Publications by authors named "C E Mendola"
We present the case of a 72-year-old man diagnosed with an aortic root aneurysm who was then diagnosed with Marfan syndrome. The patient suffered an intraoperative type B dissection with lower extremity malperfusion managed with an axillary-bifemoral extra-anatomic bypass.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial isolation negatively affects health, induces detrimental behaviors, and shortens lifespan in social species. Little is known about the mechanisms underpinning these effects because model species are typically short-lived and non-social. Using colonies of the carpenter ant Camponotus fellah, we show that social isolation induces hyperactivity, alters space-use, and reduces lifespan via changes in the expression of genes with key roles in oxidation-reduction and an associated accumulation of reactive oxygen species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- * By using a combination of behavioral tracking and a multiomic approach, researchers analyzed data from carpenter ants to explore connections among social environment, age, behavior, brain gene expression, and microbiota.
- * Findings reveal that an individual's social environment has a significant impact on its physiology and behavior, overshadowing other factors, and can be predicted more accurately through brain gene expression than behavior alone.
Article Synopsis
- Genes influence not just the traits of the organisms they belong to (direct genetic effects, DGEs) but also affect the environment and traits of other individuals (indirect genetic effects, IGEs).
- Although research shows that IGEs can significantly impact trait variation, especially in animal agriculture, their overall presence is not well understood.
- A study on the clonal raider ant Ooceraea biroi revealed that while many genes are influenced by DGEs, none showed differential expression from IGEs, highlighting gaps in our understanding of IGEs in social species.
The evolution of eusociality has allowed ants to become one of the most conspicuous and ecologically dominant groups of organisms in the world. A large majority of the current ∼14,000 ant species belong to the formicoids, a clade of nine subfamilies that exhibit the most extreme forms of reproductive division of labor, large colony size, worker polymorphism, and extended queen longevity. The eight remaining non-formicoid subfamilies are less well studied, with few genomes having been sequenced so far and unclear phylogenetic relationships.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF