Direct development is a widespread, alternative life history in Recent amphibians. There is no free-living, aquatic larva; adult features form in the embryo and are present at hatching. The mechanistic bases of direct development remain relatively unexplored. The current study describes the embryonic ontogeny of the thyroid gland in the direct-developing frog Eleutherodactylus coqui (Leptodacty...

We examined the age and growth of Urotrygon rogersi on the Colombian coast of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean by directly estimating age using vertebral centra. We verified annual deposition of growth increments with marginal increment analysis. Eight growth curves were fitted to four data sets defined on the basis of the reproductive cycle (unadjusted or adjusted for age at first band) and ...

Few physiological studies to date have focused on whether variation among sibling groups during development can account for often large, intraspecific physiological variation. In this study, we measured heart rate in the direct-developing frog Eleutherodactylus cooki throughout its embryonic development and examined heart rate variation among egg clutches comprising from 10 to 40 eggs. Clutches...

The Mediterranean sponges Aplysina aerophoba and A. cavernicola accumulate brominated isoxazoline alkaloids including aplysinamisin-1 (1), aerophobin-2 (2), isofistularin-3 (3) or aerothionin (4) at concentrations up to 10% of their respective dry weights. In laboratory feeding experiments employing the polyphagous Mediterranean fish Blennius sphinx crude extracts of both Aplysina sponges were ...

The Trigonidiinae crickets of Rodrigues are examined. Two species widespread in South Western Indian Ocean islands are recorded in Rodrigues for the first time: Trigonidium cicindeloides Rambur, 1839 and Natula longipennis (Serville, 1839). Nemobius luteolus Butler, 1876 is a Trigonidiinae and not a Nemobiinae, it is transferred to Metioche Stål, 1877 as Metioche luteolus (Butler, 1876), n. com...

Results of a study on trypanorhynch cestodes of fishes from Indonesian coastal waters are presented. A new species, Dasyrhynchus thomasi sp. n., is described, and five species are recorded which all represent new locality records: Tentacularia coryphaenae Bosc, 1797; Nybelinia africana Dollfus, 1960; Nybelinia scoliodoni (Vijayalakshmi, Vijayalakshmi et Gangadharam, 1996); Sphyriocephalus dollf...