A corrida armamentista predador presa entre serpentes e mamíferos na América do Sul: uma revisão do conhecimento e metodologias para estudo da resistência de marsupiais Didelphidae (Didelphimorphia) ao veneno de jararaca

Abstract

This work comprises a bibliographical review on the resistance to snake venom of the Bothrops complex of wild small mammal species, especially the Didelphini family, which constitute prey and predators of these snakes, and the description of methodologies that I learned as part of my training for power to continue the project in graduate school. The venom of snakes has numerous components that present various toxic activities in the body of their prey. Despite this, some mammals have developed resistance to these factors. This resistance arose because of a coevolutionary arms race in which both participants develop mechanisms of reciprocal adaptations to continue to survive in this interaction. With the techniques of capturing individuals of interest and using the platelet aggregation test, it was possible to evaluate the action of von Willebrand factor present in the plasma of these animals, collecting botrocetin and aspercetin data from the venom of Bothrops jararaca and Bothrops asper. The platelet aggregation test using platelet-rich plasma (PRP) of 3 individuals of black-ear possum (Didelphis aurita), allowed to observe that there was no aggregation of plasma platelets in the presence of botrocetin and aspercetin. The results suggest that D. aurita may exhibit amino acid substitutions in a region of vWF, causing botrocetin and aspercetin to fail to bind and activate the coagulation cascade, as previously described in the literature in Didelphis. In this way, it is possible to obtain more knowledge about the concept of coevolutionary arms race between predators and prey in species of small South American mammals.