Caenorhabditis elegans regulates egg laying by alternating between an inactive phase and a serotonin-triggered active phase. We found that the conserved ERG [ether-a-go-go (EAG) related gene] potassium channel UNC-103 enables this two-state behavior by limiting excitability of the egg-laying muscles. Using both high-speed video recording and calcium imaging of egg-laying muscles in behaving ani...

Drosophila melanogaster females are highly selective about the chemosensory quality of their egg-laying sites, an important trait that promotes the survival and fitness of their offspring. How egg-laying females respond to UV light is not known, however. UV is a well-documented phototactic cue for adult Drosophila, but it is an aversive cue for larvae. Here, we show that female flies exhibit UV...

In this paper, vocalizations of laying hens (Hyline Brown) were focused. An experiment was designed to obtain acoustic features of laying hens with different ages: 35days-old, 95days-old and 125days-old. Vocalizations were recorded by the microphone MPA201. Analysis was done by some analytical software in order to gain time-domain features and frequency-domain properties of laying hens’ sound. ...

Concerns regarding the welfare of laying hens have led to the ban of conventional battery cages in Europe from 2012 onward and to the development of alternative housing systems that allow hens to perform a broader range of natural behaviors. Limited information is available about the consequences of alternative housing systems on transmission of zoonotic pathogens such as Salmonella Enteritidis...

Session Information for Program Number 452B Print Close window Abstract Content Program Nr: Modulation of egg-laying behavior by the environment and experience. , Bob Horvitz. HHMI, Dept. of Biology, MIT, Cambridge, MA. The egg-laying behavior of C. elegans is modulated by the environment and experience. When a wellfed hermaphrodite is removed from a food source, the animal stops laying eggs. W...

Laying hens may face a number of welfare problems including: acute and chronic pain caused by beak trimming; exaggerated fearfulness that may cause stress and suffocation; difficulties in locating resources, resulting potentially in emaciation and dehydration; frustration and boredom, caused by an environment that is barren; feather pecking; cannibalism; foot lesions; and bone fractures. In Eur...

Organisms theoretically manage their immune systems optimally across their life spans to maximize fitness. However, we lack information on (1) how the immune system is managed across life-history stages, (2) whether the sexes manage immunity differentially, and (3) whether immunity is repeatable within an individual. We present a within-individual, repeated-measures experiment examining life-hi...