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- All Subjects: Biology
- Creators: Sweazea, Karen
Studies of animal contests often focus solely on a single static measurement of fighting ability, such as the size or the strength of the individual. However, recent studies have highlighted the importance of individual variation in the dynamic behaviors used during a fight, such as, assessment strategies, decision making, and fine motor control, as being strong predictors of the outcome of aggression. Here, I combined morphological and behavioral data to discover how these features interact during aggressing interactions in male virile crayfish, Faxonius virilis. I predicted that individual variation in behavioral skill for decision making (i.e., number of strikes thrown), would determine the outcome of contest success in addition to morphological measurements (e.g. body size, relative claw size). To evaluate this prediction, I filmed staged territorial interactions between male F. virilis and later analyzed trial behaviors (e.g. strike, pinches, and bout time) and aggressive outcomes. I found very little support for skill to predict win/loss outcome in trials. Instead, I found that larger crayfish engaged in aggression for longer compared to smaller crayfish, but that larger crayfish did not engage in a greater number of claw strikes or pinches when controlling for encounter duration. Future studies should continue to investigate the role of skill, by using finer-scale techniques such as 3D tracking software, which could track advanced measurements (e.g. speed, angle, and movement efficiency). Such studies would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relative influence of fighting skill technique on territorial contests.
This feasibility study explored the use of an evolutionary mismatch narrative in nutritional education intervention aiming to reduce ultra-processed foods in the diets of veterans with type 2 diabetes and improve diabetic outcomes. Ultra-processed foods are foods that are primarily manufactured through industrial processes. These foods are high in calories but low in nutritional content. Diets high in these foods have been linked to increased health risks. One of the major health risks is type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease that is developed when cells become unable to properly utilize insulin. Over time this may lead to additional health conditions such as nerve damage, cardiovascular disease, and renal disease. Evolutionary mismatch narrative nutritional intervention offers a different approach to nutritional education to help reduce ultra-processed foods in diets. This study was a randomized controlled feasibility study at the Phoenix VA. Eleven participants were enrolled and randomly selected to be given either an evolutionary mismatch narrative education intervention or general nutritional education about ultra-processed foods. 24-hour diet recalls and blood chemistry were collected and analyzed. Blood chemistry provided diabetes related measurements which included glucose, HbA1c, insulin, HOMA-IR, and C-reactive protein. Statistically significant findings in this study included percentage of ultra-processed foods decreasing for both control and experimental groups from week 0 to week 4 (p=0.014), and C-reactive protein levels between the control and experimental groups (p=0.042). However, baseline C-reactive protein concentrations were lower in the experimental group such that normalizing for group differences at baseline revealed no significant difference in C-reactive protein change between interventions (p = 1.000). There were no other statistically significant values regarding diabetes related measurements. The results from this study suggest that nutritional education in general may help decrease ultra-processed food consumption.