Imprinting: lasting effects on uracil incorporation into chick brain

On the first day after hatching, domestic chicks were trained for 20, 60, 120, or 240 minutes with an imprinting stimulus. On the second day, they were all retrained for 60 minutes. The greater the chicks' experience on the first day, the lower the rate of incorporation of tritiated uracil into macromolecules in the anterior part of the forebrain roof on the second day. Such effects were not found in other brain regions, nor in any brain region of chicks that received similar treatment on the first day but were not retrained on the second.     

Infestation of sheep dung by nematophagous fungi and implications for the control of free-living stages of gastro-intestinal nematodes

A field trial was conducted to assess the rate at which dung becomes infested by fungi which parasitise nematodes (nematophagous fungi) after deposition. Sheep dung was placed on field plots of bare ground, ryegrass (Lolium perenne), browntop (Agrostis capillaris) and white clover (Trifolium repens) in summer (February) and autumn (April), and subsamples were examined at intervals for the presence of nematophagous fungi. Nematophagous fungi occurred in 71% of 129 samples recovered in February and 57% of 58 samples recovered in April. Arthrobotrys oligospora, Monacrosporium candidum and Nematoctonus spp. were the most frequently isolated nematode-trapping fungi in both seasons. The endoparasitic nematophagous fungus Harposporium leptospira also occurred frequently in dung deposited in February, but not April. Fungi entered dung quickly, with 83% and 58% of dung samples containing nematophagous fungi at 3 days after deposition in February and April, respectively. The percentage of dung infested by nematophagous fungi on plots of bare ground, ryegrass, white clover and browntop was 76%, 75%, 61% and 55%, respectively. Results suggest that a number of species of nematophagous fungi are able to enter dung soon after deposition on a variety of types of ground cover.