Morphometrics (culmen length, bill height, bill width, wing chord length, and tarsus length) were taken on 664 marbled murrelets at Desolation Sound and Mussel Inlet, British Columbia, during 1994 to 1997, in order to assess morphological differences within and between populations and the accuracy of a discriminant function analysis to identify the sex of birds. An assessment of interand intra-...

It has long been established that fleas jump by storing and releasing energy in a cuticular spring, but it is not known how forces from that spring are transmitted to the ground. One hypothesis is that the recoil of the spring pushes the trochanter onto the ground, thereby generating the jump. A second hypothesis is that the recoil of the spring acts through a lever system to push the tibia and...

Serial homologs are similar structures that develop at different positions within a body plan. These structures share some, but not all, aspects of developmental patterning, and their evolution is thought to be constrained by shared, pleiotropic gene functions. Here we describe the functions of 17 developmental genes during metamorphic development of the legs in the red flour beetle, Tribolium ...

Rapid Growth Problems The problems discussed here occur in the younger, rapidly growing German Shepherd. As German Shepherds are far more angulated than most breeds, they can appear to be having serious problems when in many cases they are going through fairly normal stages of development. Common problems are: 1. Excessive looseness of hocks, can be secondary to excessive depth of hindquarter a...

Data from 1006 pigs selected for breeding and subsequently scored at 22-24 weeks of age were used to estimate heritabilities for conformation traits. Front wrists, front pasterns, back hocks, back pasterns, front view, rear view and back shape were each subjectively scored by a single operator. For the individual traits heritability estimates ranged from high (0.42±0.09 for front pasterns) to n...

Bergmann's rule predicts a decrease in body size with increasing temperature and has much empirical support. Surprisingly, we know very little about whether "Bergmann size clines" are due to a genetic response or are a consequence of phenotypic plasticity. Here, we use data on body size (mass and tarsus length) from three long-term (1979-2008) study populations of great tits (Parus major) that ...