With the purpose of determining the principal food resources responsible for maintaining the fishery yield in a section of the São Francisco River, 6 sampling of the fish fauna were made downstream from the Três Marias Dam, from September 1996 to July 1997. A total of 1,127 individuals of 35 species were captured, using gillnets with mesh sizes varying from 3 to 16 cm. The stomach contents of 3...

Reconstructing the diet of top marine predators is of great significance in several key areas of applied ecology, requiring accurate estimation of their true diet. However, from conventional stomach content analysis to recent stable isotope and DNA analyses, no one method is bias or error free. Here, we evaluated the accuracy of recent methods to estimate the actual proportion of a controlled d...

Undeu the above comprehensive and indeed misleading title a very useful little pamphlet is published by Mr. R. Weiss, a consulting chemist, assisted by Dr. G. Herschell and Mr. A. Charles, F.R.C.S.i. It deals with the use of laboratory methods in daily practice. For example, 27 pages are given to urine analysis, another section to analysis of stomach contents, ten pages to analyses of faeces, a...

Investigation of food and feeding of fishes has traditionally been an important field of activity in fisheries biology, but it is one in which there are great difficulties in correlating the results with the research made in the other fields (FAO, 1974). Investigations of the food of the fish cannot be considered in isolation but have to be discussed in relation to the whole marine environment,...

Gastric pH and volume were measured in 87 patients who had received i.v. omeprazole (a new gastric antisecretory agent) 40 mg or placebo 1 or 3 h before surgery. Omeprazole increased the pH of gastric contents in the majority of patients. Administration 1 h before surgery produced greater gastric pH and smaller volume than administration 3 h before surgery. There was a reduction in the number o...

Rumination, or the chewing and re-swallowing of regurgitated stomach contents, can be found in up to 10% of institutionalized individuals with severe or profound mental retardation. Serious physical consequences, including death, can result from the disorder. Unfortunately, rumination can be subtle and difficult to observe and often continues untreated. Additionally, the research literature has...

Ecological character displacement describes a pattern where morphological differences between sympatric species are enhanced through interspecific competition. Although widely considered a pervasive force in evolutionary ecology, few clear-cut examples have been documented. Here we report a case of ecological character displacement between two salamander species, Plethodon cinereus and Plethodo...

On 15 July 1971, Deborah Leach was found dead on the beach. Dr. Manock, the State forensic pathologist, used stomach content analysis to determine the time of Leach’s death. Manock concluded that death was between 4:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Only Mr. Van Beelen had been witnessed on the beach during this time. Van Beelen was convicted of Leach’s murder in 1973.1 His conviction was upheld on appeal....

The aim of this study was to evaluate the importance of fruits and seeds as food items in the natural diet of the tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum). During one year, tambaqui's stomach contents were collected, and their nutritional and energetic values were determined. During the flooding period, and while the river water was rising, which coincided with a high availability of fruits and seeds, t...