Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

What a highly monitored chikungunya epidemic reveals about preparedness for Europe and beyond

The 2024–25 chikungunya epidemic in Reunion Island illustrates the challenge of translating early warning into timely public-health action during fast-moving arboviral outbreaks. Despite advanced surveillance, the epidemic accelerated rapidly and placed substantial pressure on pr...

Wings act as a solar shield against solar radiation in the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria

Morphological traits in insects have frequently evolved multifunctional roles, including contributions to thermoregulation. Wings typically function in flight, but may also provide protection against intense solar radiation. In the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria , males are...

Questioning the G2 phase in the budding yeast cell cycle with a qualitative and possibilistic model

Abstract The budding yeast S. cerevisiae , a foundational model for cell cycle studies, exhibits a complex phase organisation (G1, S, G2/M) governed by checkpoints ensuring faithful cellular inheritance. However, the existence of a distinct G2 phase in yeast remains debated, with...

Airflows redefine the cost of aerial transport in the wild

Fuel economy matters to both animals and machines, as the cost of transport can determine where, when, and how far locomotion is possible. However, established estimates of these values for animal flight come from laboratories and treat the atmosphere as constant, even though fre...

Micromechanical Insights Into the Cyclic Behavior of Fault‐Valve Systems

Abstract Cyclic fluid pressurization can promote repeated fault reactivation and transient permeability changes, a behavior often discussed within the fault‐valve concept in which faults alternate between acting as hydraulic barriers and conduits. To investigate the micromechanic...

Magnetohydrodynamic drag on an oscillating sphere in a rotating spherical cavity

Oscillating-sphere drag is a classical fluid-mechanics problem, yet no theory simultaneously accounts for confinement, rotation, viscosity and magnetic fields. We consider a conducting sphere undergoing translational oscillations inside a rotating spherical cavity, modelling conf...

Evaluating the roles of testosterone and sex-linked genes in territorial aggression of sex-reversed XY females in the African pygmy mouse

Sex differences in social aggression are widespread across the animal kingdom, with males typic-ally displaying greater territoriality. While this dimorphism has traditionally been attributed to sex hormones, sex chromosomes can also contribute to it independently of hormonal inf...

Change in the demographic dynamics of a spatially structured population of a colonial waterbird after a perturbation affecting a large colony

Localized perturbations may affect spatially structured populations (SSPs) as a whole by altering dispersal between patches. Yet, such large-scale consequences remain poorly understood and may depend on the proportion of the SSP affected by the perturbation. Here, we used correla...

Global Incidence of All-Cause Dementia

Importance Global dementia incidence estimates are limited by underrepresentation of low- and middle-income countries and heterogeneous analytic methods. Due to these limitations, true understanding of the global dementia landscape remains incomplete. Objective To identify dement...

Asymmetric bloom lengthening drives high-latitude ocean chlorophyll accumulation imbalance

Terrestrial ecosystems maintain a stable time-allocation budget between growth and senescence, but whether this applies to the ocean remains unclear. Using fused satellite LiDAR and ocean-color data (2007–2022), we show that marine phenology is variable and asymmetric. In high la...

Replicability of agent-based simulations: a case study with a SEIRS epidemiological model

Reproducibility is not only a cornerstone of the advancement of science, but also of scientific credibility. However, it remains a persistent challenge across many disciplines, and it is now referred to as the “reproducibility crisis.” This issue is particularly relevant in compu...

Ground-motion dataset for shallow earthquakes in Colombia

Abstract. The tectonics of Colombia is characterised by the interaction of multiple oceanic plates subducting beneath the continent, generating active transpressional deformation and a wide range of subduction-related and crustal earthquakes. We present a flatfile containing grou...

A multiregional serosurvey of RNA virus-reactive antibodies in bats and rodents reveals the enzootic presence of flavi- and paramyxoviruses in African Pteropodidae

Bats and rodents have been identified as reservoir hosts of diverse RNA viruses that pose potential risks to humans. However, overall virus prevalence in wildlife and underlying factors determining the zoonotic potential of reservoir-borne viruses remain poorly characterized. Vir...

The geometry of gametic dispersal in a flying mammal, Rhinolophus hipposideros

Abstract Dispersal influences population and evolutionary dynamics, in a manner that depends on by which dispersal strategies gene flow occurs. In some species, mating partners move exclusively for mating, dispersing genes but not individuals. This is the case in many bat species...

Experimental impact study on a micro-grid project in rural Madagascar: The Café Lumière project

This paper evaluates the impact of a pilot innovative project aiming at promoting a replicable model to create access to distributed electricity in rural areas where grid extension is economically infeasible. The project proposes building solar-powered micro-grids to provide affo...

Challenges in reconstructing seasonally driven landslide motion from optical satellite data: insights from the Del Medio catchment, NW Argentina

Optical satellite images are a valuable resource for studying slow-moving landslides from space. However, monitoring displacement through pairwise image correlation and time-series inversion presents several challenges, including the impact of seasonality on measurement accuracy....

Long-term preservation of early-formed silicate reservoirs in the deep mantle: New insight from 146Sm-142Nd systematics in Hawaiian basalts

Short-lived radiogenic isotope systems provide unique constraints on the preservation of early-formed reservoirs in Earth's mantle. We present the largest high-precision μ 142 Nd dataset for a single hotspot, comprising 55 analyses of 29 shield-stage tholeiitic basalts from the H...

Bony labyrinth taxonomic identification and long-term evolution of livestock in the Southwest and Central Asia

Abstract Southwest and Central Asia were pivotal regions for the domestication and dispersal of domestic herbivores. Here we investigate long-term variation in bony labyrinth morphology of domestic bovids (sheep, goats and cattle) across the last 10 000 years. We focused on the o...

Steric‐Setup Effects on US East Coast Sea‐Level Change

Abstract The extent to which coastal sea levels co‐vary with open‐ocean variability is explored through evaluation of a balanced dynamics framework relating sea level with pressure, density, and velocity along the continental shelf and slope seafloor. Using high‐resolution region...

Marine arsenate evolution during Proterozoic oxygenation events and implications for biological phosphate metabolism

Abstract Earth’s atmosphere and oceans experienced two major episodes of ocean-atmosphere oxygenation that transformed the planet and shaped the evolution of the oxygen-rich biosphere between 2.45 and 0.541 billion years ago (Ga). These changes increased the abundance of oxidized...