We describe a new subspecies of Pale-bellied Tapaculo Scytalopusgriseicollis from the northern Eastern Cordillera of Colombia and Venezuela. This form differs diagnosably in plumage from described subspecies Scytalopusgriseicollisgriseicollis and Scytalopusgriseicollisgilesi and from the latter in tail length. It is also differentiated non-diagnosably in voice from both these populations. Ecolo...

The red-bellied black snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus) is a member of the Elapidae family and distributed on east coast Australia. species known to feed variety ectothermic prey, including frogs lizards. It also be ophiophagous (snake-feeding), stomach-content analyses suggest that P. porphyriacus exhibits cannibalistic behavior, yet this extreme case ophiophagy has rarely been documented. Here,...

Multiple environmental factors may act synergistically to influence demographic characteristics, and ultimately the dynamics, of biological populations. Using prospective and retrospective analyses of demographic data from a 40-year study of individually marked animals, we investigated the demographic mechanisms of the temporal and spatial dynamics of a yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventr...

In some sexually dichromatic passerines, juvenile males retain a plumage similar to that of adult females through their first year or longer (delayed plumage maturation). The Tawny-bellied Seedeater (Sporophila hypoxantha) is a sexually dichromatic species in which, to the human eye, the juveniles look like females. We analyzed the species’ stages of plumage maturation by reflectance spectromet...

Captive breeding is an important tool for amphibian conservation despite high economic costs and deleterious genetic effects of sustained captivity unavoidably small colony sizes. Integration biobanking assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) could provide solutions to these challenges, but rarely used due lack recognition the potential benefits clear policy direction. Here we present compell...

Unlike individually distinctive contact calls, or calls that aid in the recognition of young by their parents, the function or functions of individually distinctive alarm calls is less obvious. We conducted three experiments to study the importance of caller reliability in explaining individual-discriminative abilities in the alarm calls of yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris). In our ...