the role of plasticity in shaping population divergences, remains overall poor...

Significance From both evolutionary and biomedical perspectives, ectopic organ development is a promising paradigm to investigate the emergence and integration of novel complex structures outside their normal biological context. However, the best known examples of ectopic organ induction require genetic techniques only available for a few model sys...

Supplementary Figures

A comparison of functional categories that were enriched in genes with sex-biased or Dsx-mediated expression in O. taurus and those that were enriched in the Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) Dsx targets identified in Clough et al. 2014. Sheet 1 lists functional categories enriched in the fly Dsx targets. Sheet 2 lists functional categories enric...

Pearson's correlations. Sheet 1 provides a summary of coefficients between biological replicates within sample groups. Sheet 2 provides all of the correlation coefficients in a matrix format. Sheet 3 provides all of the p-values for these correlations in a matrix format.

Genes that are Dsx-Mediated across four O. taurus tissues (head horns, thoracic horns, brains and genitalia). These lists were generated by comparing the transcriptomes of dsxRNAi males to those of control males (sheet 1; "Males"), as well as those of dsxRNAi females to those of control females (sheet 2; "Females). For each tissue, genes with signi...

Genes that are putative Dsx targets across four O. taurus tissues (head horns, thoracic horns, brains and genitalia). These lists were generated by determining which genes, whose expression exhibited differential expression between control and dsxRNAi animals, also possessed five or more significant (p<0.005) predicted Dsx binding sites. Putative D...

Functional Categories that were enriched in sex-biased and Dsx-mediated O. taurus genes, as determined by Gene Ontology Enrichment analysis. Sheet 1 ("README") defines parameters used in the analysis. Sheets 2-5 list functional categories enriched in genes with sex-biased expression across four tissues. Sheets 6-9 list functional categories enriche...

A comparison of Dsx targets identified in this study to those identified in a study of D. melanogaster (fruit fly; Clough et al. 2014). Using BLAST searches we found 603 O. taurus orthologues corresponding to the Dsx targets identified in the fly study. Of these, 444 were also found by our binding site analysis, such that approximately 74% of the D...

Background Gonads are specialized gamete-producing structures that, despite their functional importance, are generated by diverse mechanisms across groups of animals and can be among the most plastic organs of the body. Annelids, the segmented worms, are a group in which gonads have been documented to be plastic and to be able to regenerate, but li...

The origin and integration of novel traits are fundamental processes during the developmental evolution of complex organisms. Yet how novel traits integrate into pre-existing contexts remains poorly understood. Beetle horns represent a spectacular evolutionary novelty integrated within the context of the adult dorsal head, a highly conserved trait...

The integration of form and function of novel traits is a fundamental process during the developmental evolution of complex organisms, yet how novel traits and trait functions integrate into preexisting contexts remains poorly understood. Here, we explore the mechanisms by which the adult insect head has been able to integrate novel traits and feat...

Famous for its blind cavefish and Darwin's finches, Latin America is home to some of the richest biodiversity hotspots of our planet. The Latin American fauna and flora inspired and captivated naturalists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including such notable pioneers such as Fritz Müller, Florentino Ameghino, and Léon Croizat who made...

Comparative population genetics in asexual vs. sexual species offers the opportunity to investigate the impact of asexuality on genome evolution. Here we analyse coding sequence polymorphism and divergence patterns in the fascinating Lineus ribbon worms, a group of marine, carnivorous nemerteans with unusual regeneration abilities, and in which ase...

The Baylor College of Medicine recently sequenced and annotated the Onthophagus taurus genome as part of the i5k pilot project. This dataset presents the Onthophagus taurus gene set BCM_v_0.5.3, which was generated computationally. RNA-Seq data was used with additional protein homology data for a MAKER automated annotation of the Onthophagus tauru...

Background Time-lapse imaging has proven highly valuable for studying development, yielding data of much finer resolution than traditional “still-shot” studies and allowing direct examination of tissue and cell dynamics. A major challenge for time-lapse imaging of animals is keeping specimens immobile yet healthy for extended periods of time. Altho...

Syllid male stolon featured in a 2014-2015 postcard from The Node

The evolutionary origin of the insect head has been of longstanding interest in evolutionary biology. Much is known about the formation of the ventral head containing the mouthparts, yet dorsal head formation remains poorly understood, in particular during the transformation of larval to pupal/adult stages. This is particularly problematic as many...

Arthropods are formed by segments whose identities are determined by hox genes, but anterodorsal head tissues pose an exception to this rule. The bend-and-zipper model proposes that this region originates by upfolding of anterolateral embryonic primordia, suggesting that its developmental control is separate from its ventral counterpart. This could...

Life-history evolution results from innovation in developmental trajectories enabling lineages to explore and adapt to available ecological niches. Annelids show a wide array of embryonic and post-embryonic developmental strategies to survive and thrive in land and sea. Mapping these strategies to current phylogenies of the phylum suggests that som...

The Baylor College of Medicine recently sequenced and annotated the Onthophagus taurus genome as part of the i5k pilot project. This dataset presents the Onthophagus taurus genome v1.0. This assembly version is the pre-release version, prior to filtering and quality control by the National Center for Biotechnology Information's GenBank resource: h...

While transplantation procedures are often associated with biomedical applications, they are also an invaluable tool for basic research. This review focuses on h