Bioturbation is known to stimulate microbial communities, especially in macrofaunal burrows where the abundance and activities of bacteria are increased. Until now, these microbial communities have been poorly characterized and an important ecological question remains: do burrow walls harbor similar or specific communities compared with anoxic and surface sediments? The bacterial community stru...

Urechis caupo is a burrow-dwelling filter feeder that captures suspended particles in a mucus net and irrigates its burrow with peristaltic body wall contractions. An electromagnetic flow meter was used to measure the burrow irrigation rates of 7 U. caupo in their natural burrows under normal tidal cycles. The average burrow irrigation rate of 266 ± 158 ml min–1 (mean ± SD) was much greater tha...

—Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) populations are declining in many portions of their range, and research and management efforts into stemming declines are underway. One tool with promise is the artificial burrow, which can supplement nesting opportunities and play a role in research, mitigation, translocation, and reintroduction studies. However, few studies directly assess important burrow ...

Small herbivores face risks of predation while foraging and are often forced to trade off food quality for safety. Life history, behaviour, and habitat of predator and prey can influence these trade-offs. We compared how two sympatric rabbits (pygmy rabbit, Brachylagus idahoensis; mountain cottontail, Sylvilagus nuttallii) that differ in size, use of burrows, and habitat specialization in the s...

Fossorialism is a beneficial adaptation for brooding, predator avoidance and protection from extreme climate. The abundance of fossilised burrow casts from the Early Triassic of southern Africa is viewed as a behavioural response by many tetrapods to the harsh conditions following the Permo-Triassic mass-extinction event. However, scarcity of vertebrate remains associated with these burrows lea...

The burrow walls created by macrofauna in aquatic sediments are sites of intense chemical mass transfer. Quantitative measurement of their significance is, however, difficult because chemistry in the immediate vicinity of burrow walls is temporally dynamic due to periodic ventilation of burrows by macrofauna. A temporally dynamic, 2D multicomponent diffusion-reaction model was utilized to depic...

This document discusses the identification of common citrus mites. Written by L. M. Diepenbrock, J. D. Burrow, and Carrillo published UF/IFAS Entomology Nematology Department; 2 pp.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in1374

Burrow-nesting petrels use their well-developed sense of smell for foraging, homing to their nest, and mate recognition. The chicks of burrow-nesting petrels can apparently learn odours associated with prey while still in the nest, but the development of individual-specific odour recognition is less well understood. We used a simple two-choice test to determine whether 4- to 6-week-old chicks o...

Animals exposed to the direct influences of the sun, moon and seasons may exhibit rhythmic behaviour displaying a solar, lunar or annual periodicity, whereas organisms living where periodic stimuli are reduced or absent often rely upon endogenous rhythms for initiating behaviour. Among the latter are some of the inhabitants of mudflats and estuaries which may occupy permanent burrows or tubes t...