W hen Odysseus attempted to sail unharmed between Scylla and Charybdis, he could not have dreamt to ever be quoted in relation to restenosis after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). To be truly successful, balloon dilatation should change the preexistent stenotic lesion to the extent that sufficient luminal widening is achieved and restenosis does not occur. Nevertheless, ap...

Adrenalectomy for pheochromocytoma (PCC) is generally performed after preparation with αand β-sympathicolytic agents to blunt the effects of the elevated catecholamine output. In patients also known to have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, this preoperative workup needs more attention than in other patients with PCC. This is illustrated by the following case, in which the perioperative pass through...

Species recognition can often play a key role in female mating preferences. Far less is known about conspecific mate recognition from the male perspective. In many closely related taxa, females exhibit few obvious visual differences and males might have to attend to chemical cues in mate recognition, a possibility that has rarely been explored in vertebrates. Here, we examine male species recog...

A rapidly increasing body of work is revealing that the genomes of distinct species often exhibit hybrid ancestry, presumably due to postspeciation hybridization between closely related species. Despite the growing number of documented cases, we still know relatively little about how genomes evolve and stabilize following hybridization, and to what extent hybridization is functionally relevant....

Many studies of offspring size focus on differences in maternal investment that arise from ecological factors such as predation or competition. Classic theory predicts that these ecological factors will select for an optimal offspring size, and therefore that variation in a given environment will be minimized. Yet recent evidence suggests maternal traits such as size or age could also drive mea...

Hybrid speciation may contribute significantly to generating biodiversity, but only a few well-documented examples for it exist so far that do not involve polyploidization as a mechanism. The swordtail fish, Xiphophorus clemenciae, shows common hallmarks of a hybrid origin and still overlaps in its current geographic distribution with its putative ancestral species (Xiphophorus hellerii and Xip...

Swordtail fish have been studied extensively in relation to diverse aspects of biology; however, little attention has been paid to the patterns of genetic variation within and among populations of swordtails. In this study, we sequenced the mtDNA control region from 65 individuals and 10 populations of Xiphophorus cortezi to investigate the genetic variation within and among populations, includ...

The adaptive benefits of maternal investment into individual offspring (inherited environmental effects) will be shaped by selection on mothers as well as their offspring, often across variable environments. We examined how a mother's nutritional environment interacted with her offspring's nutritional and social environment in Xiphophorus multilineatus, a live-bearing fish. Fry from mothers rea...