Flight feathers have evolved under selective pressures to be sufficiently light and strong enough to cope with the stresses of flight. The feather shaft (rachis) must resist these stresses and is fundamental to this mode of locomotion. Relatively little work has been done on rachis morphology, especially from a mechanical perspective and never at the nanoscale. Nano-indentation is a cornerstone...

BACKGROUND During sleep animals are relatively unresponsive and unaware of their environment, and therefore, more exposed to predation risk than alert and awake animals. This vulnerability might influence when, where and how animals sleep depending on the risk of predation perceived before going to sleep. Less clear is whether animals remain sensitive to predation cues when already asleep. ME...

Similar species may co-occur in sympatry because of the partitioning of habitat use and resources at different spatial and temporal scales. Understanding co-occurrence patterns of species may assist in explaining patterns of habitat selection, which is important when planning conservation actions for threatened species. Little is known about the ecological preferences of Asian hill partridges, ...

The Chukar Partridge (Alectoris chukar, Galliformes) is one of the most important game birds in its native range, spanning from Balkans to eastern Asia, and regions Europe, North America New Zealand where it was introduced. Previous studies found two main genetic lineages species forming an a western clade. Partridges are raised farms released supplement natural populations for shooting USA, Ca...

the purpose of this study was to identify genomic regions of quantitative trait loci (qtl), affectingcarcass traits on chromosome 1 in an f2 population of japanese quail. for this purpose, a three-generationresource population was developed by using two distinct japanese quail strains, wild (meat type) andwhite (layer type). eight pairs of white and wild birds were crossed reciprocally and 34 f...

The juvenile period is often a crucial interval for selective pressure on locomotor ability. Although flight is central to avian biology, little is known about factors that limit flight performance during development. To improve understanding of flight ontogeny, we used a propeller (revolving wing) model to test how wing shape and feather structure influence aerodynamic performance during devel...

Background Gallibacterium anatis is an opportunistic pathogen of intensively reared poultry causing oophoritis, salpingitis, peritonitis and enteritis. Gallibacterium anatis infection often remains undiagnosed. Recently multi-drug resistant isolates have been described. Methods A newly developed PCR restriction fragment length polymorphism assay targeting the 16S rRNA gene was used to identif...

Introduction Aquatic birds are the main reservoirs of influenza viruses, however pigs represent an essential host in virus ecology as they are susceptible to both avian and human influenza viruses. Circulating zoonotic influenza (A/H7N9, A/H5N1, and A/H3N2v) viruses could mutate into forms easily transmissible from human-to-human and become a public health concern. Georgia is located along rout...