ABSTRACT
In many countries and also Brazil, the extracts or infusions of fresh plants are used to treat common infections or diseases, mainly in the countryside and among the indigenous people. The popular knowledge of the medicinal plants contributes a lot to the benefit of the human health, and directly could help for new discoveries of medicines. The antinociceptive effect is an important target for new active compounds to be searched, in part due to the increase in human life expectation, on the other hand for new cheaper compounds to the low income population, and finally, with new properties or less side effects. In the current work, extracts obtained from Erythrina velutina seeds, commonly used against snake bites, were tested for the capacity to neutralize the nociceptive effects induced by the hot plate test and anxiety behavior with combination of the open field and the elevated plus maze. Tested animals (rats) with different extracts of seed demonstrated analgesic effect with the animal on hot plate. The animals also increased wandering in the open field and even the numbers of entries and the time spent in the open arms of the elevated plus maze. That demonstrated that lesser anxiety levels allow longer and more frequent exploration periods of the open arms, suggesting that Erythrina velutina has strong anxiolytic properties compared to the control anxiolytic diazepam, it could serve as a new approach for the treatment anxiety.
ABSTRACT
The observation of two distinct, well-defined oviposition areas in nests of the primitively eusocial wasp Polistes versicolor suggests the presence of multiple egg-layers and territorial behaviors. Electrophoretic analysis of enzyme loci in pupae from 35 colonies revealed an average observed heterozygosity of 0.10 and the existence of private polymorphisms, thereby indicating a low dispersion in this species. No evidence of diploid males was found. Phenotypic segregation analysis revealed the presence of more than one egg-laying female in 15 out of 35 colonies, as well as spatially preferential oviposition in 2 out of 13 nests, with distinct oviposition areas. Genetic relatedness estimates for brood were lower than expected for haplodiploid species under monogynous conditions (r = 0.75 for female broods and r = 0.5 for male) in 4 of those 13 nests, thereby inferring complex sociogenetic structuring in Polistes versicolor colonies.
ABSTRACT
The observation of two distinct, well-defined oviposition areas in nests of the primitively eusocial wasp Polistes versicolor suggests the presence of multiple egg-layers and territorial behaviors. Electrophoretic analysis of enzyme loci in pupae from 35 colonies revealed an average observed heterozygosity of 0.10 and the existence of private polymorphisms, thereby indicating a low dispersion in this species. No evidence of diploid males was found. Phenotypic segregation analysis revealed the presence of more than one egg-laying female in 15 out of 35 colonies, as well as spatially preferential oviposition in 2 out of 13 nests, with distinct oviposition areas. Genetic relatedness estimates for brood were lower than expected for haplodiploid species under monogynous conditions (r = 0.75 for female broods and r = 0.5 for male) in 4 of those 13 nests, thereby inferring complex sociogenetic structuring in Polistes versicolor colonies.
