Snails (Mollusca : Gastropoda) are an ideal bio-indicators for palaeo-environments and water quality (pollution) and are much more useful in the classification of ecological diverse aquatic habitats.1-3 These aquatic snails also complete the life cycle of digenetic trematode parasites causing various dreaded trematodiasis diseases in vertebrates including men. Indeed these snails are an interme...

The modeling and simulation of fish-like swimming is of interest in life sciences as well as in engineering applications. Understanding the mechanics of swimming can help clarifying some aspects of the evolution and of the physiology of aquatic organisms. In engineering, the study and optimisation of aquatic locomotion can improve the design of underwater vehicles having superior manouvering ca...

Seventy-five surface water samples were collected from three agricultural regions of California and analyzed for the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid. Samples were collected during California's relatively dry-weather irrigation seasons in 2010 and 2011. Imidacloprid was detected in 67 samples (89%); concentrations exceeded the United States Environmental Protection Agency's chronic invert...

The life histories of many animals are characterized by niche shifts, the timing of which can strongly affect fitness. In the tree frog Agalychnis callidryas, which has arboreal eggs, there is a trade-off between predation risks before and after hatching. When eggs are attacked by snakes, tadpoles escape by hatching rapidly and falling into the water below. Eggs not attacked by snakes hatch lat...

Man is water. When life appeared on earth, the primordial cell had a simple structure and could immediately ascertain from the surrounding aquatic environment the substances for nutrition and oxygen, without any need for structural complexity. As part of evolution, during the transition from aquatic to terrestrial life, vertebrates had to fight against dehydration as well as fish in the sea. In...

For evaluating the trophic relationship between early life stages of fish and zooplankton in Lake Monte Alegre, fish distribution and feeding habits have been studied in areas with and without macrophytes. In the first of these areas, 356 specimens belonging to 8 species, mostly juveniles, were caught by a sieve. Another 35 specimens, belonging to 4 species, were caught by gill nets and seine i...

Peter D. Dijkstra, Sander van Dijk, Ton G.G. Groothuis, Michele E.R. Pierotti, and Ole Seehausen Division of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Graham Kerr Building, Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK, Behavioural Biology Research Group, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 14, 9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Divis...

The 12 June Reviews by R. Kays et al. (“Terrestrial animal tracking as an eye on life and planet,” p. 1222) and N. E. Hussey et al. (“Aquatic animal telemetry: A panoramic window into the underwater world,” p. 1221) highlight some challenges to the future of terrestrial and aquatic telemetry studies, respectively, focusing on issues related to global collaboration and data sharing. Kays et al. ...