The relationship between food quantity and the social feeding behaviour of Caenorhabditis elegans.

Authors

  • Malak Abdelhamid
  • Hyang Im Lee
  • Soomin Lee
  • YoungJu Lee
  • Justin Sidhu

Abstract

This experiment aimed to investigate the social feeding behaviour of Caenorhabditis elegans under varying food concentrations. The finding that the nociceptive neuron, a neuron that detects aversive stimuli, induces social feeding led us to observe if limitation in food amount is also an aversive stimulus. In selection of the nematode’s food source Escherichia coli was chosen as it is one of its common foods. The nematodes were grown in an incubator at 20 degrees Celsius in different E. coli amounts: 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 where the 0 and 100 treatments were negative and positive controls, respectively. The surface area of clusters in a 1cm2 grid were measured daily for four days. We hypothesized the surface area of Caenorhabditis elegans clumps will be greater for a smaller amount of Escherichia coli. However, the results show no significant statistical difference among the values of average surface area from different treatments levels. The average of the clump size in order of increasing food amount is: 0.851.02 %, 5.894.12 %, 19.1713.08 %, 22.8826.94 % and 15.3414.89%. Thus we fail to reject our null hypothesis. It is our understanding that overpopulation was another stressor along with the limitation in food amount, interfering with causing the cluster sizes in relation to food amount.

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Published

2014-02-20

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Articles