Emerging infectious diseases are implicated in the declines and extinctions of amphibians worldwide. Ranaviruses in the family Iridoviridae are a global concern and have caused amphibian die-offs in wild populations in North America, Europe, South America, and in commercial populations in Asia and South America. The movement of amphibians for bait, food, pets, and research provides a route for ...

The Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) was launched on December 21, 2001 and flew for about 32 days on a long-duration balloon mission from McMurdo Base in Antarctica. On December 26, 2001 at about 5:30 UT, a ground-level solar particle event (M7.6 flare) was observed by a number of neutron monitors. The SIS instrument aboard the ACE spacecraft measured the elemental composition and p...

The C++ language provides a two-layer execution model: static execution of meta-programs and dynamic execution of resulting programs. The Expression Templates technique takes advantage of this dual execution model through the construction of C++ types expressing simple arithmetic formulas. Our intent is to extend this technique to a whole programming language. The Tiger language is a small, imp...

Toxascaris leonina is a common parasitic nematode of wild mammals and has significant impacts on the protection of rare wild animals. To analyze population genetic characteristics of T. leonina from South China tiger, its mitochondrial (mt) genome was sequenced. Its complete circular mt genome was 14,277 bp in length, including 12 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and 2 non-cod...

This paper describes work being conducted at the Louisiana State University Robotics Research Laboratory towards the development of legged robot walking algorithms for unstructured environments. This work is associated with the Robo-Tiger project whose goal is the construction of a life-size robotic tiger mascot with the physical attributes of a real tiger. The focus of this research is on robo...

The tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier Peron and Lesueur 1822) is a widely distributed predator with a broad diet and the potential to affect marine community structure, yet information on local patterns of abundance for this species is lacking. Tiger shark catch data were gathered over 7 years of tag and release research fishing (1991–2000, 2002–2004) in Shark Bay, Western Australia (25 45¢S, 113 ...

Evaluation of physiological stress in the tiger (Panthera tigris) using faecal cortisol metabolite (FCM) enzyme immunoassays (EIAs) provides a powerful conservation physiology tool for the species. However, it is important to validate non-invasive endocrine sampling techniques in field conditions to ensure that the method provides a reliable parameter of physiological stress in the species. Thi...

Insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) plays an important role in regulating gonad function, which is essential for normal reproduction in animals, especially in sexual receptivity and reproductive behavior. In this study, a cDNA encoding Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) IGF-I was isolated from liver total RNA using RT-PCR. The IGF-I cDNA of Amur tiger (ATIGF-I) was highly homologous to that ...

The tiger beetle fauna of the Maghreb region is one of the richest in the Palaearctic, including 22 species and 5 subspecies and 19% of all Palaearctic species of Cicindelinae. Assembled to their chorotypes, the Maghreb tiger beetles fall into eight different groups that include Maghreb endemics (26% of fauna), Mediterranean (7%), West Mediterranean (40%), North African (4%), Mediterranean-West...

Body size is an important feature of an animal that is linked with its life history, morphology, physiology and ecology. Understanding the association between body size and habitat type of an animal and the underlying causes for this are important for determining their distribution. The present study examines the association between body size and habitat types of tiger beetles in Sri Lanka and ...