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Sean Nash

Foraging ants navigate more efficiently when given energy-drink-like doses of caffeine ... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240523112447.htm

ants learning memory caffeine navigation poison bait uptake efficiency invasive insects zoology HSR HSR-2025 science behavioralscience biology potential research idea

shared by Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • Ants who receive a caffeine-laced sugary reward become more efficient at navigating back to the reward's location compared to ants that only receive sugar. Researchers report on May 23 in the journal iScience that caffeinated ants move toward the reward via a more direct path but do not increase their speed, suggesting that caffeine improved their ability to learn.
  • "The idea with this project was to find some cognitive way of getting the ants to consume more of the poisonous baits we put in the field,"
  • it pushes them into having straighter paths and being able to reach the reward faster
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Control efforts, which focus on using poisonous baits, have proven ineffective, likely due to low bait uptake and bait abandonment. The researchers wanted to test whether using caffeine, which has been shown to improve learning in honeybees and bumblebees, might improve the ants' ability to learn the bait location and guide their nestmates back there
  • The ants walked down a Lego drawbridge onto a testing platform -- an A4 sheet of paper overlaying an acrylic surface -- on which the researchers had placed a drop of sucrose solution laced with 0, 25 ppm, 250 ppm, or 2,000 ppm of caffeine
  • The lowest dose we used is what you find in natural plants, the intermediate dose is similar to what you would find in some energy drinks, and the highest amount is set to be the LD50 of bees -- where half the bees fed this dose die -- so it's likely to be quite toxic for them," says Galante.
  • Overall, they tested 142 ants, and each ant was tested four times
  • Foraging time dropped by 28% per visit for ants that received 25 ppm of caffeine and by 38% per visit for ants that received 250 ppm of caffeine, meaning that if an ant took 300 s in its first visit, by the final trial, it would be expected to take 113 s at the low caffeine dose and 54 s at the intermediate dose. This effect was not seen at the highest caffeine dose.
  • The researchers showed that caffeine lowered the ants' foraging times by making them more efficient, not by making them speedier. There was no effect of caffeine on the ants' pace at any dosage, but ants that received low to intermediate doses of caffeine trips traveled by less tortuous paths. "What we see is that they're not moving faster, they're just being more focused on where they're going," says Galante. "This suggests that they know where they want to go, therefore, they have learned the locations of the reward."
  • Henrique Galante, Massimo De Agrò, Alexandra Koch, Stefanie Kau, Tomer J. Czaczkes. Acute exposure to caffeine improves foraging in an invasive ant. iScience, 2024; 109935 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109935
emmarrogers

Frequent mowing puts poisonous weed into survival mode | ScienceDaily - 1 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240603195751.htm

HSR HSR-2025 behavior biology environmental potential research idea botany

shared by emmarrogers on 04 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • The taproot went down further
  • More spikes popped out on the stem
  • The flowers became more toxic
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Although studies have often highlighted weed fitness and defense traits resulting from disturbances like mowing, most were limited to foliar, or leaf, defenses, Kariyat said. That changed when Vasquez and fellow master's biology students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley monitored fields of mowed, unmowed and frequently mowed silverleaf nightshade in and around Edinburg, Texas.
  • "Alejandro's question was, 'how do these flowers differ between mowed and unmowed plants?'"
  • "You are trying to mow these plants so that the plants are getting eliminated," Kariyat said. "But what you are actually doing here, you are making them much worse, much stronger."
  • The observations of mowed, unmowed and frequently mowed areas with silverleaf nightshade provide evidence that could prompt further studies by weed scientists on best management practices, Kariyat said.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 04 Jun 24
       
      Again... when you see a callout like this for more research in an area... especially one that might be feasible with some serious planning/organization... you might be on to something.
  • the study does provide more insight into the defensive capabilities of plants pitted against human disturbance
  • "Continuous mowing differentially affects floral defenses in the noxious and invasive weed Solanum elaeagnifolium in its native range."
  • Journal Reference: Alejandro Vasquez, Alexa Alaniz, Robert Dearth, Rupesh Kariyat. Continuous mowing differentially affects floral defenses in the noxious and invasive weed Solanum elaeagnifolium in its native range. Scientific Reports, 2024; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-58672-w
  • Solanum ptychanthum or black nightshade, and Solanum carolinense, or Carolina horsenettle, also produce toxic berries and are native to Arkansas.
    • emmarrogers
      emmarrogers on 04 Jun 24
       
      Could we possibly research different types of weeds similar to the silver Nightshade, like one of these plants?
  • Sean Nash on 04 Jun 24
     
    There is a TON of data that can be measured & analyzed in a study like this. Easier to do in a less time-dependent way in the lab, but easier and more realistic (in vivo) to do if you have access to similar fields that are mowed and unmowed to differing extents. So many variables to examine and consider here for how plants may change physiologically based upon how we interact with them. This goes beyond that analogy I always use for fast evolution in Honors Biology: how dandelion populations become shorter based upon frequent mowing. This gets into the physiological responses. Very cool methinks.
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