Distinct populations of Astyanax mexicanus cavefish offer striking examples of repeatable convergence or parallelism in their independent evolutions from surface to cave phenotypes. However, the extent to which the repeatability of evolution occurred at the genetic level remains poorly understood. To address this, we first characterized the genetic diversity of 518 single-nucleotide polymorphis...

Rare Late Pleistocene porcupine remains of Hystrix (Atherurus) brachyura Linnaeus 1758 are described from the Fuchsluken Cave, a small gypsum karst cavity at the Rote Berg on the Giebelstein near Saalfeld (Thuringia, Central Germany). The cave was used during the Eemian and mainly Early Weichselian (around 120.000-75.000 BP) by spotted hyena clans of Crocuta crocuta spelaea (Goldfuss 1823), whi...

Title of Document: HOW THE AVAILABILITY OF NUTRIENTS AND ENERGY INFLUENCE THE BIODIVERSITY OF CAVE ECOSYSTEMS Katie Schneider, Ph.D., 2009 Directed By: Dr. William F. Fagan, Professor, Department of Biology Resource constraints can affect species on multiple levels. In this dissertation, I combine laboratory experiments, an ecosystem-level manipulation experiment and statistical modeling to exa...

Surveying the internal structure of a cave is an important part of any archaeological or palaeontological investigation of a cave locality. However, the use of standard topographical surveying techniques is often difficult due both to the irregular nature of the structure and to the difficult working conditions. This study uses a novel method based on ultrasound reflections to produce an accura...

fish oil is the important fat source in fish nutrition. high demand for fish oil and low global supply arise a need of alternative oils in fish culture. plant oils are a good candidate in this case. the aim of the present study was to compare the efficacy of fish oil and linseed oil on growth and stress resistance of tiger barb ( puntius tetrazona ) larvae. artemia nauplii were enriched by 2.5,...

Pesce, G. L.: The Zinzulusa cave: an endangered biodiversity »hot spot« of South Italy. Nat. Croat., Vol. 10, No. 3., 207–212, 2001, Zagreb. The historical, geological, faunistic and ecological characteristics of the Zinzulusa cave (Castro Marina, South Italy), one of the most remarkable anchialine aquifers of Italy, are presented in this paper. The results of recent explorations and discoverie...

The morphologies and passive electrical parameters of fibres in two eye muscles of a surface- and a cave-dwelling crayfish were compared. In the cave-dwelling form the muscles contained fewer fibres, of less diameter, and hence had a smaller cross-sectional area. Current-voltage relationships were similar in both species. Input resistance was higher in the cave-dweller, but the difference was n...

*[email protected] 2007). In the last 50 years the cave suffered several microbiological crises (outbreak of microorganisms threatening the paintings) due to the invasion of the alga Bracteacoccus minor in 1963 (Lefèvre, 1974) and the fungus Fusarium solani in 2001 (Dupont et al., 2007). At present, the paintings are threatened by black stains produced by the fungus Ochroconis lascauxensis (M...

To reconstruct the phylogenetic position of the extinct cave lion (Panthera leo spelaea), we sequenced 1 kb of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene from two Pleistocene cave lion DNA samples (47 and 32 ky B.P.). Phylogenetic analysis shows that the ancient sequences form a clade that is most closely related to the extant lions from Africa and Asia; at the same time, cave lions appear to be highl...

For future space research experiments in Cave A and in the BIOMAT-Cave of FAIR it is necessary to develop a raster scan system, that performs uniform large-area irradiations for all particles from protons up to uranium and a wide range of energies and intensities. Cave A is still equipped with the prototype of the raster scan system [1] which was upgraded [2] in 2001 by implementing the Factory...