Freshwater turtles are being exploited for meat, eggs, traditional medicine, and pet trade. As a response, turtle farming became a booming aquaculture industry in the past two decades, specifically in the southeastern states of the United States of America (US) and across Southeast Asia. However, US turtle farms are currently producing turtles only for the pet trade while commercial trappers re...

Variation in the forefoot skeleton of small-eared shrews (family Soricidae, genus Cryptotis) has been previously documented, but the paucity of available skeletons for most taxa makes assessment of the degrees of intraspecific and interspecific variation difficult. We used a digital X-ray system to extract images of the forefoot skeleton from 101 dried skins of eight taxa (seven species, includ...

Large ears enhance perception of echolocation and prey generated sounds in bats. However, external ears likely impair aerodynamic performance of bats compared to birds. But large ears may generate lift on their own, mitigating the negative effects. We studied flying brown long-eared bats, using high resolution, time resolved particle image velocimetry, to determine the aerodynamics of flying wi...

Birds are major predators of many eared insects including moths, butterflies, crickets and cicadas. We provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that insect ears can function as 'bird detectors'. First, we show that birds produce flight sounds while foraging. Eastern phoebes (Sayornis phoebe) and chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) generate broadband sounds composed of distinct repetitive elemen...

A problem confronting Snowy Owls (Nyctea scandiaca) in their southern incursions is the shortage of food. This difficulty is raised by the presence of other raptors that feed on small mammals. This note shows how little food is found by migrant Snowy Owls and indicates a complex temporary ecological solution. At Tatoosh Island, Washington (48”24’ N, 124” 44’ W) on 25 November 1973, we observed ...

We report new northwesternmost records of the Northern Little Yellow-eared Bat, Vampyressa thyone Thomas, 1909 (Phyllostomidae, Stenodermatinae), from Sierra de Atoyac, Guerrero, Mexico. identified four individuals using morphological characters; two were collected at 1,234 and 1,285 m above sea level, altitudes atypical for this species. Captures recorded between 19:20 23:18 h, all presented s...

The morphology of juvenile and adult stages of the quill mite Bubophilus aluconis Nattress and Skoracki, 2009 parasitizing the Long-eared Owl Asio otus (Linnaeus) (Aves: Strigiformes) in Poland is described and illustrated. Poland is a new location and A. otus is a new host species for B. aluconis. A description of the male is presented for the first time for this quill mite species.