A. hebraeum nymphae were found on 4 angulate tortoises and 13 leopard tortoises in the Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape Province. Adults of this species were collected for the 1st time from a leopard tortoise in the Mkuze Game Reserve, Natal. The significance of this finding, in relation to the normal host preferences of this tick, is briefly discussed.

BACKGROUND Tortoises (Testudinidae) occur in a wide range of environments, providing important ecosystem functions, such as seed dispersal and refuge in the form of burrows. Tortoise movement has previously been shown to be related to resource availability, reproductive status and local environmental conditions. However, understanding of the variables that drive their movement remains comparati...

Most directly transmitted infections require some form of close contact between infectious and susceptible hosts to spread. Often disease models assume contacts are equal and use mean field estimates of transmission probability for all interactions with infectious hosts. Such methods may inaccurately describe transmission when interactions differ substantially in their ability to cause infectio...

066.1 Conservation Biology of Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises: A Compilation Project of the IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group A.G.J. Rhodin, P.C.H. Pritchard, P.P. van Dijk, R.A. Saumure, K.A. Buhlmann, J.B. Iverson, and R.A. Mittermeier, Eds. Chelonian Research Monographs (ISSN 1088-7105) No. 5, doi:10.3854/crm.5.066.leytensis.v1.2012 © 2012 by Chelonian Research Founda...

A path integral derivation is given of a thermal propagator in a collapsing black-hole spacetime. The thermal nature of the propagator as seen by an inertial observer far from the black hole is understood in terms of homo-topically non-trivial paths in the connguration space appropriate to tortoise coordinates.

The complete genome sequence of the type strain Corynebacterium testudinoris DSM 44614 from the mouth of a tortoise comprises 2,721,226 bp with a mean G+C content of 63.14%. The automatic annotation of the genome sequence revealed 4 rRNA operons, 51 tRNA genes, 7 other RNA genes, and 2,561 protein-coding regions.

One of the most pressing dilemmas our time is determining how to satisfy demands a growing human population while still conserving biodiversity. Worldwide, land modification accommodate resource needs has caused significant declines in wildlife populations. To help minimize biodiversity loss, we must support on human-dominated land, such as farms and urban areas, but knowledge do so lacking. Ag...

Pattern of black and yellow The tortoise shell pattern consists of yellow hairs sprinkled lightly among black hairs in a few irregular, asymmetrical regions over the body. This is the typical pattern of family D, a highly inbred strain which never shows white. Occasionally a foot has a small area of segregated yellow at the tip. Large areas often appear to be solid black. The tricolor pattern o...

BACKGROUND Although not unusual to find captive relicts of species lost in the wild, rarely are presumed extinct species rediscovered outside of their native range. A recent study detected living descendents of an extinct Galápagos tortoise species (Chelonoidis elephantopus) once endemic to Floreana Island on the neighboring island of Isabela. This finding adds to the growing cryptic diversity ...

The Southwestern United States desert serves as the host for several threatened and endangered species, one of which is the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii). The goal of this study was to develop a fine-scale, remote-sensing-based approach that indicates favorable burrow locations for G. agassizii in the Boulder City (Nevada) Conservation Easement area (35,500 ha). This was done by analyzin...