1. Insect toxin, mammal toxins I and II and crustacean toxin were obtained from the venom of the scorpion Androctonus australis. Their effects on the isolated giant axon of the cockroach Periplaneta americana were investigated by current-clamp and voltage-clamp techniques. 2. In current-clamp conditions, mammal toxins and crustacean toxin (1*3—13 /IM) induced a large prolongation of the falling...

Despite major progress in our understanding of animal signaling systems, the identification of chemical signals in aquatic organisms is still in its infancy. Exemplary for this is the lack of structural knowledge of crustacean sex pheromones despite their initial description in crabs almost 40 yr ago. We hypothesized that species in which the reproductive event is linked to a short window of ma...

High-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) technology has become an important tool for studying physiological responses of organisms to changes in their environment. De novo assembly of RNA-seq data has allowed researchers to create a comprehensive catalog of genes expressed in a tissue and to quantify their expression without a complete genome sequence. The contributions from the "Tapping the Po...

Vitellogenin (VTG) has been widely used as a biomarker of estrogenic exposure in fish, leading to the development of standardized assays for VTG quantification. However, standardized quantitative assays for invertebrate, particularly crustacean, lipovitellin (also known as vitellin [VTN]) are lacking. In this study, a fluorescence-based VTN enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was develope...

Results 2999 children were seen during this period with a range of allergic problems, including food allergy. 167 (5.6%) had experienced a definite clinical reaction to seafood (103 male, 62%); 94% had evidence of co-existent atopic disease. The most common seafood implicated were: Prawn (26%), Unspecified white fish (10%), Tuna (8%), Salmon (8%). In 14%, the exact type of fish could not be rec...

Cholinesterase (ChE) activity is present in crustacean muscle extracts. However, since acetylcholine (ACh) is not a neuromuscular transmitter in these animals, the role and exact localization of ChE was unknown. The histochemical localization of the enzyme was studied in whole muscle and in the sarcoplasmic reticulum fraction of the extract, 50-microm frozen sections of glutaraldehyde-fixed cra...

In the course of evolution, crustaceans adapted to a large variety of habitats. Probably the most extreme habitat shift was the transition from water to land, which occurred independently in at least five crustacean lineages. This substantial change in life style required adaptations in sensory organs, as the medium conveying stimuli changed in both chemical and physical properties. One importa...

Patterns of host use by parasites throughout a guild community of intermediate hosts can depend on several biological and ecological factors, including physiology, morphology, immunology, and behavior. We looked at parasite transmission in the intertidal crustacean community of Lower Portobello Bay, Dunedin, New Zealand, with the intent of: (1) mapping the flow of parasites throughout the major...

The fauna communities of ephemeral pools in southern Chile are characterized by heterogeneity of crustacean taxa; nevertheless, no detailed studies exist of their community structure. The aim of the present study was to analyze the crustacean community structure in two groups of ephemeral pools (Puaucho and Nigue pools) in the coastal zone of the Araucanía region. A correlation matrix was made ...

> Abstract 150 years after Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ and 100 years after W.T. Calman’s infl uential treatment on crustacean morphology and classifi cation, crustacean phylogenetics remains an active, exciting and controversial fi eld of research. An international symposium held from 7th–11th October 2008 at the University of Rostock attempted to summarize the latest developments. Molecular e...