Integrated evolutionary pattern analyses reveal multiple origins of steroidal saponins in plants.

Steroidal saponins are a class of specialized metabolites essential for plant's response to biotic and abiotic stresses. They are also important raw materials for the industrial production of steroid drugs. Steroidal saponins are present in some monocots, such as Dioscorea and Paris, but their distribution, origin, and evolution in plants remain poorly understood. By reconstructing the evolutionary history of the steroidal saponin-associated module (SSAM) in plants, we reveal that the steroidal saponin pathway has its origin in Asparagus and Dioscorea. Through evaluating the distribution and evolutionary pattern of steroidal saponins in angiosperms, we further show that steroidal saponins originated multiple times in angiosperms, and exist in early diverged lineages of certain monocot lineages including Asparagales, Dioscoreales, and Liliales. In these lineages, steroidal saponins are synthesized through the high copy and/or high expression mechanisms of key genes in SSAM. Together with shifts in gene evolutionary rates and amino acid usage, these molecular mechanisms shape the current distribution and diversity of steroidal saponins in plants. Consequently, our results provide new insights into the distribution, diversity and evolutionary history of steroidal saponins in plants, and enhance our understanding of plants' resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses. Additionally, fundamental understanding of the steroidal saponin biosynthesis will facilitate their industrial production and pharmacological applications.

Evolution of the Mutation Spectrum Across a Mammalian Phylogeny.

Although evolutionary biologists have long theorized that variation in DNA repair efficacy might explain some of the diversity of lifespan and cancer incidence across species, we have little data on the variability of normal germline mutagenesis outside of humans. Here, we shed light on the spectrum and etiology of mutagenesis across mammals by quantifying mutational sequence context biases using polymorphism data from thirteen species of mice, apes, bears, wolves, and cetaceans. After normalizing the mutation spectrum for reference genome accessibility and k-mer content, we use the Mantel test to deduce that mutation spectrum divergence is highly correlated with genetic divergence between species, whereas life history traits like reproductive age are weaker predictors of mutation spectrum divergence. Potential bioinformatic confounders are only weakly related to a small set of mutation spectrum features. We find that clock-like mutational signatures previously inferred from human cancers cannot explain the phylogenetic signal exhibited by the mammalian mutation spectrum, despite the ability of these signatures to fit each species' 3-mer spectrum with high cosine similarity. In contrast, parental aging signatures inferred from human de novo mutation data appear to explain much of the 1-mer spectrum's phylogenetic signal in combination with a novel mutational signature. We posit that future models purporting to explain the etiology of mammalian mutagenesis need to capture the fact that more closely related species have more similar mutation spectra; a model that fits each marginal spectrum with high cosine similarity is not guaranteed to capture this hierarchy of mutation spectrum variation among species.

Phylogenetic Comparative Approach Reveals Evolutionary Conservatism, Ancestral Composition, and Integration of Vertebrate Gut Microbiota.

How host-associated microbial communities evolve as their hosts diversify remains equivocal: how conserved is their composition? What was the composition of ancestral microbiota? Do microbial taxa covary in abundance over millions of years? Multivariate phylogenetic models of trait evolution are key to answering similar questions for complex host phenotypes, yet they are not directly applicable to relative abundances, which usually characterize microbiota. Here, we extend these models in this context, thereby providing a powerful approach for estimating phylosymbiosis (the extent to which closely related host species harbor similar microbiota), ancestral microbiota composition, and integration (evolutionary covariations in bacterial abundances). We apply our model to the gut microbiota of mammals and birds. We find significant phylosymbiosis that is not entirely explained by diet and geographic location, indicating that other evolutionary-conserved traits shape microbiota composition. We identify main shifts in microbiota composition during the evolution of the two groups and infer an ancestral mammalian microbiota consistent with an insectivorous diet. We also find remarkably consistent evolutionary covariations among bacterial orders in mammals and birds. Surprisingly, despite the substantial variability of present-day gut microbiota, some aspects of their composition are conserved over millions of years of host evolutionary history.

Climate of origin shapes variations in wood anatomical properties of 17 Picea species.

BACKGROUND: Variations in hydraulic conductivity may arise from species-specific differences in the anatomical structure and function of the xylem, reflecting a spectrum of plant strategies along a slow-fast resource economy continuum. Spruce (Picea spp.), a widely distributed and highly adaptable tree species, is crucial in preventing soil erosion and enabling climate regulation. However, a comprehensive understanding of the variability in anatomical traits of stems and their underlying drivers in the Picea genus is currently lacking especially in a common garden. RESULTS: We assessed 19 stem economic properties and hydraulic characteristics of 17 Picea species grown in a common garden in Tianshui, Gansu Province, China. Significant interspecific differences in growth and anatomical characteristics were observed among the species. Specifically, xylem hydraulic conductivity (Ks) and hydraulic diameter exhibited a significant negative correlation with the thickness to span ratio (TSR), cell wall ratio, and tracheid density and a significant positive correlation with fiber length, and size of the radial tracheid. PCA revealed that the first two axes accounted for 64.40% of the variance, with PC1 reflecting the trade-off between hydraulic efficiency and mechanical support and PC2 representing the trade-off between high embolism resistance and strong pit flexibility. Regression analysis and structural equation modelling further confirmed that tracheid size positively influenced Ks, whereas the traits DWT, D_r, and TSR have influenced Ks indirectly. All traits failed to show significant phylogenetic associations. Pearson's correlation analysis demonstrated strong correlations between most traits and longitude, with the notable influence of the mean temperature during the driest quarter, annual precipitation, precipitation during the wettest quarter, and aridity index. CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed that xylem anatomical traits demonstrated considerable variability across phylogenies, consistent with the pattern of parallel sympatric radiation evolution and global diversity in spruce. By integrating the anatomical structure of the stem xylem as well as environmental factors of origin and evolutionary relationships, our findings provide novel insights into the ecological adaptations of the Picea genus.

Global leaf sulfur stoichiometry and the relationships with nitrogen and phosphorus: phylogeny, growth form and environmental controls.

Sulfur (S) is an essential bioelement with vital roles in serving regulatory and catalytic functions and tightly coupled with N and P in plants. However, globally stoichiometric patterns of leaf S and its relationships to leaf N and P are less well studied. We compiled 31 939 records of leaf-based data for 2600 plant species across 6652 sites worldwide. All plant species were divided into different phylogenetic taxa and growth forms. Standard major axis analysis was employed to fit the bivariate element relationships. A phylogenetic linear mixed-effect model and a multiple-regression model were used to partition the variations of bioelements into phylogeny and environments, and then to estimate the importance of environmental variables. Global geometric mean leaf S, N and P concentrations were 1.44, 15.70 and 1.27 mg g-1, respectively, with significant differences among plant groups. Leaf S-N-P positively correlated with each other, ignoring plant groups. The scaling exponents of LN-LS, LP-LS and LN-LP were 0.64, 0.76 and 0.79, respectively, for all species, but differed among plant groups. Both phylogeny and environments regulated the bioelements. The variability, rather than mean temperature, controlled the bioelements. Phylogeny explained more for the concentrations of all the three bioelements than environments, of which S was the one most affected by phylogenetic taxa.

Predictability of the community-function landscape in wine yeast ecosystems.

Predictively linking taxonomic composition and quantitative ecosystem functions is a major aspiration in microbial ecology, which must be resolved if we wish to engineer microbial consortia. Here, we have addressed this open question for an ecological function of major biotechnological relevance: alcoholic fermentation in wine yeast communities. By exhaustively phenotyping an extensive collection of naturally occurring wine yeast strains, we find that most ecologically and industrially relevant traits exhibit phylogenetic signal, allowing functional traits in wine yeast communities to be predicted from taxonomy. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the quantitative contributions of individual wine yeast strains to the function of complex communities followed simple quantitative rules. These regularities can be integrated to quantitatively predict the function of newly assembled consortia. Besides addressing theoretical questions in functional ecology, our results and methodologies can provide a blueprint for rationally managing microbial processes of biotechnological relevance.

Evolution of wing shape in geometrid moths: phylogenetic effects dominate over ecology.

Locomotory performance is an important determinant of fitness in most animals, including flying insects. Strong selective pressures on wing morphology are therefore expected. Previous studies on wing shape in Lepidoptera have found some support for hypotheses relating wing shape to environment-specific selective pressures on aerodynamic performance. Here, we present a phylogenetic comparative study on wing shape in the lepidopteran family Geometridae, covering 374 species of the northern European fauna. We focused on 11 wing traits including aspect ratio, wing roundness, and the pointedness of the apex, as well as the ratio of forewing and hindwing areas. All measures were taken from images available on the internet, using a combination of tools available in Fiji software and R. We found that wing shape demonstrates a phylogenetically conservative pattern of evolution in Geometridae, showing similar or stronger phylogenetic signal than many of its potential predictors. Several wing traits showed statistically significant associations with predictors such as body size, phenology, and preference for forest habitats. Overall, however, all of these associations remained notably weak, with no wing shape being excluded for any value of the predictors, including body size. We conclude that, in geometrids, wing traits do not readily respond to selective pressures optimizing aerodynamic performance of the moths in different environments. Selection on wing shape may nevertheless operate through other functions of the wings, with the effectiveness of crypsis at rest being a promising candidate for further studies.

Species that require long day conditions to flower are not advancing their flowering phenology as fast as species without photoperiod requirements.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Over the last few decades, many plant species have shown changes in phenology, such as the date on which they germinate, bud or flower. However, some species are changing slower than others, potentially due to daylength (photoperiod) requirements. METHODS: We combined data on flowering time advancement with published records of photoperiod sensitivity to try to predict which species are advancing their flowering time. Data availability limited us to the Northern Hemisphere. KEY RESULTS: Cross-species analyses showed that short day plants advanced their flowering time by 1.4 days per decade, day neutral plants advanced by 0.9 days per decade, but long day plants delayed their flowering by 0.2 days per decade. However, photoperiod sensitivity status was moderately phylogenetically conserved, and the differences in flowering time advancement were not significant after phylogeny was accounted for. Both annual and perennial herbs were more likely to have long day photoperiod cues than woody species, which were instead more likely to have short day photoperiod cues. CONCLUSIONS: Short day plants are keeping up with plants that do not have photoperiod requirements, suggesting that daylength requirements do not hinder changes in phenology. However, long day plants are not changing their phenology and may risk falling behind as competitors and pollinators adapt to climate change.

Evolutionary trends of reproductive phenotype in Cycadales: an analysis of morphological evolution in Ceratozamia.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The size and shape of reproductive structures is especially relevant in evolution because these characters are directly related to the capacity of pollination and seed dispersal, a process that plays a basic role in evolutionary patterns. The evolutionary trajectories of reproductive phenotypes in gymnosperms have received special attention in terms of pollination and innovations related to the emergence of the Spermatophytes. However, variability of reproductive structures, evolutionary trends and the role of environment in the evolution of cycad species have not been well documented and explored. This study considered this topic under an explicitly phylogenetic and evolutionary approach that included a broad sampling of reproductive structures in the genus Ceratozamia. METHODS: We sampled 1400 individuals of 36 Ceratozamia species to explore evolutionary pattern and identify and evaluate factors that potentially drove their evolution. We analyzed characters for both pollen and ovulate strobili within a phylogenetic framework using different methods and characters (i. e., molecular and both quantitative and qualitative morphological) to infer phylogenetic relationships. Using this phylogenetic framework, evolutionary models of trait evolution for strobilar size were evaluated. In addition, quantitative morphological variation and its relation to environmental variables across species were analyzed. KEY RESULTS: We found contrasting phylogenetic signals between characters of pollen and ovulate strobili. These structures exhibited high morphological disparity in several characters related to size. Results of analyses of evolutionary trajectories suggested a stabilizing selection model. In regards to phenotype-environment, the analysis produced mixed results and differences for groups in the vegetation type where the species occur; however, a positive relationship with climatic variables was found. CONCLUSIONS: The integrated approach synthesized reproductive phenotypic variation with current phylogenetic hypotheses and provided explicit statements of character evolution. The characters of volume for ovulate strobili were the most informative, which could provide a reference for further study of the evolutionary complexity in Ceratozamia. Finally, heterogeneous environments, which are under changing weather conditions, promote variability of reproductive structures.

Local climate change velocities and evolutionary history explain multidirectional range shifts in a North American butterfly assemblage.

Species are often expected to shift their distributions either poleward or upslope to evade warming climates and colonise new suitable climatic niches. However, from 18-years of fixed transect monitoring data on 88 species of butterfly in the midwestern United States, we show that butterflies are shifting their centroids in all directions, except towards regions that are warming the fastest (southeast). Butterflies shifted their centroids at a mean rate of 4.87 km year-1. The rate of centroid shift was significantly associated with local climate change velocity (temperature by precipitation interaction), but not with mean climate change velocity throughout the species' ranges. Species tended to shift their centroids at a faster rate towards regions that are warming at slower velocities but increasing in precipitation velocity. Surprisingly, species' thermal niche breadth (range of climates butterflies experience throughout their distribution) and wingspan (often used as metric for dispersal capability) were not correlated with the rate at which species shifted their ranges. We observed high phylogenetic signal in the direction species shifted their centroids. However, we found no phylogenetic signal in the rate species shifted their centroids, suggesting less conserved processes determine the rate of range shift than the direction species shift their ranges. This research shows important signatures of multidirectional range shifts (latitudinal and longitudinal) and uniquely shows that local climate change velocities are more important in driving range shifts than the mean climate change velocity throughout a species' entire range.

Patterns of sexual dimorphism in the armoured tardigrades.

Sexual dimorphism is widespread among animals, with diverse patterns and proposed explanations observed across the Tree of Life. Here we present the first formal analysis of the patterns of sexual dimorphism in body size and cephalic sensory appendages across 40 species (from 10 genera) of armoured tardigrades (Echiniscidae). Phylogenetic signal was found for body size traits and the cephalic papilla relative size, indicating that the association between these traits between the sexes has high evolutionary persistence. The Echiniscidae body size dimorphism is generally female-biased, which would be in accordance with the fecundity hypothesis. No strong evidence of allometric patterns of body size sexual dimorphism was found. In contrast, some of the cephalic appendages show male-biased sexual dimorphism, particularly those that, by being more innervated, are thought to function as chemodetection organs used by males during mate search. The latter is consistent with the sexual selection hypothesis. As the first systematic quantification and analysis of the patterns of sexual dimorphism in the phylum Tardigrada, this study provides important insights into their ecology and evolution, such as corroborating the suggestion that cephalic appendages evolved for mate searching.

Nest site correlates with nest type and body size in Troglodytidae passerines.

Nest characteristics are highly variable in the Passeriformes, but the macroevolutionary patterns observable for birds in general are not necessarily valid for specific families, suggesting that both global and within-family studies are needed. Here, we used phylogenetic comparative methods to address the evolutionary patterns of nest type, nest site and habitat in the Troglodytidae, a passerine group with diversified nest and habitat characteristics. The common ancestor of the Troglodytidae likely constructed enclosed nests within sheltered sites (cavity or crevice), but the radiation of the group was characterized by (i) shifts to exposed nest sites (vegetation) with retention of enclosed nests or (ii) retention of sheltered sites with nest simplification (cup nests). Nest site and nest type presented strong phylogenetic conservatism and evolved interdependently, while habitat was poorly correlated with nest evolution. A phylogenetic mixed modelling approach showed that sheltered nest sites were associated with small body size, likely to avoid competition with other animals for these places. With these results, we improve the understanding of nest character evolution in the Troglodytidae and reveal evolutionary aspects not observed so far for passerine birds.

Plant chemical traits define functional and phylogenetic axes of plant biodiversity.

To determine which types of plant traits might better explain ecosystem functioning and plant evolutionary histories, we compiled 42 traits for each of 15 perennial species in a biodiversity experiment. We used every possible combination of three traits to cluster species. Across these 11,480 combinations, clusters generated using tissue %Ca, %N and %K best mapped onto phylogeny. Moreover, for the 15 best combinations of three traits, 82% of traits were chemical, 16% morphological and 2% metabolic. The diversity-dependence of ecosystem productivity was better explained by the %Ca, %N and %K clusters: compared to adding a new species at random, adding a species from an absent cluster/clade better-explained gains in productivity. Species number impacted productivity only when all clusters were present. Our results suggest that tissue elemental chemistry might be more phylogenetically conserved and more strongly related to ecosystem functioning than commonly measured morphological and physiological traits, a possibility that merits exploration.

Recent exposure to environmental stochasticity does not determine the demographic resilience of natural populations.

Escalating climatic and anthropogenic pressures expose ecosystems worldwide to increasingly stochastic environments. Yet, our ability to forecast the responses of natural populations to this increased environmental stochasticity is impeded by a limited understanding of how exposure to stochastic environments shapes demographic resilience. Here, we test the association between local environmental stochasticity and the resilience attributes (e.g. resistance, recovery) of 2242 natural populations across 369 animal and plant species. Contrary to the assumption that past exposure to frequent environmental shifts confers a greater ability to cope with current and future global change, we illustrate how recent environmental stochasticity regimes from the past 50 years do not predict the inherent resistance or recovery potential of natural populations. Instead, demographic resilience is strongly predicted by the phylogenetic relatedness among species, with survival and developmental investments shaping their responses to environmental stochasticity. Accordingly, our findings suggest that demographic resilience is a consequence of evolutionary processes and/or deep-time environmental regimes, rather than recent-past experiences.

Lower Statistical Support with Larger Data Sets: Insights from the Ochrophyta Radiation.

It is commonly assumed that increasing the number of characters has the potential to resolve evolutionary radiations. Here, we studied photosynthetic stramenopiles (Ochrophyta) using alignments of heterogeneous origin mitochondrion, plastid, and nucleus. Surprisingly while statistical support for the relationships between the six major Ochrophyta lineages increases when comparing the mitochondrion (6,762 sites) and plastid (21,692 sites) trees, it decreases in the nuclear (209,105 sites) tree. Statistical support is not simply related to the data set size but also to the quantity of phylogenetic signal available at each position and our ability to extract it. Here, we show that this ability for current phylogenetic methods is limited, because conflicting results were obtained when varying taxon sampling. Even though the use of a better fitting model improved signal extraction and reduced the observed conflicts, the plastid data set provided higher statistical support for the ochrophyte radiation than the larger nucleus data set. We propose that the higher support observed in the plastid tree is due to an acceleration of the evolutionary rate in one short deep internal branch, implying that more phylogenetic signal per position is available to resolve the Ochrophyta radiation in the plastid than in the nuclear data set. Our work therefore suggests that, in order to resolve radiations, beyond the obvious use of data sets with more positions, we need to continue developing models of sequence evolution that better extract the phylogenetic signal and design methods to search for genes/characters that contain more signal specifically for short internal branches.

Conflicts in Mitochondrial Phylogenomics of Branchiopoda, with the First Complete Mitogenome of Laevicaudata (Crustacea: Branchiopoda).

Conflicting phylogenetic signals are pervasive across genomes. The potential impact of such systematic biases may be reduced by phylogenetic approaches accommodating for heterogeneity or by the exclusive use of homoplastic sites in the datasets. Here, we present the complete mitogenome of Lynceus grossipedia as the first representative of the suborder Laevicaudata. We employed a phylogenomic approach on the mitogenomic datasets representing all major branchiopod groups to identify the presence of conflicts and concordance across the phylogeny. We found pervasive phylogenetic conflicts at the base of Diplostraca. The homogeneity of the substitution pattern tests and posterior predictive tests revealed a high degree of compositional heterogeneity among branchiopod mitogenomes at both the nucleotide and amino acid levels, which biased the phylogenetic inference. Our results suggest that Laevicaudata as the basal clade of Phyllopoda was most likely an artifact caused by compositional heterogeneity and conflicting phylogenetic signal. We demonstrated that the exclusive use of homoplastic site methods combining the application of site-heterogeneous models produced correct phylogenetic estimates of the higher-level relationships among branchiopods.

The Limits of Evolutionary Convergence in Sympatry: Reproductive Interference and Historical Constraints Leading to Local Diversity in Warning Traits.

AbstractMutualistic interactions between defended species represent a striking case of evolutionary convergence in sympatry, driven by the increased protection against predators brought by mimicry in warning traits. However, such convergence is often limited: sympatric defended species frequently display different or imperfectly similar warning traits. The phylogenetic distance between sympatric species may indeed prevent evolution toward the exact same signal. Moreover, warning traits are also involved in mate recognition, so trait convergence might result in heterospecific courtship and mating. Here, we develop a mathematical model to investigate the strength and direction of the evolution of warning traits in defended species with different ancestral traits. Specifically, we determine the effect of phenotypic distances between ancestral trait states of sympatric defended species and of the costs of heterospecific sexual interactions on imperfect mimicry and trait divergence. Our analytical results confirm that reproductive interference and historical constraints limit the convergence of warning traits, leading to either complete divergence or imperfect mimicry. Our model reveals that imperfect mimicry evolves only when ancestral trait values differ between species because of historical constraints and highlights the importance of female and predator discrimination in the evolution of such imperfect mimicry. Our study thus provides new predictions on how reproductive interference interacts with historical constraints and may promote the emergence of novel warning traits, enhancing mimetic diversity.

Reproductive and environmental traits explain the variation in egg size among Medusozoa (Cnidaria).

Medusozoa (Cnidaria) are characterized by diverse life cycles, with different semaphoronts (medusa, medusoid, fixed gonophore, polyp) representing the sexual phase and carrying the gametes. Although egg size is often considered a proxy to understand reproductive and developmental traits of medusozoans, understanding of the processes influencing egg size variation in the group under an evolutionary context is still limited. We carried out a comprehensive review of the variation of egg size in Medusozoa to test whether this variation is related to biological/sexual or environmental traits. Egg size presents a strong phylogenetic signal (λ = 0.79, K = 0.67), explaining why closely related species with different reproductive strategies and different individual sizes have similar egg sizes. However, variation in egg size is influenced by the number of eggs, depth and temperature, with larger eggs frequently present in species with few eggs (1-15), in deep-sea species and in cold-water species. Conversely, the production of small eggs among cold-water species of Staurozoa might be associated with the development of a small benthic larvae in this group. Our study reinforces that egg sizes respond to reproductive and environmental traits, although egg size is highly conserved within medusa classes.

Confusion will be my epitaph: genome-scale discordance stifles phylogenetic resolution of Holothuroidea.

Sea cucumbers (Holothuroidea) are a diverse clade of echinoderms found from intertidal waters to the bottom of the deepest oceanic trenches. Their reduced skeletons and limited number of phylogenetically informative traits have long obfuscated morphological classifications. Sanger-sequenced molecular datasets have also failed to constrain the position of major lineages. Noteworthy, topological uncertainty has hindered a resolution for Neoholothuriida, a highly diverse clade of Permo-Triassic age. We perform the first phylogenomic analysis of Holothuroidea, combining existing datasets with 13 novel transcriptomes. Using a highly curated dataset of 1100 orthologues, our efforts recapitulate previous results, struggling to resolve interrelationships among neoholothuriid clades. Three approaches to phylogenetic reconstruction (concatenation under both site-homogeneous and site-heterogeneous models, and coalescent-aware inference) result in alternative resolutions, all of which are recovered with strong support and across a range of datasets filtered for phylogenetic usefulness. We explore this intriguing result using gene-wise log-likelihood scores and attempt to correlate these with a large set of gene properties. While presenting novel ways of exploring and visualizing support for alternative trees, we are unable to discover significant predictors of topological preference, and our efforts fail to favour one topology. Neoholothuriid genomes seem to retain an amalgam of signals derived from multiple phylogenetic histories.

Seed dispersal syndrome predicts ethanol concentration of fruits in a tropical dry forest.

Studying fruit traits and their interactions with seed dispersers can improve how we interpret patterns of biodiversity, ecosystem function and evolution. Mounting evidence suggests that fruit ethanol is common and variable, and may exert selective pressures on seed dispersers. To test this, we comprehensively assess fruit ethanol content in a wild ecosystem and explore sources of variation. We hypothesize that both phylogeny and seed dispersal syndrome explain variation in ethanol levels, and we predict that fruits with mammalian dispersal traits will contain higher levels of ethanol than those with bird dispersal traits. We measured ripe fruit ethanol content in species with mammal- (n = 16), bird- (n = 14) or mixed-dispersal (n = 7) syndromes in a Costa Rican tropical dry forest. Seventy-eight per cent of fruit species yielded measurable ethanol concentrations. We detected a phylogenetic signal in maximum ethanol levels (Pagel's λ = 0.82). Controlling for phylogeny, we observed greater ethanol concentrations in mammal-dispersed fruits, indicating that dispersal syndrome helps explain variation in ethanol content, and that mammals may be more exposed to ethanol in their diets than birds. Our findings further our understanding of wild fruit ethanol and its potential role as a selective pressure on frugivore sensory systems and metabolism.