Sleeping site selection and presleep behavior in wild pigtailed macaques.

Several factors are likely to control sleeping site selection and presleep behavior in nonhuman primates, including predation risk and location of food resources. We examined the effects of these factors on the sleeping behavior of northern pigtailed macaques (Macaca leonina). While following a troop living in the surroundings of the Visitor Center of Khao Yai National Park (Thailand), we recorded the physical characteristics and location of each sleeping site, tree, the individuals' place in the tree, posture, and behavior. We collected data for 154 nights between April 2009 and November 2010. The monkeys preferred tall sleeping trees (20.9 ± SD 4.9 m) and high sleeping places (15.8 ± SD 4.3 m), which may be an antipredator strategy. The choice of sleeping trees close to the last (146.7 ± SD 167.9 m) or to the first (150.4 ± SD 113.0 m) feeding tree of the day may save energy and decrease predation risk when monkeys are searching for food. Similarly, the choice of sleeping sites close to human settlements eases the access to human food during periods of fruit scarcity. Finally, the temporal pattern of use of sleeping sites, with a preference for four of the sleeping sites but few reuses during consecutive nights, may be a trade-off between the need to have several sleeping sites (decreasing detection by predators and travel costs to feeding sites), and the need to sleep in well-known sites (guaranteeing a faster escape in case of predator attack).

Finding good acoustic features for parrot vocalizations: the feature generation approach.

A crucial step in the understanding of vocal behavior of birds is to be able to classify calls in the repertoire into meaningful types. Methods developed to this aim are limited either because of human subjectivity or because of methodological issues. The present study investigated whether a feature generation system could categorize vocalizations of a bird species automatically and effectively. This procedure was applied to vocalizations of African gray parrots, known for their capacity to reproduce almost any sound of their environment. Outcomes of the feature generation approach agreed well with a much more labor-intensive process of a human expert classifying based on spectrographic representation, while clearly out-performing other automated methods. The method brings significant improvements in precision over commonly used bioacoustical analyses. As such, the method enlarges the scope of automated, acoustics-based sound classification.

Development and evaluation of a real-time PCR assay for detection and quantification of blastocystis parasites in human stool samples: prospective study of patients with hematological malignancies.

Blastocystis anaerobic parasites are widespread worldwide in the digestive tract of many animal species, including humans. Epidemiological Blastocystis studies are often limited by the poor sensitivity of standard parasitological assays for its detection. This report presents a highly sensitive real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) assay developed to detect Blastocystis parasites in stool samples. The assay targets a partial sequence of the Blastocystis small ribosomal subunit (SSU) rRNA gene, allowing subtyping (ST) of Blastocystis isolates by direct sequencing of qPCR products. This qPCR method was assessed in a prospective study of 186 patients belonging to two cohorts--a group of 94 immunocompromised patients presenting hematological malignancies and a control group of 92 nonimmunocompromised patients. Direct-light microscopy and xenic in vitro stool culture analysis showed only 29% and 52% sensitivity, respectively, compared to our qPCR assay. Of the 27 (14.5%) Blastocystis-positive patients, 8 (4%) experienced digestive symptoms. No correlation was found between symptomatic patients and immune status, parasite load, or parasite subtypes, although subtyping of all isolates revealed a high (63.0%) prevalence of ST4. Two unexpected avian subtypes were found, i.e., ST6 and ST7, which are frequently isolated in Asia but rarely present in Western countries. In conclusion, this qPCR proved by far the most sensitive of the tested methods and allowed subtype determination by direct sequencing of qPCR products. New diagnostic tools such as the qPCR are essential for evaluating the clinical relevance of Blastocystis subtypes and their role in acute or chronic digestive disorders.

[Coupling proteinemia and serum protein electrophoresis: evaluation of the capillary technique (Capillarys 2, Sebia), experience from Clermont-Ferrand]. / Évaluation du couplage protéinémie + électrophorèse des protéines sériques totales par technique capillaire (Capillarys 2, Sebia) : expérience clermontoise.

Serum protein electrophoresis (SPE) is a routine analysis that requires to quantify the total serum proteins in order to calculate the concentration in g/L of each electrophoretic protein fraction. Aim of this study was to evaluate the performances of the « Capillarys Total protein ¼ kit (Sebia®), coupled to the Capillarys 2 system (Sebia®), allowing the proteinemia quantification by capillary electrophoresis (EC) simultaneously to the electrophoretic separation. We compared the proteinemia analyzed in EC with the spectrophotometric reference technique for 904 serums. Our results validated the performances of this kit used on the Capillarys 2 system. We noticed interferences identified for 5.8% of total serums: serums with strong monoclonal immunoglobulinemia (proteinemia of 0 g/L), with inconsistent electrophoretic profile (proteinemia not calculated), and lipemic serums (discordant proteinemia). After exclusion of the lipemic serums or serums without proteinemia associated to the EC profile, a good correlation was found for these 94.2% serums analyzed in EC (r = 0.93) in comparison with the reference technique. Then, the kit developed by Sebia® to perform SPE coupled to proteinemia analysis is usable in routine analysis except for the lipemic serums and for the serum with intense monoclonal immunoglobulinemia. Advantage of such a coupling is to better organize the unit specifically implicated in proteins exploration. But this technique is longer, leading to slowing EC analyses. Taking in account these limitations and restrictions, and in view of the development of complete pre-analytical chains in hospital labs, this technique, despite its performance, was not retained by Sebia® for future commercialization.