© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org G ecosystems worldwide are fundamentally shaped by an underappreciated but key functional group of social, semi-fossorial (adapted to burrowing and living underground), herbivorous mammals (hereafter, burrowing mammals). Examples include not only the phylogenetically similar species of prairie dogs of North America (Cynomys spp); gr...

Decades of research in the area of developmental psychobiology have shown that early life experience alters behavioral and brain development, which canalizes development to suit different environments. Recent methodological advances have begun to identify the mechanisms by which early life experiences cause these diverse adult outcomes. Here we present four different research programs that demo...

Jetlag results when a temporary loss of circadian entrainment alters phase relationships among internal rhythms and between an organism and the outside world. After a large shift in the light-dark (LD) cycle, rapid recovery of entrainment minimizes the negative effects of internal circadian disorganization. There is evidence in the existing literature for an activation of the hypothalamic-pitui...

Michael Gruss Jörg Bock Carina Helmeke Soeren Westerholz Katharina Braun Department of Developmental Neurobiology, Institute of Biology Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg, Germany ABSTRACT: Decades of research in the area of developmental psychobiology have shown that early life experience alters behavioral and brain development, which canalizes development to suit different envir...

THE PRIMARY CLOCK MECHANISM controlling most of the circadian patterns in mammals resides in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). It appears that the feedback loops that control the 24-h period of circadian rhythms are the same in diurnal and nocturnal species (6), and yet the timing of daily peaks and nadirs of many circadian rhythms (e.g., activity, sleep, body temperature, corticosteroid relea...

BORKOVCOVÁ, M.: Parasitocenoses in productional rodent breeds in Czech Republic. Acta univ. agric. et silvic. Mendel. Brun., 2009, LVII, No. 1, pp. 27–34 Aim of this work was to monitor the occurrence of most common parasites of rodents in 13 commercial and hobby breeds. Most o en detected protozoans belonged to genera Giardia, Eimeria and Cryptosporidium, tapeworms Hymenolepis nana and H. dimi...

Astrocytes, once considered as merely supporting cells in the brain by only assisting neuronal functions are now implicated to play crucial roles in neuronal migration, establishment and maturation of synaptic contacts during early development. Relatively, only few reports have shown the impact of the neonatal environment on glial plasticity in higher associative brain regions as the medial pre...

Following intraocular injection of cholera toxin subunit B (CTB), optic afferents to the dorsal pontine region were observed in Mongolian gerbils, Chilean degus, and laboratory rats. CTB-positive optic axons emerge at the caudal pole of the superior colliculus, descend through the periaqueductal gray, and innervate the lateral parabrachial nucleus. This projection appears to be a continuation o...