Palmer, T. M. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2023

Symbiotic acacia ants drive nesting behavior by birds in an African savanna

Mutualisms between plants and ants are common features of tropical ecosystems around the globe and can have cascading effects on interactions with the ecological communities in which they occur. In an African savanna, we assessed whether acacia ants influence nest site selection by tree-nesting birds. Birds selected nest sites in trees inhabited by ant species that vigorously defend against browsing mammals. Future research could address the extent to which hatching and fledging rates depend on the species of ant symbiont, and why ants tolerate nesting birds but not other tree associates (especially insects).

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Software Application Profile: mrrobust - A Tool For Performing Two-Sample Summary Mendelian Randomization Analyses

MotivationIn recent years Mendelian randomization analysis using summary data from genome-wide association studies has become a popular approach for investigating causal relationships in epidemiology. The mrrobust Stata package implements several of the recently developed methods.\n\nImplementationmrrobust is freely available as a Stata package.\n\nGeneral FeaturesThe package includes inverse variance weighted estimation, as well as a range of median and MR-Egger estimation methods. Using mrrobust, plots can be constructed visualising each estimate either individually or simultaneously. The package also provides statistics such as [Formula] which are useful in assessing attenuation bias in causal estimates.\n\nAvailabilityThe software is freely available from GitHub [https://raw.github.com/remlapmot/mrrobust/master/].

epidemiology↗