Endoparasites observed within invertebrates used as live food items for captive wild birds: Overview and potential risks

To monitor and evaluate potential risks to birds’ health, invertebrate species that have been used as live food items had their body contents searched for endoparasites. The contents of approximately 10,000 invertebrates were analyzed. A principal component analysis was performed to study the relationship between the presence/absence of endoparasites and the characteristics of the invertebrates. In most of them, including the species preferred by birds such as caterpillars, waxworms, mealworms, most grasshoppers, and spiders, no organism was identified. Such findings suggest a low potential for parasite transmission associated with its consumption by birds. Although they had unknown or even unlikely implications for the birds’ health, gregarines, oxyurides Leidynema sp., and digenetic trematodes Monolecithotrema sp. were found in samples from woodlice, cockroaches, and centipedes, respectively. The only avian parasites observed in this study were Heterakis gallinarum in samples from earthworms and Acuaria spiralis from woodlice. Suggestively, soil invertebrates showed a higher prevalence of endoparasites and may represent a higher potential risk in comparison to the other categories of invertebrates sampled herein. Detritivory and collected origin were also explanatory variables related to the presence of endoparasites in the current study.     

Monitoring the convection coefficient in fermentative processes using numerical methods

Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering - This work is based on the importance of monitoring the thermodynamic variables of sugarcane juice fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae, using a numerical...     

Additional Characters to Distinguish the Nymphs of the Perlid Genera from Southeastern Brazil (Insecta,Plecoptera)

Six additional characters are proposed to distinguish the nymphs of the perlid genera from Southeastern Brazil, and a practical key is provided.     

Circadian and Ultradian Rhythmicities in Very Premature Neonates Maintained in Incubators

Six very premature babies (born at 26–28 weeks gestational age) have been studied in hospital for 11–17 weeks, while in intensive care and in an incubator. Apart from suffering occasionally from the neonatal disorders of haemolytic jaundice and ‘respiratory distress of the newborn’, the babies were healthy and developed normally. Initially, the babies were continuously fed intravenously, and the lighting in the ward was on continuously. Routine care was given round the clock. When their medical condition permitted it, the babies were moved in their incubator to an adjacent ward, where they took frequent (2–4 hourly) small meals by mouth, the lighting was dimmed at night, and routine care tended to be given more in the daytime. Hourly recordings of insulated skin temperature were taken throughout the study, and it is the detection of rhythmicity in these measurements that has been the subject of the present study. The methods used were Phase-weighted Stacks, Phasor Walkout and Power Spectral Analysis. These methods have previously been used mainly in geophysical studies, and their value is that they can detect weak signals in noisy data and do not assume a particular waveform of any signal. Circadian rhythmicity was found in all babies for much of the time that were in the constant environment provided by the incubator. Ultradian rhythms were sometimes present also, but they were shorter-lived, and showed a wide range of changing periods, generally in excess of 8 h. When the babies were being treated for jaundice or respiratory distress, there was a tendency for the circadian rhythms to become weaker and for a broader spectrum of ultradian periods to appear. Placing babies in the 12 h : 12 h light : dark environment provided by the ward, and instituting feeding by mouth, had, in most cases, only modest effects upon either circadian or ultradian rhythms. Thus, circadian rhythms continued (but generally with a period not exactly equal to 24 h), and ultradian rhythms, when present, often did not show periods that could be related easily to feeding or care-giving. These results are discussed in terms of evidence for endogenous and exogenous origins of the observed rhythms, and of theories that have postulated the relationship between circadian and ultradian rhythms. It is concluded that the results from the present analyses are difficult to reconcile with the view that circadian rhythms develop from interactions between ultradian oscillators. We suggest that they indicate a matu-ration of the circadian system as a consequence of increasing associations between the circadian elements that are present in the suprachiasmatic nuclei and in other oscillators of the circadian system. The new analytical methods used here also indicate that the results obtained from time-frequency analysis depend to some extent upon the method used.     

Reiteration frequency of procollagen genes in the guinea pig genome: Collagen genes are not amplified during granuloma fibroblasts differentiation

Procollagen mRNA was purified from collagen synthesizing polysomes obtained from an experimental guinea pig granuloma, and iodinated in vitro. The procollagen ¹²⁵I-labelled mRNA was hibridized with granuloma and liver guinea pig DNA in vast DNA excess conditions. A Cot $\text{1}\text{2}$ 800–900 mol · s · l^?1 for both tissues was obtained from the hybridization curves. With these results, we could suggest the existence of 11–13 procollagen genes per haploid genome. By the analysis of the hybridization data it was possible to infer that there is no genomic amplification in tissues highly specialized in the synthesis of collagen such as granuloma.     

Prednisolone and Mustine in Prevention of Tumour Swelling during Pulmonary Irradiation

Ventilatory function declines during the early stages of irradiation for bronchial carcinoma. This decline is potentially dangerous if the tumour narrows the trachea or both main bronchi. The protective effect of preliminary treatment with prednisolone or mustine before irradiation was studied in 88 patients by serial estimations of forced expiratory volume and forced vital capacity. Twenty-three patients received prednisolone by mouth, 24 had mustine intravenously, and 41 had no preliminary treatment. Both prednisolone and mustine prevented a significant decline in ventilatory function due to tumour swelling, prednisolone being marginally superior. It is concluded that all patients at risk should be treated with oral prednisolone, 20 mg daily, for one day before and two days after the first fraction of irradiation.     

New species of Ergasilus von Nordmann, 1832 (Copepoda: Ergasilidae) from the gills of freshwater fishes in Patagonia,Argentina

Systematic Parasitology - A new parasitic copepod, Ergasilus yandemontei n. sp., is described based on 10 adult females collected from the gills of the atherinid silverside Odontesthes hatcheri...     

Common and rare species respond to similar niche processes in macroinvertebrate metacommunities

Ecologists have long investigated why communities are composed of a few common species and many rare species. Most studies relate rarity to either niche differentiation among species or spatial processes. There is a parallel between these processes and the processes proposed to explain the structure of metacommunities. Based on a metacommunity perspective and on data on stream macroinvertebrates from different regions of Brazil, we answer two questions. 1) Are sets of common and rare species affected by similar niche and spatial processes? 2) How does the community composition of common and of rare species differ? The main hypothesis we test is that common species are mainly affected by environmental factors, whereas rare species are mostly influenced by dispersal limitation. We used variation partitioning to determine the proportion of variation explained by the environment and space in common and rare species matrices. Contrary to our expectations, evidence supported the idea that both common and rare species are affected mainly by environmental factors, even after controlling for the differing information content between common and rare species matrices. Moreover, the abundance of some common species is also a good predictor of variation in rare species matrices. Niche differences are unlikely to be the sole cause of patterns of rarity in these metacommunities. We suggest that sets of common and rare species react to similar major environmental gradients and that rare species also respond to processes that operate at a more fine‐grained spatial scale, particularly biotic interactions. We extend the view that species sorting is the dominant process structuring metacommunities and argue that future studies focusing on rarity would benefit from a metacommunity perspective.     

Control of NADH ferricyanide reductase activity in the human erythrocyte by somatotrophin and insulin

Reduction of external ferricyanide by the human erythrocyte is significantly stimulated by insulin and somatotrophin at concentrations above physiological levels. Basal (in absence of hormones) and hormone-stimulated activities are attenuated in the presence of glycolytic inhibitors iodoacetate and vanadate indicating the requirement of glycolytic substrates for the reduction process and for the activation of cellular metabolism in response to the hormones. Sulfhydryl reagents like N-ethylmaleimide also attenuate the basal and hormone-stimulated activities and this effect was rationalized on the basis of action at SH sites which trigger responses to hormones. Stimulation of ferricyanide reduction by insulin and somatotrophin may be also the result of Na⁺/H⁺ antiport activation which may be prevented by amiloride. This suggests that Na⁺/H⁺ antiport is part of the membrane transduction system for insulin and somatotrophin in the human erythrocyte. These observations are a contribution to the study of plasma membrane oxidoreductase systems involved in physiological and metabolic functions of the cell.