chronic intake of fermented floral nectar by wild treeshrews.pdfVIP

Chronic intake of fermented floral nectar by wild treeshrews †‡ § ´ ¶ †† Frank Wiens* , Annette Zitzmann* , Marc-Andre Lachance , Michel Yegles , Fritz Pragst**, Friedrich M. Wurst , Dietrich von Holst*, Saw Leng Guan‡‡, and Rainer Spanagel† *Tierphysiologie, Universita¨t Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany; †Psychopharmakologie, Zentralinstitut fu¨ r Seelische Gesundheit, 68159 Mannheim, Germany; §Zoologisches Institut, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universita¨t, 60054 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; ¶ Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada N6A 5B7; Laboratoire National de Sante´, Toxicologie, Universite´ du Luxembourg, 1511 Luxemburg; **Toxikologische Chemie, Institut fu¨ r Rechtsmedizin, 14195 Berlin, Germany; ††Universita¨re Psychiatrische Kliniken, 4025 Basel, Switzerland; and ‡‡Forest Research Institute, 52109 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Edited by May R. Berenbaum, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL, and approved May 21, 2008 (received for review February 20, 2008) For humans alcohol consumption often has devastating conse- human alcohol consumption could be evolutionarily maintained quences. Wild mammals may also be behaviorally and physiolog- by positive effects on evolutionary fitness that outweigh any ically challenged by alcohol in their food. Here, we provide a associated health risk in most current settings, despite negative detailed account of chronic alcohol intake by mammals as part of net effects in some others. a coevolved relationship with a plant. We discovered that seven For investigating these hypotheses, it would be helpful if mammalian species in a West Malaysian rainforest consume alco-