Perspectives and Attitudes towards the Functional and Safety Aspects of Seaweeds for Edible Applications in India

Seaweeds are inevitable resources of nutrition bearing favorable rheological characteristics, which has resulted in their inclusion in a variety of daily consumer products. India, with its vast coastline and over 1000 species of seaweeds, presents tremendous potential to bring this resource into nutraceuticals and the food sector. The present survey was designed for the Indian population, which was further classified according to diet preferences, age groups, gender and various occupations. Their perceptions regarding nutritional aspects, sensory views, safety hazards and resource reliability were recorded. Among all groups studied, gender represented significant differences upon the various safety opinions recorded (p < 0.001) compared to the occupations, age groups and diet preferences studied. In addition, the dataset revealed the pro-phycological behavior of consumers subjected to vital concerns about bioresource reliability and pre-processing to avoid health hazards related to wild harvest or on-shore cultivated samples. In addition, consumer responses also revealed potential inhibitory factors in edible applications such as taste and smell. This study suggests that collaborative efforts among media, culinary experts and phycologists could play a pivotal role in promoting seaweeds in the rapidly expanding food sector industry of India.

Understanding of Various Diet Preferences and Cognizance about Zoonotic Diseases

Diet preferences are dependent on one’s culture and habitat and play an indispensable role in the prevention, and management of various health issues. The high prevalence and persistence of food-related diseases are ramifying the human population globally. Although many are preventable through practices of adhering to healthy dietary patterns, and engaging in physical activity. The preponderance of evidence to date suggests that a plant-based diet can be protective and potentially curative for several chronic degenerative diseases and reduces the risk of zoonotic diseases. The present study was designed to analyse various diet preferences and awareness level about their role in the spread of zoonotic diseases amidst covid-19 pandemic. The present cross-sectional study was conducted online with 757 randomly selected subjects residing in Delhi and NCR of India in the month of May-June, 2020. It was observed that 53.9% of subjects preferred a vegetarian diet. For a very high percentage (88.7%) of the subject’s selection criteria for a particular diet, was health quotient. 82.2% of subjects believed that meat consumption increases susceptibility to various infectious diseases including zoonotic diseases. However, only 40.5%, non-vegetarian subjects were willing to adopt a plant-based diet after the Covid-19 outbreak. It was found that majority of vegetarian and non-vegetarian subjects believed that eating animal products lead to spreading of zoonotic diseases. Key words: Covid-19, Diet preference, Health, Vegetarian, Non-vegetarian, Zoonotic diseases.

Comparative Study of the Cranio-osteology of Two Lonchophyllinae from Colombia

Lonchophyllinae comprises four genera of Neotropical nectarivorous bats. Inside this subfamily the genus Lonchophylla is one of the most diverse. A total of 51 Lonchophylla skulls from Colombia (L. robusta n=34 and L. thomasi n=17) was studied by means of geometric morphometric methods with the aim to determine their morphological differential characteristics. For this purpose, viscero and neurocranium were evaluated with 12 landmarks on the dorsal aspect of left hemicranium. The two species were statistically different according to size (expressed as skull length) but also to shape (expressed as the set of Procrustes coordinates). Skulls in L. robusta were clearly bigger, with shorter braincase and longer rostra, and their zygomatic process was more latero-caudally displaced, whereas L. thomasi presented a zygomatic process which was displaced more rostrally as well longer braincases. All these detected skull form dissimilarities between both species would be explained by their different alimentary habits, but a combination of dietary analysis and morphological analysis is needed to make stronger inference about diet preferences.

Reliable Phylogenetic Regressions for Multivariate Comparative Data: Illustration with the MANOVA and Application to the Effect of Diet on Mandible Morphology in Phyllostomid Bats

Understanding what shapes species phenotypes over macroevolutionary timescales from comparative data often requires studying the relationship between phenotypes and putative explanatory factors or testing for differences in phenotypes across species groups. In phyllostomid bats for example, is mandible morphology associated to diet preferences? Performing such analyses depends upon reliable phylogenetic regression techniques and associated tests (e.g., phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares, pGLS, and phylogenetic analyses of variance and covariance, pANOVA, pANCOVA). While these tools are well established for univariate data, their multivariate counterparts are lagging behind. This is particularly true for high-dimensional phenotypic data, such as morphometric data. Here, we implement much-needed likelihood-based multivariate pGLS, pMANOVA, and pMANCOVA, and use a recently developed penalized-likelihood framework to extend their application to the difficult case when the number of traits $p$ approaches or exceeds the number of species $n$. We then focus on the pMANOVA and use intensive simulations to assess the performance of the approach as $p$ increases, under various levels of phylogenetic signal and correlations between the traits, phylogenetic structure in the predictors, and under various types of phenotypic differences across species groups. We show that our approach outperforms available alternatives under all circumstances, with greater power to detect phenotypic differences across species group when they exist, and a lower risk of improperly detecting nonexistent differences. Finally, we provide an empirical illustration of our pMANOVA on a geometric-morphometric data set describing mandible morphology in phyllostomid bats along with data on their diet preferences. Overall our results show significant differences between ecological groups. Our approach, implemented in the R package mvMORPH and illustrated in a tutorial for end-users, provides efficient multivariate phylogenetic regression tools for understanding what shapes phenotypic differences across species. [Generalized least squares; high-dimensional data sets; multivariate phylogenetic comparative methods; penalized likelihood; phenomics; phyllostomid bats; phylogenetic MANOVA; phylogenetic regression.]

Allelic Variation in Taste Genes Is Associated with Taste and Diet Preferences and Dental Caries

Taste and diet preferences are complex and influenced by both environmental and host traits while affecting both food selection and associated health outcomes. The present study genotyped 94 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in previously reported taste and food intake related genes and assessed associations with taste threshold (TT) and preferred intensity (PT) of sweet, sour and bitter, food preferences, habitual diet intake, and caries status in healthy young Swedish men and women (n = 127). Polymorphisms in the GNAT3, SLC2A4, TAS1R1 and TAS1R2 genes were associated with variation in TT and PT for sweet taste as well as sweet food intake. Increasing PT for sweet was associated with increasing preference and intake of sugary foods. Similarly, increasing TT for sour was associated with increasing intake of sour foods, whereas the associations between food preference/intake and TT/PT for bitter was weak in this study group. Finally, allelic variation in the GNAT3, SLC2A2, SLC2A4, TAS1R1 and TAS1R2 genes was associated with caries status, whereas TT, PT and food preferences were not. It was concluded that variations in taste receptor, glucose transporter and gustducin encoding genes are related to taste perception, food preference and intake as well as the sugar-dependent caries disease.