The personality trait of curiosity has been shown to increase welfare in humans. If this positive welfare effect is also true for non-humans, animals with high levels of curiosity may be able to cope better with stressful situations than their conspecifics. Before discoveries can be made regarding the effect of curiosity on an animal's ability to cope in their environment, a way of measuring cu...

Quick and cost-effective serologic assays, such as those based on enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technology, are useful for screening animal populations for infectious diseases. Recombinant protein G is described as an almost universal ELISA conjugate for the detection of antibodies from a wide range of animal species. However, there is limited data documenting the ability of protein...

Knowing the geographic distribution of any species is an important first step toward understanding its ecology. Long-tailed weasels (Mustela frenata) are secretive and difficult to detect, so little is known about their distribution in Illinois. To fill this gap in the knowledge, we solicited information from museum curators about the sites where long-tailed weasel specimens were collected in I...

Schistosoma japonicum (S. japonicum) is a worldwide spread pathogen which penetrates host skin and then induces several diseases in infected host, such as fibrosis, formation of granulomas, hepatocirrhosis, and hepatomegaly. In present study, for the first time, transcriptomic profiles of mouse livers and skins infected by fork-tailed S. japonicum cercaria or non-fork-tailed S. japonicum cercar...

Abstract Farm diversification is mainly driven by risk mitigation effects and economic gains related to complementarities between production activities. By combining these two aspects, we investigate economies in a sample of French mixed sheep farming systems rank using stochastic dominance criteria. Partially diversified (Sheep-Grass, Sheep-Crop, Sheep-Landless) fully (Sheep-Grass-Crop-Landles...