Aguilar, L. A. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2025

AI, citizen science, and the 2024 eclipse emphasize the importance of light for bird behavior

On April 8th 2024, a total solar eclipse disrupted light-dark cycles for North American birds during the lead-up to spring reproduction. Compiling over 10,000 community observations and AI analyses of nearly 100,000 vocalizations, we found that bird behavior was significantly affected by these few minutes of unexpected afternoon darkness. More than half of wild bird species changed their biological rhythms, with many producing a dawn chorus in the aftermath of the eclipse. This natural experiment demonstrates the power of technology-enabled and public science projects to understand our natural world. Further, it underscores the power of light in structuring animal behavior: even when night lasts for just four minutes, robust behavioral changes ensue.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

VCF/Plotein: A web application to facilitate the clinical interpretation of genetic and genomic variants from exome sequencing projects

PurposeTo create a user-friendly web application that allows researchers, medical professionals and patients to easily and securely view, filter and interact with human exome sequencing data in the Variant Call Format (VCF).\n\nMethodsWe have created VCF/Plotein, a web application written entirely in JavaScript using the Vue.js framework, available at http://vcfplotein.liigh.unam.mx. After a VCF is loaded, gene and variant information is extracted from Ensembl, and cross-referencing with external databases is performed via the Elasticsearch search engine. Support for application-based gene and variant filtering has also been implemented. Interactive graphs are created using the D3.js library. All data processing is done locally in the users CPU to ensure the security of patient data.\n\nResultsVCF/Plotein allows users to interactively view and filter VCF files without needing any bioinformatics knowledge. A number of features make it especially suited for the medical community, such as its speed, security, the ability to filter by disease or gene function, and the ease with which information may be shared with collaborators/co-workers.\n\nConclusionVCF/Plotein is a novel web application that allows users to easily and interactively filter and display exome sequencing information, and that is especially suited for bench researchers, medical professionals and patients.

bioinformatics↗