In the Amazon Basin, use of pink dolphin or boto (Inia geoffrensis) for bait in piracatinga (Calophysus macropterus) fishery was first detected year 2000. Since then, this artisanal has become more prevalent as it requires only a few hours work per night and provides immediate cash earnings. It is thus an attractive addition to (or replacement for) traditional fishing. Previous reports have not...

We studied growth of the caiman, Caiman crocodilus yacare, in the Brazilian Pantanal for 27 years between 1987 and 2013.We recaptured 647 of 7769 C. c. yacare initially marked in an area of 50 km(2), in two ranches. We were able to determine size at age accurately for 24 male and17 female caimans that had been marked at hatching or less than 1 year old, and recaptured over periods of 5 to 24 ye...

Ascending projections to the thalamus from a midbrain somatosensory area were investigated in a reptile, Caiman crocodilus. Connections were determined utilizing horseradish peroxidase (HRP) neurohistochemistry in which tetramethylbenzidine was the chromogen. Anterograde experiments, in which HRP injections were placed into the midbrain, revealed bilateral projections to the medialis complex of...

Caiman yacare (lagarto) and Melanosuchus niger (black caiman), sympatric species in the Bolivian Amazon basin, have been severely overexploited in the past. We present the results of a standardized survey of C. yacare and M. niger populations in order to evaluate their actual population status in twelve oxbow lakes of the Ichilo River floodplain. Additionally we explored the effect of environme...

1 FROM THE EDITOR Yoseph Bar-Cohen, [email protected] This issue reports the latest progress in the fields of Electroactive Polymers (EAP) and biomimetics. Some of the latest development at the various lab worldwide is reported in this issue. From the perspective of Biomimetics, it is interesting to note that the SPIE’s Conference on Biomimetics has continued to grow in terms of the number of p...