Prenatal diagnosis of familial congenital pyloric atresia

Familial congenital pyloric atresia is a rare malformation of the fetal gastrointestinal tract. It usually manifests as maternal polyhydramnios and enlarged fetal stomach on ultrasound scan. Sonographic prenatal diagnosis and management of a pregnancy complicated by familial congenital pyloric atresia are presented.     

Food selection in larval fruit flies: dynamics and effects on larval development

Selecting food items and attaining a nutritionally balanced diet is an important challenge for all animals including humans. We aimed to establish fruit fly larvae (Drosophila melanogaster) as a simple yet powerful model system for examining the mechanisms of specific hunger and diet selection. In two lab experiments with artificial diets, we found that larvae deprived of either sucrose or protein later selectively fed on a diet providing the missing nutrient. When allowed to freely move between two adjacent food patches, larvae surprisingly preferred to settle on one patch containing yeast and ignored the patch providing sucrose. Moreover, when allowed to move freely between three patches, which provided either yeast only, sucrose only or a balanced mixture of yeast and sucrose, the majority of larvae settled on the yeast-plus-sucrose patch and about one third chose to feed on the yeast only food. While protein (yeast) is essential for development, we also quantified larval success on diets with or without sucrose and show that larvae develop faster on diets containing sucrose. Our data suggest that fruit fly larvae can quickly assess major nutrients in food and seek a diet providing a missing nutrient. The larvae, however, probably prefer to quickly dig into a single food substrate for enhanced protection over achieving an optimal diet.     

Social media and scientific research are complementary—YouTube and shrikes as a case study

Fascination with animals and their behaviour is one the most prominent patterns persisting in all human cultures. During the last decades, however, technological development and public access to the Internet have increased the speed and the extent of information sharing at an unprecedented rate, in some cases even challenging the traditional methods used in science. In order to understand the extent of this influence, we focused on the behaviour of shrikes. Shrikes are an enigmatic group of songbirds with a unique behaviour of impaling prey. We employed an extensive Internet search on YouTube (YT), a very popular and increasingly important source of information worldwide, for videos recording shrikes. Our analyses revealed that the number of shrike videos on YT is strongly positively correlated with classical knowledge on shrikes from books and scientific articles. Our results also suggest that in some cases YT may provide an alternative source of information on shrike ecology and behaviour. YT videos may thus provide new insights into the study of certain species or subjects and help identify gaps in ecological studies, especially in poorly studied species.