Adult hippocampal neurogenesis in Egyptian fruit bats from three different environments: Are interpretational variations due to the environment or methodology?

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Richard Chawana
  • Nina Patzke
  • Adhil Bhagwandin
  • Consolate Kaswera-Kyamakya
  • Emmanuel Gilissen
  • Bertelsen, Mads Frost
  • Jason Hemingway
  • Paul R. Manger

We quantified both proliferative (Ki-67 immunohistochemistry) and immature (doublecortin immunohistochemistry) cells within the dentate gyrus of adult Egyptian fruit bats from three distinct environments: (a) primary rainforest, (b) subtropical woodland, and (c) fifth-generation captive-bred. We used four different previously reported methods to assess the effect of the environment on proliferative and immature cells: (a) the comparison of raw totals of proliferative and immature cells; (b) these totals standardized to brain mass; (c) these totals expressed as a density using the volume of the granular cell layer (GCLv) for standardization; and (d) these totals expressed as a percentage of the total number of granule cells. For all methods, the numbers of proliferative cells did not differ statistically among the three groups, indicating that the rate of proliferation, while malleable to experimental manipulation or transiently in response to events of importance in the natural habitat, appears to occur, for the most part, at a predetermined rate within a species. For the immature cells, raw numbers and standardizations to brain mass and GCLv revealed no difference between the three groups studied; however, standardization to total granule cell numbers indicated that the two groups of wild-caught bats had significantly higher numbers of immature neurons than the captive-bred bats. These contrasting results indicate that the interpretation of the effect of the environment on the numbers of immature neurons appears method dependent. It is possible that current methods are not sensitive enough to reveal the effect of different environments on proliferative and immature cells.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Comparative Neurology
Volume528
Issue number17
Pages (from-to)2994-3007
Number of pages14
ISSN0021-9967
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

    Research areas

  • doublecortin, Ki-67, maturation, megachiroptera, proliferation, rainforest, RRID AB_2088494, RRID AB_2142367

ID: 282937500