Individual consistency in spatiotemporal characteristics of migratory Whimbrels in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway

Many migratory birds exhibit interannual consistency in migration schedules,routes and stopover sites.Detecting the interannual consistency in spatiotemporal characteristics helps understand the maintenance of migration and enables the implementation of targeted conservation measures.We tracked the migration of Whimbrel(Numenius phaeopus)in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and collected spatiotemporal data from individuals that were tracked for at least two years.Wilcoxon non-parametric tests were used to compare the interannual variations in the dates of departure from and arrival at breeding/nonbreeding sites,and the inter-annual variation in the longitudes when the same individual across the same latitudes.Whimbrels exhibited a high degree of consistency in the use of breeding,nonbreeding,and stopover sites between years.The variation of arrival dates at nonbreeding sites was significantly larger than that of the departure dates from nonbreeding and breeding sites.Repeatedly used stopover sites by the same individuals in multiple years were concentrated in the Yellow Sea coast during northward migration,but were more widespread during southward migration.The stopover duration at repeatedly used sites was significantly longer than that at sites used only once.When flying across the Yellow Sea,Whimbrels breeding in Sakha(Yakutia)exhibited the highest consistency in migration routes in both autumn and spring.Moreover,the consistency in migration routes of Yakutia breeding birds was generally higher than that of birds breeding in Chukotka.Our results suggest that the northward migration schedule of the Whimbrels is mainly controlled by endogenous factors,while the southward migration schedule is less affected by endogenous factors.The repeated use of stopover sites in the Yellow Sea coast suggests this region is important for the migration of Whimbrel,and thus has high conservation value.

scEpiTools: a database to comprehensively interrogate analytic tools for single-cell epigenomic data

Recent advances in single-cell sequencing technologies provide significant implications for understanding cellular heterogeneity,developmental biology,and disease mechanisms.To fully exploit the potential of these data,numerous tools have been proposed for upstream and downstream analyses.In the the single-cell RNA sequencing(scRNA-seq)community,scRNA-tools(Zappia et al.,2018)was proposed to help researchers navigate the plethora of tools by category.Since its inception,scRNA-tools has been widely used and its updated version further reveals trends in the field with over 1000 collected tools(Zappia and Theis,2021),providing a valuable guidance in selecting tools for analyses.

Present-Day Japan’s Economic Diplomacy Toward Uzbekistan and Its Development

Located in Central Asia connecting Eurasia,Uzbekistan not only occupies an important geographical position,but also has abundant energy resources,which makes it Japan’s important economic and diplomatic target country in Central Asia.Since the unfolding of the new century,Japan’s economic diplomacy with Uzbekistan has gone through several stages of development,from initial contact to gradual maturity,and has been undergoing twists and turns.Since Shinzo Abe came to power for the second time in 2012,Japan’s economic diplomacy with Uzbekistan has deepened significantly,showing more distinct characteristics of changes,including the substantial increase of the amount of aid to the Uzbek government,attaching importance to bilateral economic and trade cooperation,and flexibly utilising the‘Central AsiatJapan’regional cooperation mechanism.The strategic considerations behind these changes and adjustments are to deeply participate in the regional cooperation in Central Asia by building a bilateral economic and trade relationship network,ensure the security of energy and resource supply in the post-pandemic era,realise the strategy of becoming a great power,and balance the forces of foreign powers.