Effect of nocturnal lighting on an ant’s ethological and physiological traits

Artificial nocturnal lighting affects the nature, an impact best studied on vertebrates that are directly depending on the presence or absence of light. Here, we examined on an ant species taken as a model the effects of artificial nocturnal lighting on eleven physiological and ethological traits. Ant workers maintained under nocturnal lighting showed a decrease or a change in their level of activity, food consumption, locomotion, orientation ability, audacity, tactile perception, social relationship, learning and memory. This was largely observed during the night but the effects persisted, at a lower extend, during the day.

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Ethological and physiological side effects of oxybutynin studied on ants as models

MOJ Biology and Medicine ◽

10.15406/mojbm.2020.05.00116 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 4-16

Author(s):

Marie-Claire Cammaerts ◽

Roger Cammaerts

Keyword(s):

Urinary Incontinence ◽

Side Effects ◽

Adverse Effects ◽

Food Consumption ◽

Social Relationships ◽

Tactile Perception ◽

Efficacy And Safety ◽

Consumption Activity ◽

Orientation Ability

Patients suffering from urinary incontinence are still nowadays mostly treated with oxybutynin. Using ants as models, we found that this drug decreased their food consumption, orientation ability, tactile perception, cognition and memory, induced restlessness and stress, impacted their social relationships and leaded to dependence. No adaptation occurred to these side effects. The action of oxybutynin quickly vanished in 10 hours. Most of these side effects corresponded to those observed in humans (on whom effects on food consumption, activity, cognition and anxiousness can be observed), and some others were observed in ants (impact on social relationships, dependence on the drug and absence of adaptation to its side effects). Ants appear thus to be valuable models for revealing side effects of a drug. On the basis of our results and of those reported in the literature, it can be concluded that patients treated with oxybutynin should be carefully monitored as for their risk of developing adverse effects, even unexpected ones. Novel, safer medicines, presenting a better balance between efficacy and safety should be researched.

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Side effects of the cough drug dextromethorphan, studied on ants as models

MOJ Biology and Medicine ◽

10.15406/mojbm.2021.06.00128 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 40-50

Author(s):

Marie Claire Cammaerts ◽

Roger Cammaerts

Keyword(s):

Side Effects ◽

Food Consumption ◽

Social Relationships ◽

Pain Perception ◽

Limited Time ◽

Biological Models ◽

Therapeutic Doses ◽

Orientation Ability

Dextromethorphan, the currently preferred cough drug, tested on ants used as biological models, decreased the food consumption of these insects, increased their sinuosity of movement, reduced their tactile (pain) perception, and impacted their social relationships. It did not affect the ants’ orientation ability, audacity, cognition, conditioning acquisition and memory. The ants did not adapt themselves to the side effects of dextromethorphan and became dependent on its consumption. The effect of the drug quickly and linearly decreased after weaning, becoming very weak after 4 – 6 hours and null after 10 – 12 hours. Dextromethorphan led to dependence, what can also occur in humans. Being safer than previously used cough drugs, dextromethorphan can be consumed for treating dry cough, but in order to prevent dependence, should be used only at therapeutic doses and during a limited time.

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Safety of glucosamine, examined on ants as models

MOJ Biology and Medicine ◽

10.15406/mojbm.2018.03.00088 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 132-142

Author(s):

Marie-Claire Cammaerts ◽

Roger Cammaerts

Keyword(s):

Adverse Effect ◽

Beneficial Effect ◽

Learning And Memory ◽

Social Relationship ◽

Severe Adverse Effect ◽

Physiological Effects ◽

Body Movements ◽

Relationship Cognition ◽

Cells Death

Arthritis is one of the most spread illnesses and is treated using essentially glucosamine. Since some years, the efficiency and even the safety of this drug is debated. Indeed, a placebo has often an effect similar to that of glucosamine, and in some cases, this drug appeared to induce cells’ death. In the present work, we examined the ethological and physiological effects of glucosamine using ants as models. No severe adverse effect was found: the ants’ sensitive perception, social relationship, cognition, learning and memory were not impacted by glucosamine consumption. Moreover, this drug leaded to no dependence, and its effect slowly vanished in about 14hours after weaning. Glucosamine only increased the ants’ activity and locomotion. Body movements are known as being beneficial to patients suffering from arthritis. Therefore, we cautiously hypothesize that one potential beneficial effect of glucosamine may result from an increase of activity and locomotion it induces.

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Challenging the safety and efficiency of homeopathy: Ignatia amara as an example, ants as models

MOJ Biology and Medicine ◽

10.15406/mojbm.2019.04.00105 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Marie-Claire Cammaerts ◽

David Cammaerts

Keyword(s):

Adverse Effects ◽

Social Relationship ◽

Pharmaceutical Drugs ◽

Biological Models ◽

Stress Symptoms ◽

Homeopathic Drug ◽

Efficient Alternative ◽

Homeopathic Drugs ◽

Orientation Ability ◽

Specific Health

Homeopathic treatments are considered by the vast majority of the scientific community as non-effective, apart from a well-documented placebo effect. Nevertheless, some experimental results raise questions about their efficiency, and numerous practitioners still consider homeopathy as an efficient alternative treatment instead of usual pharmaceutical drugs. Homeopathy is thus nowadays debated among the general public, practitioners and medical schools, and is still used by many patients in search for “natural” treatments. It is therefore relevant to bring information to feed this debate and to investigate the efficiency and safety of homeopathic drugs. We examined on ants, used as biological models, the effects of a homeopathic drug, Ignatia amara, advocated to ease symptoms of stress. We tested the effects of thus drug on ant’s ethological and physiological traits (1) under normal condition, then (2) under a stressing situation. We found that (1) this drug was not without adverse effects but slightly impacted some ants’ traits; (2) this drug could reduce the adverse effects caused by the stressing situation. It nearly fully restored the ants’ locomotion, orientation ability, audacity, tactile perception, brood caring, social relationship, escaping behavior, cognition, and slightly the memory. No adaptation and no habituation to the effects of Ignatia amara occurred, and no dependence on its consumption developed. The causes and mechanisms of these effects remain unknown to us, but our results support the hypothesis that, in some given cases, for some specific health problems, and using adequate product(s) and dose(s), a homeopathic treatment based on Ignata amara extracts could help patients to recover from stress symptoms.

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Continuous VA deficiency during postnatal development decreases rat learning and memory function via excitatory Ca2+neuron

Cell Biology International ◽

10.1042/cbi034s018a ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 34 (8) ◽

pp. S18-S18

Author(s):

Wei Jiang ◽

Enyi Wen ◽

Min Gong ◽

Yang Bi ◽

Xiaojuan Zhang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Postnatal Development ◽

Learning And Memory ◽

Memory Function

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Influence of Maternal Education on Food Consumption and Energy and Nutrient Intake in a Group of Pre-School Children from Madrid

International Journal for Vitamin and Nutrition Research ◽

10.1024/0300-9831.73.6.439 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 73 (6) ◽

pp. 439-445 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Navia ◽

Ortega ◽

Requejo ◽

Perea ◽

López-Sobaler ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Food Consumption ◽

School Children ◽

Food Habits ◽

Nutrient Intake ◽

Maternal Education ◽

Statistical Significance ◽

Dietary Adequacy ◽

Consumption Energy ◽

Maternal Educational Level ◽

Energy And Nutrient Intake

A study was conducted on the influence of maternal education level on food consumption, energy and nutrient intake, and dietary adequacy in 110 pre-school children from Madrid, Spain. With increasing maternal education, children consumed more sugar (p < 0.05), fruit (p < 0.05), and fish (p < 0.05). Snacking was more frequent with decreasing maternal education (p < 0.05). Though statistical significance was not reached, the consumption of pre-cooked foods was greater among children of mothers educated to a higher level, a phenomenon probably related to the work situation of these women. With respect to dietary composition, no significant differences were found between groups for macronutrient, fiber and energy intakes, except for energy supplied by polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), which was greater in the children of less educated women (p < 0.01). This is probably due to their greater consumption of sunflower seed oil. The diets of children belonging to well-educated mothers came closer to meeting the recommended intakes for folate, vitamin C, and iodine. It would seem that maternal educational level influences the food habits of children. Mothers with less education may require special advice in this area.

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Relation Between Level of Prefrontal Activity and Subject's Performance

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027//0269-8803.13.2.117 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 117-125 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Laurence Casini ◽

Françoise Macar ◽

Marie-Hélène Giard

Keyword(s):

Brain Activity ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Practice Phase ◽

Trained Subjects ◽

Anagram Task ◽

Economic Information ◽

Long Duration ◽

Level Of Activity ◽

The Brain ◽

Processing Mechanism

Abstract The experiment reported here was aimed at determining whether the level of brain activity can be related to performance in trained subjects. Two tasks were compared: a temporal and a linguistic task. An array of four letters appeared on a screen. In the temporal task, subjects had to decide whether the letters remained on the screen for a short or a long duration as learned in a practice phase. In the linguistic task, they had to determine whether the four letters could form a word or not (anagram task). These tasks allowed us to compare the level of brain activity obtained in correct and incorrect responses. The current density measures recorded over prefrontal areas showed a relationship between the performance and the level of activity in the temporal task only. The level of activity obtained with correct responses was lower than that obtained with incorrect responses. This suggests that a good temporal performance could be the result of an efficacious, but economic, information-processing mechanism in the brain. In addition, the absence of this relation in the anagram task results in the question of whether this relation is specific to the processing of sensory information only.

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Men’s Hunger, Food Consumption, and Preferences for Female Body Types

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000210 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (6) ◽

pp. 495-497 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Nicolas Guéguen

Keyword(s):

Food Consumption ◽

Female Body ◽

The Body ◽

Slender Body ◽

Mediation Effect ◽

Point Scale ◽

Body Type ◽

Experimental Conditions

Nelson and Morrison (2005 , study 3) reported that men who feel hungry preferred heavier women. The present study replicates these results by using real photographs of women and examines the mediation effect of hunger scores. Men were solicited while entering or leaving a restaurant and asked to report their hunger on a 10-point scale. Afterwards, they were presented with three photographs of a woman in a bikini: One with a slim body type, one with a slender body type, and one with a slightly chubby body. The participants were asked to indicate their preference. Results showed that the participants entering the restaurant preferred the chubby body type more while satiated men preferred the thinner or slender body types. It was also found that the relation between experimental conditions and the choices of the body type was mediated by men’s hunger scores.

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