PubMed · 16516718
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Gary Ludwig. 2006. Heed the warning signs.. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0197-2510(06)70323-0
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Genetic variation in behavioral traits allows organisms to respond and adapt to environmental challenges. Genetic variation in behavior is often affected by many genes and thus has a complex genetic basis. Inversions, the reorientation of genes along the chromosome, tightly link genetic variants together because they suppress recombination. Therefore, inversions are believed to have a major impact on phenotypic variation because they combine the effects of multiple genes, which can pleiotropically alter multiple aspects of behavior. This study investigates how the inversion In(2L)t, found in Drosophila melanogaster populations around the world, impacts different aspects of behavior in an environment-sensitive manner. We test the activity, foraging, and startle-induced behavior of flies with different In(2L)t genotypes across sex and temperatures. We observe that Drosophila homozygous for In(2L)t sleep less frequently, spend more time away from a food source, and have a longer duration of startle response. Additionally, the impacts of In(2L)t on aspects of behavior can be sex-specific and are largely consistent across temperatures. Taken together, our research demonstrates that inversions can regulate aspects of behavior, and suggests hypotheses explaining the distribution of In(2L)t across space and time.
To increase our understanding of auditory neurocognition in musicians, we compared nonmusicians with amateur band musicians in their neural and behavioral sound encoding accuracy. Mismatch negativity and P3a components of the auditory event-related potentials were recorded to changes in basic acoustic features (frequency, duration, location, intensity, gap) and abstract features (melodic contour and interval size). Mismatch negativity was larger in musicians than in nonmusicians for location changes whereas no statistically significant group difference was observed in response to other feature changes or in abstract-feature mismatch negativity. P3a was observed only in musicians in response to location changes. This suggests that when compared with nonmusicians, even amateur musicians have neural sound processing advantages with acoustic information most essential to their musical genre.
It is widely recognized that one person's freedom may be limited to prevent harm to another (non-consenting) person. It is curious, therefore, that where a right to reproductive freedom is recognized, there is considerable reticence to limit or override it in cases where reproduction harms those people who are brought into existence. I argue that this is inappropriate. If there should be no right to inflict a harm in non-reproductive contexts then there should be no right to inflict an equivalent harm in reproductive contexts. Because of the long history of bias and arbitrary discrimination in curtailments of reproductive freedom, I suggest how bias might be avoided in deciding how severe a harm must be to defeat a right to reproductive freedom.