1. It is not always possible to track trophic interactions between predators and prey by direct observation. This is especially true when observing small or elusive animals with cryptic food-web ecology. Gut and/or faecal analysis can sometimes allow prey remains to be identified visually but is only possible when a component of the diet is resistant to digestion. In some cases there are no sol...

BACKGROUND Ribosomal RNAs have been widely used for identification and classification of species, and have produced data giving new insights into phylogenetic relationships. Recently, multilocus genotyping and even whole genome sequencing-based technologies have been adopted in ambitious comparative biology studies. However, such technologies are still far from routine-use in species classifica...

Very little is known about the normal gastrointestinal flora of wild birds, or how it might affect or reflect the host's life-history traits. The aim of this study was to survey the species richness of bacteria in the feces of a wild population of blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus and to explore the relationships between bacterial species richness and various life-history traits, such as age, sex, ...

We describe four monoclonal antibodies (MAB) which specifically recognize double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) together with their use in new methods for detecting and characterizing dsRNA in unfractionated nucleic acid extracts. The specificity of the antibodies was analyzed using a panel of 27 different synthetic and naturally occurring nucleic acids. All four antibodies reacted in a highly specific m...

A field experiment established in 1980 was conducted to evaluate the effects of open drainage ditch applied for water removal on bacterial and fungal communities of cold waterlogged paddy soils in 2011. In this experiment, traditional plate counting and temperature gradient gel electrophoresis were employed to characterize the abundance and diversity of soil bacterial and fungal communities. Fo...

Detection of alterations in nucleotide sequences enables us to associate a phenotype with the underlying genetic information. Nucleotide sequencing is generally accepted as the ultimate method for this purpose. Alternative convenient methods have been developed for detection of polymorphisms or variations in nucleotide sequences, including single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis...

Increasingly, the microbiological scientific community is relying on molecular biology to define the complexity of the gut flora and to distinguish one organism from the next. This is particularly pertinent in the field of probiotics, and probiotic therapy, where identifying probiotics from the commensal flora is often warranted. Current techniques, including genetic fingerprinting, gene sequen...

Background: The intestinal microbiota affects many physiological and immunological functions of the body and is closely connected to the homeostasis and health status of an individual. Due to difficulties in obtaining samples from the intestine and studying complex microbial populations the knowledge of the composition, dynamics and metabolic potential of microbial populations in the upper gut ...

Droughts are among the most important disturbance events for stream ecosystems; they not only affect stream hydrology but also the stream biota. Although desiccation of streams is common in Mediterranean regions, phases of dryness in headwaters have been observed more often and for longer periods in extended temperate regions, including Central Europe, reflecting global climate change and enhan...