In Drosophila multiple circadian oscillators and behavioral rhythms are known to exist, yet most previous studies that attempted to understand circadian entrainment have focused on the activity/rest rhythm and to some extent the adult emergence rhythm. Egg laying behavior of Drosophila females also follows circadian rhythmicity and has been seen to deviate substantially from the better characte...

Serotonin has been implicated in the regulation of a wide range of brain functions involving alternative behavioral states, including the control of mood, aggression, sex, and sleep. Here, we report that in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, serotonin controls a switch between two distinct, on/off states of egg-laying behavior. Through quantitative analysis of the temporal pattern of egg-layi...

Studies were made on the number of egg clutch, copulating pairs, duration of mating, duration of egg laying, and weight of egg clutch of Pila globosa by inducing it with Pituitary Gland (PG) and Optic Tentacle cut (OT) under laboratory condition. The effect of inducing the animal with PG and OT cut showed that it resulted in an increase in the number of egg clutch in comparison with that of the...

A completely randomized design experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding different levels (0, 2.5, 5.0, 10.0, 20.0%) of guar meal (GM) in laying hen diets over a 8-wk trial period. A total of 180 Hisex laying hens (25wk old) of similar body weight were randomly distributed among 5 treatments with 6 replicates with 6 hens each. Body weight, body weight gain, egg produced per hen...

The recognized importance of coffee alkaloids and phenolics mediating insect-plant interactions led to the present investigation aiming to test the hypothesis that the phenolics chlorogenic and caffeic acids and the alkaloid caffeine and some of its derivatives present in coffee leaves affect egg-laying by the coffee leaf miner Leucoptera (=Perileucoptera) coffeella (Guérin-Méneville & Perrotte...

OBJECTIVE An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of superdosing phytase on productive performance and egg quality in laying hens. METHODS A total of 200 42-wk-old Hy-Line Brown laying hens were allotted into 1 of 5 dietary treatments with 5 replicates consisting of 8 hens per replicate. The positive control (PC) and negative control diets (NC) were prepared based on the recommend...

The trials were conducted to assess the effects of long-term feeding with phytase transgenic corn (PTC) to hens on laying performance and egg quality, and investigate the fate of transgenic DNA and protein in digesta, blood, tissues, and eggs. Fifty-week old laying hens (n = 144) were fed with a diet containing 62.4% PTC or non-transgenic isogenic control corn (CC) for 16 weeks. We observed tha...

Stingless bees may produce both large queens and "miniature" queens, but the adaptive significance of this is uncertain. Using biometry and statistical analysis we determined the proportion of miniature queens in Plebeia remota that were either mated (14%) or virgin (45%). Mated queens were mostly normalsized which indicated that they were more successful. Nevertheless, the presence of miniatur...

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of different levels of L-carnitine on productive performance, egg quality and blood parameters in laying hens. Forty-eight Hy-Line W-36 egg Layers were weighed at 90 weeks of age and randomly allocated into 16 cages (three hens per cage). Four dietary treatments were prepared by supplementing L-carnitine (0, 50, 100 and 150 mg/kg of diet)...

Rice bran (RB) is a major by-product, produced from the rice milling process. This study was conducted to evaluate the performance, egg quality, and blood biochemical parameters of 288 Hy-line laying hens fed diets with rice bran and commercial microbial phytase Natuphos®5000. The experiment was a 4×2 factorial one with four RB levels (0, 5, 10, and 15%) by two phytase levels (0 and 5000 FTU/kg...