The study of activity patterns in subterranean mammals has been poorly explored in subterranean insectivores. This is especially true for the rare and elusive blind mole Talpa caeca. A field work devoted to collect data on life history traits of the blind mole was run in a montane pasture in Southern Italy (1549 m a.s.l.). Plastic barrel-like traps were placed in actively used mole tunnels and checked regularly at 6 h intervals for two sessions of nine consecutive days, for a total 1500 trap-nights. No moles were captured alive, but signs of mole activity at trap sites (traps filled with ground) were regularly recorded. A video recorded inside a trap confirmed that
moles fill the traps with soil as part of trap avoidance behavior. Activity at trap sites was analyzed as a binomial variable, considering the rate of filled traps vs.the number of armed traps at each 6 h trap-checking intervals. Activity showed a polyphasic pattern typical of moles, but differently from other species, activity was more concentrated in the central part of the day (12.00-18.00). Results suggest a specific adaptation to local environmental conditions and body size.
The presented technological procedure makes it possible to assemble large magnetic blocks from permanent magnets with a high value of maximum energy product in such a way that the individual magnets or magnetic plates are moved toward each other at a controlled speed in the direction perpendicular to the future common contact surface of these magnets, i.e. parallel to the induction lines crossing this contact surface. Unlike in the previously used way of assembling the blocks, it is thus possible to eliminate the influence of partial demagnetization as the blocks are being assembled and consequently to reach higher values of magnetic induction in the air gap of the magnetic circuit. When applying the new method of assembling the blocks for instance in circuits of magnetic filters for the purification of ceramic suspensions, a prerequisite for the further improvement of the technological parameters of filtration is thus created., Václav Žežulka and Pavel Straka., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
We performed a phylogeographic analysis of mitochondrial DNA in the edible dormouse, Glis glis (Linnaeus, 1766), including 15 known haplotypes obtained across large part the European species’ range along with a fragment of the cytochrome b gene of one specimen from Alonissos island (Sporades archipelago, Greece). The haplotype of this specimen did not cluster with any other haplotypes, which were grouped into four lineages. The genetic divergence (mean K2P distance) between the Greek specimen and these four lineages, comprised between 3.3 % and 5.9 %, was comparable to the genetic divergence found between the aforesaid lineages (1.9-6.4 %). Accordingly, the specimen most likely falls into a new, never described before, Mediterranean mitochondrial lineage of G. glis.
An unnamed microcercous cercaria (Digenea: Monorchiidae), a parasite of Amiantis purpurata (Lamarck, 1818) (Bivalvia: Veneridae) and its corresponding metacercaria from the province of Buenos Aires and the Patagonian coast of the Southwest Atlantic Ocean, are described. The cercaria described in this paper differs from the three other monorchiid microcercous cercariae, i.e., Lasiotocus minutus (Manter, 1931), Lasiotocus elongatus (Manter, 1931), and Cercaria caribbea XXXVI Cable, 1956, mainly because of the extension of the excretory vesicle and the location of the ventral sucker. Cercariae artificially extracted from sporocysts encyst in a dish and form metacercariae enveloped by a gelatinous sac with two prolongations, which are used to adhere to the substratum. The monorchiid described in this paper has a life cycle similar to those of L. minutus and L. elongatus, although the adult stage of the present species is still unknown. Their larvae are similar in morphology and have venerid clams as their first hosts. The presence of a monorchiid larva is reported for the first time in the Southern Hemisphere. Its monthly prevalence rates, ranging from 0 to 25% (mean: 8.3%), are given from the Patagonian coast. The infection seems to cause castration as it was observed that during March through to May, when most gametes were produced in uninfected individuals, 81% of the infected individuals did not produce gametes.
Myxobolus allami sp. n. is described from the intestinal wall of the silvery black porgy, Sparidentex hasta (Valenciennes), off Saudi Arabian coast of Arabian Gulf. Two of 20 examined fish were found to be infected with irregular-shaped plasmodia 3-8 mm long × 2-3 mm wide. Mature myxospores are subspherical to elliptical in the valvular view and oval in the sutural view, and are 11-13 (12) µm long, 7-8 (7.5) µm wide and 10-12 (10.8) µm thick. Spores have relatively thin valves and mostly (~ 72%) end with short caudal appendages of ~3 µm long. The spores also have two polar capsules, which are oval to elliptical and measure 5-7 (5.7) µm in length and 2-3 (2.7) µm in width. Polar filaments are coiled, with three turns. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that caudal appendages originated from the sutural edge at the posterior pole of the myxospore with density similar to that of its valves. The SSU rRNAgene sequence of the present species does not match any available sequences in GenBank. Phylogenetically, this species is sister to Myxobolus khaliji Zhang, Al-Qurausihy et Abdel-Baki, 2014 within a well-supported clade of Myxobolus-Henneguya with species infecting marine fishes. The combination of molecular data and morphological differences between this and other species of Myxobolus Bütschli, 1882 lead us to propose that the present form be established as a new species, M. allami. The present study also provides more evidence for the idea that caudal appendages cannot be reliably used to distinguish the species of the genera Myxobolus and Henneguya Thélohan, 1892.
A new nematode, Dichelyne alatae sp. n., is described on the basis of the worms recovered from the intestine of the whiting, Sillaginopsis panijus (Perciformes: Sillaginidae) from the estuary of the river Hooghly at Kalyani, West Bengal, India. Dichelyne alatae differs from congeners in having a small body size, deirids posterior to the oesophagus, short and wide caudal alae at the level of cloacal opening, unequal, alate spicules, a shield-shaped gubemaculum, a different number of caudal papillae and a conical tail with spines in its distal region.
Together with the development of peritoneal dialysis (PD), appropriate animal models play an important role in the investigation of physiological, pathophysiological and clinical aspects of PD. However, there is still not an ideal experimental PD animal model. In this study, 45 Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups. Grou p 1 (n=15) was receiving daily peritoneal injection through the catheter connected to the abdominal cavity, using PD solution containing 3.86 % D-glucose. Group 2 (n=15) was receiving daily peritoneal injection of 0.9 % physiological saline through a catheter. Group 3 (n=15), which was subjected to sham operation, served as controls. Our results showed that WBC counts in peritoneal effluent of Group 1 were slightly higher than those of Group 2 and control group, respectively (p<0.05). However, there was no episode of infection in any group. In addition, there was no significant difference in neutrophils fractions among these three groups. Hematoxylin-eosin and Masson’s trichrome staining demonstrated a dramatic increase in thickness of the mesothelium-to-muscle layer of peritoneum exposed to high glucose (Group 1) compared to Group 2 and controls (p<0.01). These data indicated that we established a novel rat model of PD with a modified catheter insertion method. This model is more practical, easy to operate, not too expensive and it will facilitate the investigate of long-term effects of PD., Y.-M. Peng ... [et al.]., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Community detection algorithms help us improve the management of complex networks and provide a clean sight of them. We can encounter complex networks in various fields such as social media, bioinformatics, recommendation systems, and search engines. As the definition of the community changes based on the problem considered, there is no algorithm that works universally for all kinds of data and network structures. Communities can be disjointed such that each member is in at most one community or overlapping such that every member is in at least one community. In this study, we examine the problem of finding overlapping communities in complex networks and propose a new algorithm based on the similarity of neighbors. This algorithm runs in O(mlgm) running time in the complex network containing m number of relationships. To compare our algorithm with existing ones, we select the most successful four algorithms from the Community Detection library (CDlib) by eliminating the algorithms that require prior knowledge, are unstable, and are time-consuming. We evaluate the successes of the proposed algorithm and the selected algorithms using various known metrics such as modularity, F-score, and Normalized Mutual Information. In addition, we adapt the coverage metric defined for disjoint communities to overlapping communities and also make comparisons with this metric. We also test all of the algorithms on small graphs of real communities. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is successful in finding overlapping communities.
A new copepod species, Acanthochondria sagitta sp. n., is described based on specimens collected from the flounder Xystreurys rasile (Jordan) (Pleuronectiformes, Paralichthyidae), caught in the coastal waters off Necochea, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. The new species differs from its congeners by the following combination of characters: presence of three pairs of cephalic outgrowths; the triangular shape of the trunk with diverging postero-lateral processes; leg 2 of an intermediate shape between Types C and D, which projects laterally from the trunk, and Type B-V antennule bearing two proximal processes (one ventral and one dorsal) on the swollen basal portion.