Here, we describe the paternity patterns of two species of praying mantis from the genus Ciulfina, the agile praying mantid. This study is the first to
describe patterns of paternity in the Mantodea. We found a variation in paternity in these two closely related species. Ciulfina rentzi exhibited single paternity, with a single male siring all offspring within a clutch. By contrast, Ciulfina klassi displayed multiple paternity, with the minimum number of fathers contributing to a clutch ranging from one to Selleckchem Selumetinib four. Differences in copulation duration and reproductive output between these two species may help to explain these paternity patterns. “
“Pigmentation disorders such as albinism are occasionally associated with hearing impairments in mammals. Therefore, we wanted to investigate whether such a phenomenon also exists in non-mammalian vertebrates. We measured the hearing abilities of normally pigmented and albinotic specimens of two catfish species, the European wels Silurus glanis (Siluridae) and the South American bronze catfish Corydoras aeneus (Callichthyidae). The non-invasive auditory evoked potential (AEP) recording technique was utilized
to determine hearing thresholds at 10 frequencies from 0.05 buy KU-57788 to 5 kHz. Neither auditory sensitivity nor shape of AEP waveforms differed between normally pigmented and albinotic specimens at any frequency tested in both species. Silurus glanis and C. aeneus showed the best hearing between 0.3 and 1 kHz; the lowest thresholds were 78.4 dB at 0.5 kHz in S. glanis (pigmented), 75 dB at 1 kHz in S. glanis (albinotic), 77.6 dB at 0.5 kHz in C. aeneus (pigmented) and 76.9 dB at 1 kHz in C. aeneus (albinotic). This study indicates no association between albinism and hearing ability. Perhaps because of the lack of melanin in the fish inner ear, hearing in fishes is
less likely to be affected by albinism than in mammals. “
“Birds have the largest eyes, both relatively and absolutely, of any of the terrestrial vertebrates. Large avian eye size has been hypothesized to be an adaptation to flight as part of Leuckart’s Law, the idea in biology that more swiftly moving animals have larger eyes. Increased 上海皓元医药股份有限公司 spatial resolution is one result of larger eye sizes and may possibly improve an animal’s ability to judge distances, of obvious importance for flight. Leuckart’s Law in birds has been tested previously utilizing Plasticine eye models and body mass as a surrogate for flight speed. In this study, we test Leuckart’s Law using axial length measurements of eyeballs obtained from wet bird specimens and flight speeds obtained from migrating birds. These data do not support Leuckart’s Law: for 88 bird species across 10 orders, a regression of absolute eye axial length versus flight speed explains virtually none of the variance, with an r2 value of 0.001. Regressions of relative eye size versus air speed are significant (P<0.000, r2=0.