Animals encounter information from different resources simultaneously, integrating input from multiple sensory systems before responding behaviorally. When different cues interact with one another, they may enhance, diminish, or have no impact on their responses. In this project, we test how the presence of chemical cues affect the perception of visual cues. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) often use both chemical cues and visual cues to communicate with shoal mates, to assess predation risk, and to locate food. For example, zebrafish rely on both olfactory cues and visual cues for kin recognition, and they frequently use both chemical and visual cues to search for and to capture prey. In zebrafish, the terminal nerve (TN) constitutes the olfacto-visual centrifugal pathway and connects the olfactory bulb with the retina, thus allowing olfactory perception also to activate visual receptors. Past studies have found that the presence of an olfactory cue can modulate visual sensitivity in zebrafish through the terminal nerve pathway. Alternatively, given that zebrafish are highly social, the presence of social chemical cues may distract individuals from responding to other visual cues, such as food and predator visual cues. Foraging and predator chemical cues, including chemical food cues and alarm cues, may also distract individuals from responding to non-essential visual cues. Here, we test whether the response to a visual cue either increases or decreases when presented in concert with alanine, an amino acid that represents the olfactory cues of zebrafish prey. We found that the presence of chemical cues did not affect whether zebrafish responded to visual cues, but that the fish took longer to respond to visual cues when chemical cues were also present. These findings suggest that different aspects of behavior could be affected by the interaction between sensory modalities. We also found that this impact of delayed response was significant only when the visual cue<br/>was weak compared to the strength of the chemical cue, suggesting that the salience of interacting cues may also have an influence on determining the outcomes of the interactions. Overall, the interactive effects of chemicals on an animal’s response to visual cues may also have wide-ranging impacts on behavior including foraging, mating, and evading predators, and the interaction of cues may affect different aspects of the same behavior.

Humans use emotions to communicate social cues to our peers on a daily basis. Are we able to identify context from facial expressions and match them to specific scenarios? This experiment found that people can effectively distinguish negative and positive emotions from each other from a short description. However, further research is needed to find out whether humans can learn to perceive emotions only from contextual explanations.

Locusts are generalist herbivores meaning that they are able to consume a variety of plants. Because of their broad diet, and ability to respond rapidly to a favorable environment with giant swarms of voracious insects, they are dangerous pests. Their potential impacts on humans increase dramatically when individuals switch from their solitarious phase to their gregarious phase where they congregate and begin marching and eventually swarming together. These swarms, often billions strong, can consume the vegetation of enormous swaths of land and can travel hundreds of kilometers in a single day producing a complex threat to food security. To better understand the biology of these important pests we explored the gut microbiome of the South American locust (Schistocerca cancellata). We hypothesized generally that the gut microbiome in this species would be critically important as has been shown in many other species. We extracted and homogenized entire guts from male S. cancellata, and then extracted gut microbiome genomic DNA. Genomic DNA was then confirmed on a gel. The initial extractions were of poor quality for sequencing, but subsequent extractions performed by collaborators during troubleshooting at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville proved more useful and were used for PCR. This resulted in the detections of the following bacterial genera in the gut of S. cancellata: Enterobacter, Enterococcus, Serratia, Pseudomonas, Actinobacter, and Weisella. With this data, we are able to speculate about the physiological roles that they hold within the locust gut generating hypotheses for further testing. Understanding the microbial composition of this species’ gut may help us better understand the locust in general in an effort to more sustainably manage them.

Over 40% of adults in the United States are considered obese. Obesity is known to cause abnormal metabolic effects and lead to other negative health consequences. Interestingly, differences in metabolism and contractile performance between obese and healthy weight individuals are associated with differences in skeletal muscle fiber type composition between these groups. Each fiber type is characterized by unique metabolic and contractile properties, which are largely determined by the myosin heavy chain isoform (MHC) or isoform combination that the fiber expresses. In previous studies, SDS-PAGE single fiber analysis has been utilized as a method to determine MHC isoform distribution and single fiber type distribution in skeletal muscle. Herein, a methodological approach to analyze MHC isoform and fiber type distribution in skeletal muscle was fine-tuned for use in human and rodent studies. In the future, this revised methodology will be implemented to evaluate the effects of obesity and exercise on the phenotypic fiber type composition of skeletal muscle.