Abstract Urbanization and habitat fragmentation can disrupt wildlife behavior cause declines in biodiversity ecosystem function. Most urban research has compared highly urbanized regions with rural areas. However, human development is also rapidly occurring exurban areas, which consist of a matrix lower-density housing natural patches. Thus, although such “exurbanization” intensifying, little e...

Abstract Herbivory is a common ecological function among extant lepidosaurs, but little known about the origin of this feeding strategy within Lepidosauria. Here we describe sphenodontian (Lepidosauria) from Late Triassic western North America, Trullidens purgatorii n. gen. sp., that reveals new aspects earliest radiation herbivorous lepidosaurs. This taxon represented by an isolated lower jaw ...

Body size is a useful character to unravel the biology of fossil taxa and, indirectly, palaeoenvironment in which they lived. However, reliability proxies debated, particularly among insular endemics large teeth relative body have been observed. To shed light on this issue, here we compute statistical models assess: (i) and long bone scaling (ii) dentition evolutionary dynamics anagenetic linea...

The relationship between phenotypic variation arising through individual development and phenotypic variation arising through diversification of species has long been a central question in evolutionary biology. Among humans, reduced placental invasion into endometrial tissues is associated with diseases of pregnancy, especially pre-eclampsia, and reduced placental invasiveness has also evolved,...

Species are generally regarded as a fundamental unit of biodiversity. By contrast, higher taxa such as genera and families, while widely used as biodiversity metrics and for classification and communication, are generally not believed to be shaped by shared evolutionary processes in the same way as species. We use simulations to show that processes which are important for emergence of evolution...

The pathogenesis of South American and North American myxoma viruses was examined in two species of North American lagomorphs, Sylvilagus nuttallii (mountain cottontail) and Sylvilagus audubonii (desert cottontail) both of which have been shown to have the potential to transmit the South American type of myxoma virus. Following infection with the South American strain (Lausanne, Lu), S. nuttall...

UT-B represents the major urea transporter in erythrocytes, in addition to being expressed in kidney descending vasa recta, brain, spleen, ureter, bladder, and testis. Expression of urea transporter UT-B confers high urea permeability to mammalian erythrocytes. Erythrocyte membranes are also permeable to various urea analogues, suggesting common transport pathways for urea and structurally simi...

The method of generalized least squares provides a flexible method of phylogenetic reconstruction from sequence data, after reducing them to pairwise distances between species, corrected for multiple and back mutation. It gives efficient estimates of the branch lengths of a given tree. It also provides a natural measure of the departure of the observed from the predicted set of distances which ...

Complement forms a key arm of innate immune defenses against gonococcal infection. Sialylation of gonococcal lipo-oligosaccharide, or expression of porin 1A (Por1A) protein, enables Neisseria gonorrhoeae to bind the alternative pathway complement inhibitor, factor H (fH), and evade killing by human complement. Using recombinant fH fragment-murine Fc fusion proteins, we localized two N. gonorrho...

Environmental enrichment diminishes abnormal behaviors in laboratory animals such as rodents, lagomorphs, dogs, cats, and nonhuman primates. Thirteen male single housed New Zealand White rabbits were offered three different toys and the time spent chewing on the toys instead of on the cage was evaluated. Every toy was offered to each rabbit for two separate one week periods. Each rabbit was mon...