A new formula for insect rearing artificial diets without using any of their conventional gelling agents was provided in the present work, for the first time. Larvae of the Egyptian cotton leafworm, Spodoptera littoralis (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) were successfully mass-reared, for nine consecutive generations on an agar-free artificial diet. This suggested medium is based on yellow lentils, Lens...

The differences between the seasonal occurrence and likelihood of being infected by FD phytoplasmas, of male and female Scaphoideus titanus Ball, were investigated. Sex ratio (male: female) was calculated by counting males and females sampled by means of yellow sticky traps and sweep-nets and from adults derived from hatched eggs in field-collected grapevine wood. PCR essays were performed to t...

Good management of the pregnant heifer is crucial to ensure that she is well grown and healthy and calves down easily before joining the milking herd. This study collected primary data on all aspects of heifer management on 101 UK farms during heifer pregnancy from conception to calving including farm factors and associated costs of system inputs. A cost analysis workbook was developed to calcu...

Mariculture of tropical sea cucumbers is promising, but the nursery rearing of juveniles is a bottleneck for farming and sea ranching. We conducted four medium-scale experiments lasting 3-6 weeks, using thousands of cultured juvenile sandfish Holothuria scabra, to optimise nursery rearing in mesh enclosures in earthen seawater ponds and to test rearing in enclosures in the sea. In one experimen...

BACKGROUND Laboratory rats exhibit behavioral changes that reflect a continuum of early life experience, from isolation-reared to socially reared to enrichment-reared conditions. In this study, we further characterize the behavioral effects of isolation, social, and enriched rearing on locomotor activity, patterns of movement and exploration, startle reactivity, prepulse inhibition (PPI), and h...

Nikolov I.S., Stoeckle B.C., Markov G., Kuehn R. (2017): Substantial hybridisation between wild boars (Sus scrofa scrofa) and East Balkan pigs (Sus scrofa f. domestica) in natural environment as a result of semiwild rearing in Bulgaria. Czech J. Anim. Sci., 62, 1–8. The East Balkan pig (EBP) is a traditional domestic pig breed in Bulgaria managed in semi-wild conditions and well-adapted to the ...

Experiments were done to determine if transporting live screwworms Cochliomyia hominivorax Coquerel (Diptera: Calliphoridae) for developing new strains from countries where foot-and-mouth disease and classical swine fever are endemic, to the mass rearing facilities in Mexico and Panama, may introduce these exotic diseases into these countries. Are screwworms capable of harboring and spreading f...

The Mormon cricket, Anabrus simplex (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae), is a flightless katydid that undergoes major outbreaks in western North America. Under outbreak conditions, Mormon crickets often form large cohesive migratory bands that can contain millions of individuals moving in unison across the landscape. Density-dependent phase polyphenism has been hypothesized as a behavioural mechanism u...

This study examined the association between recollected parental child-rearing strategies and individual differences in self-regulation, socio-emotional adjustment, and psychopathology in early adulthood. Undergraduate participants (N = 286) completed the EMBU - a measure of retrospective accounts of their parents' child-rearing behaviors - as well as self-report measures of self-regulation and...

This study's purpose was to examine the influence of an altered activity level, via artificial rearing, on the contractile properties, myosin heavy chain phenotypes (MHC), and muscle fiber sizes of the developing rat tongue retractor musculature. Artificially reared rat pups were fed through a gastric cannula, eliminating nutritive suckling from postnatal day 4 to postnatal day 14. Rat pups wer...