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Biomedical subjects

K L Wuensch

Publications and source records attributed to K L Wuensch.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1990

Sex differences in the flesh-eating preferences of wild house mice.

Freshly asphyxiated male or female house mice and prairie deer mice were presented to hungry male or female wild-strain house mice. Male subjects ate significantly more conspecific than contraspecific flesh, but females showed no statistically reliable preference. This sex difference, which is essentially opposite that previously reported in deer mice, is related to species-specific sex differences in aggressiveness using a response-competition model.

Aggression↗
PubMed1989

Acoustic interference in a recognition task.

Phonetic or acoustic characteristics of stimuli in recall studies have consistently been shown to generate more interference over short intervals than semantic characteristics. We performed three experiments to determine whether this characteristic also applied to recognition processes over short intervals. Subjects were shown study lists of eight words and were asked to recognize which of those words recurred on subsequent eight-word lists. Delays varied from 0 to 100 s between study and test, with a rehearsal-preventing task inserted during the delays. Phonetic distractors generated greater interference than semantic distractors at all delay levels, and semantic distractors generated greater interference than random distractors. These distractor-type differences were not present in long-term recognition tasks. The deterioration in performance over time was considerably slower in these recognition experiments than in previous recall studies.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Female prairie deer mice prefer conspecific flesh over contraspecific flesh.

Hungry adult female deer mice were presented with freshly asphyxiated conspecifics and house mice. The deer mice showed a reliable preference for the conspecific flesh during the first 2 hr of testing, but this preference was attenuated during the following 20 hr of testing. Previous research has shown that male deer mice prefer contraspecific flesh. The preference of female deer mice for conspecific flesh is attributed to their tendency to be more aggressive toward living conspecifics than are male deer mice and their tendency to avoid living contraspecifics more than do male deer mice.

Aggression↗
PubMed1986

Development of responsiveness to conspecific scent in house mice: effects of preweaning and postweaning experiences.

Responses to male conspecific odors (soiled bedding) presented in an alleyway were compared among five groups of adult male albino house mice with different rearing histories. Both isolated mice that had as pups been fostered onto a rat mother and normally nursed mice that had been group housed since weaning showed reduced attraction to conspecific odor. Preweaning paternal presence, a factor known to affect the development of response to male conspecific scent in rats and gerbils, had no reliable effect with mice.

Aging↗
PubMed1986

Prairie deer mice prefer contraspecific flesh over conspecific flesh.

Hungry adult male deer mice were presented with freshly asphyxiated conspecifics and house mice. The deer mice showed a reliable preference for the contraspecific flesh during the first hour of testing, but this preference was attenuated during subsequent hours as subjects switched from eating the preferred parts of the contraspecific to the preferred parts of the conspecific.

Animals↗
PubMed1978

Exposure to onion taste in mother's milk leads to enhanced preference for onion diet among weanling rats.

Five mothers of 50 newborn rat pups were maintained on either standard lab chow or a diet composed of the same chow with onion powder added. Taste preference tests administered during weaning indicated that the pups whose mother was fed the onion chow showed a preference for onion diet, but that such preference dissipated across the five day testing period. A control group of pups who were exposed to any onion diet cues available through channels other than the mother's milk did not show a preference for onion diet. It was concluded that exposure to onion taste in mother's milk was responsible for an initial preference for onion diet.

Animal Feed↗