Populations of bottlenose dolphin and harbour porpoise inhabit Cardigan Bay, which was designated a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), with bottlenose dolphin listed as a primary feature for its conservation status. Understanding the abundance, distribution and habitat use of species is fundamental for conservation and the implementation of management. Bottlenose dolphin and harbour porpoise u...

Animal tool use is of inherent interest given its relationship to intelligence, innovation and cultural behaviour. Here we investigate whether Shark Bay bottlenose dolphins that use marine sponges as hunting tools (spongers) are culturally distinct from other dolphins in the population based on the criteria that sponging is both socially learned and distinguishes between groups. We use social n...

In an attempt to establish an ideal method for mass production of Calicophoron microbothrium metacercariae, a study was carried out to compare the shedding capacities of Bulinus tropicus naturally and experimentally infected with C. microbothrium. A total of 906 F1 B. tropicus between 4 and 5 weeks old were each experimentally infected with two C. microbothrium miracidia and monitored for 12 we...

The environment, the on-going global climate change and the ecology of animal species determine the localisation of habitats and the geographical distribution of the various species in nature. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of such changes on snail species not only of interest to naturalists but also of importance to human and animal health. The spatial distribution of freshwa...

Stomach contents from 59 marine mammals, 28 Delphinus delphis, 14 Tursiops truncatus, three Grampus griseus, four Stenella coeruleoalba, three Globicephala melas, one Ziphius cavirostris, four Phocoena phocoena, one Physeter macrocephalus and one Balaenoptera acutorostrata stranded on the northwestern Spanish Atlantic coast from December 1990 to March 1993 were examined. A total of 9076 fish ot...

The universal primer three-primer approach can dramatically reduce the cost when genotyping the microsatellites. One former research reported four universal primers that can be used in singleplex and multiplex genotyping. In this study, we proposed an alternative suite of universal primers with four dyes for genotyping 8-12 loci in one single run. This multiplex method was tested on Tetranychus...

Geographical and temporal trends in echolocation clicking activity can lead to insights into the foraging and migratory behaviors of pelagic dolphins. Using autonomous acoustic recording packages, the geographical, diel, and seasonal patterns of Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus) echolocation click activity are described for six locations in the Southern California Bight between 2005 and 2007. R...