Psychological health of mothers and siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders during COVID-19 pandemic: new evidence in Italian families.

Background And Aim: Psychological challenges are well recognized in families with a child with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Instead, less is known about the effects of traumatic scenarios, such as COVID-19, on the psychological health of these families. The main aim of this research was to study the psychological health of both mothers and typically developing (TD) siblings of children with ASD during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Egg parasitoid exploitation of plant volatiles induced by single or concurrent attack of a zoophytophagous predator and an invasive phytophagous pest.

Zoophytophagous insect predators can induce physiological responses in plants by activating defence signalling pathways, but whether plants can respond to facultative phytophagy by recruiting natural enemies remains to be investigated. In Y-tube olfactometer bioassays, using a system including a Vicia faba plant, the zoophytophagous predator Podisus maculiventris and the egg parasitoid Telenomus podisi, we first demonstrated that T. podisi females are attracted by broad bean plants damaged by feeding activity of P.

Low-Resolution Place and Response Learning Capacities in Down Syndrome.

Down syndrome (DS), the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability, results from the partial or complete triplication of chromosome 21. Individuals with DS are impaired at using a high-resolution, allocentric spatial representation to learn and remember discrete locations in a controlled environment. Here, we assessed the capacity of individuals with DS to perform low-resolution spatial learning, depending on two competing memory systems: (1) the place learning system, which depends on the hippocampus and creates flexible relational representations of the environment; and (2) the response learning system, which depends on the striatum and creates fixed stimulus-response representations of behavioral actions.

An invasive insect herbivore disrupts plant volatile-mediated tritrophic signalling.

Plants respond to insect attack by emission of volatile organic compounds, which recruit natural enemies of the attacking herbivore, constituting an indirect plant defence strategy. In this context, the egg parasitoid is attracted by oviposition-induced plant volatiles emitted by plants as a consequence of feeding and oviposition by the pentatomid host However, this local tritrophic web could be affected by the recent invasion by the alien pentatomid bug , an herbivore that shares the same environments as native pentatomid pests. Therefore, we investigated in laboratory conditions the possible impact of on the plant volatile-mediated signalling in the local tritrophic web --.

Foraging behaviour of an egg parasitoid exploiting plant volatiles induced by pentatomids: the role of adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces.

Several phases of herbivorous insect attack including feeding and oviposition are known to induce plant defenses. Plants emit volatiles induced by herbivores to recruit insect parasitoids as an indirect defense strategy. So far, volatiles induced by herbivore walking and their putative role in the foraging behavior of egg parasitoids have not been investigated.