In common with other acoustico-lateralis receptors, the hair cells of the lateral-line organs of fishes and amphibia receive efferent innervation. Ultrastructural studies have shown that efferent synapses similar to those found at the base of the hair cells in the cochlea (Engstrom & Wersall, 1958) and vestibular system (Wersall, 1956) exist also at the base of hair cells in lateral-line organs...

Nephroblastomas seem to be very rare in animals with mesonephritic kidneys (fishes and amphibia), although immense numbers of many species are kept as pets and in laboratories. A single case was recorded in the steelhead trout (5). The steelhead trout (Salmo gairdneri, Rich.) is the same species as the rainbow trout, differing only in that it spends part of its life in the sea and returns to fr...

To our knowledge, there are no reports on the use of radionuclide labeled agents to image the lymphatic system of anuran amphibia. Lymphoscintigraphy was performed in 18 toads Bufo marinus L, after the injection of Tc-99m-serum albumin within the ventral lymph sac. Images were obtained with a rectilinear scanner immediately after tracer administration. Scintigrams were digitalized and densitome...

1. By D.C. Blackburn & D.B. Wake (for full contact details, see the list after References). The title of this contribution should be cited as “Class Amphibia Gray, 182. In: Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness”. 2. The Amphibian Species of the World website (Frost, 2011), a continuation of Frost (1985), has guided our...

Amphibians are unusual among vertebrates in having two spectral classes of rod photoreceptors, unique amphibian "green" rods and typical vertebrate "red" rods. Although amphibians have been the subject of extensive research on visual function, it is not known whether possession of two classes of rods is a general feature of Amphibia, nor is it clear to what behaviors each class of rods contribu...

1Department of Environmental Sciences, Institute of Biogeography, University of Basel, Switzerland 2Department of Zoology, Natural History Museum, London, UK 3School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, UK 4Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK 5Applied Biodiversity Research Division, South African National Biodiversity Institute, Cape Town, South Afric...