The prevalence of Salmonella and Arizona organisms in the reptile collection at the National Zoological Park was investigated. Culture of specimens from 311 reptiles, while live or at necropsy, yielded yielded 117 positive results, for an overall infection rate of 37%. Snakes had the highest rate, 55% (69 of 125); lizards had an intermediate rate, 36% (46 of 129); and turtles and tortoises had ...

Formalinized specimens used in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) studies have shown shortcomings with respect to efficacy of DNA isolation and subsequent PCR amplification. In order to pinpoint the source of some of the problems with formalinized tissues in reptiles, we compared the efficacy of isolation and amplification of mtDNA from two different snake species Micrurus fulvius and Lampropeltis trian...

Reptiles can harbor pathogenic microorganisms asymptomatically and serve as potential reservoirs of infection for humans, domestic animals, and other reptiles. Infectious diseases are also problematic for free-ranging reptile populations and are an important consideration in reptile reintroduction and translocation projects. There have been limited serologic studies of free-ranging reptiles for...

The first study on ticks on reptiles of Sri Lanka dates back to Seneviratna (1965) who reported ticks from five reptiles. Later studies were either limited to one reptile (Fernando & Fernando 2012), or captive animals in zoos (Fernando & Randeniaya 2009) and household pets (Nathanael et al. 2004). According to the current classification (Guglielmone et al. 2010), all the tick species previously...

Reptiles are among the most threatened vertebrates worldwide. Habitat loss and fragmentation, human overexploitation, introduced invasive species, emerging diseases, environmental pollution global warming, severely increase risk of extinction population decline this taxon. A key strategy for protecting reptiles’ biodiversity has been creation maintenance protected areas. The focus work will be ...

It has been hypothesized that a high reproductive output contributes to the unique gigantism in large dinosaur taxa. In order to infer more information on dinosaur reproduction, we established allometries between body mass and different reproductive traits (egg mass, clutch mass, annual clutch mass) for extant phylogenetic brackets (birds, crocodiles and tortoises) of extinct non-avian dinosaur...

Because of their physiological and life history characteristics, mammals exploit adaptive zones unavailable to ectothermic reptiles. Yet, they perform best in energy-rich environments because their high and constant growth rates and their sustained levels of resting metabolism require continuous resource supply. In resource-limited ecosystems such as islands, therefore, reptiles frequently disp...

The cross-sectional area of a nutrient foramen of a long bone is related to blood flow requirements of the internal bone cells that are essential for dynamic bone remodelling. Foramen area increases with body size in parallel among living mammals and non-varanid reptiles, but is significantly larger in mammals. An index of blood flow rate through the foramina is about 10 times higher in mammals...

The genus Salmonella is responsible for considerable human and animal disease worldwide. It consists of two species, namely Salmonella enterica and Salmonella bongori. Salmonella enterica is divided into six subspecies, namely S. enterica subsp. enterica (I), salamae (II), arizonae (IIIa), diarizonae (IIIb), houtenae (IV) and indica (VI) (Le Minor and Popoff, 1987). Salmonella enterica subsp. e...

We tested if growth rates of recent taxa are unequivocally separated between endotherms and ectotherms, and compared these to dinosaurian growth rates. We therefore performed linear regression analyses on the log-transformed maximum growth rate against log-transformed body mass at maximum growth for extant altricial birds, precocial birds, eutherians, marsupials, reptiles, fishes and dinosaurs....