Frank Wiens

Dept. of Animal Physiology

Bayreuth University
D-95440 Bayreuth
Germany

E-mail: frank.wiens@uni-bayreuth.de

„Natural Alcohol Consumption in Treeshrews“

The main focus of my research are the biological processes involved in maintaining chronic alcohol consumption in treeshrews and other wild mammals.

My central hypothesis is that the general sensitivity to psychopharmacological effects of ingested alcohol is actively maintained by natural selection.

Treeshrews (oder Scandentia) are small mammals of the Southeast Asian rainforest that are closely related to primates. In the wild they rely on a daily diet of fermented floral nectar of the bertam palm containing up to 3.8% ethanol.

I study natural alcohol consumption by treeshrews in the field under the behavioral ecology paradigm of “drinking is a kind of making the best of any situation”.

What is the ecological context in which chronic alcohol consumption by treeshrews occurs?

Which adaptive benefits do treeshrews obtain from alcohol in their diet, if any?

Specifically, I concentrate on alcohol as a modulator of the stress response

and of learning and memory.

Experimental manipulations run in parallel in the lab are aimed at answering:

Which molecular mechanisms are involved in alcohol’s beneficial effects on treeshrews?

Are these also involved in the transition to detrimental drinking behavior?

My focus is on epigenetic regulation of target genes.

Study Sites:

• field site in Perak, Malaysia
• animal housing facilities at Bayreuth University

Selected Publications:

• Wiens F, Zitzmann A, Lachance M-A, Yegles M, Pragst F, Wurst FM, von Holst D, Saw LG, Spanagel R (in press): Chronic intake of fermented floral nectar by wild treeshrews. PNAS
• Janecka JE, Miller W, Pringle TH, Wiens F, Zitzmann A, Helgen KM, Springer MS, Murphy WJ (2007): Molecular and genomic data indentify the closest living relative of primates Science 318, 792-794.

last updated 22 July 2008