The Complex and Well-Developed Morphological and Histological Structures of the Gastrointestinal Tract of the Plateau Zokor Improve Its Digestive Adaptability to High-Fiber Foods

The morphological and histological traits of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) enable the animal to perform some specific functions that enhance the species’ adaptability to environments. The plateau zokor (Eospalax baileyi) is a subterranean rodent that mainly forages on plant roots in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, but little is known about the mechanism by which the plateau zokor digests roots that have high fiber contents. In this study, we used comparative anatomy methods to compare the morphological and histological traits of the GIT of both the plateau zokor and the plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), a small, fossorial lagomorph that forages aboveground plant parts, in order to clarify the traits of the plateau zokor’s GIT and to understand its adaptations to high-fiber foods. The results showed that the foods which plateau zokors eat have a higher fiber content than those which the plateau pikas eat. The plateau zokor has a double-chambered and hemi-glandular stomach (the tubular glands are only in the gastric corpus II, and the gastric fundus is keratinized), whereas the plateau pika has a simple, wholly glandular stomach. The gross morphological indicators (organ index and relative length) of the GIT were significantly lower in the plateau zokor than they were in the plateau pika (p p < 0.001), and the thickness of each layer of intestinal tissue is higher in the plateau zokor than it is in the plateau pika. Additionally, the small intestinal villi also are higher and wider in the plateau zokor than they are in the plateau pika. Our results suggest that instead of adapting to digest the high-fiber diet by expanding the size of the GIT, the plateau zokor has evolved a complex stomach and a well-developed gastrointestinal histological structure, and that these specialized GIT structures are consistent with an optimal energy-economy evolutionary adaptation strategy

Distinct protocerebral neuropils associated with attractive and aversive female-produced odorants in the male moth brain

The pheromone system of heliothine moths is an optimal model for studying principles underlying higher-order olfactory processing. In Helicoverpa armigera, three male-specific glomeruli receive input about three female-produced signals, the primary pheromone component, serving as an attractant, and two minor constituents, serving a dual function, that is, attraction versus inhibition of attraction. From the antennal-lobe glomeruli, the information is conveyed to higher olfactory centers, including the lateral protocerebrum, via three main paths – of which the medial tract is the most prominent. In this study, we traced physiologically identified medial-tract projection neurons from each of the three male-specific glomeruli with the aim of mapping their terminal branches in the lateral protocerebrum. Our data suggest that the neurons’ widespread projections are organized according to behavioral significance, including a spatial separation of signals representing attraction versus inhibition – however, with a unique capacity of switching behavioral consequence based on the amount of the minor components

ZmRop1 participates in maize defense response to the damage of Spodoptera frugiperda larvae through mediating ROS and soluble phenol production

Abstract As plant‐specific molecular switches, Rho‐like GTPases (Rops) are vital for plant survival in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, their roles in plant defense response to phytophagous insect's damage are largely unknown. In this study, the expression levels of nine maize RAC family genes were analyzed after fall armyworm (FAW) larvae infestation. Among the analyzed genes, ZmRop1 was specifically and highly expressed, and its role in maize response to FAW larvae damage was studied. The results showed that upon FAW larvae infestation, salicylic acid and methyl jasmonate treatment ZmRop1 gene transcripts were all down‐regulated. However, upon mechanical injury, the expression level of ZmRop1 was up‐regulated. Overexpression of ZmRop1 gene in maize plants could improve maize plant resistance to FAW larvae damage. Conversely, silencing of ZmRop1 increased maize plant susceptibility to FAW larvae damage. The analysis of the potential anti‐herbivore metabolites, showed that ZmRop1 promoted the enzyme activities of catalase, peroxidase and the expression levels of ZmCAT, ZmPOD, ZmRBOHA and ZmRBOHB, thereby enhancing the reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, including the content of O2− and H2O2. In addition, overexpression or silencing of ZmRop1 could have influence on the content of the total soluble phenol through mediating the activity of polyphenol oxidase. In summary, the results illuminated our understanding of how ZmRop1 participate in maize defense response to FAW larvae damage as a positive regulator through mediating ROS production and can be used as a reference for the green prevention and control of FAW larvae

iCatcher+: Robust and automated annotation of infant's and young children's gaze direction from videos collected in laboratory, field, and online studies

Technological advances in psychological research have enabled large-scale studies of human behavior and streamlined pipelines for automatic processing of data. However, studies of infants and children have not fully reaped these benefits, because the behaviors of interest, such as gaze duration and direction, even when collected online, still have to be extracted from video through a laborious process of manual annotation. Recent advances in computer vision raise the possibility of automated annotation of this video data. In this paper, we built on a system for automatic gaze annotation in young children, iCatcher (Erel et al., 2022), by engineering improvements, and then training and testing the system (hereafter, iCatcher+) on three datasets with substantial video and participant variability (214 videos collected in United States lab and field sites, 143 videos collected in Senegal field sites, and 265 videos collected via webcams in homes; participants aged 4 months-3.5 years). When trained on each of these datasets, iCatcher+ performed with near human-level accuracy on held-out videos on distinguishing “LEFT” versus “RIGHT”, and “ON” versus “OFF” looking behavior, across all datasets. This high performance was achieved at the level of individual frames, experimental trials, and study videos, held across participant demographics (e.g., age, race/ethnicity), participant behavior (e.g., movement, head position) and video characteristics (e.g., luminance), and generalized to a fourth, entirely held-out online dataset. We close by discussing next steps required to fully automate the lifecycle of online infant and child behavioral studies, representing a key step towards enabling rapid, high-powered developmental research

sj-pdf-1-amp-10.1177_25152459221147250 – Supplemental material for iCatcher+: Robust and Automated Annotation of Infants’ and Young Children’s Gaze Behavior From Videos Collected in Laboratory, Field, and Online Studies

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-amp-10.1177_25152459221147250 for iCatcher+: Robust and Automated Annotation of Infants’ and Young Children’s Gaze Behavior From Videos Collected in Laboratory, Field, and Online Studies by Yotam Erel, Katherine Adams Shannon, Junyi Chu, Kim Scott, Melissa Kline Struhl, Peng Cao, Xincheng Tan, Peter Hart, Gal Raz, Sabrina Piccolo, Catherine Mei, Christine Potter, Sagi Jaffe-Dax, Casey Lew-Williams, Joshua Tenenbaum, Katherine Fairchild, Amit Bermano and Shari Liu in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science</p