The study, published yesterday in the , sheds light on how worker bees – who are sterile – evolved charismatic and cooperative behaviours such as nursing young bees, collecting food for the colony, defending it against intruders and dancing to communicate the location of profitable flowers to nestmates.

California high desert honey bees pollinating a yellow beavertail cactus flower. Photo: Jesse Eastland, Wikimedia Commons

When 91��ɫ researchers examined the honey bee genome, they discovered that the genes associated with worker behaviour were found in areas of the genome that have the highest rate of recombination. Recombination represents a shuffling of the genetic deck: recombination in the ovaries of a queen shuffles the chromosomes she inherited from her parents. As a result, the queen’s female offspring are likely to inherit mosaic chromosomes with different combinations of mutations, says 91��ɫ biology Professor Amro Zayed, whose lab conducted the research.

Recombination allows natural selection to act on specific mutations without regard to neighbouring mutations.

91��ɫ biology Professor Amro Zayed

“If I’m a good rower in a dragon boat with 49 poor rowers, I am going to lose all of my races.  But if teams were shuffled after every race, I’ll likely have a better chance of winning. I may even get to be in a boat with 49 good rowers just like myself,” says Zayed. “The same thing happens with mutations on a chromosome.  Recombination makes the evolutionary fate of mutations independent of their surrounding neighbours, which enhances the process of natural selection.”.

The team believes that they have solved one of the mysteries of the honey bee’s genome, says postdoctoral research associate Clement Kent, lead author on the study.

“The honey bee has the highest rates of recombination in animals – ten times higher than humans.  Our study shows that this high degree of genetic shuffling has turned on the evolutionary faucet in parts of the bee genome responsible for orchestrating worker behaviour,” says Kent.  “This can allow natural selection to increase the fitness of honey bee colonies, which live or die based on how well their workers ‘behave’.”

The study, “Recombination is associated with the evolution of genome structure and worker behavior in honey bees” was coauthored by Kent, Zayed, and graduate students Shermineh Minaei and Brock Harpur. The research was funded by the and the Province of Ontario.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience higher rates of bullying, which are associated with a higher incidence of mental health issues, according to a study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders this month by 91��ɫ researchers.

“Very little research has been done to assess the relationship between bullying and mental health in youth with ASD. It’s always been suspected there was a link, but this study confirms that,” says 91��ɫ Psychology Professor Jonathan Weiss, lead researcher of the study and co-author of the article, along with Debra Pepler, Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology, and first author M. Catherine Cappadocia, PhD candidate in clinical-developmental psychology.

M. Catherine Cappadocia

“In the study, those youth with ASD who experienced little or no victimization, less than two or three times in the past month, compared to those victimized at least once a week, exhibited less anxiety, self-injury and over-sensitive behaviours,” says Cappadocia. She, Weiss and Pepler, who is scientific co-director of the Promoting Relationships & Eliminating Violence Network (), are all members of 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.

In “”, the researchers surveyed 192 parents whose children, between the ages of five and 21 and enrolled in elementary or secondary school up to Grade 12, had been diagnosed with ASD. The authors examined the parents’ reports of victimization, along with the association between the rate of victimization experienced and mental health issues. Seventy-five per cent reported their child with ASD had been bullied within the last month at school, 23 per cent reported victimization two or three times, 13 per cent reported victimization once a week and 30 per cent two or more time a week. Fifty per cent of the youth with ASD had experienced victimization for more than a year, and that can lead to anxiety, depression, self-injury, hyperactivity, over-sensitivity and a lower self-concept, says Cappadocia.

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Jonathan Weiss

“It’s one of the first studies to look at bullying in youth with ASD. It’s important as it shines a light on youth with ASD and victimization,” says Weiss. “I think it really highlights that chronic victimization is common for some of these youth. A large percentage of the youth in this study experience chronic victimization. Those are the youth that have significantly more mental health concerns.” In addition, he says, one in 110 children has been diagnosed with ASD. “It’s one of the most common identifications in the school system.”

One factor that puts youth with ASD at risk for victimization is when they have more difficulty being assertive and making friends at school. They often lack social and pragmatic skills, and their parents may be less empowered to effect change as a result of the number of major stresses in their lives. “These are a lot of the same factors that are found in the general population of kids that are bullied,” says Weiss. “What really stands out in this study is the association with these risk factors.”

A lack of friends is a significant risk factor for bullying even in the general population and leaves these children unprotected by their peers. That means no one is going to stand up for them when someone starts to bully them. “Eighty-five per cent of the time when bullying happens, peers are watching,” says Cappadocia. “If a peer stands up, 50 per cent of the time the bullying stops. Peer support makes a huge difference and represents a robust protective factor these kids are missing.”

 Debra Pepler

Youth with ASD may also be more vulnerable because they lack the skills needed to react effectively to victimization when it does occur. “When children with ASD are targeted, there can be a more intense behavioural reaction, which may encourage the child who is bullying to continue,” she says. “If a child with ASD has a strong emotional or behavioural reaction, the bullying can become chronic, especially if peers tend to jump in and encourage the child who is bullying. It can keep escalating.”

Weiss, Pepler and Cappadocia all do clinical work in addition to research. In her clinical work, Cappadocia frequently sees youth with ASD who have been bullied. “Part of the interest in pursuing this particular research came from being interested clinically in how to help these children.”

The next step is to find interventions to help these children and their classmates, which would then translate to the general population, says Weiss. He is looking to run groups at 91��ɫ next year for youth with ASD who experience bullying, which will look at all facets of the problem, from peers, the school, their family, as well as the child.

He is also interested in looking at what makes some youth with ASD, who’ve been victimized, resilient. He’ll be examining what the peer, family and school relations are like, and why they may buffer the potential mental health impact of victimization.

Cappadocia received support through the Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child & Youth Mental Health at CHEO Graduate Award and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships Doctoral Award. Weiss was supported by a New Investigator Fellowship from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation, while Pepler was supported by Networks of Centres of Excellence through its support of PREVNet.

For more information, visit the website.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Led by Professor Colin Coates (left), Canada Research Chair in Canadian Cultural Landscapes and professor of Canadian Studies at Glendon College, the project is expected to cast light on the impacts of an earlier period of economic “globalization” as a way of better understanding the challenges of current practices. It is one of eight projects across Canada that has been granted funding in the 2011 Digging into Data Challenge.

Fourteen teams representing Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States have been awarded grants to investigate how computational techniques can be applied to “big data” to change the nature of humanities and social sciences research. Each team represents collaborations among scholars, scientists and librarians from leading universities worldwide.

Coates, who is also the director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at 91��ɫ, is one of the principal investigators on the project titled Trading Consequences, which received $125,000 in funding. The project will examine the economic and environmental consequences of commodity trading during the 19th century and employs information extraction techniques to study large corpora of digitized documents from the 19th century. This innovative digital resource will allow historians to discover novel patterns and to explore new hypotheses through structured query and a variety of visualization tools.

"Our team of environmental historians is excited to be partners with the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews in the Trading Consequences project. Canadian economic development has historically been defined by commodity flows, and it is important to understand the environmental impacts of this commerce in the past, just as it is today. The focus on Canadian data will test the techniques created through this collaborative project for mapping the scope and impact of international trade in the 19th century," said Coates.

“91��ɫ is proud to receive recognition in the 2011 Digging into Data Challenge,” said Robert Haché, 91��ɫ’s vice-president research & innovation. “These important research projects advance knowledge as researchers work collaboratively and internationally to find new ways to analyze, search for and store data using digital and electronic technologies.”

“The Digging into Data Challenge is an international initiative that enables Canadian researchers to take advantage of the huge digital resources now available and to develop close partnerships with overseas universities,” said Chad Gaffield, president of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). “These exciting projects cross both disciplines and national borders; they lead to new insights into human thought and behaviour.”

The successful cohort of projects received a total of nearly $5 million in funding from eight international research funding agencies. SSHRC’s contribution of $869,117 will support Canadian researchers from eight of the fourteen teams.  

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Blow by Blow: The Second Annual Donald Sanderson Memorial Symposium on Sport Concussion is open to the public – athletes, coaches, parents, researchers and anyone interested in the physical and psychological impact head injuries can have on individuals and their families.

91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science will host the two-hour evening event, which will bring sports medicine and brain researchers together with athletes to discuss an injury that continues to impair the careers and health of both amateur and professional athletes − most recently, hockey champion Sidney Crosby.

The symposium is held in honour of Donald Sanderson, the 91��ɫ kinesiology student and promising hockey player who died Jan. 2, 2009 as a result of a head injury during a Whitby Dunlops game. 

�������� Right: Matt Dunigan

"Educating our student athletes about head injuries is critical,” says Cindy Hughes, manager of the Gorman/Shore Sport Injury Clinic in 91��ɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science, who helped organize the symposium. “They need to understand the importance of reporting a possible concussion right away so they can receive the proper care."

, a game analyst with TSN since 1996, played football for 14 years on five Canadian teams and was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2006. He retired from football in 1996 after suffering at least a dozen diagnosed concussions, and continues to struggle with the long-term effects of those concussions. He will speak about the post-concussive symptoms he has experienced since retirement and the effect of concussion on himself and his family, as well as the importance of reporting concussion and taking it seriously. A champion of research on sport concussion, Dunigan announced last spring that upon his death his brain will be donated to Toronto’s Krembil Neuroscience Centre.

Dahna Sanderson, who established the Donald Sanderson Memorial Trust Fund in memory of her son, will also speak during the symposium. A sports mom and fan for 20 years, she coached professional figure skating and is passionate about sports and sports safety. 

is a primary care sport medicine specialist, certified in family and sports medicine in Canada and the US. Currently practising in Burlington, he has been a junior hockey team physician for the past decade in Canada and the US. He is a research chair of the Hockey Neurotrauma and Concussion Initiative Research Committee and is primary investigator of the Hockey Concussion Education Project. 

Lauren Sergio is a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health. A neuroscientist, she studies the effects of age, sex, neurological disease, head injury and experience (élite versus non-élite athletes) on the brain’s control of complex movement. She works with a wide range of adults, from NHL draft prospects to Alzheimer’s disease patients, using behavioural and brain imaging techniques. 

Left: Lauren Sergio

Roy McMurtry, 91��ɫ chancellor and former chair and chief executive officer of the Canadian Football League, will deliver opening remarks. Award-winning CBC sports reporter Teddy Katz will MC the event. 

The symposium takes place in the Price Family Cinema, Accolade East Building, from 7 to 9pm. Admission is free, but registration is required. To register and for more information on speakers, visit the symposium website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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