Air-breathing tadpoles of Xenopus laevis (Amphibia: Anura) use buccopharyngeal surfaces for both gas exchange and capture of food particles in the water. In dense food suspensions, tadpoles decrease ventilation of the buccopharynx and increase air breathing. The lung ventilatory frequency is elevated even though the rate of oxygen consumption is at or below resting levels, suggesting that the l...

Research on the postnatal development of behavior involving olfaction is reviewed. Included are investigations of olfactory responses of human neonates and young children, the development of preferences in various mammals, the ontogeny of the fright reaction in fish and amphibia, and the attraction of maternal odors for small mammals. The effects of early exposure and conditioning to olfactory ...

Previously, we reported that an opsin (Rc-MS) belonging to the SWS2 group opsins is expressed in bullfrog green rods [Hisatomi, O. et al., FEBS Lett., 1999, 447, 44-48]. An anti-Rc-MS antiserum recognized the cones of the Japanese common newt, Cynops pyrrhogaster, which has no green rods. We isolated a cDNA encoding an SWS2 group opsin (Cp-SWS2) from this newt and found that Cp-SWS2 is expresse...

Polymerase chain reaction analysis was performed to determine whether mosquito predators in wetland habitats feed on Anopheles gambiae sensu lato (s.l.) larvae. Aquatic mosquito predators were collected from six wetlands near Lake Victoria in Mbita, Western Kenya. This study revealed that the whole positive rate of An. gambiae s.l. from 330 predators was 54.2%. The order of positive rate was th...

Fifty years after Briggs and King first succeeded in obtaining normal tadpoles from transplanted embryo nuclei in vertebrates, two general principles have emerged from work in amphibia and mammals. One is the conservation of the genome during cell differentiation. A small percentage of adult or differentiated cells have totipotent nuclei, and a much higher percentage of cells committed to one p...