Search results for "PRI"
showing 10 items of 17196 documents
No Evidence for Enforced Alloparental Care in a Cooperatively Breeding Parrot
2016
In cooperatively breeding species, in which non-breeding helpers assist in rearing the offspring of breeding individuals, conflicts of interest commonly occur between breeders and helpers over their respective contributions to offspring care. During such conflicts, breeders might use aggressive behavior to enforce contributions of helpers to offspring care, especially if helpers are not related to the breeders and their offspring and thus do not stand to gain indirect fitness benefits by helping. Using a combination of behavioral and genetic data, we investigated in the cooperatively breeding El Oro parakeet Pyrrhura orcesi (i) whether breeders are commonly dominant over helpers, (ii) wheth…
Private information alone can trigger trapping of ant colonies in local feeding optima.
2015
Ant colonies are famous for using trail pheromones to make collective decisions. Trail pheromone systems are characterised by positive feedback, which results in rapid collective decision making. However, in an iconic experiment, ants were shown to become 'trapped' in exploiting a poor food source, if it was discovered earlier. This has conventionally been explained by the established pheromone trail becoming too strong for new trails to compete. However, many social insects have a well-developed memory, and private information often overrules conflicting social information. Thus, route memory could also explain this collective 'trapping' effect. Here, we disentangled the effects of social …
Oxylipin mediated stress response of a miraculin-like protease inhibitor in Hexanoic acid primed eggplant plants infested by Colorado potato beetle
2017
Insect-plant interactions are governed by a complex equilibrium between the mechanisms through which plant recognize insect attack and orchestrate downstream signaling events that trigger plant defense responses, and the mechanisms by which insects overcome plant defenses. Due to this tight and dynamic interplay, insight into the nature of the plant defense response can be gained by analyzing changes in the insect herbivores digestive system upon plant feeding. In this work we have identified a Solanum melongena miraculin-like protease inhibitor in the midgut juice of Colorado potato larvae feeding on eggplant plants treated with the natural inducer of plant defenses hexanoic acid. We analy…
Extended winters entail long-term costs for insect offspring reared in an overwinter burrow
2018
International audience; Winter imposes an ecological challenge to animals living in colder climates, especially if these adverse conditions coincide with reproduction and offspring rearing. To overcome this challenge, some insects burrow in the soil to protect adults, larvae, or eggs from negative effects of winter. However, whether this protection is effective against any long-term consequences of changes in winter duration is unclear. Here, we investigated the long-term effects of winter length variation on eggs of the European earwig Forficula auricularia. In this insect, females construct and maintain a burrow between late autumn and spring, in which they provide extensive forms of care…
RNA-Seq analysis to investigate alternate bearing mechanism in Pistacia vera L
2018
Pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) production suffers a high level of alternate bearing. The mechanism underlying this negative phenomenon is different from other species, such as apple and olive. Pistachio produces a high number of inflorescence buds every year that in heavy cropping trees (“ON”) mostly fall during the kernel development phase, which occurs in July-August. Primary metabolites (i.e., carbohydrates) play a key role in the signaling related to inflorescence bud abscission. In this work, RNA-Seq was used as a tool to investigate transcriptome of inflorescence buds and fruits, sampled from branches with low (“OFF”) and high (“ON”) crop load. Reference based RNA-Seq analysis using Ara…
The priming fingerprint on the plant transcriptome investigated through meta-analysis of RNA-Seq data
2020
Plants may enter into a state of alert that allows them to deploy defensive measures in a more effective way upon stress occurrence. This phenomenon is termed defense priming, and it is started in plants with a still enigmatic priming phase in which complex molecular and physiological changes occur. During the priming phase the plant transcriptome is deeply affected, but it remains largely unclear the extent of the transcriptional changes that contribute to prime the plant. In this study, we performed a meta-analysis of publicly available RNA-Seq data obtained during different priming conditions and in different plant species in order to investigate the existence of a transcriptional "primi…
Love at first sniff: a spermatophore-associated pheromone mediates partner attraction in a collembolan species
2017
Mate choice is essential in most animals, as a good choice of mating partner largely determines reproductive success. Much evidence shows that olfactory cues play an important role in mate choice. However, the integration of chemical, visual and acoustic cues, often used when both partners meet, makes it hard to test whether olfaction alone can mediate reproductive decisions. Interestingly, several invertebrates have adopted a mating system where males deposit their sperm (packed in spermatophores) in the environment for females to pick up with no visual contact between the sexes. In this case the male cue is conveyed by the spermatophore only. Earlier studies on a species with indirect spe…
Borrelia afzeliialters reproductive success in a rodent host
2018
The impact of a pathogen on the fitness and behaviour of its natural host depends upon the host–parasite relationship in a given set of environmental conditions. Here, we experimentally investigated the effects ofBorrelia afzelii,one of the aetiological agents of Lyme disease in humans, on the fitness of its natural rodent host, the bank vole (Myodes glareolus), in semi-natural conditions with two contrasting host population densities. Our results show thatB. afzeliican modify the reproductive success and spacing behaviour of its rodent host, whereas host survival was not affected. Infection impaired the breeding probability of large bank voles. Reproduction was hastened in infected females…
Aging parasites produce offspring with poor fitness prospects.
2017
Senescing individuals have poor survival prospects and low fecundity. They can also produce offspring with reduced survival and reproductive success. We tested the effect of parental age on the performance of descendants in the nematode Heligmosomoides polygyrus , an intestinal parasite of rodents. We found that offspring of senescing worms had reduced within-host survival and reduced egg shedding over the first month post-infection compared with offspring produced by young parents. These results suggest that declining offspring quality is a component of senescence in parasitic nematodes and might have evolutionary consequences for the optimal schedule of age-dependent investment into repr…
Maternal condition determines offspring behavior toward family members in the European earwig
2015
International audience; Parental care confers benefits to juveniles but is usually associated with substantial costs for parents. These costs often depend on parental condition, which is thus considered as a key determinant of the level of parental care expressed during family life. However, how parental condition affects the behaviors that juveniles express toward their siblings and parents remains poorly explored. Here, we investigated these questions in the European earwig Forficula auricularia, an insect in which mothers provide extensive forms of care to their juveniles. We measured maternal body condition at egg hatching, subsequently manipulated maternal nutritional state, and finall…