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The impact of preserved museum specimens is transforming and increasing by three-dimensional (3D) imaging that creates high-fidelity online digital specimens. Through examples from the openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network, we describe how we created a digitization community dedicated to the shared vision of making 3D data of specimens available and the impact of these data on a broad audience of scientists, students, teachers, artists, and more. High-fidelity digital 3D models allow people from multiple communities to simultaneously access and use scientific specimens. Based on our multiyear, multi-institution project, we identify significant technological and social hurdles that remain for fully realizing the potential impact of digital 3D specimens.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down undergraduate research programs across the United States. A group of 23 colleges, universities, and research institutes hosted remote undergraduate research programs in the life sciences during Summer 2020. Given the unprecedented offering of remote programs, we carried out a study to describe and evaluate them. Using structured templates, we documented how programs were designed and implemented, including who participated. Through focus groups and surveys, we identified programmatic strengths and shortcomings as well as recommendations for improvements from students' perspectives. Strengths included the quality of mentorship, opportunities for learning and professional development, and a feeling of connection with a larger community. Weaknesses included limited cohort building, challenges with insufficient structure, and issues with technology. Although all programs had one or more activities related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, these topics were largely absent from student reports even though programs coincided with a peak in national consciousness about racial inequities and structural racism. Our results provide evidence for designing remote Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) that are experienced favorably by students. Our results also indicate that remote REUs are sufficiently positive to further investigate their affordances and constraints, including the potential to scale up offerings, with minimal concern about disenfranchising students.

The efficient generation, accurate detection, and detailed physical tracking of energetic electrons are of applied interest for high harmonics generation, electron-impact spectroscopy, and femtosecond time-resolved scanning tunneling microscopy. We here investigate the generation of photoelectrons (PEs) by exposing plasmonic nanostructures to intense laser pulses in the infrared (IR) spectral regime and analyze the sensitivity of PE spectra to competing elementary interactions for direct and rescattered photoemission pathways. Specifically, we measured and numerically simulated emitted PE momentum distributions from prototypical spherical gold nanoparticles (NPs) with diameters between 5 and 70 nm generated by short laser pulses with peak intensities of 8.0 × 1012 and 1.2 × 1013 W/cm2, demonstrating the shaping of PE spectra by the Coulomb repulsion between PEs, accumulating residual charges on the NP, and induced plasmonic electric fields. Compared to well-understood rescattering PE cutoff energies for strong-field photoemission from gaseous atomic targets (10× the ponderomotive energy), our measured and simulated PE spectra reveal a dramatic cutoff-energy increase of two orders of magnitude with a significantly higher contribution from direct photoemission. Our findings indicate that direct PEs reach up to 93 % of the rescattered electron cutoff energy, in contrast to 20 % for gaseous atoms, suggesting a novel scheme for the development of compact tunable tabletop electron sources.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down undergraduate research programs across the United States. A group of 23 colleges, universities, and research institutes hosted remote undergraduate research programs in the life sciences during Summer 2020. Given the unprecedented offering of remote programs, we carried out a study to describe and evaluate them. Using structured templates, we documented how programs were designed and implemented, including who participated. Through focus groups and surveys, we identified programmatic strengths and shortcomings as well as recommendations for improvements from students' perspectives. Strengths included the quality of mentorship, opportunities for learning and professional development, and a feeling of connection with a larger community. Weaknesses included limited cohort building, challenges with insufficient structure, and issues with technology. Although all programs had one or more activities related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, these topics were largely absent from student reports even though programs coincided with a peak in national consciousness about racial inequities and structural racism. Our results provide evidence for designing remote Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) that are experienced favorably by students. Our results also indicate that remote REUs are sufficiently positive to further investigate their affordances and constraints, including the potential to scale up offerings, with minimal concern about disenfranchising students.

Teeth are a model system for integrating developmental genomics, functional morphology, and evolution. We are at the cusp of being able to address many open issues in comparative tooth biology and we outline several of these newly tractable and exciting research directions. Like never before, technological advances and methodological approaches are allowing us to investigate the developmental machinery of vertebrates and discover both conserved and excitingly novel mechanisms of diversification. Additionally, studies of the great diversity of soft tissues, replacement teeth, and non-trophic functions of teeth are providing new insights into dental diversity. Finally, we highlight several emerging model groups of organisms that are at the forefront of increasing our appreciation of the mechanisms underlying tooth diversification.

Invasions of freshwater habitats by marine fishes provide exceptional cases of habitat-driven biological diversification. Freshwater habitats make up less than 1% of aquatic habitats but contain ∼50% of fish species. However, while the dominant group of freshwater fishes (Otophysi) is older than that of most marine fishes (Percomorphaceae), it is less morphologically diverse. Classically, scientists have invoked differences in the tempo and/or mode of evolution to explain such cases of unequal morphological diversification. We tested for evidence of these phenomena in the superfamily Cottoidea (sculpins), which contains substantial radiations of marine and freshwater fishes. We find that the morphology of freshwater sculpins evolves faster but under higher constraint than that of marine sculpins, causing widespread convergence in freshwater sculpins and more morphological disparity in marine sculpins. The endemic freshwater sculpins of Lake Baikal, Siberia, are exceptions that demonstrate elevated novelty akin to that of marine sculpins. Several tantalizing factors may explain these findings, such as differences in habitat stability and/or habitat connectivity between marine and freshwater systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphometrics of fish otoliths have been commonly used to investigate population structures and the environmental impacts on ontogeny. These studies can require hundreds if not thousands of otoliths to be collected and processed. Processing these otoliths takes up valuable time, money, and resources that can be saved by automation. These structures also contain relevant information in three dimensions that is lost with 2D morphometric methods from photographic analysis. In this study, the otoliths of three populations of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) were examined with manual 2D, automated 2D, and automated 3D otolith measurement methods. The automated 3D method was able to detect an 8% difference in average otolith density, while 2D methods could not. Due to the loss of information in the z axis, and the longer processing time, 2D methods can take up to 100 times longer to reach the same statistical power as automated 3D methods. Automated 3D methods are faster, can answer a wider range of questions, and allow fisheries scientists to automate rather monotonous tasks. La morphometrie des otolites de poissons a souvent ete utilisee pour etudier les structures de populations et les impacts de l'environnement sur l'ontogenese. Ces etudes peuvent necessiter le prelevement et le traitement de centaines, voire de milliers d'otolites. Le traitement de ces otolites prend du temps, de l'argent et des ressources precieuses que l'automatisation peut permettre d'epargner. Ces structures contiennent egalement de l'information tridimensionnelle interessante que l'utilisation de methodes morphometriques basees sur l'analyse de photographies evacue. Dans la presente etude, les otolites de trois populations de saumons cohos (Oncorhynchus kisutch) ont ete examines par des methodes de mesure des otolites en 2D manuelle, en 2D automatisee et en 3D automatisee. Cette derniere methode a pu detecter une difference de 8 % de la densite moyenne des otolites, ce que les methodes 2D n'ont pu faire. En raison de la perte d'information le long de l'axe z et du temps de traitement plus long, les methodes 2D peuvent prendre jusqu'a 100 fois plus longtemps pour atteindre la meme efficacite statistique que des methodes 3D automatisees. Ces dernieres sont plus rapides, permettent de repondre a un plus grand eventail de questions et permettent aux specialistes des sciences halieutiques d'automatiser des taches plutot monotones. [Traduit par la Redaction], Introduction Morphometrics is the study of the variation of size and shape. While biologists have used morphometrics for centuries, the use of quantitative morphometrics of structures within organisms is more [...]

Armour has been present in vertebrates for millions of years and has evolved independently several times in the ray finned fishes. While armour is typically considered defensive, it is a multifunctional trait with many plausible alternative functions. We explore the hydrodynamic function of armour in nine species of poachers (Agonidae) by visualizing flow to assess drag reduction. We used microcomputed tomography scans to categorize armour morphology into morphotypes, and compared the rugosity (surface roughness) across these morphotypes. We then used digital particle image velocimetry to visualize boundary layer separation along 3D-printed whole-body models made using the scans. Poacher armour comprises eight rows that, some distance behind the second dorsal fin, merge into six. We found four morphotypes, with higher rugosity observed for the prominent spine morphotype and the lowest rugosity in the no-spine morphotype. Principal component analysis revealed that much of the variation in armour morphology is driven by plate shape, spine size, and protrusion. The boundary layer was retained longer in species with larger spines. Overall, the presence of a spine increased boundary layer retention, decreasing the drag, which is advantageous for these benthic fish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]