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Gloger’s rule postulates that animals should be darker colored in warm and humid regions where dense vegetation and dark environments are common. Although rare in Canis populations, melanism in wolves is more com...
Reintroduction is a common technique for re-establishing threatened species. However, the adaptation to novel habitats with distinct conditions poses a risk of failure. Weather conditions affect the behaviour ...
The worm Enchytraeus buchholzi is a new record species for Shaanxi, China, and a key pest on American ginseng Panax quinquefolium. To distinguish the species, the authors prepared its whole mounts and paraffin-em...
Considering animals as individuals and not as species is becoming increasingly essential to animal welfare management in captive settings. Recent studies on big cat personalities and coping strategies suggest ...
Migratory birds differ markedly in their migration strategies, particularly those performing short- versus long-distance migrations. In preparation for migration, all birds undergo physiological and morphologi...
Pikes, members of genus Esox, are widespread freshwater predators of the northern hemisphere, and important sport fish also. From the Carpathian basin only one species, the northern pike (E. lucius) is noted. At ...
Most amphibians use a repertoire of acoustic signals to propagate signals in social contexts. The description of these repertoires provides a key towards the understanding of the behaviour of individuals and t...
The sky-island Ligidium species fauna in southwest China is poorly known. Before this study, six of the seven sky-island species of the genus were known to be endemic to southwest China. In morphology, Ligidium s...
Freshwater planarians of the genus Dugesia (Platyhelminthes, Tricladida, Dugesiidae) are distributed in a major part of the Old World and Australia, although until recently only very few species were known from C...
Hoplobatrachus rugulosus (Anura: Dicroglossidae) is distributed in China and Thailand and the former can survive substantially lower temperatures than the latter. The mitochondrial genomes of the two subspecies a...
Host range is a fundamental trait to understand the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of symbionts. Increasing host specificity is expected to be accompanied with specialization in different symbiont traits...
In lacertid lizards from Mediterranean islands, frugivory is common, particularly under prey scarcity, a characteristic of small islands. In several populations, the diet of the Balearic lizard, Podarcis lilfordi...
The ‘snow-melt mosquito’ aedes (rusticoidus) refiki is a rare species with a wide distribution in Europe that is usually defined as an aggressive mosquito for mammals, including humans. During a mosquito survey i...
The study on medium and large-sized mammalian species' diversity and distribution is important for conservation efforts in the different protected areas of Ethiopia. The present study was intended to investiga...
In mammals, body mass lost during food restriction is often rapidly regained, and fat is accumulated when ad libitum feeding is resumed. Studies in small cold-acclimated mammals have demonstrated significant mobi...
The success of animal reproduction is impacted by a trade-off between energetic costs and mortality associated with immediate vs. future reproductive attempts. The reproductive strategies of European insectivo...
Endurance rivalry and female choice are two important mechanisms of sexual selection in lek-breeding species. Endurance rivalry is when males compete for opportunities to mate by spending more time in leks tha...
The nervous system of siboglinids has been studied mainly in Osedax and some Vestimentifera, while data in Frenulata – one of the four pogonophoran main branches – is still fragmentary. In most of the studies, th...
Laelaps agilis C.L. Koch, 1836 is one the most abundant and widespread parasitic mite species in the Western Palearctic. It is a permanent ectoparasite associated with the Apodemus genus, which transmits Hepatozo...
The present study was conducted to investigate the ecological aspects of sand flies in southwestern North Khorasan, in which cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania major has been reported with the highest a...
The Egyptian spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus) is the only known rodent to exhibit true, human-like menstruation and postpartum ovulation, and is an important new model for reproductive studies. Spiny mice do not pr...
Captive breeding of bonobos (Pan paniscus) has proven to be successful, but maintaining genetic diversity remains a challenge. Cryopreservation of semen is an important potential tool to maintain genetic diversit...
Fairy shrimps belong to order Anostraca, class Branchiopoda, subphylum Crustacea, and phylum Arthropoda. Three fairy shrimp species (Eubranchipus uchidai, E. asanumai, and E. hatanakai) that inhabit snowmelt pool...
Understanding the diversity of eyes is crucial to unravel how different animals use vision to interact with their respective environments. To date, comparative studies of eye anatomy are scarce because they of...
The decapods are a major group of crustaceans that includes shrimps, prawns, crayfishes, lobsters, and crabs. Several studies focused on the study of the digestive system of the decapods, constituted by the oe...
Fertilization is an event at the beginning of ontogeny. Successful fertilization depends on strategies for uniting female and male gametes that developed throughout evolutionary history. In some species of tar...
Control of intermediate host snails using molluscicides for the control and/or elimination of schistosomiasis is a strategy in line with WHO recommendations. Niclosamide is the main chemical molluscicide recom...
Limnoperna fortunei is a freshwater bivalve mollusc originally from southern Asia that invaded South America in the 1990’s. Due to its highly efficient water pumping and filtering, and its capacity to form stron...
Aluminum is the third most prevalent element in the earth’s crust. In most conditions, it is tightly bound to form inaccessible compounds, however in low soil pH, the ionized form of aluminum can be taken up b...
Asymmetries are a widespread phenomenon in otherwise bilaterally symmetric organisms, and investigation of asymmetric structures can help us gather insights into fundamental evolutionary processes such as the ...
Hypostominae is a subfamily of the family Loricariidae that has a great diversity of species. Accordingly, testicular studies in fish can contribute to the phylogeny and taxonomy of species and to the comparis...
The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is the largest and one of the most endangered cats in the world. In wild and captive cats, communication is mainly dependent on olfaction. However, vocal communication als...
Fish encounter oxidative stress several times during their lifetime, and it has a pervasive influence on their health and welfare. One of the triggers of oxidative stress in fish farming is the use of oxidativ...
Sixty percent of all species are insects, yet despite global efforts to monitor animal movement patterns, insects are continuously underrepresented. This striking difference between species richness and the nu...
Nearly all insectivorous bats (Chiroptera) are strictly nocturnal, flying and feeding only between sunset and sunrise despite lower insect availability than by day, most likely to avoid predation by diurnal bi...
Dispersal behavior is a critical component of invasive species dynamics, impacting both spatial spread and population density. In South Florida, Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) are an invasive species that di...
The striped venus clam Chamelea gallina is an economically important species in Adriatic Sea fisheries. The use of hydraulic dredging for its catch has a long history in Italy and its management faced several sta...
Modification and destruction of natural habitats are bringing previously unencountered animal populations into contact with humans, with bats considered important zoonotic transmission vectors. Caves and cave-...
Head appendages in Annelida contribute significantly to the immense morphological diversity in this spiralian taxon. Nevertheless, the evolutionary origin of annelid antennae, palps, cirri and tentacles are pa...
There are two species of Mus in the Caucasus: M. musculus and M. macedonicus. M. musculus is widespread in the Caucasus, where the species is found everywhere from the Black to the Caspian Sea. M. macedonicus is ...
The morphology of anuran larvae is suggested to differ between species with tadpoles living in standing (lentic) and running (lotic) waters. To explore which character combinations within the general tadpole m...
Rodents are thought to be produced their human-audible calls (AUDs, below 20 kHz) with phonation mechanism based on vibration of the vocal folds, whereas their ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs, over 20 kHz) are ...
Increasing temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns threaten the existence of many organisms. It is therefore informative to identify the functional traits that underlie differences in desiccation re...
The causes of geographic variation of body size in ectotherms have generally been attributed to environmental variables. Research in amphibians has favored mechanisms that involve water availability as an expl...
Although acoustic communication plays an essential role in the social interactions of Rallidae, our knowledge of how Rallidae encode diverse types of information using simple vocalizations is limited. We recor...
Monogeneans, in general, show a range of unique adaptations to a parasitic lifestyle, making this group enormously diverse. Due to their unique biological properties, diplozoid monogeneans represent an attract...
Prioritizing groupings of organisms or ‘units’ below the species level is a critical issue for conservation purposes. Several techniques encompassing different time-frames, from genetics to ecological markers,...
Rainbow trout is an economically important fish in aquaculture and is a model species in environmental physiology. Despite earlier research on the seawater adaptability of rainbow trout at different temperatur...
Bryozoans are sessile aquatic suspension feeders in mainly marine, but also freshwater habitats. Most species belong to the marine and calcified Cheilostomata. Since this taxon remains mostly unstudied regardi...
Aphids can be positioned as robust pest insects in farming and as ones of the model organisms for arthropods in molecular biology. Carotenoids are pigments that protect organisms from photooxidative damage cau...
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