Received 4 January 2005. Accepted 9 November 2005. Distributed December 2005. Abstract Circumstantial evidences for mimicry of scorpions by the neotropical gecko Coleodactylus brachystoma (Squamata, Gekkonidae) in the Cerrados of central Brazil. There are few records of invertebrates mimicry by reptiles. In the Cerrados of central Brazil, the small Coleodactylus brachystoma is an endemic specie...

Ectotherms can attain preferred body temperatures by selecting specific temperature microhabitats within a varied thermal environment. The side-blotched lizard, Uta stansburiana may employ microhabitat selection to thermoregulate behaviorally. It is unknown to what degree habitat structural complexity provides thermal microhabitats for thermoregulation. Thermal microhabitat structure, lizard te...

Dakotasaurus gilletorum Nydam 2013 was erected for two partial mandibles of a paramacellodid-cordylid grade scincomorphan lizard from the early Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of southern Utah (Nydam 2013). However, the genus name Dakotasaurus is a junior homonym of the ichnofossil Dakotasaurus Branson and Mehl 1932. Under Article 23.1 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 199...

Evolutionary history can exert a profound influence on ecological communities, but few generalities have emerged concerning the relationships among phylogeny, community membership, and niche evolution. We compared phylogenetic community structure and niche evolution in three lizard clades (Ctenotus skinks, agamids, and diplodactyline geckos) from arid Australia. We surveyed lizard communities a...

Cells cope with temperature elevations, which cause protein misfolding, by expressing heat shock proteins (HSPs). This adaptive response is called the heat shock response (HSR), and it is regulated mainly by heat shock transcription factor (HSF). Among the four HSF family members in vertebrates, HSF1 is a master regulator of HSP expression during proteotoxic stress including heat shock in mamma...

background: various prokaryotic and eukaryotic expression systems have been developed for the production of recombinant proteins. in the present study, we used a new protein expression system based on the iranian lizard leishmania, a trypanosomatid protozoan as a host, for the expression of lpg3 gene from leishmania infantum (l.infantum). methods: the lpg3 gene was cloned in the expression cass...

We are attempting to develop cost-effective control methods for the important vector of sleeping sickness, Glossina fuscipes spp. Responses of the tsetse flies Glossina fuscipes fuscipes (in Kenya) and G. f. quanzensis (in Democratic Republic of Congo) to natural host odours are reported. Arrangements of electric nets were used to assess the effect of cattle-, human- and pig-odour on (1) the nu...

Almost two decades of research on applications of the mathematical formalism of quantum theory as a modeling tool in domains different from the micro-world has given rise to many successful applications in situations related to human behavior and thought, more specifically in cognitive processes of decision-making and the ways concepts are combined into sentences. In this article, we extend thi...

We investigated the respiratory metabolism of the overwintering lizard Lacerta vivipara while in either supercooled or frozen states. With a variable pressure and volume microrespirometer and a chromatograph, we show that the oxygen consumption of the supercooled animals showed a nonlinear relationship with temperature and an aerobic metabolism demand between 0.5 and -1.5 degrees C. A significa...