The potential for rescuing immature oocytes from the ovaries of females of rare felid species which die or undergo medical ovariohysterectomy was evaluated. Ovaries were recovered from 13 species representing 35 individuals in good-to-poor health. Although the majority of females were 10 yr of age or older and in fair-to-poor health, a total of 846 oocytes were recovered of which 608 (71.9%) we...

OBJECTIVES The RASopathies are a group of syndromes that have in common germline mutations in genes that encode components of the Ras/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway and have been a focus of study to understand the role of this pathway in development and disease. These syndromes include Noonan syndrome (NS), Noonan syndrome with multiple lentigines (NSML or LEOPARD syndrome), ne...

In this study, we investigated the role of selection in the maintenance of a dorsal colour polymorphism in natural populations of the northern leopard frog, Rana pipiens. We determined genetic structure both spatially and temporally from a suite of putatively neutral molecular markers and tested whether or not the colour locus exhibited patterns of genetic variation that differed from those of ...

reported by the Raffertys (10) in leopard frogs (Rana pipiens pipiens) that were maintained under crowded con ditions in the laboratory for periods ranging from 3 to 10 months. These incidences (20†" 50 %) are significantly higher than the incidence that Lucké(5) found in newly caught frogs (2.7 %) or in frogs that he maintained in the laboratory for a year or more (6.7 %). Subsequent studie...

Auditory hair cells in the amphibian papilla (APHCs) of the leopard frog, Rana pipiens pipiens, have a significantly higher permeability to water than that observed in mammalian hair cells. The insensitivity of water permeability in frog hair cells to extracellular mercury suggests that an amphibian homologue of the water channel aquaporin-4 (AQP4) may mediate water transport in these cells. Us...