In several studies, it has been found that repeated exposure to a novel food increases children’s acceptance of the exposure food. The present study, investigated how repeated exposure influences the acceptance of two Nordic berry juices, and whether the development depends on initial liking of the product, in 9–11 year-old children. The study had 317 participants. Two groups of children were exposed to either sea-buckthorn (n = 92) or aronia (n = 105) juice eight times, and performed two follow-up sessions 3 and 6 months after the 8th exposure. A third group (n = 120) served as controls. During pre and post-test sessions all participating children evaluated acceptance of both juices.

Intake of sea-buckthorn juice increased significantly over the eight exposures (55.1 ± 7.3 till 108.8 ± 12.3) and remained high after 6 months (131.1 ± 13.2). Intake of aronia juice was only increased at follow-up sessions. Liking did not develop significantly for any of the juices across exposures. When children were grouped by their initial liking increased intake across exposures was observed regardless of initial liking of sea-buckthorn. Liking developed similarly for both juices. A significant increase was found for the ‘initial dislikers’ only. This study demonstrates how exposure effects are influenced by initial liking; it appears that changes in familiarity explain the changes seen for sea-buckthorn among ‘dislikers’. ‘Initial dislikers’ had the most benefit from repeated exposures, but did not reach ‘initial likers’ across eight exposures; more exposures in the group of ‘initial dislikers’ had possibly led to even higher liking and intake. The increased intake observed for ‘neutral likers’ and ‘initial likers’ of sea-buckthorn was not explained by increased familiarity or increased liking.

Semiochemicals are chemicals used to communicate. Animals tend to use these e.g. to locate food sources or to find a suitable mate. In this study, the sex pheromone of the Indian meal moth, Plodia interpunctella, was analysed. Since this is an economically important species, it is mass-reared in labs and science centers worldwide for experimental purposes. A culture of these moths was brought into the lab at Lund University for studies and has after that served as a model species demonstrating up-wind pheromone-mediated male flight in different courses held by the university. As years went by, the culture got less successful in up-wind flights, most probably because of inbreeding and bottleneck effects, and therefore, a new culture was taken in. This study focuses on using various experiments to see if there was a behavioral and/or physiological difference between the two cultures. Results show a significant difference in behavioral traits (frequency of calling behavior in females and in male up-wind flights) but not in physiological traits (female pheromone production or male antennal response). This study discusses some effects of mass-reared lab cultures.

Yllesugning och ylleätning är relativt ovanliga beteendeproblem hos tamkatter. De har inte studerats i någon större omfattning trots att de har varit kända under lång tid. Det saknas välformulerade hypoteser som kan förklara de resultat som framkom i den hittills enda publicerade studien inom området. Därför genomfördes en Internetbaserad enkätstudie där 205 katter ingick. Resultaten tyder på att när en kattunge tas från sin mamma före 5-6 veckors ålder så kan det naturliga dibeteendet dröja sig kvar upp i vuxen ålder. Det riktar sig mot tyger i form av den orala stereotypin yllesugning. Ylleätning visade sig också röra sig om ett stereotypt beteende, men i det här fallet är det associerat med graden av objektlek som en katt ägnar sig åt. Graden av objektlek är högre hos yngre katter än hos äldre, och dessutom högre hos kattraser av sydöstasiatiskt ursprung än hos kattraser av annat ursprung. Graden av ylleätning visade sig följa samma mönster som graden av objektlek. Ylleätning tycks alltså röra sig om ett missriktat predationsbeteende. Det är fortfarande oklart om det finns ett samband mellan yllesugning och ylleätning eller inte.