THERAPSIDS AS MAMMALS

Maritime mammals: terrestrial mammals as consumers in marine intertidal communities

The phenomenon of terrestrial mammals as predators in marine intertidal communities, and thus as agents of energy transfer from sea to land, is poorly understood. We review here the evidence for terrestrial mammals intentionally entering the ocean shore at low tide in order to prey on living marine invertebrates, fish, algae, and seagrasses. We introduce the term ‘maritime mammals’, defined as ...

Marine Mammals as Oceanographic Sampling Platforms

Mammals as prey: estimating ingestible size.

Most mammals have deformable bodies, making it difficult to measure the size of living or freshly killed ones accurately. Because small rodents are common prey of many snakes, and because nearly all snakes swallow their prey whole, we explored four methods for determining the ingestible size (the smallest cross-sectional area that the largest part of the rodent can be made into without breaking...

Triorganotin as a compound with potential reproductive toxicity in mammals.

Organotin compounds are typical environmental contaminants and suspected endocrine-disrupting substances, which cause irreversible sexual abnormality in female mollusks, called "imposex". However, little is known about the capability of triorganotin compounds, such as tributyltin and triphenyltin, to cause disorders in the sexual development and reproductive functions of mammals, including huma...

Exotic Small Mammals as Potential Reservoirs of Zoonotic Bartonella spp.

To evaluate the risk for emerging human infections caused by zoonotic Bartonella spp. from exotic small mammals, we investigated the prevalence of Bartonella spp. in 546 small mammals (28 species) that had been imported into Japan as pets from Asia, North America, Europe, and the Middle and Near East. We obtained 407 Bartonella isolates and characterized them by molecular phylogenetic analysis ...