introduction: this study was designed to investigate the effects of music in wistar rats after sub-chronic treatment of simvastatin. the rats were orally administered with either simvastatin or saline (controls). after 4 weeks of drug treatment, the rats were selected for behavioral studies. the rats were exposed to music 24 hours before behavioral tests (mozart’s piano sonata, kv361, largo). r...

If acquired associations are to accurately represent real relevance relations, there is motivation for the hypothesis that learning will, in some circumstances, be more appropriately modelled, not as direct dependence, but as conditional independence. In a serial compound conditioning experiment, two groups of rats were presented with a conditioned stimulus (CS1) that imperfectly (50%) predicte...

Direct reciprocity, according to the decision rule 'help someone who has helped you before', reflects cooperation based on the principle of postponed benefits. A predominant factor influencing Homo sapiens' motivation to reciprocate is an individual's perceived benefit resulting from the value of received help. But hitherto it has been unclear whether other species also base their decision to c...

Understanding interactions among nonindigenous species that pose a threat to native species is crucial to effectively preserve native biodiversity. Captive feeding trials demonstrated that the black rat, Rattus rattus, will readily consume two of the most destructive nonindigenous snails, the giant African snail, Achatina fulica (100% predation), and the predatory snail Euglandina rosea (80% pr...

Leptospirosis is a zoonosis known to be endemic in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, even though clinical reports are uncommon. We investigated leptospira infection in rats purchased in food markets during the rainy season (October) (n=150), as well as those trapped during the dry season (February-March) (n=125) in the region using RT-PCR for the lipL32 gene, confirmed by 16S rRNA, as well as by the...

background: the species of ectoparasites that live on a specific host in a geographical region form an ectoparasite community. species abundance distributions describe the number of individuals observed for each different species that is encountered within a community. based on properties of the species abundance distribution, the expected total number of species present in the community can be...

Although mammals are a well-studied group of animals, making accurate field identification of small mammals is still complex because of morphological variation across developmental stages, color variation of pelages, and often damaged osteological and dental characteristics. In 2008, small mammals were collected for an epidemiological study of a spotted fever outbreak in Hainan, China. Ten spec...