Traditionally field and laboratory research about malaria vectors in Europe have been mainly focused on the species of the Anopheles maculipennis complex. However, although malaria is essentially a rural disease, potential urban vectors merit attention. Because only a few European Anopheles species can breed in urban environments, improving knowledge about their bioecology is necessary to imple...

The extraordinary diversity of larval form and function in marine invertebrates has motivated many studies of development, ecology, and evolution. Among organisms with pelagic development via a larval stage, this diversity is often reduced to a dichotomy between two broad nutritional categories: planktotrophy and lecithotrophy. Despite the clear utility of the planktotrophy-lecithotrophy dichot...

The spatial distribution of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus in environmental and geographical zones, e.g., urban-rural, coastal-mountainous, and north-south, was investigated throughout Vietnam. Immature stages were collected from used tires along roads. The effects of regions, seasons, and the degree of urbanization on the density and the frequency were statistically analyzed. Aedes aegypti...

Musculature of 36 specimens of Pagrus pagrus from the coastal zone of the State of Rio de Janeiro were examined to study larval of anisakid nematodes between January and May 2008. A total of 24 larval of Anisakis sp., Contracaecum sp., Hysterothylacium sp. and Raphidascaris sp. were collected infecting seven fishes (19.4%). Larval Hysterothylacium sp. and Contracaecum sp. showed highest prevale...

Dendrites are branched neuronal processes that receive input signals from other neurons or the outside world [1]. To maintain connectivity as the organism grows, dendrites must also continue to grow. For example, the dendrites in the peripheral nervous system continue to grow and branch to maintain proper coverage of their receptor fields [2, 3, 4, 5]. One such neuron is the Drosophila melanoga...

The effects of sucrose and amino acid (aa) composition and concentration in meridic larval diets (e.g., partially defined at the chemical level) was examined on several parameters of Mediterranean fruit fly (Medfly) development, lipid and protein levels of pupating larvae and emerging adults were examined. Different sucrose concentrations in the diet had small effects upon most of the developme...

Social evolution in honey bees has produced strong queen-worker dimorphism for plastic traits that depend on larval nutrition. The honey bee developmental programme includes both larval components that determine plastic growth responses to larval nutrition and nurse components that regulate larval nutrition. We studied how these two components contribute to variation in worker and queen body si...

Fishes exhibit a remarkable diversity of body shape as adults; however, it is unknown whether this diversity is reflected in larval stage morphology. Here we investigate the relationship between larval and adult body shape as expressed by body elongation. We surveyed a broad range of ray-finned fish species and compared body shape at larval and adult stages. Analysis shows that the vast majorit...