BACKGROUND Plague (Yersinia pestis infection) is a vector-borne disease which caused millions of human deaths in the Middle Ages. The hosts of plague are mostly rodents, and the disease is spread by the fleas that feed on them. Currently, the disease still circulates amongst sylvatic rodent populations all over the world, including great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus) populations in Central Asia. Gr...

A variety of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) includmg naphthalene, phenanthrene, acenaphthene, and dibenzothiophene were degraded with little or no lag in oxic slurries of marine sedi m e n t ~ from burrow walls constructed by benthic macrofauna. PAH degradation potentials of burrow sediments from the polychaetes Nereis virens and Clymenella torquata, the mollusc Mya arenaria and the enteropneu...

Burrowing by thalassinidean shrimp in modern tropical, shallow-subtidal to intertidal carbonate environments is widespread and a powerful agent of bioturbation, particularly within sandy substrates. Deep and intense burrowing by callianassids commonly occurs along the intertidal margins of hypersaline lagoons throughout the Bahamas, such as Pigeon Creek on San Salvador Island, where the sedimen...

Shared ecological resources such as burrow complexes can set the stage for social groupings and the evolution of more complex social behavior such as parental care. Paternity testing is increasingly revealing cases of kin-based groupings, and lizards may be a good system to inform on the early evolution of sociality. We examined spatial and social organization in the lizard Phrynocephalus vlang...

In some species males increase their reproductive success by forcing females to copulate with them, usually by grasping the female or pinning her to the ground to prevent her from escaping. Here we report an example of males coercing copulation by trapping a female in a confined space. During mate-searching, female Uca mjoebergi fiddler crabs visit males and choose whether or not to enter their...

In Brants’ whistling rat, Parotomys brantsii, single animals inhabit unusually complex burrow systems containing several nest chambers. We investigated burrow use and examined the effect of ectoparasites on choice of alternative nest chambers by radiotelemetrically monitoring the nocturnal sleeping locations of individual whistling rats, before and after treating them to remove ectoparasites. P...

Muscle measurements of Ensis directus, the Atlantic razor clam, indicate that the organism only has sufficient strength to burrow a few centimeters into the soil, yet razor clams burrow to over 70 cm. In this paper, we show that the animal uses the motions of its valves to locally fluidize the surrounding soil and reduce burrowing drag. Substrate deformations were measured using particle image ...

INTRODUCTION The wildlife plague system in the Pre-Balkhash desert of Kazakhstan has been a subject of study for many years. Much progress has been made in generating a method of predicting outbreaks of the disease (infection by the gram negative bacterium Yersinia pestis) but existing methods are not yet accurate enough to inform public health planning. The present study aimed to identify char...

Biochemical and traditional methods were used to determine the influence of Caflianassa trilobata on microbiological and meiofaunal communities within its large, hghly consolidated burrow. Sediment was collected from the lining of the shrimp's burrow, the burrow matrix, and ambient, subsurface sediment. The lining and matrix were composed of poorly sorted, fine-grained material compared to sand...