Corpse-directed play parenting by a sterile adult female chimpanzee.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Negrey JD
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7189720 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Cell death is prevalent throughout life; however, the coordinated interactions and roles of phagocytes during corpse removal in the live brain are poorly understood. We developed photochemical and viral methodologies to induce death in single cells and combined this with intravital optical imaging. This approach allowed us to track multicellular phagocytic interactions with precise spatiotemporal resolution. Astrocytes and microglia engaged with dying neurons in an orchestrated and synchronized fashion. Each glial cell played specialized roles: Astrocyte processes rapidly polarized and engulfed numerous small dendritic apoptotic bodies, while microglia migrated and engulfed the soma and apical dendrites. The relative involvement and phagocytic specialization of each glial cell was plastic and controlled by the receptor tyrosine kinase Mertk. In aging, there was a marked delay in apoptotic cell removal. Thus, a precisely orchestrated response and cross-talk between glial cells during corpse removal may be critical for maintaining brain homeostasis.
| S-EPMC7319765 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Women in medicine may feel pressure to choose between the competing demands of career goals and being a dedicated spouse and parent.The purpose of this survey study is to report on the current opinions of female dermatologists with regard to family planning, maternity leave, and career success.We surveyed 183 members of the Women's Dermatologic Society using a 13-question survey that was approved for distribution by the institutional review board committee of the University of Connecticut Health Center.We found that women were most likely to have children while they were residents (51%), despite the fact that residents were more likely to report barriers to childbearing at this career stage. These barriers included length of maternity leave, appearing less committed to residency responsibilities compared with peers, and inadequate time and privacy to breast feed. Strategies to achieve a work-life balance included hiring in-home help and working part-time. Of note, many women commented on the need for more family planning resources at work.Thought should be given to future administrative strategies that can lessen the burden of parents who are dermatologists and have academic ambitions.
| S-EPMC5555353 | biostudies-other
Project description:Our previous study showed that bacterial genomes can be identified using 16S rRNA sequencing in urine specimens of both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients who are culture negative according to standard urine culture protocols. In the present study, we used a modified culture protocol that included plating larger volumes of urine, incubation under varied atmospheric conditions, and prolonged incubation times to demonstrate that many of the organisms identified in urine by 16S rRNA gene sequencing are, in fact, cultivable using an expanded quantitative urine culture (EQUC) protocol. Sixty-five urine specimens (from 41 patients with overactive bladder and 24 controls) were examined using both the standard and EQUC culture techniques. Fifty-two of the 65 urine samples (80%) grew bacterial species using EQUC, while the majority of these (48/52 [92%]) were reported as no growth at 10(3) CFU/ml by the clinical microbiology laboratory using the standard urine culture protocol. Thirty-five different genera and 85 different species were identified by EQUC. The most prevalent genera isolated were Lactobacillus (15%), followed by Corynebacterium (14.2%), Streptococcus (11.9%), Actinomyces (6.9%), and Staphylococcus (6.9%). Other genera commonly isolated include Aerococcus, Gardnerella, Bifidobacterium, and Actinobaculum. Our current study demonstrates that urine contains communities of living bacteria that comprise a resident female urine microbiota.
| S-EPMC3957746 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundSocial isolation is a key risk factor for the onset and progression of age-related disease and mortality in humans. Nevertheless, older people commonly have narrowing social networks, with influences from both cultural factors and the constraints of senescence. We evaluate evolutionarily grounded models by studying social aging in wild chimpanzees, a system where such influences are more easily separated than in humans, and where individuals are long-lived and decline physically with age.MethodologyWe applied social network analysis to examine age-related changes in social integration in a 7+ year mixed-longitudinal dataset on 38 wild adult chimpanzees (22 females, 16 males). Metrics of social integration included social attractivity and overt effort (directed degree and strength), social roles (betweenness and local transitivity) and embeddedness (eigenvector centrality) in grooming networks.ResultsBoth sexes reduced the strength of direct ties with age (males in-strength, females out-strength). However, males increased embeddedness with age, alongside cliquishness. These changes were independent of age-related changes in social and reproductive status. Both sexes maintained highly repeatable inter-individual differences in integration, particularly in mixed-sex networks.Conclusions and implicationsAs in humans, chimpanzees appear to experience senescence-related declines in social engagement. However, male social embeddedness and overall sex differences were patterned more similarly to humans in non-industrialized versus industrialized societies. Such comparisons suggest common evolutionary roots to ape social aging and that social isolation in older humans may hinge on novel cultural factors of many industrialized societies. Lastly, individual and sex differences are potentially important mediators of successful social aging in chimpanzees, as in humans. Lay summary: Few biological models explain why humans so commonly have narrowing social networks with age, despite the risk factor of social isolation that small networks pose. We use wild chimpanzees as a comparative system to evaluate models grounded in an evolutionary perspective, using social network analysis to examine changes in integration with age. Like humans in industrialized populations, chimpanzees had lower direct engagement with social partners as they aged. However, sex differences in integration and older males' central positions within the community network were more like patterns of sociality in several non-industrialized human populations. Our results suggest common evolutionary roots to human and chimpanzee social aging, and that the risk of social isolation with age in industrialized populations stems from novel cultural factors.
| S-EPMC8697844 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The brain plays a critical role in upstream regulation of processes central to mating effort, parental effort, and self-maintenance. For seasonally breeding animals, the brain is likely mediating trade-offs among these processes within a short breeding season, yet research thus far has only explored neurogenomic changes from non-breeding to breeding states or select pathways (e.g., steroids) in male and/or lab-reared animals. Here, we use RNA-seq to explore neural plasticity in three behaviorally relevant neural tissues (ventromedial telencephalon [VmT], hypothalamus [HYPO], and hindbrain), comparing free-living female tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) as they shift from territory establishment to incubation. We additionally highlight changes in candidate aggression-related genes to explore the potential for a neurogenomic shift in the mechanisms regulating aggression, a critical behavior both in establishing and maintaining a territory and in defense of offspring. We found hundreds of differentially expressed genes in the VmT and HYPO. Enrichment analyses for the VmT revealed higher expression of genes related to neuroplasticity and processes beneficial for competition during territory establishment, but down-regulated immune processes. The HYPO showed signs of high neuroplasticity during incubation, and a decreased potential for glucocorticoid signaling. Furthermore, expression of aggression-related genes shifted from steroidal to non-steroidal pathways across the breeding season. Altogether, we found genomic signatures suggestive of trade-offs between enhanced activity and immunity in the VmT and between stress responsiveness and parental care in the HYPO, along with a potential shift in the mechanisms regulating aggression. These data highlight important gene regulatory pathways that may underlie behavioral plasticity in females.
2019-11-19 | GSE134939 | GEO
Project description:Among African great apes, play is virtually absent between adult lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). Here, we report an extremely rare case of adult-adult play observed in the lowland gorilla group housed at La Vallée de Singes (France). We recorded three playful interactions between the silverback and an adult lactating female. Given the diverse causal and functional nature of play, different factors may join in promoting this behaviour. In our group, contrary to what has been shown by previous studies in wild and captive gorillas, adult females spent more time in spatial proximity with the silverback than with other females. Hence, the probability of social interaction (including play) between silverback and adult females was enhanced. Moreover, the motivation of the lactating female to play might be an effect of oxytocin, a hormone that reaches high concentration levels during lactation and that promotes social affiliation. The fact that play invitations were always performed by the female might support this hypothesis. Certainly, we cannot exclude the possibility that the play event is a group idiosyncrasy or an artefact of captivity, even though the subjects never showed abnormal behaviour. Structurally, play sessions showed a suitable degree of pattern variability and switching frequency from one pattern to another. The proportion of offensive patterns was higher in the female during play and in the male during aggression, which conforms to the role reversal play phenomenon. In conclusion, this report confirms that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is likely that under particular physiological or socio-ecological conditions, adult-adult play may be manifested as an "unconventional" part of gorilla social behaviour.
| S-EPMC9061689 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Humans speak to dogs using a special speech register called Pet-Directed Speech (PDS) which is very similar to Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) used by parents when talking to young infants. These two type of speech share prosodic features that are distinct from the typical Adult-Directed Speech (ADS): a high pitched voice and an increased pitch variation. So far, only one study has investigated the effect of PDS on dogs' attention. We video recorded 44 adult pet dogs and 19 puppies when listening to the same phrase enounced either in ADS or in PDS or in IDS. The phrases were previously recorded and were broadcasted via a loudspeaker placed in front of the dog. The total gaze duration of the dogs toward the loudspeaker, was used as a proxy of attention. Results show that adult dogs are significantly more attentive to PDS than to ADS and that their attention significantly increases along with the rise of the fundamental frequency of human' speech. It is likely that the exaggerated prosody of PDS is used by owners as an ostensive cue for dogs that facilitates the effectiveness of their communication, and should represent an evolutionarily determined adaptation that benefits the regulation and maintenance of their relationships.
| S-EPMC5504008 | biostudies-other
Project description:Single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) was used to profile the transcriptome of 12,352 nuclei in chimpanzee adult testis. This dataset includes three samples from three different individuals. This dataset is part of a larger evolutionary study of adult testis at the single-nucleus level (97,521 single-nuclei in total) across mammals including 10 representatives of the three main mammalian lineages: human, chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, gibbon, rhesus macaque, marmoset, mouse (placental mammals); grey short-tailed opossum (marsupials); and platypus (egg-laying monotremes). Corresponding data were generated for a bird (red junglefowl, the progenitor of domestic chicken), to be used as an evolutionary outgroup.
2021-11-08 | E-MTAB-11064 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Play during early life is a ubiquitous activity, and an individual's propensity for play is positively related to cognitive development and emotional well-being. Play behavior (which may be solitary or shared with a social partner) is diverse and multi-faceted. A challenge for current research is to converge on a common definition and measurement system for play - whether examined at a behavioral, cognitive or neurological level. Combining these different approaches in a multimodal analysis could yield significant advances in understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms of play, and provide the basis for developing biologically grounded play models. However, there is currently no integrated framework for conducting a multimodal analysis of play that spans brain, cognition and behavior. The proposed coding framework uses grounded and observable behaviors along three dimensions (sensorimotor, cognitive and socio-emotional), to compute inferences about playful behavior in a social context, and related social interactional states. Here, we illustrate the sensitivity and utility of the proposed coding framework using two contrasting dyadic corpora (N = 5) of mother-infant object-oriented interactions during experimental conditions that were either non-conducive (Condition 1) or conducive (Condition 2) to the emergence of playful behavior. We find that the framework accurately identifies the modal form of social interaction as being either non-playful (Condition 1) or playful (Condition 2), and further provides useful insights about differences in the quality of social interaction and temporal synchronicity within the dyad. It is intended that this fine-grained coding of play behavior will be easily assimilated with, and inform, future analysis of neural data that is also collected during adult-infant play. In conclusion, here, we present a novel framework for analyzing the continuous time-evolution of adult-infant play patterns, underpinned by biologically informed state coding along sensorimotor, cognitive and socio-emotional dimensions. We expect that the proposed framework will have wide utility amongst researchers wishing to employ an integrated, multimodal approach to the study of play, and lead toward a greater understanding of the neuroscientific basis of play. It may also yield insights into a new biologically grounded taxonomy of play interactions.
| S-EPMC5871690 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:The brain plays a critical role in upstream regulation of processes central to mating effort, parental effort, and self-maintenance. For seasonally breeding animals, the brain is likely mediating trade-offs among these processes within a short breeding season, yet research thus far has only explored neurogenomic changes from non-breeding to breeding states or select pathways (e.g., steroids) in male and/or lab-reared animals. Here, we use RNA-seq to explore neural plasticity in three behaviorally relevant neural tissues (ventromedial telencephalon [VmT], hypothalamus [HYPO], and hindbrain [HB]), comparing free-living female tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) as they shift from territory establishment to incubation. We additionally highlight changes in aggression-related genes to explore the potential for a neurogenomic shift in the mechanisms regulating aggression, a critical behavior both in establishing and maintaining a territory and in defense of offspring. RESULTS:HB had few differentially expressed genes, but VmT and HYPO had hundreds. In particular, VmT had higher expression of genes related to neuroplasticity and processes beneficial for competition during territory establishment, but down-regulated immune processes. HYPO showed signs of high neuroplasticity during incubation, and a decreased potential for glucocorticoid signaling. Expression of aggression-related genes also shifted from steroidal to non-steroidal pathways across the breeding season. CONCLUSIONS:These patterns suggest trade-offs between enhanced activity and immunity in the VmT and between stress responsiveness and parental care in the HYPO, along with a potential shift in the mechanisms regulating aggression. Collectively, these data highlight important gene regulatory pathways that may underlie behavioral plasticity in females.
| S-EPMC6836416 | biostudies-literature