Current investigations regarding social stress primarily focus on the health consequences of being in stressful social hierarchies. The repetitive nature of social conflicts seems to favor an induction of hyperalgesia or hypoalgesia, both in rodents and humans. Additionally, social conflicts may affect the immune system. In order to better establish the pain and immune responses to stress, the ...

The objective of this study was to investigate the possible link between cadmium exposure, hepatic markers of oxidative stress and aggressive behavior in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus). Fish were first exposed to 0.75 mg/L CdCl2 for 15 days (12 isolated fish for each group) and afterward a behavioral test was performed. Fish from the control and cadmium-exposed groups were paired for 1 h ...

A subordinate Brownian motion is a Lévy process that can be obtained by replacing the time of the Brownian motion by an independent subordinator. The infinitesimal generator of a subordinate Brownian motion is −φ(−Δ), where φ is the Laplace exponent of the subordinator. In this paper, we consider a large class of subordinate Brownian motions without diffusion component and with φ comparable to ...

In this paper, we consider a large class of subordinate Brownian motions X via subordinators with Laplace exponents which are complete Bernstein functions satisfying some mild scaling conditions at zero and at infinity. We first discuss how such conditions govern the behavior of the subordinator and the corresponding subordinate Brownian motion for both large and small time and space. Then we e...

Perceptual categorization at the basic level is generally faster than categorization at more superordinate or subordinate level [Rosch, E., Mervis, C. B., Gray, W. D., Johnson, D. M., & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 8(3), 382-439]. But, what does it mean to be fastest? One possibility is that levels of abstraction that are categorized fastest...

Evidence is contradictory regarding the effects of natural or surgical menopause on "female protection" against coronary artery atherosclerosis. We evaluated atherosclerosis, plasma lipids, blood pressure, and carbohydrate tolerance in 21 ovariectomized and 23 intact female cynomolgus macaques fed a moderately atherogenic diet for 30 months. We also evaluated the influence of social dominance s...

Socially subordinate female common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) have markedly lower plasma cortisol levels than dominant females. Subordinate females also undergo hypoestrogenemic anovulation, and estrogen can elevate glucocorticoid levels. Therefore, we previously hypothesized that this cortisol difference is mediated by rank-related differences in reproductive hormones, probably estradiol. ...

The present study examined the effects of maternal social status, with subordinate status being a chronic stressor, on development and activity of the stress axis in zebrafish embryos and larvae. Female zebrafish were confined in pairs for 48 h to establish dominant/subordinate hierarchies; their offspring were reared to 144 h post-fertilization (hpf) and sampled at five time points over develo...

Abstract. The relative contribution of prior experience and of size asymmetries to the determination of dyadic dominance between unfamiliar individuals was examined using pairs of green swordtail fish, Xiphophorus helleri. Three experiments were conducted to assess the extent to which superiority in size could override potential handicaps resulting from prior experience. These results indicated...

In cooperative animal societies, dominant females typically show higher breeding success than subordinates, and are commonly believed to control the extent of reproductive sharing. However, studies of social insect societies reveal that subordinates too can interfere with the breeding attempts of others, with important implications for the distribution of fitness within colonies. Here, we show ...