Leszek Rychlik and co-authors from Portugal assessed the use of an external heat source (basking) in the thermoregulatory strategies of three shrew species. Shrews were tested in a terrarium where they had access to a heat rock which could be turned off (cold) or on (heated). In accordance with authors' predictions, Crocidura russula (the [...]
High polymorphism of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes that encode proteins crucial for adaptive immunity of vertebrates have been long hypothesized to be maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection resulting from adaptation of parasites to common MHC types, but supporting evidence is scarce. In our new paper in Molecular Ecology (Migalska et al. 2022, http://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16486) we find [...]
In the article published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0212 dr Magdalena Herdegen-Radwan (Department of Behavioural Ecology) presents empirical suport for the role of associative learning in originating sexual preferences. Sexual preferences of guppy females changed following food-conditoning on different colours, supporting the emergence of an association between the colour of the stimulus [...]
In this article, we explain how the degree of environmental heterogeneity may influence pests’ niche breadth evolution, which may in turn affect the ability of pests to persist in agricultural systems. The study was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, research projects no. 2016/21/B/NZ8/00786 and 2017/27/N/NZ8/00305. Skoracka A., Laska A., Radwan J., Konczal. M., Lewandowski [...]
This time Leszek Rychlik and co-authors from Portugal (University of Lisbon) published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology the paper on social thermoregulation in Crocidura russula. They analyzed the behavior and physiology of shrew groups from winter (acclimated to 14 °C) and summer (acclimated to 24 °C). All group mates were frequently found huddling in the [...]
The research conducted by researchers and students from Population Ecology Lab in cooperation with researchers from Warsaw University of Life Sciences – SGGW, University of Lisbon, and Western Illinois University has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. By combining laboratory experiments and field surveys, they demonstrated the importance of sink habitats for [...]
Leszek Rychlik (Department of Systematic Zoology) and co-authors (mainly from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology PAS in Warsaw) published, in the International Journal of Molecular Science, the results of a study in which they checked whether the numbers of new generated cells in shrew brains (namely in the subventricular zone of the lateral ventricle, [...]
Leszek Rychlik (Department of Systematic Zoology) and Krzysztof Kowalski (currently the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń) published a review in the journal Toxins (Q1 in Zoology) on the evolution and ecological functions of venomousness in insectivorous mammals (order Eulipotyphla), to which most of the currently known venomous mammals belong. The authors provide an overview of [...]
The research conducted by a team of 18 researchers from 13 European institutions, including Dr. Przemysław Kurek from our Institute, aimed to identify the network of relationships between a group of birds eating fleshy-fruits and plants in the context of transferring their seeds between different types of environments. The research was carried out on a [...]
Since the 1990s, the Department of Water Protection has conducted research on the bioindicative role of Unio mussels. Initially, the surveys supported by the US Environmental Protection Agency grant, focused on the sensitivity of the swan mussel Anodonta cygnea to various pollutants occurring in surface waters. This research resulted in the implementation of a system for the detection [...]
