The environmental impact of cadmium use and its accumulation in nature have increased to alarming levels. This study aimed to morphologically and histologically investigate the acute toxic effects of cadmium on green toad, Pseudepidalea variabilis (Pallas, 1769) larvae. Embryos were obtained from specimens collected in amplexus from nature and kept under laboratory conditions until stage 26, wh...

Light enhanced calcification (LEC) is a well-documented phenomenon in reef-building corals. The main mechanism proposed for LEC is that photosynthetic CO2 uptake by the algal symbionts elevates the pH and thus enhances calcification. We evaluated the role of light and of photosynthesis on calcification by assessing the response of the corals Porites lutea and Acropora variabilis to different co...

Complex and distinct bacterial communities inhabit marine sponges and are believed to be essential to host survival, but our present-day inability to domesticate sponge symbionts in the laboratory hinders our access to the full metabolic breadth of these microbial consortia. We address bacterial cultivation bias in marine sponges using a procedure that enables direct comparison between cultivat...

Larvae and/or nymphs of four species of ixodid ticks, Ixodes scapularis Say, Amblyomma americanum (L.), Dermacentor andersoni Stiles, and Dermacentor variabilis Say, were fed to completion on laboratory hamsters or mice which had been inoculated with a West Nile (WN) virus isolate from Culex pipiens L. captured in Connecticut USA. Maximum titers in mice and hamsters were approximately 5 and two...

The chlorophyll-containing lamellar structures isolated from Anabaena variabilis have the ability to oxidize reduced mammalian cytochrome c in the dark. This activity is oxygen dependent and heat labile. As with other cytochrome oxidase preparations, activity is stimulated by detergents and is sensitive to the ionic strength of the assay solution. The cytochrome oxidase activity is not inhibite...

Among cyanobacteria, the heterocystous, N2-fixing Anabaena variabilis and the unicellular Anacystis nidulans have recently been shown to possess an NAD+-dependent, bidirectional hydrogenase. A 5.0 kb DNA segment of the `4. nidulans genome is now identified to harbor the structural genes hoxUYH coding for three subunits of the bidirectional hydrogenase. The gene arrangement in A. nidulans and in...

Buchneria dofleini (Buchner, 1924), type species of Buchneria Harmer, 1957,was first described from material collected in 1904-1905 from Sagami Bay, Japan, but the type specimens had not been reexamined since the original description. In this study, I examined specimens of Buchneria from historical collections and material recently collected near Akkeshi, Hokkaido, Japan. Three Buchneria specie...

Sanguinivorous Naobranchia variabilis prefer the first gill arch, external hemibranch and anterior end of the gill arch. The smallest N. variabilis observed attached to fish by a thin filament which connects fused tips of second maxillae to a 'plug' inserted into the gill tissue. Second maxillae enlarge to encircle and increasingly compress the gill filament, which results in a thin layer of ep...

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide for its low cost and high efficiency. However, it is rarely applied directly in rice field due to its toxicity to rice. Therefore, glyphosate-tolerant rice can greatly decrease the cost of rice production and provide a more effective weed management strategy. Although, several approaches to develop transgenic rice with glyphosate tolerance have been ...