Severe discharge of sewage and industrial effluents into the Persian Gulf causes the deposition of various types of heavy metals and especially lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury in the muscles of marine animals. The present study was carried out to evaluate the concentration of lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury in the fish (Scomberomorus commerson), shrimp (Fenneropenaeus indicus) and lobster...

The scalloped spiny lobster Panulirus homarus supports numerous traditional diving, trap and trammel net fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean. Commercial catches made in 2003 to 2005 in the Arabian Sea region of Oman (a coastline of ~1100 km, comprising Dhofar and Al-Wusta) were sampled for length and sex composition, and female reproductive condition. On average, lobsters caught in Dhofar wer...

Decapod crustaceans synthesize highly active proteolytic enzymes in the midgut gland and release at least a part of them into the stomach where they facilitate the first step in peptide hydrolysis. The most common proteinases in the gastric fluid characterized so far are serine proteinases, that is, trypsin and chymotrypsin. These enzymes show highest activities at neutral or slightly alkaline ...

The hyperpolarization-activated inward cationic current (Ih) is known to regulate the rhythmicity, excitability, and synaptic transmission in heart cells and many types of neurons across a variety of species, including some pyloric and gastric mill neurons in the stomatogastric ganglion (STG) in Cancer borealis and Panulirus interruptus However, little is known about the role of Ih in regulatin...

The serotonergic innervation of the stomatogastric ganglion (STG) of three decapod crustacean species, Panulirus interruptus, Homarus americanus and Cancer irroratus, was studied. Immunohistochemical techniques were used to study the distribution of serotonin-like staining in regions of the stomatogastric system in the three species. In C. irroratus and H. americanus, but not in P. interruptus,...

THE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER on the origin and development of the spermatophoric mass of Enoplometopus oeeidentalis (Randall) is threef~ld: (1) to increase our knowledge of the blOlogy of this little-known species, (2) to show evidence in suppott of external fertilization, an? (3) ~o extend the list of mechanically sperm-ltberatmg families in Hawaii to include t~eNephropsidae(Homaridaeauet., Nephr...

Individual recognition in the lobster Homarus americanus (Milne-Edwards), is based on detection of urine pheromones via chemoreceptors of the lateral antennular flagellum. The specific sensory pathway mediating this recognition is not known. Most of the chemoreceptor cells of this flagellum are found in the unimodal aesthetasc sensilla and project specifically to the glomeruli of the olfactory ...

INTRODUCTION The heart-ganglion preparation of the lobster is an independent nerve-effector system. It can be isolated from the rest of the animal and maintained for many hours, actively contracting, in a cooled saline bath. It is therefore an ideal system for studying the functional organization of a relatively simple organ a pump that is governed by a part of the nervous system composed of on...