New PLoS ONE evaluations at Faculty of 1000 Biology

On April 21, Michael Symonds from the University of Nottingham evaluated at the F1000Biology a very recent article published in PLoS ONE (Unique environmental effects on physical activity participation: a twin study. Duncan GE, Goldberg J, Noonan C, Moudon AV, Hurvitz P, Buchwald D PLoS ONE 2008 3(4):e2019). He rated this article with the F1000 factor of 3.00; this value denotes that the article is of interest to community in the corresponding research area and that he recommends it to be referred to.

Here are the evaluator's specific remarks:

"As with all aspects of human health and behaviour, the relative influence of genes versus environment looms large. This novel twin study strongly suggests that environmental, rather than genetic, factors are the main determinants of physical activity participation. One way in which this study differs from others in the field is the threshold level of physical activity, which may explain its apparently surprising results."

Another PLoS ONE article (The Cayman crab fly revisited--phylogeny and biology of Drosophila endobranchia. Stensmyr MC, Stieber R, Hansson BS. PLoS ONE 2008 3(4):e1942) was evaluated by Artyom Kopp of University of California. The faculty has recommended this article to be read by the community members in the corresponding research area and has rated the article with the F1000 factor of 3.00.

This article reports rediscovery of Drosophila endobranchia, a fruit fly that lives in the mouth of land crabs on the Caribbean Island of Grand Cayman and that was last sighted in 1966. The evaluators’ specific comments on the article are here:

“This paper will revive the interest in a very unusual species of Drosophila that feeds on the secretions of land crabs - D. endobranchia from the Grand Cayman Island. Following up on Hampton Carson's work, the authors describe the ecology and behavior of this species and determine its phylogenetic position. Drosophila, while commonly known as "fruit flies", exploit a wide variety of food sources, and crab feeding in particular has evolved at least three times in different Drosophila lineages”.

Separate to this, the article has enjoyed a lot of media attention in the last few days.

Roughly about 5% of PLoSONE articles are evaluated on the Faculty of 1000 at a given time, which coincides to fourth position in terms of number of evaluations, after Science (~17% of the published articles evaluated), Nature (~15% of the published articles evaluated) and PNAS (~15% of the published articles evaluated).

PS: F1000Biology is available to subscribers only. All major research institutions across the world already subscribe to the service. All contents at F1000 are usable through the creative commons attribution license unless otherwise stated.