Differences In Behavioral Responses Research Articles

Transgenerational neurotoxic effects of triphenyltin on marine medaka: Impaired dopaminergic system function

Triphenyltin (TPT), a widely used environmental contaminant in antifouling paints, is known for its neurotoxic effects. To investigate the multigenerational impacts of long-term exposure (6 weeks) to environmental concentrations of TPT (100 ng/L) on either parent, we performed mixed mating between control and exposed groups (males or females). Although there was no direct contact with TPT in the subsequent generations, both the first and second generations displayed behavioral abnormalities, including reduced activity and impaired cognitive function, with pronounced gender differences and anxiety-like behaviors. Females were more susceptible than males, displaying a significantly increased time spent in the mirror-proximal zone in both F1 and F2 generations. Additionally, F0 females exhibited a marked reduction in the time spent in the bright area, further supporting the role of sex differences in behavioral responses. Notably, the maternal contribution of marine medaka (Oryzias melastigma) played a more significant role in the inheritance of TPT-induced cognitive deficits. A reduction in DA levels and AChE activity was observed across generations, regardless of gender, underscoring the critical role of DA-AChE balance in maintaining cognitive function. Additionally, gender differences and the hereditary effects of TPT exposure on anxiety-like behaviors were strongly associated with the transcriptional regulation of pparγ and gst. Impaired transcription of key genes in the dopaminergic system resulted in reduced DA levels, with the intergenerational transmission of mao being closely linked to behavioral impairments. In summary, TPT-induced neurotoxicity presents both hereditary effects and gender-specific differences, emphasizing the maternal influence in the inheritance of cognitive abilities and shedding light on the genetic impact of parental exposure.

Modulation of stress-related behaviour by preproglucagon neurons and hypothalamic projections to the nucleus of the solitary tract

Stress-induced behaviours are driven by complex neural circuits and some neuronal populations concurrently modulate diverse behavioural and physiological responses to stress. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1)-producing preproglucagon (PPG) neurons within the lower brainstem caudal nucleus of the solitary tract (cNTS) are particularly sensitive to stressful stimuli and are implicated in multiple physiological and behavioural responses to interoceptive and psychogenic threats. However, the afferent inputs driving stress-induced activation of PPG neurons are largely unknown, and the role of PPG neurons in anxiety-like behaviour is controversial. Through chemogenetic manipulations we reveal that cNTS PPG neurons have the ability to moderately increase anxiety-like behaviours in mice in a sex-dependent manner. Using an intersectional approach, we show that input from the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) drives activation of both the cNTS as a whole and PPG neurons in particular in response to acute restraint stress, but that while this input is rich in corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), PPG neurons do not express significant levels of receptors for CRH and are not activated following lateral ventricle delivery of CRH. Finally, we demonstrate that cNTS-projecting PVN neurons are necessary for the ability of restraint stress to suppress food intake in male mice. Our findings reveal sex differences in behavioural responses to PPG neural activation and highlight a hypothalamic-brainstem pathway in stress-induced hypophagia.

Effects of heat stress abatement on behavioral response in lactating dairy cows prior to and following an intramammary lipopolysaccharide infusion

The assessment of animal behavior serves as a valuable approach to identify illness and animal responses to environmental stimuli. Both heat stress and mastitis are reported to impact the behavioral responses of dairy cattle. However, little is known about the effects of heat stress on the lactating cow's behavioral responses to mastitis. The aims of the current study were to evaluate the effects of deprivation of evaporative cooling on behavioral responses of lactating dairy cows before and following mammary inflammation induced by intramammary lipopolysaccharide (IM-LPS) infusion and to characterize the impact of deprivation of evaporative cooling on feed sorting in lactating dairy cows during summer. Multiparous mid-lactating Holstein dairy cows (n = 18, parity = 2.4 ± 0.6, DIM = 136 ± 61 d) were randomly assigned to: evaporatively cooled (CL, n = 9) or not cooled (NC, n = 9) for 36 d (average temperature-humidity index = 78.4). The evaporative cooling system included misters and fans. Misters were installed on the front face of each fan, which was placed over both feed bunk and free stalls. On d 30, the left rear quarters of a subset of cows (n = 14, 7/treatment) were infused with a bolus of LPS (10 µg of Escherichia coli O111:B4 LPS). Feeding and resting behaviors were recorded throughout the experiment using automated sensor devices (NEDAP). Sorting activity based on particle size separation using a Penn State Particle Separator was assessed at d 3, 16, and 26 of the experiment. Before IM-LPS, NC cows had lower ruminating and eating time, and consequently greater inactive time compared with CL cows. Relative to CL cows, NC cows had reduced lying time, and greater standing and walking time. The NC cows also had greater standing bouts, only at the beginning of the experiment, relative to CL cows. Additionally, NC cows sorted more for long particles (NC: 99.4% vs. CL: 94.4%) and sorted against medium and short particles on d 3 of the experiment compared with CL cows. However, following IM-LPS, no significant differences in behavioral responses were observed between NC and CL cows. In conclusion, deprivation of evaporative cooling negatively affected the behavioral responses of lactating dairy cows during summer. Further, heat-stressed cows without evaporative cooling sorted more for long particles of the diet potentially as a response to cope with the reduced rumen pH. However, deprivation of evaporative cooling does not have a significant impact on the lactating cow's behavioral responses to LPS induced mammary inflammation.

Sensory cues, behavior and fur-based drying in the rat wetness response.

It never rains in standard lab-confinements; thus we have limited understanding of animal reactions to water and wetness. To address this issue, we sprayed water on different body parts of rats and measured drying and fur temperature by thermal imaging while manipulating behavior, sensory cues and fur. Spraying water on rats resulted in fur changes (hair clumping, apex formation), grooming, shaking, and scratching. Anesthesia abolished behavioral responses, interfered with fur changes, and slowed drying. Spraying water on different body parts resulted in differential behavioral drying responses. Spraying the head resulted in grooming and shaking responses; water evaporated from the head twice as fast as water sprayed on the animal's back or belly. We observed no effect of whisker removal on post-water-spraying behavior. In contrast, local anesthesia of dorsal facial skin reduced post-water-spraying behavioral responses. Shaving of head fur drastically enhanced post-water-spraying behaviors, but reduced water loss during drying; indicating that fur promotes evaporation, acting in tandem with behavior to mediate drying. Excised wet fur patches dried and cooled faster than shaved excised wet skin. Water was sucked into distal hair tips, where it evaporated. We propose the wet-fur-heat-pump-hypothesis; fur might extract heat required for drying by cooling ambient air.

Vibration-based mitigation of noxious-evoked responses to skin puncture in neonates and infants: a randomised controlled trial

ObjectiveTo assess the effect of a non-noxious vibratory stimulus on noxious-evoked cortical responses to skin puncture and to determine whether the presence of certain behavioural components may be used to...

The influence of vehicle size on perception and behavior toward drivers

ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of vehicle size on driver impressions and behavioral intentions. Study 1 tested whether vehicle size (large vs. small) affects perceived physical size (height, body shape) through socioeconomic status (SES). We found that large (vs. small) vehicle drivers were perceived as tall (vs. short), and this perception was mediated by the drivers’ estimated SES (but not by body shape). Study 2 focused on aggressive behavioral intentions (e.g. honking) toward other drivers, examining whether the relationship between vehicle size and intention was serially mediated by estimated physical size and traits (aggression, power). Here, large (vs. small) vehicle driver were perceived as tall (heavy) and possessing high power (high aggression), which is related to less (more) aggressive behavioral intention toward the driver. Our study suggests that individuals perceive other drivers’ physical sizes differently, and this perception is associated with differences in behavioral responses toward other drivers.

Effectiveness of peanut ball intervention on childbirth experiences, maternal satisfaction and behavioural responses among pregnant mothers: A randomised control trial

IntroductionA positive childbirth experience and satisfaction are the key indicators defining the quality of care pregnant mothers receive in a healthcare institution. Therefore, researchers have sought multiple strategies to improve childbirth experience and maternal satisfaction. In light of this background, the current research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of peanut ball intervention in improving maternal satisfaction and promoting positive childbirth experiences and behavioural responses. MethodsThe current research employed a randomised control trial in which 768 low-risk primigravid women were recruited into two groups: treatment (n = 384) and control (n = 384). A comparative evaluation of the outcomes was carried out between the peanut ball intervention provided to the treatment group and the standard care provided to the control group. Data was collected using an observation checklist for behavioural response and a questionnaire for childbirth experience and maternal satisfaction. ResultsThe study revealed a significant mean score difference in behavioural response, childbirth experience and maternal satisfaction, indicating the effectiveness of the peanut ball intervention in improving these outcomes. ConclusionThe peanut ball intervention can effectively improve positive behavioural response, childbirth experience and maternal satisfaction among low-risk primigravid women. The current study provides insight into healthcare providers' consideration of the peanut ball intervention among pregnant mothers as a safe and comfortable method of childbirth.

The 2015 Refugee Crisis and Institutional Trust in European Countries

Exogenous events have the potential to affect citizens’ risk-perceptions, (in)security sentiments, electoral choices, policy preferences and institutional trust levels. It has been shown that migrant and refugee flows also affect citizens’ trust and policy preferences. The 2015 refugee crisis as it has come to be known, shook Europe’s cohesion and tested the existing immigration and asylum policies as well as acted as a further stimulus to populist/right wing Eurosceptic parties with an agenda of anti-immigrant restrictive policies. Expectedly, it has attracted considerable attention in the relevant literature. Building on existing studies that examine various aspects associated with the 2015 refugee crisis, the present paper examines its effect on institutional trust levels in Europe. Specifically, it focuses on trust towards the national government, the EU and the two state security services the police and the armed forces. To this effect, the study draws data from successive Eurobarometer surveys before and after the crisis. Employing segmented-type regression models as well as Oaxaca decomposition models it probes into the 2015 refugee crisis’ impact on the levels of institutional trust using over 400,000 responses to the relevant Eurobarometer questions. The results reported herein suggest the presence of “a rally around the flag effect”. Nonetheless, macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth and unemployment as well as differences in behavioural responses also explain a large part of the observed gap in trust before and after the 2015 refugee crisis.

How does witnessing coworker ostracism differentially elicit victim-directed help and enacted ostracism: The mediating roles of compassion and schadenfreude, moderated by dispositional envy

This study examines the differential effects of observed ostracism on observers’ victim-directed helping behaviors and their own enactment of ostracism, as informed by their dispositional envy. In particular, we examined two distinctive paths that explain the observers’ congruent (compassion) and incongruent (schadenfreude) emotional responses toward victims. Utilizing a four-wave, multi-source survey dataset comprising 306 employees from various organizations in Pakistan, our findings reveal that observed ostracism elicits feelings of compassion in employees with a low dispositional envy, who then exhibit greater victim-directed helping behaviors. By contrast, employees with a high dispositional envy experience schadenfreude when observing ostracism, prompting them to engage in further victim-directed ostracism themselves. Our findings provide important insights into the catalytic role of dispositional envy in determining emotions that explains why the observation of a coworker’s social exclusion prompts a differential behavioral response.

Alterations in food preference and stress reactivity in mice with a knockout of MeCP2 in POMC neurons

Methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2) is an epigenetic factor associated with the neurodevelopmental disorders Rett Syndrome and MECP2 duplication syndrome. Previous studies have demonstrated that knocking out MeCP2 globally in the central nervous system leads to an overweight phenotype and hyperphagia, however it is not clear if the hyperphagia is the result of an increased motivation to obtain food reward or enhancements in food preference. Here, we show that mice deficient in MeCP2 specifically in pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons have an increased preference for high fat diet but do not have a greater motivation to obtain food reward, relative to wildtype (WT) littermate controls. We also demonstrate that POMC-Cre MeCP2 knockout (KO) mice have increased body weight after long-term high fat diet exposure as well as elevated plasma leptin and corticosterone (CORT) levels compared to wildtype mice. Given that our POMC-Cre MeCP2 KO mice have elevated CORT, we wanted to determine if our KO mice also respond differentially to early life stress such as maternal separation stress compared to WT controls. Collectively, our data suggest that POMC-specific loss-of-function Mecp2 mutations leads to dissociable effects on the rewarding/motivational properties of food as well as changes to hormones associated with body weight homeostasis and stress and could underlie differential behavioral responses to early life stress. NIGMS 1SC1GM144190-01 (ESN), Texas Woman's University internal funds. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

Background contrast affects detection and recognition of courting wolf spiders by intended and unintended receivers

We used video playback of courting male Schizocosa ocreata wolf spiders to examine responses of intended receivers (conspecific females) and eavesdroppers (competitor males, predatory spiders, toads) to manipulations of spider color (natural color, monochromatic gray, monochromatic RBG average) displayed against complex leaf litter backgrounds (color, grayscale). Models of chromatic and achromatic contrast between spider stimuli and backgrounds were used to predict receiver responses. The results support the hypothesis that interactions between spider and background coloration affect detection and recognition, although responses varied with receiver type. Detection responses of intended receivers (female S. ocreata) did not fit predictions of the chromatic contrast model in some cases, but showed a fair fit to the achromatic model. Detection responses of social eavesdroppers (male S. ocreata) fit the chromatic and achromatic contrast models slightly better than did female responses (poor fit and very good fit, respectively). Eavesdropping wolf spider predators (Rabidosa) exhibited detection responses that significantly matched predictions of the chromatic (very good fit) and achromatic (excellent fit) models. Whereas jumping spiders (Phidippus) showed a good fit to the chromatic and achromatic contrast models, toad predators had a good fit only to the chromatic model. Recognition responses revealed a different pattern of fit to the chromatic and achromatic models across receiver types, although Rabidosa again indicated a significant fit to both models. Taken together, the results of this study identify both chromatic and achromatic features of spider appearance as likely explanations for differences in behavioral responses of intended and unintended receivers. This outcome suggests the possibility that both sexual and natural selection likely target different features of male appearance during courtship.

Discrete prefrontal neuronal circuits determine repeated stress-induced behavioral phenotypes in male mice

Chronic stress is a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders, including depression. Although depression is a highly heterogeneous syndrome, it remains unclear how chronic stress drives individual differences in behavioral responses. In this study, we developed a subtyping-based approach wherein stressed male mice were divided into four subtypes based on their behavioral patterns of social interaction deficits and anhedonia, the core symptoms of psychiatric disorders. We identified three prefrontal cortical neuronal projections that regulate repeated stress-induced behavioral phenotypes. Among them, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)→anterior paraventricular thalamus (aPVT) pathway determines the specific behavioral subtype that exhibits both social deficits and anhedonia. Additionally, we identified the circuit-level molecular mechanism underlying this subtype: KDM5C-mediated epigenetic repression of Shisa2 transcription in aPVT projectors in the mPFC led to social deficits and anhedonia. Thus, we provide a set of biological aspects at the cellular, molecular, and epigenetic levels that determine distinctive stress-induced behavioral phenotypes.

Differential behavioral response to predator odor in neuropathic pain in mice.

Neuropathic pain, a type of chronic pain caused by injury or disease of the somatosensory system, affects ∼10% of the general population and is difficult to treat. It is strongly associated with mood disorder comorbidities and impairs quality of life. It was recently suggested that hypervigilance caused by chronic pain might be of advantage in some species, helping them avoid predators during injury when they are most vulnerable. Here, we sought to confirm the hypervigilance hypothesis by using two predator odor (PO) paradigms, one with transient and one with continuous odor presentation. We observed behavioral responses to PO in neuropathic and control mice in an open field setting. We find that neuropathic mice show hypervigilance to PO, confirming previous results. However, we also find increased anxiety responses to neutral odor in neuropathic mice, which manifests as maladaptive pain. This demonstrates that this maladaptive nature of pain could be an evolutionary adaptation aimed at reducing injury-induced vulnerability.

The health costs of political identity: evidence from the US during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT We estimate the impact of US political identity on COVID-19 safety behaviors, cases, and deaths. Our data set merges US county-level data on mask-wearing, cell-phone mobility, vaccination rates, county characteristics, and variables reflecting conservative political identity with COVID-19 cases and deaths from the first 12, 20, and 28 months of the pandemic in the United States. State-level fixed-effect estimations controlling for county characteristics indicate every 10 percentage point increase in the county popular vote for President Trump in the 2020 election to be associated with a 0.36σ reduction in a COVID-safety index, 1798 additional COVID cases, and 31.9 COVID deaths per 100,000 county residents in the initial 28 months of the pandemic. Further, we ask whether differential behavioral responses during the pandemic can be explained by traditional strains of American conservatism or are associated with a more specific Trumpian identity. We create state-level indices of traditional libertarian and social conservatism, finding that these indices display little systematic explanatory power over COVID-safety behaviors, cases, and deaths relative to 2020 Trump voter support.

<i>Corrigendum to</i>: The role of grass-tree <i>Xanthorrhoea semiplana</i> (Asphodelaceae) canopies in temperature regulation and waterproofing for ground-dwelling wildlife

<sec> Context Birds appear to be better suited than mammals or reptiles to adapt to fast-changing landscapes because of their greater mobility; however, the behavioural effects of urbanisation on birds in Australia remain broadly unexplored. </sec> <sec> Aims This study aimed to investigate the effects of urbanisation on behavioural responses exhibited by a common and widespread meliphagid, the bandiny or New Holland honeyeater (<i>Phylidonyris novaehollandiae</i>) while undergoing standard bird banding processes. </sec> <sec> Methods Five non-invasive techniques (alarm calling, wriggling, biting, breathing rate, and tonic immobility) were explored for efficacy in identifying underlying differences in distress arising from mist-netting at urban and exurban localities in southwestern Western Australia. </sec> <sec> Key results Breathing rate was the most important variable for identifying differences in post-capture distress response. The breathing rate of urban bandiny following capture was lower than those of exurban areas. All other parameters proved suboptimal for detecting differential behavioural responses to handling between urban and exurban populations, despite having been successfully used in other international studies. </sec> <sec> Conclusions We suggest that urban honeyeaters exhibit lower mean breathing rates due to chronic overstimulation in response to urban lifestyles and are not able to further elevate this behaviour in response to stressful stimuli. The failure of other approaches explored highlights the need to apply ecosystem-appropriate methods for investigating urbanisation within an Australian context. </sec> <sec> Implications Our results suggest that behavioural approaches to quantifying avian stress developed internationally require additional consideration when applied to the ecosystems of Australia, whose birds are evolved to accommodate a different regime of seasonality that has shaped them behaviourally and morphologically. </sec>

Fluoxetine potentiates methylphenidate-induced behavioral responses: Enhanced locomotion or stereotypies and facilitated acquisition of cocaine self-administration

The medical psychostimulant methylphenidate (MP) is used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and recreationally as a “cognitive enhancer”. MP is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, but does not affect serotonin. Serotonin contributes to addiction-related gene regulation and behavior. Previously, we showed that enhancing serotonin action by adding a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, fluoxetine (FLX), to MP potentiates MP-induced gene regulation in striatum and nucleus accumbens, mimicking cocaine effects. Here, we investigated the behavioral consequences of MP+FLX treatment. Young adult male rats received MP (5 mg/kg, i.p.) or MP+FLX (5 mg/kg each) daily for 6-8 days. Behavioral effects were assessed in an open-field test during the repeated treatment. Two weeks later the motor response to a cocaine challenge (25 mg/kg) and the rate of acquisition of cocaine self-administration behavior were determined. Our results demonstrate that FLX potentiates effects of MP on open-field behavior. However, we found differential behavioral responses to MP+FLX treatment, as approximately half of the rats developed high rates of focal stereotypies (termed “MP+FLX/high reactivity” group), whereas the other half did not, and only showed increased locomotion (“MP+FLX/low reactivity” group). Two weeks later, cocaine-induced locomotion and stereotypies were positively correlated with MP+FLX-induced behavior seen at the end of the repeated MP+FLX treatment. Moreover, the MP+FLX/high reactivity group, but not the low reactivity group, showed facilitated acquisition of cocaine self-administration. These results demonstrate that repeated MP+FLX treatment can facilitate subsequent cocaine taking behavior in a subpopulation of rats. These findings suggest that MP+FLX exposure in some individuals may increase the risk for psychostimulant use later in life.

BIP-Tree: Tree Variant With Behavioral Intention Perception for Heterogeneous Trajectory Prediction

An insightful understanding and relational reasoning of motion behavior are typical components for trajectory prediction to achieve safe planning when navigating in complex scenarios. Due to the differences in behavioral responses of heterogeneous agents and the existence of chain effect in message passing, an effective prediction method is desired to better acquire potential behavioral intention and model motion behavior. In this paper, we construct a trajectory prediction method to represent and encode the behavioral interactions among heterogeneous agents, called as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Tree variant with Behavioral Intention Perception (BIP-Tree)</i> . Specifically, a dual-behavior interaction module is presented to deeply understand behavioral intention by simultaneously considering the behavioral perception and behavioral response in spatial interaction. The behavioral perception means that individual acquires behavioral features from interactive objects located in its perception range, while the behavioral response means that each agent makes distinctive reactions to different categories of agents (for example, due to different collision risks caused by pedestrian and vehicle, a pedestrian will respond differently to the interactive agents at the same distance). Meanwhile, we also introduce one new tree variant in message passing stage to enhance the acquisition of potential motion feature, denoting traffic agents as nodes and the interactions among them as tree trunks. The interaction message can be delivered along tree trunks from leaf nodes to root node, to further achieves the chain effect of high-order interactions beyond adjacent entities. Our method is evaluated on several public datasets, such as Apolloscape, nuScenes, Argoverse, SDD, INTERACTION, inD, and Waymo. The extensive experimental results demonstrate that our method can predict more plausible and realistic trajectories with multi-modality. Among them, the best performance is achieved on three datasets. More remarkably, compared with state-of-the-arts, our method achieves significant performance and decreases by at least <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$13.04\%$</tex-math> </inline-formula> on average ADE and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$19.42\%$</tex-math> </inline-formula> on average FDE on inD dataset with four intersections. The dataset and code are available at: htpps://github.com/VTP-TL/BIP-Tree.

The Difference between Male and Female Rats in Terms of Freezing and Aversive Ultrasonic Vocalization in an Active Avoidance Test

We examined sex differences in behavioral responses to fear-related learning through ultrasonic vocalization. Adult male and female rats of two inbred rat strains (WAG/Rij rats with genetic predisposition absence epilepsy, n = 25; and the minor substrain NEW with non-epileptic phenotype, n = 32) were examined in the two-way active avoidance task (50 trials). Three behavioral responses were defined: successful learning, unsuccessful learning, and freezing (motionless behavior). We found that males were more likely to experience freezing (40%) than females (3.7%). Females performed significantly better than males: 93% of females showed “successful learning”, while only 43.2% of males did. Long-lasting 22 kHz ultrasonic calls, so-called aversive ultrasonic vocalizations aUSVs, were recorded in 26% of females (only successful learners) and in 50% of males. The density of aUSVs in females was lower than in males. WAG/Rij males performed much poorer than the NEW males. In general, males, in contrast to females, showed significantly poorer avoidance learning, more frequently experienced freezing, and produced more aversive USVs. Males thus experienced a negative emotional state, rather than exhibiting poor cognitive abilities. Perhaps, WAG/Rij rats and a minor NEW substrain showed an increased emotionally in fear-related tasks, because they are prone to emotional disorders or emotional exhaustion. Sex differences in freezing and in aUSVs might result from the poorly understood neuromodulatory effects of the cholinergic system.

Tit alarm calls trigger anti-predator behavior in free-range domestic chickens

Interspecific call transmission is a common information-gathering behavior in birds. Unlike centralized large-scale chicken farming in urban areas, domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) in remote mountainous areas of China are often raised free-range by individual households. Free-range domestic chickens are exposed to many natural predators and can increase their chances of survival if they can respond to heterospecific alarm signals. To this end, we observed free-ranging domestic chickens in Miao village communities around Leishan County, Guizhou, southwestern China, and we performed comparisons on the behavioral responses of these chickens to the territorial song and alarm calls of wild Japanese tits (Parus minor). Our findings showed that the chickens were more vigilant to Japanese tit alarm calls than to territorial songs and exhibited significant anti-predator behaviors such as vigilance and runaway. Furthermore, there was significant difference in behavioral response to the two different alarm calls, with greater vigilance to tit alarm calls for Siberian chipmunks (Tamias sibiricus) than for sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus). This suggests that domestic chickens can differentiate between territorial songs and alarm calls of wild Japanese tits, and there is a behavioral difference in the two types of alarm calls of Japanese tits.

Companion crops alter olfactory responses of the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) and its larval endoparasitoid (Cotesia icipe)

BackgroundThe fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda, is a devastating invasive pest and a threat to food security in Africa, with yield losses of 20–50%. Recent studies highlighted the importance of cereal crops such as maize and sorghum as the most preferred host plants for FAW oviposition. In the current work, we investigated the olfactory responses of FAW and its key larval endoparasitoid Cotesia icipe to odours from the preferred host (maize) in the presence of six potential companion crops including beans, groundnut, sweet potato, greenleaf- and silverleaf desmodium, and cassava. We hypothesized that odours released by companion crops in maize-based intercropping systems would alter host preferences of FAW for oviposition and its parasitoid responses.ResultsIn dual choice oviposition bioassays, FAW laid significantly more eggs on maize than on the other plants. However, in the multiple-choice bioassays, significantly fewer eggs were laid on maize when companion plants were present except cassava. While wind tunnel bioassays confirmed the differential behavioural responses of FAW, we found that its larval endoparasitoid C. icipe was attracted to volatiles from the companion plants tested individually and/or when they were combined with maize. Coupled gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) analysis detected several potential behaviour-modifying compounds including (Z)-3-hexenyl acetate, (E)-β-ocimene, (E)-4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene, (E)-β-caryophyllene, camphor, methyl salicylate and (E, E)-4,8,12-trimethyl-1,3,7,11-tridecatetraene.ConclusionsOur findings provide evidence supporting diversified maize cropping system could reduce FAW damage by repelling the pest while simultaneously recruiting its natural enemies. Hence, diversifying cereal cropping system with companion crops could serve as an ecologically sustainable FAW management strategy.Graphical