Colony size buffers interactions between neonicotinoid exposure and cold stress in bumblebees.

Social bees are critical for supporting biodiversity, ecosystem function and crop yields globally. Colony size is a key ecological trait predicted to drive sensitivity to environmental stressors and may be especially important for species with annual cycles of sociality, such as bumblebees. However, there is limited empirical evidence assessing the effect of colony size on sensitivity to environmental stressors or the mechanisms underlying these effects. Here, we examine the relationship between colony size and sensitivity to environmental stressors in bumblebees. We exposed colonies at different developmental stages briefly (2 days) to a common neonicotinoid (imidacloprid) and cold stress, while quantifying behaviour of individuals. Combined imidacloprid and cold exposure had stronger effects on both thermoregulatory behaviour and long-term colony growth in small colonies. We find that imidacloprid's effects on behaviour are mediated by body temperature and spatial location within the nest, suggesting that social thermoregulation provides a buffering effect in large colonies. Finally, we demonstrate qualitatively similar effects in size-manipulated microcolonies, suggesting that group size per se, rather than colony age, drives these patterns. Our results provide evidence that colony size is critical in driving sensitivity to stressors and may help elucidate mechanisms underlying the complex and context-specific impacts of pesticide exposure.

Breaking the cycle: Reforming pesticide regulation to protect pollinators.

Over decades, pesticide regulations have cycled between approval and implementation, followed by the discovery of negative effects on nontarget organisms that result in new regulations, pesticides, and harmful effects. This relentless pattern undermines the capacity to protect the environment from pesticide hazards and frustrates end users that need pest management tools. Wild pollinating insects are in decline, and managed pollinators such as honey bees are experiencing excessive losses, which threatens sustainable food security and ecosystem function. An increasing number of studies demonstrate the negative effects of field-realistic exposure to pesticides on pollinator health and fitness, which contribute to pollinator declines. Current pesticide approval processes, although they are superior to past practices, clearly continue to fail to protect pollinator health. In the present article, we provide a conceptual framework to reform cyclical pesticide approval processes and better protect pollinators.

Oral Health of Women and Children: Progress, Challenges, and Priorities.

INTRODUCTION: Tooth decay remains the most prevalent chronic disease in children and adults, even though it is largely preventable. Studies show that mothers' oral and overall health is linked to children's oral health and pregnancy outcomes. This paper examines achievements during the last 20 years, assesses current challenges, and discusses future priorities. ORAL HEALTH STATUS: Data show a modest improvement in children's oral health during the last 20 years; however, tooth decay still affects more than half of adolescents. According to national survey data, about 26% of working-age adults had untreated tooth decay. Overall, significant oral health disparities by race/ethnicity and income persist. DENTAL SERVICE UTILIZATION: The annual dental visit rate for children in the 2015 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey was 48%. Among children enrolled in Medicaid, dental visit rates increased from 18% in 1993 to nearly 50% in 2018. About 46% of women are estimated to receive teeth cleaning during pregnancy. Over the years, race or ethnicity and income-level differences in dental visits observed in the early 2000s have narrowed substantially in children but not among pregnant women. DISCUSSION: Many effective interventions are available at the community and individual levels but are underutilized. Lack of integration of oral health into the overall health care system and programs, community conditions, poverty, and limited health literacy make it difficult for families to engage in healthy habits, use preventive interventions, and access treatment promptly. CONCLUSION: To further improve oral health, policy and system reforms are needed to address the factors mentioned above. Therefore, we urge the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau to take steps to convene a workshop to develop a framework for future actions.

Evolutionary trade-offs between male secondary sexual traits revealed by a phylogeny of the hyperdiverse tribe Eumaeini (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae).

Male butterflies in the hyperdiverse tribe Eumaeini possess an unusually complex and diverse repertoire of secondary sexual characteristics involved in pheromone production and dissemination. Maintaining multiple sexually selected traits is likely to be metabolically costly, potentially resulting in trade-offs in the evolution of male signals. However, a phylogenetic framework to test hypotheses regarding the evolution and maintenance of male sexual traits in Eumaeini has been lacking. Here, we infer a comprehensive, time-calibrated phylogeny from 379 loci for 187 species representing 91% of the 87 described genera. Eumaeini is a monophyletic group that originated in the late Oligocene and underwent rapid radiation in the Neotropics. We examined specimens of 818 of the 1096 described species (75%) and found that secondary sexual traits are present in males of 91% of the surveyed species. Scent pads and scent patches on the wings and brush organs associated with the genitalia were probably present in the common ancestor of Eumaeini and are widespread throughout the tribe. Brush organs and scent pads are negatively correlated across the phylogeny, exhibiting a trade-off in which lineages with brush organs are unlikely to regain scent pads and vice versa. In contrast, scent patches seem to facilitate the evolution of scent pads, although they are readily lost once scent pads have evolved. Our results illustrate the complex interplay between natural and sexual selection in the origin and maintenance of multiple male secondary sexual characteristics and highlight the potential role of sexual selection spurring diversification in this lineage.

Wind drives temporal variation in pollinator visitation in a fragmented tropical forest.

Wind is a critical factor in the ecology of pollinating insects such as bees. However, the role of wind in determining patterns of bee abundance and floral visitation rates across space and time is not well understood. Orchid bees are an important and diverse group of neotropical pollinators that harvest pollen, nectar and resin from plants. In addition, male orchid bees collect volatile scents that they store in special chambers in their hind legs, and for which the wind-based dispersal of odours may play a particularly crucial role. Here, we take advantage of this specialized scent foraging behaviour to study the effects of wind on orchid bee visitation at scent sources in a fragmented tropical forest ecosystem. Consistent with previous work, forest cover increased orchid bee visitation. In addition, we find that temporal changes in wind speed and turbulence increase visitation to scent stations within sites. These results suggest that the increased dispersal of attractive scents provided by wind and turbulence outweighs any biomechanical or energetic costs that might deter bees from foraging in these conditions. Overall, our results highlight the significance of wind in the ecology of these important pollinators in neotropical forests.

Colocation Does Not Equal Integration: Identifying and Measuring Best Practices in Primary Care Integration of Children's Oral Health Services in Health Centers.

OBJECTIVE: Improving oral health of low-income and uninsured young children remains challenging because of reluctance of general dentists to care for very young children or participate in Medicaid, limited involvement of primary care providers in children's oral health, and lack of parental awareness of the importance of early oral health care. These barriers can be addressed in health centers (HCs) that are the premier sources of primary care for low-income and uninsured populations and a significant Medicaid provider. Many HCs provide dental services on-site, but literature indicates that medical and dental services often remain siloed with limited interaction among providers in addressing the oral health needs of young patients including risk assessment, education, and caries prevention. Accordingly, we developed a conceptual framework and measuring tool for medical dental integration and sought to examine utility of this tool in a purposive sample of HCs. METHOD: We developed a conceptual framework for integrated oral health delivery and designed a survey to measure this integration. We surveyed 12 HCs in Los Angeles County participating in a project to improve oral health-care capacity for young children after 2 years of implementation. We included measures of risk assessment, preventive interventions, communication and collaborative practice, and buy-in organized in structure and process domains. Two individuals independently scored the responses, and a third reviewed and finalized. We standardized final scores to range from 0 to 100. RESULTS: Overall integration scores ranged from 31% to 73% (mean = 64%). Process scores were higher than structure scores for nearly all HCs. Processes contributing to higher scores included referrals with warm hand-offs, leadership support for medical-dental integration, and involvement in dental quality improvement projects. Structure factors contributing to higher scores included the presence of medical oral health champions, linked electronic health records, and referral protocols. CONCLUSION: We found that high levels of integration could be achieved despite structure and process limitations and sustainable integration depends on leadership and provider commitment and embedding of best practices in daily operations. Further research can illustrate the reliability of our tool and the impact of integration on access.

Development of a parents' short form survey of their children's oral health.

BACKGROUND: Parents play an important role in their children's oral health behaviors, provide oral health access, initiate prevention, and coping strategies for health care. AIM: This paper develops a short form (SF) to assist parents to evaluate their children's oral health status using Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS) framework that conceptualized health as physical, mental, and social components. DESIGN: Surveys of parents were conducted at dental clinics in Los Angeles County, together with an on-site clinical examination by dentists to determine clinical outcomes, Children's Oral Health Status Index (COHSI), and referral recommendations (RRs). Graded response models in item response theory were used to create the SF. A toolkit including SF, demographic information, and algorithms was developed to predict the COHSI and RRs. RESULTS: The final SF questionnaire consists of eight items. The square root mean squared error for the prediction of COHSI is 7.6. The sensitivity and specificity of using SF to predict immediate treatment needs (binary RRs) are 85% and 31%. CONCLUSIONS: The parent SF is an additional component of the oral health evaluation toolkit that can be used for oral health screening, surveillance program, policy planning, and research of school-aged children and adolescents from guardian perspectives.

Short form development for oral health patient-reported outcome evaluation in children and adolescents.

PURPOSE: Children and adolescents are vulnerable to dental problems and oral diseases. This paper presents the development of two multi-item self-report scales for use in assessing oral health status of children and adolescents. METHODS: Following the Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System framework, survey questions were designed using a newly developed conceptual model. These items were administered to 334 children and adolescents (8-17 years) along with concurrent dental exams. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted and the item response theory graded response model was used to estimate item parameters and oral health status scores and to identify short-form items. The items were selected by high level of information and wide coverage of different domains to assess Child Oral Health Status Index (COHSI) and treatment referral recommendations (RR). RESULTS: The long form consists of 28 items. The short-form includes 12 items (8 for COHSI and 7 for RR with 3 common items).The intra-class correlations between long form and short-form were 0.90 for COHSI and 0.87 for RR. CONCLUSION: The short-forms provide a possible solution for the longstanding challenge of oral health evaluation for large populations of children and adolescents. The calibrated long form provides the foundation for computer adaptive test administration. These oral health assessment toolkits can be used for oral health screening, surveillance program, policy planning, and research.

Wind alters landing dynamics in bumblebees.

Landing is an important but understudied behavior that flying animals must perform constantly. In still air, insects decelerate smoothly prior to landing by employing the relatively simple strategy of maintaining a constant rate of image expansion during their approach. However, it is unclear whether insects employ this strategy when faced with challenging flight environments. Here, we tested the effects of wind on bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) landing on flowers. We find that bees' approach paths to flowers shift from multidirectional in still air to unidirectional in wind, regardless of flower orientation. In addition, bees landing in a 3.5 m s-1 headwind do not decelerate smoothly, but rather maintain a high flight speed until contact, resulting in higher peak decelerations upon impact. These findings suggest that wind has a strong influence on insect landing behavior and performance, with important implications for the design of micro aerial vehicles and the ecomechanics of insect flight.

Patient-Reported oral health outcome measurement for children and adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Oral health is an important component of daily functioning and well-being. A comprehensive patient-reported oral health measure is needed to gauge the impact of oral health status on children and adolescents. This study aims to develop oral health item banks and associated short-form surveys for children and adolescents 2-17 year olds. METHODS: Using children and adolescents, ages 2-17 years, selected from diverse dental sites in Greater Los Angeles Area, we propose to develop state-of-the-science methods to create oral health item banks to effectively measure oral health outcomes for children and adolescents. Methods include a literature review of existing measures, focus groups, cognitive interviews, drafting and field testing of survey items, and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the measures. RESULTS: Based on the systematic literature search and focus groups, we identified core (physical health, mental health, and social function domains) and peripheral (e.g., need and access) oral health domains. We then drafted survey items and revised them based on 66 cognitive interviews (27 children/adolescents and 39 parents) with 39 families. The revised items will be administered in a field test of 500 children and adolescents ages 2-17, and their parents. CONCLUSIONS: The qualitative methods used in the initial phases of the project (focus group and cognitive interviews) are the initial steps in the development of oral health item banks and associated short-form surveys for children and adolescents. The oral health items can potentially be used to create effective computerized adaptive test and/or create ad hoc short forms targeting specific areas of oral health to survey large populations of children with much less cost compared with traditional clinical oral health examination.

Bumblebee flight performance in cluttered environments: effects of obstacle orientation, body size and acceleration.

Locomotion through structurally complex environments is fundamental to the life history of most flying animals, and the costs associated with movement through clutter have important consequences for the ecology and evolution of volant taxa. However, few studies have directly investigated how flying animals navigate through cluttered environments, or examined which aspects of flight performance are most critical for this challenging task. Here, we examined how body size, acceleration and obstacle orientation affect the flight of bumblebees in an artificial, cluttered environment. Non-steady flight performance is often predicted to decrease with body size, as a result of a presumed reduction in acceleration capacity, but few empirical tests of this hypothesis have been performed in flying animals. We found that increased body size is associated with impaired flight performance (specifically transit time) in cluttered environments, but not with decreased peak accelerations. In addition, previous studies have shown that flying insects can produce higher accelerations along the lateral body axis, suggesting that if maneuvering is constrained by acceleration capacity, insects should perform better when maneuvering around objects laterally rather than vertically. Our data show that bumblebees do generate higher accelerations in the lateral direction, but we found no difference in their ability to pass through obstacle courses requiring lateral versus vertical maneuvering. In sum, our results suggest that acceleration capacity is not a primary determinant of flight performance in clutter, as is often assumed. Rather than being driven by the scaling of acceleration, we show that the reduced flight performance of larger bees in cluttered environments is driven by the allometry of both path sinuosity and mean flight speed. Specifically, differences in collision-avoidance behavior underlie much of the variation in flight performance across body size, with larger bees negotiating obstacles more cautiously. Thus, our results show that cluttered environments challenge the flight capacity of insects, but in surprising ways that emphasize the importance of behavioral and ecological context for understanding flight performance in complex environments.

Hummingbird flight stability and control in freestream turbulent winds.

Airflow conditions close to the Earth's surface are often complex, posing challenges to flight stability and control for volant taxa. Relatively little is known about how well flying animals can contend with complex, adverse air flows, or about the flight control mechanisms used by animals to mitigate wind disturbances. Several recent studies have examined flight in the unsteady von Kármán vortex streets that form behind cylinders, generating flow disturbances that are predictable in space and time; these structures are relatively rare in nature, because they occur only the immediate, downstream vicinity of an object. In contrast, freestream turbulence is characterized by rapid, unpredictable flow disturbances across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, and is nearly ubiquitous in natural habitats. Hummingbirds are ideal organisms for studying the influence of freestream turbulence on flight, as they forage in a variety of aerial conditions and are powerful flyers. We filmed ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) maintaining position at a feeder in laminar and strongly turbulent (intensity ∼15%) airflow environments within a wind tunnel and compared their mean kinematics of the head, body, tail and wing, as well as variability in these parameters. Hummingbirds exhibited remarkably stable head position and orientation in both smooth and turbulent flow while maintaining position at the feeder. However, the hummingbird's body was less stable in turbulent flow and appeared to be most sensitive to disturbances along the mediolateral axis, displaying large lateral accelerations, translations and rolling motions during flight. The hummingbirds mitigated these disturbances by increasing mean wing stroke amplitude and stroke plane angle, and by varying these parameters asymmetrically between the wings and from one stroke to the next. They also actively varied the orientation and fan angle of the tail, maintaining a larger mean fan angle when flying in turbulent flow; this may improve their passive stability, but probably incurs an energetic cost as a result of increased drag. Overall, we observed many of the same kinematic changes noted previously for hummingbirds flying in a von Kármán vortex street, but we also observed kinematic changes associated with high force production, similar to those seen during load-lifting or high-speed flight. These findings suggest that flight may be particularly costly in fully mixed, freestream turbulence, which is the flow condition that hummingbirds are likely to encounter most frequently in natural habitats.

Child and adolescent perceptions of oral health over the life course.

PURPOSE: To elicit perceptions of oral health in children and adolescents as an initial step in the development of oral health item banks for the Patient-Reported Oral Health Outcomes Measurement Information System project. METHODS: We conducted focus groups with ethnically, socioeconomically, and geographically diverse youth (8-12, 13-17 years) to identify perceptions of oral health status. We performed content analysis, including a thematic and narrative analysis, to identify important themes. RESULTS: We identified three unique themes that the youth associated with their oral health status: (1) understanding the value of maintaining good oral health over the life course, with respect to longevity and quality of life in the adult years; (2) positive association between maintaining good oral health and interpersonal relationships at school, and dating, for older youth; and (3) knowledge of the benefits of orthodontic treatment to appearance and positive self-image, while holding a strong view as to the discomfort associated with braces. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide valuable information about core domains for the oral health item banks to be developed and generated content for new items to be developed and evaluated with cognitive interviews and in a field test.

Expanding public coverage for dental services: pathway to improvements or hollow promise?

Growth in public sector dental benefits following passage of the are Affordable Care Act extends a national trend of expanding publicly funded benefits program. This paper contrasts the performance of California's Medicaid dental program with progress in other states, outlines major reasons for performance gaps, raises concerns about recent policymakers' decisions and questions whether expanding coverage without addressing long-standing shortcomings represents a step forward or a catalyst deterioration and untoward consequences for millions.

Elevated atmospheric CO2 has small, species-specific effects on pollen chemistry and plant growth across flowering plant species.

Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (eCO2) can affect plant growth and physiology, which can, in turn, impact herbivorous insects, including by altering pollen or plant tissue nutrition. Previous research suggests that eCO2 can reduce pollen nutrition in some species, but it is unknown whether this effect is consistent across flowering plant species. We experimentally quantified the effects of eCO2 across multiple flowering plant species on plant growth in 9 species and pollen chemistry (%N an estimate for protein content and nutrition in 12 species; secondary chemistry in 5 species) in greenhouses. For pollen nutrition, only buckwheat significantly responded to eCO2, with %N increasing in eCO2; CO2 treatment did not affect pollen amino acid composition but altered secondary metabolites in buckwheat and sunflower. Plant growth under eCO2 exhibited two trends across species: plant height was taller in 44% of species and flower number was affected for 63% of species (3 species with fewer and 2 species with more flowers). The remaining growth metrics (leaf number, above-ground biomass, flower size, and flowering initiation) showed divergent, species-specific responses, if any. Our results indicate that future eCO2 is unlikely to uniformly change pollen chemistry or plant growth across flowering species but may have the potential to alter ecological interactions, or have particularly important effects on specialized pollinators.

Development of short forms for screening children's dental caries and urgent treatment needs using item response theory and machine learning methods.

OBJECTIVES: Surveys can assist in screening oral diseases in populations to enhance the early detection of disease and intervention strategies for children in need. This paper aims to develop short forms of child-report and proxy-report survey screening instruments for active dental caries and urgent treatment needs in school-age children. METHODS: This cross-sectional study recruited 497 distinct dyads of children aged 8-17 and their parents between 2015 to 2019 from 14 dental clinics and private practices in Los Angeles County. We evaluated responses to 88 child-reported and 64 proxy-reported oral health questions to select and calibrate short forms using Item Response Theory. Seven classical Machine Learning algorithms were employed to predict children's active caries and urgent treatment needs using the short forms together with family demographic variables. The candidate algorithms include CatBoost, Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Naïve Bayes, Neural Network, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine. Predictive performance was assessed using repeated 5-fold nested cross-validations. RESULTS: We developed and calibrated four ten-item short forms. Naïve Bayes outperformed other algorithms with the highest median of cross-validated area under the ROC curve. The means of best testing sensitivities and specificities using both child-reported and proxy-reported responses were 0.84 and 0.30 for active caries, and 0.81 and 0.31 for urgent treatment needs respectively. Models incorporating both response types showed a slightly higher predictive accuracy than those relying on either child-reported or proxy-reported responses. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of Item Response Theory and Machine Learning algorithms yielded potentially useful screening instruments for both active caries and urgent treatment needs of children. The survey screening approach is relatively cost-effective and convenient when dealing with oral health assessment in large populations. Future studies are needed to further leverage the customize and refine the instruments based on the estimated item characteristics for specific subgroups of the populations to enhance predictive accuracy.

Rolling with the flow: bumblebees flying in unsteady wakes.

Our understanding of how variable wind in natural environments affects flying insects is limited because most studies of insect flight are conducted in either smooth flow or still air conditions. Here, we investigate the effects of structured, unsteady flow (the von Karman vortex street behind a cylinder) on the flight performance of bumblebees (Bombus impatiens). Bumblebees are 'all-weather' foragers and thus frequently experience variable aerial conditions, ranging from fully mixed, turbulent flow to unsteady, structured vortices near objects such as branches and stems. We examined how bumblebee flight performance differs in unsteady versus smooth flow, as well as how the orientation of unsteady flow structures affects their flight performance, by filming bumblebees flying in a wind tunnel under various flow conditions. The three-dimensional flight trajectories and orientations of bumblebees were quantified in each of three flow conditions: (1) smooth flow, (2) the unsteady wake of a vertical cylinder (inducing strong lateral disturbances) and (3) the unsteady wake of a horizontal cylinder (inducing strong vertical disturbances). In both unsteady conditions, bumblebees attenuated the disturbances induced by the wind quite effectively, but still experienced significant translational and rotational fluctuations as compared with flight in smooth flow. Bees appeared to be most sensitive to disturbance along the lateral axis, displaying large lateral accelerations, translations and rolling motions in response to both unsteady flow conditions, regardless of orientation. Bees also displayed the greatest agility around the roll axis, initiating voluntary casting maneuvers and correcting for lateral disturbances mainly through roll in all flow conditions. Both unsteady flow conditions reduced the upstream flight speed of bees, suggesting an increased cost of flight in unsteady flow, with potential implications for foraging patterns and colony energetics in natural, variable wind environments.

Development and implementation of a dental office assessment program.

This paper summarizes steps taken by a large U.S. commercial dental plan to meet measurement challenges through development of a program designed to assess and improve the practices of dentists enrolled in a large preferred provider network. Data collected by trained evaluators who assessed 1,428 dental offices using a structured office assessment instrument were subjected to psychometric analysis by UCLA researchers. Results suggested that the optimal structure for an office assessment instrument consisted of 71 items organized into 10 scales (clusters of measures) reflecting key aspects of dental practice.

Glyphosate impairs bee thermoregulation.

The world's most common herbicide affects social homeostasis in bumble bee colonies.