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Background Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and aortic stenosis can cause obstruction to the flow of blood out of the left ventricular outflow tract into the aorta, with obstructive HCM resulting in dynamic left ventricular outflow tract obstruction and moderate or severe aortic stenosis causing fixed obstruction caused by calcific degeneration. We sought to report the characteristics and longer‐term outcomes of patients with severe obstructive HCM who also had concomitant moderate or severe aortic stenosis requiring surgical myectomy and aortic valve replacement. Methods and Results We studied 191 consecutive patients (age 67±6 years, 52% men) who underwent myectomy and aortic valve (AV) replacement (90% bioprosthesis) at our center between June 2002 and June 2018. Clinical and echo data including left ventricular outflow tract gradient and indexed AV area were recorded. The primary outcome was death. Prevalence of hypertension (63%) and hyperlipidemia (75%) were high, with a Society of Thoracic Surgeons score of 5±4, and 70% of participants had no HCM‐related sudden death risk factors. Basal septal thickness and indexed AV area were 1.9±0.4 cm and 0.72±0.2 cm2/m2, respectively, while 100% of patients had dynamic left ventricular outflow tract gradient >50 mm Hg. At 6.5±4 years, 52 (27%) patients died (1.5% in‐hospital deaths). One‐, 2‐, and 5‐year survival in the current study sample was 94%, 91%, and 83%, respectively, similar to an age‐sex–matched general US population. On multivariate Cox survival analysis, age (hazard ratio [HR], 1.65; 95% CI, 1.24–2.18), chronic kidney disease (HR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.21–2.32), and right ventricular systolic pressure on preoperative echocardiography (HR, 1.28; 95% CI, 1.05–1.57) were associated with longer‐term mortality, but traditional HCM risk factors did not. Conclusions In symptomatic patients with severely obstructive HCM and moderate or severe aortic stenosis undergoing a combined surgical myectomy and AV replacement at our center, the observed postoperative mortality was significantly lower than the expected mortality, and the longer‐term survival was similar to a normal age‐sex–matched US population.

Background We report characteristics and outcomes of elderly patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) with basal septal hypertrophy and dynamic left ventricular outflow tract obstruction. Methods and Results We studied 1110 consecutive elderly patients with HCM (excluding moderate or greater aortic stenosis or subaortic membrane, age 80±5 years [range, 75–92 years], 66% women), evaluated at our center between June 2002 and December 2018. Clinical and echocardiographic data, including maximal left ventricular outflow tract gradient, were recorded. The primary outcome was death and appropriate internal defibrillator discharge. Hypertension was observed in 72%, with a Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) score (8.6±6); while 80% had no HCM‐related sudden cardiac death risk factors. Left ventricular mass index, basal septal thickness, and maximal left ventricular outflow tract gradient were 127±43 g/m2, 1.7±0.4 cm, and 49±31 mm Hg, respectively. A total of 597 (54%) had a left ventricular outflow tract gradient >30 mm Hg, of which 195 (33%) underwent septal reduction therapy (SRT; 79% myectomy and 21% alcohol ablation). At 5.1±4 years, 556 (50%) had composite events (273 [53%] in nonobstructive, 220 [55%] in obstructive without SRT, and 63 [32%] in obstructive subgroup with SRT). One‐ and 5‐year survival, respectively were 93% and 63% in nonobstructive, 90% and 63% in obstructive subgroup without SRT, and 94% and 84% in the obstructive subgroup with SRT. Following SRT, there were 5 (2.5%) in‐hospital deaths (versus an expected Society of Thoracic Surgeons mortality of 9.2%). Conclusions Elderly patients with HCM have a high prevalence of traditional cardiovascular rather than HCM risk factors. Longer‐term outcomes of the obstructive SRT subgroup were similar to a normal age‐sex matched US population.

Background In patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, surgical myectomy (SM) is indicated for severe symptoms. We sought to compare long‐term outcomes of patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy where SM was based on guideline‐recommended Class I indication (Functional Class or FC ≥3 or angina/exertional syncope despite maximal medical therapy) versus earlier (FC 2 and/or impaired exercise capacity on exercise echocardiography with severe obstruction). Methods and Results We studied 2268 consecutive patients (excluding

BackgroundIn obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients with preserved left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction, we sought to determine whether LV global longitudinal strain (LV‐GLS) provided incremental prognostic utility. Methods and ResultsWe studied 1019 patients with documented hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (mean age, 50±12 years; 63% men) evaluated at our center between 2001 and 2011. We excluded age

Background: Care leavers are often disadvantaged in terms of their mental health compared to the general population. The factors influencing care leavers' mental health in the third decade of their lives have so far not been studied systematically., Objective: Based on a resource model, external contextual factors before, during and after out-of-home care are examined with regard to their positive or negative effects on mental health., Participants and Setting: The sample consists of 121 care leavers, born between 1987 and 1997 and aged between 20 and 29 at the time of the paper-and-pencil survey. The participants had been in out-of-home care for at least two years and left care at the age of 16 or later., Methods: Multiple hierarchical regression analysis with pairwise deletion and bootstrapping was used to identify predictors of mental health. The final model explains 27 % of the variance in the dependent variable "mental health" and is significant., Results: Emotional abuse by parents (β = -0.187; p = 0.027) before out-of-home care is negatively associated, but a longer length of stay (β = 0.202; p = 0.023) and support from friends (β = 0.227; p = 0.015) during out-of-home care, as well as an independent economic status (β = 0.326; p < 0.001) and a romantic relationship (β = 0.160; p = 0.044) after the transition show positive correlations with mental health., Conclusions: The results point to the need for support in building social relationships and sufficient psychosocial support during and after out-of-home care., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In popular narratives, the first date with a potential mate often centers on their gaze as embodiment of interest and attraction. However, evidence is still lacking on the role of eye-contact as a potent signal in human social interaction in the context of dating. In addition, behavioral mechanisms of mate selection are not well understood. In the present study, we therefore examined mutual eye-contact and its influence on mate choice by applying dual mobile eye-tracking during naturalistic speed-dates. A total of 30 male and 30 female subjects attended four speed-dates each (N = 240). Subjects were more likely to choose those dating partners with whom they shared more eye-contact with. In addition, perceived attractiveness played an important role for mate choice. Interestingly, receiving but not giving eye-contact also predicted individual mate choice. Eye-contact thus acts as an important signal of romantic attraction when encountering a dating partner., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Objective: Emotional processing is a core feature of social interactions and has been well studied in patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD), albeit with contradictory., Results: . However, these studies excluded patients with atypical parkinsonism, such as multiple system atrophy (MSA). The objective of this exploratory study was to provide better insights into emotion processing in patients with MSA using eye tracking data., Methods: We included 21 MSA patients, 15 PD patients and 19 matched controls in this study. Participants performed a dynamic and a static emotion recognition task, and gaze fixations were analyzed in different areas of interest. Participants underwent neuropsychological testing and assessment of depression and alexithymia., Results: MSA patients were less accurate in recognizing anger than controls (p = 0.02) and had overall fewer fixations than controls (p = 0.001). In the static task, MSA patients had fewer fixations (p < 0.001) and a longer time to first fixation (p = 0.026) on the eye region. Furthermore, MSA patients had a longer fixation duration overall than PD patients (p = 0.004) and longer fixations on the nose than controls (p = 0.005). Alexithymia scores were higher in MSA patients compared to controls (p = 0.038)., Conclusion: This study demonstrated impaired recognition of anger in MSA patients compared to HCs. Fewer and later fixations on the eyes along with a center bias suggest avoidance of eye contact, which may be a characteristic gaze behavior in MSA patients.

The European mink (Mustela lutreola) is one of the most threatened small carnivores, listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Tallinn Zoo started a conservation breeding operation in 1980, which in 1992 was shaped into the European mink EEP Program to maintain a demographically and genetically healthy population in captivity. Since 2000, mink have been translocated on a yearly basis from the breeding facility in the zoo to Hiiumaa Island (Estonia) until the formation of the wild island population in 2016. Maintaining a healthy genetic structure in a captive population was a priority, so genetically the least valuable animals, according to calculations made by a population management program, were used for translocation. This study aims to assess the amount of genetic diversity passed from an ex situ population on to the island population. Comparisons of the genetic diversity were made by mitochondrial, microsatellite and nuclear markers. In addition, our results were combined with the pedigree data from the European mink EEP Studbook to further evaluate the flow of genetic diversity from the founder population to the established wild population. According to the findings, the island population's allelic richness was comparable to that of the founder population, and no evidence was found that its genetic structure had diverged from that of the founder population. It seems that the formation of the island population has been a gradual process of no more than the last seven yearly translocations., (© 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Higher negative affectivity has an association with decreased executive function and cognitive control. Heart rate variability (HRV) serves as an index of cardiac vagal regulation differences in the autonomic nervous system for both cognition and emotion. The current study investigates this association using a classic as well as emotional antisaccade paradigm to study inhibitory control performance. Ninety participants completed affective questionnaires (Beck Depression Inventory-II, and Mood Scale), a 6-minute baseline electrocardiogram, and two different antisaccade tasks. After the baseline, subjects were presented with a video sequence with either neutral, sad, or emotionally arousing content. By subtracting the baseline from the video sequence, we computed HRV reactivity and tested whether the reactivity score could predict inhibitory control performance. We hypothesized that this would be the case in both the sadness and arousal group, but not in the neutral one. Furthermore, we awaited significant performance differences between experimental groups. Contrary to our assumption, inhibitory control performance did not differ between experimental groups. Moreover, there was no significant relation between affective measures and task performance. Nevertheless, cardiovascular reactivity in terms of HRV was predictive of error rates in both antisaccade tasks in the sadness group. We could find this effect neither in the neutral nor in the arousal group. In addition, BDI scores moderated the effect in the emotional task. Results indicate that emotional reactivity to a sad video stimulus as indexed by HRV as well as the interaction with current emotional state predict inhibitory control performance., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

More than half of the world's population is currently living in cities, with more and more people moving to densely populated areas. The experience of growing up and living in crowded environments might influence the way we explore our social environment, mainly how we attend to others. Yet, we know little about how urbanicity affects this vital function of our social life. In two studies, we use mobile eye-tracking to measure participants' social attention, while walking through a shopping mall. Results show that social density of participants' native place impacts how frequently they look at passing strangers. People who experienced more city living from birth to early adolescence, attend more to strangers' faces than their rural counterparts. Our findings demonstrate that the early experience of urban upbringing configures social attention in adulthood. The urbanicity-related bias towards social gazing might reflect a more efficient processing of social information in urban natives., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Eye contact is essential for social cognition, acting as an important tool for social communication. While differences in face scanning patterns concerning familiarity have been thoroughly investigated, the impact of facial similarity on gaze behavior has not been examined yet. We addressed this topic by recording subjects' eye-directed gazing while looking at faces that were individually created systematically varying in terms of similarity to the self-face and familiarity. Subjects' self-faces were morphed into three other faces including a close friend of the same sex. Afterwards, they rated similarity to their self-face of those morphed face stimuli in a separate rating task. Our results show a general preference for the eyes' area as well as differences regarding fixation patterns depending on similarity to the self-face. The lower the similarity to the self-face, the more fixations on the eyes' area. Subjects' ratings followed a linear line, indicating well-pronounced face perception. Nevertheless, other faces were rated faster than the self-face independent of familiarity, while morphed faces got the slowest ratings. Our results mirror the importance of similarity to the self-face as a factor shaping the way we look at the eyes of others explaining variance apart from familiarity., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2020.)

Background: The translation of biomedical research discoveries into clinical practice is marked by extended timelines (averaging 17 years) and multiple sequential process steps. However, even after a drug, device, diagnostic tool or unique therapeutic procedure successfully navigates through clinical testing to approval, real barriers remain in applying and scaling the innovation in practice., Methods: Mayo Clinic initiated the Transform the Practice programme to facilitate multidisciplinary team and convergence science to continuously reinvent solutions to address unmet patient needs and accelerate the application of next-generation healthcare solutions. During a 5-year period, 24 programme teams received financial resources, barrier-removing engagement from clinical and research leadership, and enhanced administrative support, including dedicated project managers., Results: The approach created value in facilitating consistent progress toward project objectives and resulted in multiple publications, new extramural funding sources, and implementation of new tests and services into the clinical practice. This report describes the concentrated institutional effort to accelerate the discovery-translation-application continuum in an academic medical centre and highlights successful applications and persistent obstacles., Conclusions: The Transform the Practice approach is effective in moving high-potential research discoveries closer to implementation in the clinical practice. Its concepts, including the application of structured project management methodology, may be quickly integrated to shorten an organisation's time to implementing its most important discoveries.

Biased cognition during high arousal states is a relevant phenomenon in a variety of topics: from the development of post-traumatic stress disorders or stress-triggered addictive behaviors to forensic considerations regarding crimes of passion. Recent evidence indicates that arousal modulates the engagement of a hippocampus-based "cognitive" system in favor of a striatum-based "habit" system in learning and memory, promoting a switch from flexible, contextualized to more rigid, reflexive responses. Existing findings appear inconsistent, therefore it is unclear whether and which type of context processing is disrupted by enhanced arousal. In this behavioral study, we investigated such arousal-triggered cognitive-state shifts in human subjects. We validated an arousal induction procedure (three experimental conditions: violent scene, erotic scene, neutral control scene) using pupillometry (Preliminary Experiment, n = 13) and randomly administered this method to healthy young adults to examine whether high arousal states affect performance in two core domains of contextual processing, the acquisition of spatial (spatial discrimination paradigm; Experiment 1, n = 66) and sequence information (learned irrelevance paradigm; Experiment 2, n = 84). In both paradigms, spatial location and sequences were encoded incidentally and both displacements when retrieving spatial position as well as the predictability of the target by a cue in sequence learning changed stepwise. Results showed that both implicit spatial and sequence learning were disrupted during high arousal states, regardless of valence. Compared to the control group, participants in the arousal conditions showed impaired discrimination of spatial positions and abolished learning of associative sequences. Furthermore, Bayesian analyses revealed evidence against the null models. In line with recent models of stress effects on cognition, both experiments provide evidence for decreased engagement of flexible, cognitive systems supporting encoding of context information in active cognition during acute arousal, promoting reduced sensitivity for contextual details. We argue that arousal fosters cognitive adaptation towards less demanding, more present-oriented information processing, which prioritizes a current behavioral response set at the cost of contextual cues. This transient state of behavioral perseverance might reduce reliance on context information in unpredictable environments and thus represent an adaptive response in certain situations.

The "Innsbruck Goggle Experiments" on long-term wearing of reversing mirrors, prismatic and half prismatic goggles, and colored half goggles represent a milestone in research on adaptation (adapting to the introduced "disturbance") and after-effects (after removal of the "disturbance"). By means of these goggles it is, for example, possible to invert or distort the visual field (such as flipping top and bottom or left and right), as well as to observe how individuals learn to change the image back to vertical or recognize left and right. The Innsbruck Experiments gave decisive momentum to further international research on the ontogenetic development of perception, special perception, color perception, perceptual constancy, sensorimotor coordination, as well as to the development of theories. In the current paper, aside from presenting the history and results of selected studies, we will give an introduction to the life and work of the protagonists of these studies in Innsbruck, namely Theodor Erismann (1883-1961) and Ivo Kohler (1915-1985). Furthermore, we will propose ideas for future research on cognition and neuroscience., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Founding captive populations is often the last chance for saving endangered species from extinction. Ensuring successful reproduction is typically most critical for the maintenance of captive populations, with purposeful selection of individuals for breeding being one of the crucial aspects. Comparable cross-species data on the determinants of reproduction success are most useful for solving problems in captive species programs. In the present study, we provide an overview of a 20-year captive breeding program of the critically endangered European mink. The mating season starts in March, reaching its peak in the middle of April. The average gestation length was 43.8days (mode 43), the mean litter size being 4.4 (mode 4). Litter size and cub survival were negatively correlated with maternal age but this effect was entirely due to the lower performance of the females over 4 years of age. Female body weight also showed a positive correlation with litter size, with the weight itself having increased by 10% during the 20- year period. We did not find any signs of a cost of reproduction: the number of litters the female had delivered earlier in her life did not have an effect on her litter size in the focal year. Beyond the effect of age and size, individual females did not differ in litter sizes. Consistently, we found the heritability of litter size to be low. We conclude that, when selecting females for breeding, there is little need to consider aspects other than genetic relatedness crucial for avoiding progressive inbreeding., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Personality exists in non-human animals and can impact fitness. There is, however, a shortage of empirical studies in certain areas within the field, and fundamental evolutionary theory on personality remains largely untested. For example, little is known on how variation in personality is maintained over evolutionary time. Theory suggests that fluctuating selection pressures due to spatiotemporal variation in conditions, e.g. food availability, is a possible mechanism and a few studies have shown that the success of different personality types varies with spatiotemporal conditions. However, it remains unknown whether different mechanisms can maintain personality within a species. Here we use a reintroduction programme for the critically endangered European mink (Mustela lutreola) to test whether multiple personality trait domains (boldness, exploration and sociability) affected survival in two different years and islands. This was done through pre-release personality tests and post-release radio-tracking monitoring. Survival was positively correlated with boldness, whereas the relationship with exploration was either negative or positive depending on year/island. The results show a complex relationship between personality and survival and suggest that exploration can be maintained over evolutionary time via spatiotemporal variation in conditions. However, in contrast to exploration, boldness did not vary spatiotemporally and sociability had no impact on survival. This indicates that different personality trait domains might be maintained by different mechanisms. To date, personality has been studied primarily within behavioural sciences, but through empirical findings we highlight the importance of personality also in ecology and conservation biology.

The present randomized pilot intervention study examines the effects of a mindfulness-based self-leadership training (MBSLT) specifically developed for academic achievement situations. Both mindfulness and self-leadership have a strong self-regulatory focus and are helpful in terms of stress resilience and performance enhancements. Based on several theoretical points of contact and a specific interplay between mindfulness and self-leadership, the authors developed an innovative intervention program that improves mood as well as performance in a real academic setting. The intervention was conducted as a randomized controlled study over 10 weeks. The purpose was to analyze the effects on perceived stress, test anxiety, academic self-efficacy, and the performance of students by comparing an intervention and control group ( n  = 109). Findings demonstrated significant effects on mindfulness, self-leadership, academic self-efficacy, and academic performance improvements in the intervention group. Results showed that the intervention group reached significantly better grade point averages than the control group. Moreover, the MBSLT over time led to a reduction of test anxiety in the intervention group compared to the control group. Furthermore, while participants of the control group showed an increase in stress over time, participants of the intervention group maintained constant stress levels over time. The combination of mindfulness and self-leadership addressed both positive effects on moods and on objective academic performance. The effects demonstrate the great potential of combining mindfulness with self-leadership to develop a healthy self-regulatory way of attaining achievement-related goals and succeeding in high-stress academic environments.

Hunger is an everyday motivational state, which biases cognition to detect food. Although evidence exists on how hunger affects basic attentional and mnemonic processes, less is known about how motivational drive for food modulates higher cognition. We aimed to investigate the effects of food deprivation on proactive interference resolution, in the presence and absence of food. Normal-weight participants performed a recency probes paradigm providing an experimental block with food and object stimuli as well as a control block with object stimuli only, in a fasted and a sated state. Results showed that the interaction of shifts in nutritional state with the perception of food cues evoked an altered resolution of proactive interference. Satiety led to impaired performance, whereas a hungry state resulted in strengthened resistance to proactive interference and lying in between, the control block presenting neutral objects remained unaffected by nutritional state manipulation. Additionally, a further increase in proactive interference resolution occurred when the conflicting probe depicted food compared to non-food objects. We conclude that when exposed to food, hunger initiates biased competition of active memory representations in favor of prioritized source information at cost of familiar, but irrelevant information. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of an arousal-biased competition in working memory., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This study examined the reproductive physiology of female European mink (Mustela lutreola) to augment the available information on estrus, ovulation, and pregnancy with the long-term goal of supporting ex situ breeding management of this highly endangered species. Fecal reproductive hormone metabolites were measured using EIAs for estrogen and 20-oxo-pregnane metabolites. Seasonal hormone profiles were established. A comparison of hormone fluctuations in pregnant and nonpregnant females showed that both estrogen and 20-oxo-pregnane metabolites were significantly elevated during gestation, which is 42 days in length. Delayed implantation or embryonic diapause does not occur in this species. Litter size was correlated with 20-oxo-pregnane levels but not with estrogen concentrations. During lactation, 20-oxo-pregnane metabolite levels remained higher than in nonpregnant females. The breeding season was characterized by peaks in vaginal cornified cells and fecal estrogen metabolite levels. Up to four peaks in estrogen levels were identified and confirmed that European mink are seasonally polyestrous. The results of 20-oxo-pregnane measurements indicated that hCG can be applied to induce ovulation. With the establishment of this noninvasive method, we present a new tool to support population management of this species., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Previous findings suggest that visual working memory (VWM) preferentially remembers angry looking faces. However, the meaning of facial actions is construed in relation to context. To date, there are no studies investigating the role of perceiver-based context when processing emotional cues in VWM. To explore the influence of affective context on VWM for faces, we conducted two experiments using both a VWM task for emotionally expressive faces and a mood induction procedure. Affective context was manipulated by unpleasant (Experiment 1) and pleasant (Experiment 2) IAPS pictures in order to induce an affect high in motivational intensity (defensive or appetitive, respectively) compared to a low arousal control condition. Results indicated specifically increased sensitivity of VWM for angry looking faces in the neutral condition. Enhanced VWM for angry faces was prevented by inducing affects of high motivational intensity. In both experiments, affective states led to a switch from specific enhancement of angry expressions in VWM to an equally sensitive representation of all emotional expressions. Our findings demonstrate that emotional expressions are of different behavioral relevance for the receiver depending on the affective context, supporting a functional organization of VWM along with flexible resource allocation. In VWM, stimulus processing adjusts to situational requirements and transitions from a specifically prioritizing default mode in predictable environments to a sensitive, hypervigilant mode in exposure to emotional events.

Working memory (WM) maintains information in a state that it is available for processing. A host of various concepts exist which define this core function at different levels of abstraction. The present article intended to bring together existing cognitive and neural explanatory approaches about the architecture and neural mechanisms of information maintenance in WM. For this, we highlight how existing WM concepts define information retention and present different methodological approaches which led to the assumption that information can exist in various components and states. This view is broadened by neural concepts focussing on various forms of phase synchronization and molecular biological mechanisms relevant for retaining information in an active state. An integrated presentation of different concepts and methodological approaches can deepen our understanding of this central WM function.

Aleutian mink disease virus (AMDV) causes a severe disease called Aleutian disease (AD). AMDV infects primarily mustelids, but also other mammal species. Recent evidence suggests that AMDV may also affect humans. To examine AMDV in different wild animals and in farmed mink in Estonia, we collected 203 blood samples from eight mammal species in 2007-2010, of which 152 were from species living in the wild (American mink, European mink, pine marten, polecat, raccoon dog, badger, otter, and stone marten) and 51 were from farmed mink. AMDV was tested by PCR amplification of NS1 and VP2 gene fragments, and was only detected in 4 free-ranging (14.8%) and 11 farmed (21.6%) American mink. No other species was positive for AMDV. In addition, the VP2 gene fragment was sequenced for 14 farmed mink isolates from Finland for which NS1 sequences were already publicly available. None of the four Estonian AMDV isolates found in free-ranging mink had identical sequences with farmed mink. In fact, isolates from free-ranging and farmed mink belonged to different clades, suggesting that the analyzed virus isolates circulating in nature are not from escapees of current farms. Two global phylogenies were built: one based on NS1 (336 bp, 151 taxa from nine countries); the other based on a combined NS1-VP2 dataset (871 bp, 40 taxa from six countries). AMDV genotypes did not cluster according to their geographic origin, suggesting that transport of farm mink from multiple source farms has been intense. Nevertheless, one subclade in both phylogenies was comprised solely of isolates from farmed mink, while several subclades comprised isolates only from free-ranging mink, indicating that some isolates may circulate more in the wild and others among farm animals., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Non-human animal personality is defined as consistent behavioural differences across time and situations/contexts. Behaviours are, however, often plastic and to explain how plasticity and personality may coexist an adaptive framework has been developed. Still, there is little information on how personality is impacted by situations and contexts on an individual level. We investigated this in the European mink (Mustela lutreola) by performing a set of five experiments in two situations consisting of non-breeding and breeding season, and by using different test contexts. Three personality trait domains were identified; boldness, exploration and sociability. The levels of boldness and exploration changed between seasons but remained repeatable, which implies behavioural reaction norms and supports that the concept of personality remained applicable despite plasticity. Whilst males became bolder and more explorative in the breeding season females became shyer, which reflects European mink breeding behaviour. Furthermore, behaviours performed in mirror stimulus tests fell into different domains depending on whether, the test was conducted in the own territory or not, suggesting plasticity in the response towards conspecifics. To conclude, our results highlight the importance of situation and context for the expression of personality, and the significance of measuring multiple personality trait domains with several methods., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

High among-individual variation in mating success often causes problems in conservation breeding programs. This is also the case for critically endangered European mink and may jeopardize the long-term maintenance of the species' genetic diversity under the European mink EEP Program. In this study, breeding success of wild and captive born European minks at Tallinn Zoological Garden are compared, and the mating behavior of the males is analyzed. Results show that wild born males successfully mate significantly more often than captive born males (89% and 35%, respectively). On the basis of an extensive record of mating attempts, both male aggressiveness and passivity are identified as primary causes of the observed mating failures. All other potential determinants have only a minor role. Mating success as well as a male's aggressiveness and passivity are shown to depend more strongly on the male than the female partner. We did not find any evidence that the behavior of an individual is dependent on the identity of its partner. We suggest that aggressiveness and passivity are two expressions of abnormal behavior brought about by growing up in captivity: the same individuals are likely to display both aggressive and passive behavior. The results point to the need to study and modify maintenance conditions and management procedures of mink to reduce the negative impact of the captive environment on the long-term goals of the program., (© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Human-mediated global change will probably increase the rates of natural hybridization and genetic introgression between closely related species, and this will have major implications for conservation of the taxa involved. In this study, we analyse both mitochondrial and nuclear data to characterize ongoing hybridization and genetic introgression between two sympatric sister species of mustelids, the endangered European mink (Mustela lutreola) and the more abundant polecat (M. putorius). A total of 317 European mink, 114 polecats and 15 putative hybrid individuals were collected from different localities in Europe and genotyped with 13 microsatellite nuclear markers. Recently developed Bayesian methods for assigning individuals to populations and identifying admixture proportions were applied to the genetic data. To identify the direction of hybridization, we additionally sequenced mtDNA and Y chromosomes from 78 individuals and 29 males respectively. We found that both hybridization and genetic introgression occurred at low levels (3% and 0.9% respectively) and indicated that hybridization is asymmetric, as only pure polecat males mate with pure European mink females. Furthermore, backcrossing and genetic introgression was detected only from female first-generation (F1) hybrids of European mink to polecats. This latter result implies that Haldane's rule may apply. Our results suggest that hybridization and genetic introgression between the two species should be considered a rather uncommon event. However, the current low densities of European mink might be changing this trend., (© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)