Annual Report 2009 - Department of Zoology - University of ...

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Research in the Department The Department’s research activities are organised into eight research groups, including Department members of the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology. The following pages briefly summarise each group’s research interests and members, and highlight a piece of research carried out in 2009. Animal Physiology The Animal Physiology Group’s greatest strength is in comparative animal physiology, offering a breadth of expertise and graduate training for a wide range of techniques, focusing on the model systems provided by arthropods and vertebrates. Research is conducted at a number of different levels of biological organisation, from biochemical and tissue to organismal and ecological, and includes a mixture of laboratory and field-based studies. We aim to understand the structural and functional capacities of organisms, their abilities to respond to environmental extremes, and how physiological adaptations to locomotion, activity metabolism and ion transport have arisen through evolutionary time. Charlie Ellington studies the aerodynamics, mechanics and physiology of insect flight, within the broader field of biomechanics. Simon Maddrell studies epithelial transport of insect Malpighian tubules and its control by peptides and other blood-borne agents. Walter Federle investigates the physical ecology of insect-plant interactions and the mechanisms of surface adhesion in animals. Ulrike Bauer: Plant-animal interactions in Nepenthes pitcher plants James Bullock: Design and function of fibrillar adhesive systems in insects Christofer Clemente: Evolution of lizard locomotion, insect biomechanics Kristin De-Clercq: Fluid membrane-interaction in flapping flight Jan-Henning Dirks: Fluid-based adhesion in insects Thomas Endlein: Locomotion and adhesion in ants Insect adhesive pads are self-cleaning Walter Federle Many insects, spiders, frogs and lizards have special organs on their legs that allow them to cling to smooth vertical or inverted surfaces as found on plants. A major problem for everyday adhesives such as sticky post-it notes is that they accumulate dust and lose adhesion when used more than a few times. However, animals must keep their pads sticky over millions of steps in a lifetime. They could achieve this either by diligent cleaning with their mouthparts or more elegantly by self-cleaning properties of the pads themselves. Chris Clemente, Part II student Andrew Beale, James Bullock and Walter Federle studied how smooth pads of stick insects (Carausius morosus) and hairy pads of beetles (Gastrophysa viridula) are affected by contamination. Using microspheres of different diameters, we found that both types of pads exhibit self-cleaning. Even when fully contaminated, pads recovered high levels of adhesion over only eight simulated steps. Self-cleaning was strongly enhanced by shear movements, and only the beetles’ hairy pads were able to selfclean during purely perpendicular pull-offs. Hairy pads also self-cleaned more efficiently than smooth pads for large (45 µm) and small (1 µm) particle sizes. However, the beetles’ self-cleaning was much slower when contaminated with intermediate-sized (10 µm) beads. This limitation of self-cleaning was explained by the coincidence of bead diameter and inter-seta distance, which caused the beads to remain trapped between setae. Further work will now address the underlying mechanisms of self-cleaning. 11 Yanjia Gao: The control algorithm and stability of flight in insects and MAVs Jamie Gundry: Aerodynamics of hoverfly flight Karin Moll: Biomechanics of the foraging behaviour in grass-cutting ants Sean Ng: Laminar-turbulent transition in animal flight Anne Peattie: Fibrillar adhesion in spiders Jay Riegel: Fluid transport across tissues Dan Thornham: Nepenthes pitcher traps and counteradaptations of specialised ants Hairy adhesive pads of dock beetle (Gastrophysa viridula) contaminated by 45-µm latex beads
Behaviour and Behavioural Neuroscience A full understanding of behaviour necessitates a multi-level approach in which molecular, cellular and physiological data are considered in the evolutionary context of the behaviour of whole organisms. The Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour at Madingley has pioneered and continues to exploit this approach. Barry Keverne works on two aspects of epigenetic gene regulation important for mammalian evolution. These include genomic imprinting and its significance in the coadaptive evolution of the brain and placenta. The second area of interest is epigenetic modification of regenerating vomeronasal precursor neurons in establishing adaptable functional changes in response to social environmental changes. Brian McCabe and Gabriel Horn study the neural mechanisms of learning and memory, mainly using filial imprinting in the domestic chick as a model system. Current research is focused on biochemical and electrophysiological changes associated with imprinting and the role of sleep in memory consolidation. A further interest is young animals’ predispositions to direct their attention to certain biologically relevant stimuli, thereby influencing the course of subsequent learning. Pat Bateson models these processes and investigates the environmental epigenetic effects of stress on behaviour. Nick Mundy’s principal interest is in the molecular genetic basis of evolutionary change, particularly in signaling and sensory systems in primates. Chris Bird: The use of video playback techniques in corvid behavioural research Kevin Broad: Co-adaptive evolution of brain and placenta – a template for foetal programming and adult phenotypes Why is there variation in colour vision ability among marmosets? Nick Mundy 12 Ira Federspiel: Social learning and personality in rooks, jackdaws and Eurasian jays Joan Stevenson-Hinde: Maternal anxiety, behavioural inhibition, and patterns of attachment Stephen Town: The role of context in filial imprinting Primates are well-known for having superior colour vision to other eutherian mammals but there is actually a large amount of diversity of colour vision among primates. In most species of New World monkeys there is even variation within species: a proportion of the females have full trichromatic colour vision as found in most humans, whereas the remaining females and all males are dichromatic, roughly equivalent to red-green colourblindness. This variation has a simple genetic basis. We have been studying the selective forces acting on this extraordinary polymorphism in Geoffroy’s marmoset (Callithrix geoffroyi) in collaboration with Nancy Caine at the University of San Marcos, California, and Daniel Osorio at the University of Sussex. In earlier work we demonstrated the expected Cottontop tamarin advantage of trichromatic females in foraging for red food against a green background. If this was the only factor, however, we would expect all individuals to be trichromatic, leading to the suggestion that there are likely to be situations in which dichromatic monkeys outperform trichromats on visual tasks. In new work we have now shown that dichromats are better at finding food items in lower light intensity conditions (shade) than trichromats. This result is interesting because it cannot easily be explained by the physiology of colour vision, suggesting that there is a strong learnt component to this ability, which could arise from competition between dichromats and trichromats as they are growing up together. However, whatever the mechanism, it suggests that dichromats and trichromats reduce competition by foraging in different niches and provides a potential evolutionary explanation for the maintenance of variable colour vision in populations of marmosets and other New World monkeys.
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