Giant suspension feeders such as mysticete whales, basking and whale sharks, and the extinct (indicated by '†') †pachycormiform teleosts are conspicuous members of modern and fossil marine vertebrate faunas. Whether convergent anatomical features common to these clades arose along similar evolutionary pathways has remained unclear because of a lack of information surrounding the origins of all ...

Plant chemistry can be a key driver of host shifts in herbivores. Several species in the sawfly genus Athalia are important economic pests on Brassicaceae, whereas other Athalia species are specialized on Lamiales. These host plants have glucosides in common, which are sequestered by larvae. To disentangle the possible direction of host shifts in this genus, we examined the sequestration specif...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Pretreatment diagnosis for the location of shunts and arterial feeders of spinal arteriovenous fistulas is crucial. This study aimed to evaluate the utility of subtracted CT angiography imaging by using nonrigid registration (R-CTA) in patients with spinal arteriovenous fistulas compared with conventional CTA imaging. MATERIALS AND METHODS The records of 15 consecutive ...

One aspect of animal personality that has been well described in captivity, but received only little attention in studies in the wild, is that personality types may vary in their behavioural flexibility towards environmental changes. A fundamental factor underlying such differences is believed to be the degree to which individual behavior is guided by environmental stimuli. We tested this hypot...

Many marine zooplankters, particularly among copepods, are "ambush feeders" that passively wait for their prey and capture them by fast surprise attacks. This strategy must be very demanding in terms of muscle power and sensing capabilities, but the detailed mechanisms of the attacks are unknown. Using high-speed video we describe how copepods perform spectacular attacks by precision maneuverin...

In this study, I explored the interactions among host diet, nutritional status and gastrointestinal parasitism in wild bovids by examining temporal patterns of nematode faecal egg shedding in species with different diet types during a drought and non-drought year. Study species included three grass and roughage feeders (buffalo, hartebeest, waterbuck), four mixed or intermediate feeders (eland,...

In the present study, the effect of two types of allogeneic-derived feeder cells [porcine ear and tail skin fibroblasts (PESF, PTSF)] and three types of xenogeneic-derived feeder cells [human foreskin fibroblasts (HFK), mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF) and immortalized mouse embryonic fibroblasts (STO)] on the isolation and cultivation of putative porcine embryonic stem cells (pESCs) was evalu...