The varied reproductive strategies of birds present a challenge in developing reliable indices for the assessment of effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Precocial species, such as quail, appear to be most sensitive to EDC effects during embryonic development. Although the Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) is a nonnative lab species, its reproductive strategy is similar to that of...

In metapopulations in which habitat patches vary in quality and occupancy it can be complicated to calculate the net time-averaged contribution to reproduction of particular populations. Surprisingly, few indices have been proposed for this purpose. We combined occupancy, abundance, frequency of occurrence, and reproductive success to determine the net value of different sites through time and ...

We examined the reproductive ecology of black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla in several breeding colonies in the North Pacific to test if inter-annual changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Winter Ice Cover (ICI), or local sea-surface temperature (SST) predict changes in productivity (fledglings per nest) or nutritional stress (corticosterone). We explored the implications of the...

The Columbia root-knot nematode Meloidogyne chitwoodi parasitizes several plant species, including grasses that have been developed for semiarid environments, and substantially reduces the productivity of cereals and the longevity of perennial grasses growing under semiarid conditions throughout the intermountain region. Thirty-two auto- and allotetraploid (2n = 28) taxa in the perennial Tritic...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate reproduction among patients with bipolar I disorder (BP1) or schizophrenia (SZ) in Egypt. METHODS BP1 patients (n=113) were compared with community based, demographically balanced controls (n=124) and SZ patients (n=79, DSM-IV). All participants were evaluated using structured interviews and corroborative data were obtained from relatives. Standard indices of procreation...

Introduction. Recent evidence of safety and efficacy of Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells (BMMNC) in spinal cord injury makes the Bone Marrow (BM) CD34+ percentage and the BMMNC count gain significance. The indices of BM that change with body mass index and aging in general population have been reported but seldom in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) victims, whose parameters of relevance differ from genera...

The citrus fruit fly Bactrocera minax is associated with diverse bacterial communities. We used a 454 pyrosequencing technology to study in depth the microbial communities associated with gut and reproductive organs of Bactrocera minax. Our dataset consisted of 100,749 reads with an average length of 400 bp. The saturated rarefaction curves and species richness indices indicate that the samplin...