The developmental time and survival to eclosion of Anopheles hermsi Barr & Guptavanij fed monotypic and mixed diets of ten food types were examined in laboratory studies. Larvae fed monotypic diets containing animal detritus (freeze-dried rotifers, freeze-dried Daphnia pulicaria, and TetraMin® fish food flakes) and the mixotrophic protistan Cryptomonas ovata developed faster and survived better...

Plant- and animal-pathogenic bacteria utilize phylogenetically distinct type III secretion systems (T3SS) that produce needle-like injectisomes or pili for the delivery of effector proteins into host cells. Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii (herein referred to as P. stewartii), the causative agent of Stewart's bacterial wilt and leaf blight of maize, carries phylogenetically distinct T3SSs. In...

I. Birth and death rates of natural cladoceran populations cannot be measured directly. Estimates of these population parameters must be calculated using methods that make assumptions about the form of population growth. These methods generally assume that the population has a stable age distribution. 2. To assess the effect of variable age distributions, we tested six egg ratio methods for est...

Purpose: To determine the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of Pulicaria inuloides and Ocimum forskolei essential oils. Methods: Steam distillation of the aerial parts of P. inuloides and O. forskolei was performed using a Clevenger apparatus. Essential oils were analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Total phenolic content and antioxidant activities were determined by 2,2-dip...

Recently, graphene and graphene-based materials have been increasingly used for various biological applications due to their extraordinary physicochemical properties. Here, we demonstrate the anticancer properties and apoptosis-inducing ability of silver doped highly reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites synthesized by employing green approach. These nano composites (PGE-HRG-Ag) were synthesize...

The growth rate hypothesis (GRH) proposes that variation in organism C : P and N : P ratios reflects variation in P content associated with altered allocation to P-rich ribosomal RNA under different growth rates. We tested the GRH by examining the effects of food quantity and stoichiometric quality (differing carbon : nitrogen : phosphorus [C : N : P] ratios) on juvenile growth and chemical com...

Currently, >35 Saudi Arabian medicinal plants are traditionally used for various liver disorders without a scientific rationale. This is the first experimental evaluation of the anti-hepatitis B virus (HBV) potential of the total ethanolic and sequential organic extracts of 60 candidate medicinal plants. The extracts were tested for toxicity on HepG2.2.15 cells and cytotoxicity concentration (C...

Amino acids (AAs) are critical biochemical compounds for living organisms. Because of the limited capacity for their de novo synthesis in many animals, the nutritional value of food largely depends on its AA composition relative to the animal’s requirements. To improve present knowledge on AA variability in freshwater crustaceans, we studied the interand intraspecific variability in three contr...

The keystone aquatic herbivore Daphnia has been studied for more than 150 years in the context of evolution, ecology and ecotoxicology. Although it is rapidly becoming an emergent model for environmental and population genomics, there have been limited genome-wide level studies in natural populations. We report a unique resource of novel Single Nucleotide Polymorphic (SNP) markers for Daphnia p...