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Clotting is critical in limiting hemolymph loss and initiating wound healing in insects as in vertebrates. It is also an important immune defense, quickly forming a secondary barrier to infection, immobilizing bacteria and thereby promoting their killing. ...
Insects have a complex and effective immune system, many components of which are conserved in mammals. But only in the last decade have the molecular mechanisms that regulate the insect immune response--and their relevance to general biology and human immu ...
BACKGROUND: Buruli ulcer is a severe human skin disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans. This disease is primarily diagnosed in West Africa with increasing incidence. Antimycobacterial drug therapy is relatively effective during the preulcerative stage of ...
In the past years, it has been observed that some compounds present in our environment can disturb the reproduction and development of animals like fishes, birds, or reptiles by interfering with their endocrine system. Indeed, these endocrine disrupting co ...
Many decisions involve a trade-off between commitment and flexibility. We show here that the collective decisions ants make over new nest sites are sometimes sufficiently flexible that the ants can change targets even after an emigration has begun. Our fin ...
The role of biofilms in the pathogenesis of mycobacterial diseases remains largely unknown. Mycobacterium ulcerans, the etiological agent of Buruli ulcer, a disfiguring disease in humans, adopts a biofilm-like structure in vitro and in vivo, displaying an ...
The efficiency of social insect colonies critically depends on their ability to efficiently allocate workers to the various tasks which need to be performed. While numerous models have investigated the mechanisms allowing an efficient colony response to ex ...
ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The comparison of complete genomes has revealed surprisingly large numbers of conserved non-protein-coding (CNC) DNA regions. However, the biological function of CNC remains elusive. CNC differ in two aspects from conserved protein-co ...
Ants and other social insects forming large societies are generally characterized by marked reproductive division of labour. Queens largely monopolize reproduction whereas workers have little reproductive potential. In addition, some social insect species ...
Active vision may be useful to perform landmark-based navigation where landmark relationship requires active scanning of the environment. In this article we explore this hypothesis by evolving the neural system controlling vision and behavior of a mobile r ...
