conclusions the results of the present study revealed that soil resources of these areas were contaminated with opportunistic amoebas such as acanthamoeba and hartmannella spp. and this may lead to severe diseases in high-risk people, such as immunocompromised patients. background free-living amoebas are very abundant in nature, especially in water and soil. some species of amoebas cause seriou...

Removing invasive rats from islands is a powerful conservation tool, and practitioners are now targeting larger islands for rat eradication. As they do so, they face the challenge of mitigating for potential non-target impacts on native biodiversity that may be susceptible to rodenticides. We report on the eradication of black rats Rattus rattus from Anacapa Island, California, in 2001–2002, wh...

Apart from u s i n g 0.005% concentration, the recommended f i e l d dose of 0.025% of the anticoagulant is used along w i t h an alternate food for i n d i v i d u a l rats for a varying number of days. Those that had survived were taken as tolerant, provided they showed an mg/kg intake beyond the tolerance l i m i t , survived a s i x days of feeding, e x h i b i t e d b a i t shyness and d i...

Several aspects of the ecology of Rattus exufans are revie:ved in an effort to collate a large proportion of the widely scattered hterature relatillg. to the species. Subspecific relationships are discuss~d to illustrate the early. Co~fu~lOn. regarding taxonomic position. Literature covenng R. exula~s.geog~aphicdistnb~tlOn, habitat, nutrition, reproduction, movements, and competltlon With other...

Isolation of Leptospira from the kidneys of Rattus rattus wroughtoni hinton, Rattus rattus rufescens, Bandicota bengalensis and Bandicota indica was attempted in Bangalore in southern India. In total, 296 spirochaetes were isolated from 1,348 kidney cultures (an isolation rate of 22%). A batch of fifty-six isolates from India was identified, based on serological and polymerase chain reaction an...

Estrous synchrony was tested using 10 pairs of sibling female rats (Rattus norvegicus). A Monte Carlo bootstrap simulation was used to construct random control groups to avoid previous statistical errors and to test for significance when there are irregular cycles. The 10 pairs of females did not exhibit estrous synchrony. The effect of cycle irregularity on the limits of synchrony was analyzed...