background: slugs have been known worldwide as important pests of agricultural and horticultural production. they also play a role as intermediate or definitive hosts of helminths parasite. in this purpose, current study was carried out to examine slug radular teeth structure and slug infection with helminths larvae in north of iran. methods: a total number of 114 slugs were collected from cent...

BACKGROUND Slugs have been known worldwide as important pests of agricultural and horticultural production. They also play a role as intermediate or definitive hosts of helminths parasite. In this purpose, current study was carried out to examine slug radular teeth structure and slug infection with helminths larvae in north of Iran. METHODS A total number of 114 slugs were collected from cent...

The exceptional strength and extensibility of spider dragline silk have been thought to be facilitated by two spidroins, major ampullate spidroin 1 (MaSp1) and major ampullate spidroin 2 (MaSp2), under the assumption that protein secondary structures are coupled with the expressed spidroins. We tested this assumption for the dragline silk of three co-existing Australian spiders, Argiope keyserl...

A simple solid-state NMR method was used to study the structure of (13)C- and (15)N-enriched silk from two Australian orb-web spider species, Nephila edulis and Argiope keyserlingi. Carbon-13 and (15)N spectra from alanine- or glycine-labeled oriented dragline silks were acquired with the fiber axis aligned parallel or perpendicular to the magnetic field. The fraction of oriented component was ...

The adaptive benefits of extended phenotypic plasticity are imprecisely defined due to a paucity of experiments examining traits that are manipulable and measurable across environments. Spider webs are often used as models to explore the adaptive benefits of variations in extended phenotypes across environments. Nonetheless, our understanding of the adaptive nature of the plastic responses of s...

The nutritional composition of diets can vary widely in nature and have large effects on the growth, reproduction and survival of animals. Many animals, especially herbivores, will tightly regulate the nutritional composition of their body, which has been referred to as nutritional homeostasis. We tested how experimental manipulation of the lipid and protein content of live prey affected the nu...

Certain species of orb-weavers add extra silk structures, termed a stabilimentum or web decoration, to their webs. In the genus Argiope stabilimenta are silken structures of densely woven zig-zag ribbons. The adaptive value of these stabilimenta is still unclear and controversially discussed. In the course of time, many functional hypotheses have been proposed for silk stabilimenta. Because of ...

A spider orb web is an extended phenotype; it modifies and interacts with the environment, influencing spider physiology. Orb webs are plastic, responding to variations in prey parameters. Studies attempting to understand how nutrients influence spider orb-web plasticity have been hampered by the inability to decouple prey nutrients from other, highly correlated, prey factors and the intrinsic ...