Animals - Science topic

You're very welcome!

Thank you, that's exactly the kind of dataset that would be a useful comparison. Are these data available or published?

Dear Isabel Freund,

I think these articles may actually help you.

Best wishes,

Sabri

Thank you very much for your answers!

Aman Arora Thanks for raising this important issue, I do agree with prof. Manal Hadi Kanaan And prof. Frank T. Edelmann

I don't understand this and similar discussions. There are hundreds of quality journals that publish alpha taxonomy articles in many fields. Why all attention is focused on Zootaxa?

I never publush my research in paid journals because this is a cheating business. However, this does not apply to journals of scientific societies, where member contributions are required.

Here is just a brief list of free quality international peer-reviewed journals (referring in Scopus and Web of Science core collection) that publish articles on animal alpha taxonomy (many of them are with open access; also many journals publish alpha-taxonomy on fossil records):

Zoology/Entomology:

1. Zoosystema (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless

2. Acta zoologica academiae scientiarum hungaricae (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless, open access

3. European journal of taxonomy (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless, open access

4. Zoosystematica Rossica (Scopus) - chargeless, open access

5. Zoologicheskii zhurnal (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless, open access

6. Zoology in the Middle East (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless

7. Invertebrate zoology (Scopus) - chargeless, open access

8. Acta Zoologica Bulgarica (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless, open access

9. Ecologica Montenegrina (Scopus) - chargeless

10. Annales zoologici (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless

11. Arthropod sytematics and phylogeny (Scopus, WoS core collection) chargeless, open access

12. Zoologischer anzeiger (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless

13. Turkish Journal of Zoology (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless, open access

14. Arthropoda selecta (Scopus) - chargeless, open access

Entomology:

15. Annales de la Société entomologique de France, N.S. (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless

16. Insect systematic & evolution (Scopus, WoS core collection) - chargeless

17. Far Eastern Entomologist (Scopus) - chargless

18. Entomological Review (Scopus) - chargless

19. Fragmenta entomologica (Scopus) - chargless

20. Caucasian Entomological Bulletin (Scopus) - chargeless, open access

21. Russian Entomological Journal (Scopus) - chargeless, open access

Full animal rights

Thank you Arun.. Wll go through it.

Thank you all of you for your consideration and answers

Dignity is the right and privilege of all and is never exclusive to a particular individual or a class of people.

Dignity is not for judiciary or Government It is a prerogative for all biotic factors of biosphere.

It could be Trithemis aurora.

Hi Marija,

I know this question was asked a fair while ago, but I just wanted to see if you had any luck with tattoo identification and if so, if you were able to purchase a relatively cheap and easy to use tattoo gun? Please let me know!

What tissues are you interested in? We had some luck with RNA from feces, although you'll need to troubleshoot your isolation protocol because the quality can decay quite quickly. It's also best to collect the sample "before it touches the ground", so if the animals are quite big it can get dangerous.

Thank You :)

There is no one answer to this question. Specific uses must be considered, since a scientific find that cures a horrible disease does not carry the same moral weight as things like testing makeup brands on animals. Further, the moral weights given to animal rights vs. scientific discovery differ by moral universe. In the ethics of more biocentric religions, such as Buddhism, one often finds moral dismay regarding the uses of animals in science, like one sees in the work of the current Dalai Lama. The rights of animals not to suffer outweigh considerations of human benefit. Within religious universes that tend more toward anthropocentric outlooks, such as with ethics stemming from the Abrahamic religions, harming animals in science for human benefit remains more tolerated and pursued. Of course, things are not neat and tidy regarding this, since one still may find a Buddhist who supports experimentation on animals and a Christian who does not. You might check out Tom Regan's classic work, <Animal Sacrifices: Religious Perspectives on the Use of Animals in Science>, and the work that he, Jeff Masson, Lisa Kemmerer, and others have done since. You might also look into the essays found in <A Communion of Subjects>.

The following book summarizes the knowledge on vegetation and flora of Socotra and provides a list of the vascular plants, bryophytes, and lichens of Socotra:

Brown, G. & Mies, B. (2012): Vegetation ecology of Socotra. - Plant and Vegetation 7. Springer Science & Business Media, 379 pp.

But a complete inventory of all species of plants and animals appears not yet available.

With my question, I wanted the community to become aware of the initiative to fight back the dangerous and erroneous arguments published in the Washington Post and to gather more signatories. I like when commenters make arguments against the Washington Post piece, but I honestly find unhelpful to make comments about Pyron. Let's focus on ideas/arguments and ways to push back those arguments in the WP article that could be used by insane governments and corporations to continue devastating biodiversity.

Kindly check with book by Dafoid etal.,2013 ( meat production) published by Messibi co.

Regarding what you define, you just need to use a sensor for daily activity monitoring, usually based on accelerometers. But if you are looking also to dynamics behavior of the animal, in terms of geographic displacement, you need also a localisation plotter like a GPS. There is a lot of cheap sensors that can give you such information.

If you need more accurate data, like spatiotemporal parameters, pressure data, or kinematics, other systems have to be used.

I work on (teleost) fish and am not a spider expert. There are spiders that can change colour and choose backround see e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279567360_Camouflage_of_predatory_crab_spiders_on_flowers_and_the_colour_perception_of_bees_Aranida_ThomisidaeHymenoptera_Apida

However, I also want to point out that selection per se may remove those spiders that do not blend into the background. Only those that are camouflaged will be left. This will act in the present generation. In the speciation litterature selection against immigrants is termed "immigrant inviability".

Best regards,

Ola

In Indonesian New Guinea (western parts of New Guinea Island), there is a tendency of indigenous groups using modern hunting equipment that mostly used by non-indigenous groups to make hunting more efficient  with active technique.  While some of non-indigenous tribes are currently applying passive hunting techniques (using huge number of traps and snares - about 50-200) that commonly used by indigenous tribes to maximize harvest rates for trading purposes. Both practice are using side by side related to the purpose of hunting.

I agree with Ron's assertion that aging is, to some degree, linear. It may nevertheless be possible to progressively increase activity throughout up to a point. Imagine, activity is increased slowly through one's 40s to 80s, e.g. then, life happens and an illness or injury impairs the individual's capacity to remain active and there's a sharp drop-off that persists over the remainder of their life. If that remainder is very brief, then sure, the goal of increasing activity throughout one's life was met. At the very least, it could be shown that activity was progressively increased more than had previously been demonstrated.

Thank you for your contributions.

Hi Gloria,

Germ-free are mice free of all microorganisms, while gnotobiotic mice are mice with known microorganisms.

Normally gnotobiotic are germ-free mice intentionally infected with known microorganisms.

Hi Laura,

I agree with Pavel regarding the channels and amplitude. I also don't use SoundRuler (sorry!) but I thought it might be useful to add that you need to be sure there is no background noise overlapping your calls of interest. If for example these recordings were made at a zoo, there may be visitors chatting, or in the field there could be other animals calling etc. on your recordings. If there is, then you can either need to filter it (if it does not overlap in frequency with the monkey calls), or if that's not possible, you could manually extract the frequency measures, or simply eliminate those calls from your analyses. It might be that you can use the read-out on all your "clean" calls (i.e. no background noise, one individual calling at a time) and in that case it could be just as simple as you say!

Good luck with your interesting project!

All the best,

Esther

The requested article: Caterpillar Fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) Production and Sustainability on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas can be downloaded from my www.mushroaming.com webpage under publications. All the best

I agree with Dr. Bhansali. We have measured whole blood glucose twice daily in rats for over three years.  Non-diabetic (regardless of regular 18% fat or 40% high fat  diet) had mean glucose of 90±0.89 mg/dl and 92.34±1.15 respectively for diets and after development of diabetes all >200mg/dl (324±9.83mg/dl and 333±11.50 respectively.)

Thanks all

You'll need to be a bit more specific about what you are asking. All living things generate electromagnetic fields. More complex organisms like mammals can generate numerous fields from various tissues. The gut for instance, produces a range of low frequency fields as muscular peristalsis moves food through. Other species have specialized organs that can generate/detect electric fields that can be used for sensing (lots of fish). Some can even generate such large fields that they can use an electric discharge as a weapon (electric eel). Some folks in my lab have measured various magnetic fields in animals using SQuID magnetometers. We also look at action potential propagation through tissues using the fluorescence of voltage sensitive dyes. There are most likely thousands of papers that discuss some aspect of electromagnetism in animals so it would be best to narrow it down a bit.

I to have worked on EEG of wrist rotate signal, leg rotation of human.

Placement of the electrode is important cerebral cortex that to p7, p8 position is where the Mu signals are much accurate. U could sample the signal at a higher rate and use a LPF and BPF. My paper on Hand rotate EEG signal will be helpful for you if you refer it.

I would suggest to make a study of the signals of animals EEG signal and classify them like we have to Humans alpha, Beta, delta, Mu, gama etc.  

U can also use DWT of order 2 to analysis the signal in better way.

Any help you need i can work on ur signals and send it back to you regarding pre processing.

This publication of mine might help you.

Understanding invasion of undesirable, alien species should move away from species, but look at management of landscapes (and seascapes) instead. The point is made in other Q&As on RG. This position starts from the observation that invasive plants cluster in particular landscapes (e.g. tropical Kwazulu-Natal, RSA; wetlands within the temperate zone  and much more rare in adjacent ones. The second issue is that eradication/control efforts directed at species are usually ineffective. I only know two exceptions to the latter.

At first sight, the ventral side [?] is reminiscent of a (highly retracted) polyplacophoran, especially because of what looks like ctenidia. But no visible signs of shells--Could it be one of the shell-less looking (those that have small shells or whose shells are covered by the girdle) families? Possibly a juvenile with plates not developed? 

dynamometer was my first choice but marine turtles, especially green turtle, are hard to fixate. moreover fixing the adults on beach after they laid their eggs, will disturb them too much.

Thanks for your answers Mehdi and Dusan. But it seems that i have to find another way to measure it.

best regards

onur

Hi Mehdi,

I do apologise, I only just saw your answer - strangely, Researchgate didn't let me know. 

They are to be part of a semantic processing task - e.g. to see which brain regions respond to videos of animals. I would compare them to other videos of actions and objects with white backgrounds.

Rachel

Hi Valentin,

I'm not a specialist, but they look a lot like sipunculids (Phylum Sipuncula). 

Cheers,

Camilo

Complication of vomiting and aspiration is the risk related to anesthesia. Moreover gastrointestinal motility is slow to return after anesthesia. However in case of small and light weight animals there is risk of hypoglycemia so that needs to be monitored and due to this their time of fasting is usually shorter.

Dear Aravinda

Gastropod shells may be the rests of animal died years or decades ago. As long as I understand you must estimate the biomass of gastropods alive at a given time (and at different times to build abundance curves), so you need to know their behaviour, in order to collect them when they are active (by night or rainy weather, for ex.), not to try to collect them when they are hidden.

The gross weight of live animal is probably the first valuable information, completed with the dry matter weight of a representative sample (dried in a ventilated oven  at 60-100 °C until the weight is stable)

the muffle furnace can only give you the ashes, i.e. mineral content (non-organic), not the biomass itself

You probably need also to sort gastropods by species and size...

Okay, thanks for your help!  I am looking at changes in the neuronal calcium sensor 1 and D2 dopamine receptors after a two hour cocaine self administration session

Why are you doing this?

There are a lot of expensive and free options available out there, including Ethovision, Jwatcher, Scribe, Matlab (if programmed correctly), and each of their usefulness largely depends on what exactly it is that you want to record. Some questions to consider as you look up each of them and make a choice:

1) Are you looking for something that will automatically track and record a behavior for you? That is tough, as most tracking software programs use color contrast to compare video frames to previous frames. That allows, for example, video to pull aside any frames with the color red in a separate file, which could be useful for some behaviors like quantifying how much time a bird flashes its red patch while courting.

2) If you're doing it manually (e.g., you need personal discretion to identify behaviors), several of the programs will let you press certain keys on the keyboard to record a behavior, identify it as a one-time event or ongoing event, and will automatically quantify number of events and time spent in such event.

3) If you're only interested in time stamps to the nearest second and you have to watch the videos manually, it might make sense to use a good video player instead of a behavior analysis software. I use VLC Media Player because it easily allows you to speed up and slow down, and is highly compatible with various file types. 

Sorry I can't be more specific, but it really depends on what sort of behaviors you need to actually measure. Is there something you will be measuring beyond "accurate times"?

There are treadmills for dogs and even horses.  I'm sure a monkey could be trained for one made for a dog. 

Audrey Derose-Wilson recorded heartbeats of incubating Wilson's plovers as a part of her master's work. She is currently at Virginia Tech. 

You need to determine whether your data is paired or unpaired as the statistics is different for the two cases. This might help http://www.tufts.edu/~gdallal/paired.htm

The statistical tests are different depending on whether there is pairing or not.

Eg you have a paired t test

and an unpaired t test

You need to be careful as somtimes you can get partially paired data

and this can require special methods

or

you may need to use permutation methods

see

which is explained with examples here

for which you might need software

see

Your data may well be partially paired and partially unpaired if you have taken samples from different animals and if you have taken multiple samples from the same animal.

So first determine the degree of pairing and then decide on what test you need. Do not forget the other things that can be violations of a test such as whether the data needs to be normally distributed, whether the variances are equal or not (all of which depends on the test you use).

Dear Maj,

do you want to count Eosinophil in blood of animals? 

If yes, You can make a smear and follow the Gimsa protocol; we evaluate this WBC in poultry and rat blood. and also there is some apparatus which design to count and recognize differentiation of WBC form each other indeed.

Regards,

Mehdi 

Dear Raju,

You could may be try the P388 so-called "leukemia" cell lines, which behave like a lymphoma when injected subcutaneously and not i.p. as classically done with this model.

I never performed actual lymphoma characterization of this model, in which I was interested for its aggressive behavior as an actual metastasizing process to the liver.

This model is described in the attached article. May be it could of help for you.

Best regards

Robert

Some time ago I tried to argue that the figures of the kind might mark some border/transitional point where different modes of behaviour switch from one to another. Thus, say, symmetry in the figure of Animal Mistress in Scythian (as well as Greek etc) art with her hands spread apart and holding two minor figures. And - the scenes of the same symmetrical (frontal) figure as giving birth or with the accent at her privates

For many of animals, birds and mammals alike, their circannual rhythm of behavior and physiology persists even whilst in activity. For migrating species in captivity, their migratory behavior is manifest by what is widely termed migratory restlessness and this is often accompanied by significant changes in body mass and condition and hormonal changes. Suggest you do a key word search for 'migratory restlessness'.

English would be appreciated, but French and Spanish are both Ok...

Hello,

I oral gavage mice very frequently but I never anesthetize them, I think it would be even more difficult and then the anestesia could interfere with the drugs/compound/ food if it is a special one,  you are gavaging. The risk of suffucating then is much higher, I guess. I ahven't seen anyone doing, but maybe it is possible.

I would suggest you try different tecnique of holding them, and try to put them in a condition they can't move the head. I usually do C57 and even if they are initially a bit unhappy, I never had real problem at the end, the mice get used. 

Ornella

looks like a sea cucumber

Thank you very much!!!

the below article may be of interest to you - basically says that tropical ecosystems are an excellent place to find thermal specialists

Thanks a lot! It is very helpful.  ^^

Marzluff has papers on the impact of suburbs on bird populations - the relationship actually curves up and then down.  He works at the University of Washington in Seattle

It depends completely on the energy balance over time. Animals that are losing a large amount of stored body energy and protein for a function such as producing milk without having sufficient energy intake to meet that need will lose body condition score quickly. Mature animals that are not "growing" or "lactating" will lose body condition score slowly, even with restricted energy intake. Animals with a very high metabolic rate, such as humming birds, may live only a few day without adequate food intake because of loss of body energy. Some species, such as seals and certain bears, will store a lot of energy and then may go for months without consuming any food while their body condition declines naturally. So there is not easy rule to answer your question.

The metabolic cold adaptation (MCA) hypothesis predicts an increase in the metabolic. Levis, using different populations along a distributional range with a wide ... used to explain metabolic differences in altitude, latitude and habitat .Several interspecific studies support the MCA hypothesis for a suite of both terrestrial.

please cane  be visited

I believe there is some research on using harnesses for cannulated rats, rather than head caps. I'm not sure if anything has been published yet though. 

Thanks a lot for these suggestions, they were really good, again thanks

I have found what I am looking for at "A Global Assessment of the Water

Footprint of Farm Animal Products" by Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2012).

Thanks for your responses

Not that Im aware of unfortunately.

Some success with hypertrophic models but not yet with keloid models of scarring. This study nicely illustrates the different attempts made to create an ideal model - none of which have been fully successful.

Hello Gábor,

I can recommend: "Animal Evolution. Genomes, Fossils, and Trees", edited by M.J. Telford & D.T.J. Littlewood ... published by Oxford University Press in 2009 ... ISBN 978-0-19-957030-0

Best wishes, Mike

HELLO, 

I own two gentle tom cats, who are on a hypocaloric diet, because they have grown too fat (one weights 8Kg...) As I know that tom cats usually tend to develop urinary problems, I am very careful with their drinking water.

The first thing I do, every morning , is to fill their two bowls with fresh water. apart from that, they have a water fountain, that filters permanently, and which is great fun, because they enjoy playing with the pouring water.

Also, in the 6 warmer months of the year, I add a few ice cubes to the water tray, and they enjoy playing with the ice cubes, and I am certain that these silly water games that I prepare for them, also act as a reminder that they should drink water. 

The secret with cats is that they are in general joyful and playful, and so, whenever  I want them to do certain things, I invent games or pleasurable mind traps.

(You need to be a sort of cat-person, yourself, to get along with cats!)

Hope this was useful,

Kind regards

Maria

Hello

please , read the articles and ppt in attachment i hope help you .

Good Luck

So glad it helped!

Hello Morkaz Happy new year good luck 

Vaccines are drugs used to increase the body's ability to combat disease organisms. Most vaccines are designed to help the body fight off a specific type of bacterium, protozoan, or virus. Some vaccines have been developed to stop the growth of cancer cells and to protect military troops from biological warfare.

Read more: http://www.biologyreference.com/Ta-Va/Vaccines.html#ixzz3NTbTG4Fd

Here is a start: http://www.journalofanimalscience.org/content/90/5/1583.full.pdf

Dear David

Did you find the answer you were looking for in the documents?

Pressure is only used as a monitoring parameter for directional airflow. However, Differential pressure is not direcly proportionate to directional airflow, So the exact pressure steps will depend on the leakiness of the doors and fabric as well as the design of the ventilation system. Typical pressure steps between two are 15 and 50 Pascal, but the direction of airflow will depend on the scientific requirement over pressure for SPF and under-pressure for biocontainment. Document 2 gave values for clean room (GMP/SPF) requirements, which is typically at greater equal 15 Pa. If the barrier is for biocontainment larger pressure steps are typically used to create a robust pressure cascade. There are many different manometer types that can be used, dependent on the level of monitoring that is required. in the most simple ones a liquid column is displaced and where the differential does not need to be monitored continuously, and does not need to be alarmed these can be very cost efficient and easy to maintain. Others operate without liquid (which can evaporate), but are more expensive and harder to calibrate.

Best regards, Uwe

This is the link to a website that we used in one of our statistical analysis classes. It has a sample size calculator but also gives information about how to properly use it and what types of things you should be considering. We found it very useful, hopefully you will too. http://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~rlenth/Power/ 

Try to go serum-free! See attached article.

I work in the zoo sector and it would be interesting if you could survey zoos in the AZA and/or EAZA about their policy on this because from the many zoos I am familiar with, I have never heard of zoos having a maximum threshold that they monitor. In the UK, the governing body DEFRA sure doesn't. I expect there to be a difference between North American and European zoos which could prove very interesting to analyse.

To my knowledge there is no description of a virus able to infect both plants and vertebrates. The reason is likely that the antiviral defenses are very different in those two kingdoms. Plant and insect use post transcriptional gene silencing, when vertebrate use pattern recognition and lots of antiviral effectors. This means that from plant to animals, a virus has to adapt in order to face the new antiviral system.

Animals are much exposed to plant and bacterial viruses, through contact, or eating or even drinking. They evolved a strong antiviral system that creates an effective barrier against those pathogens.Still viruses can adapt to a new host.

I happened, example for the circovirus: "A plant virus that switched to vertebrates" http://www.virology.ws/2010/04/26/a-plant-virus-that-switched-to-vertebrates/

Dear Andre,

Thanks for pointing this out. There is indeed an increasing awareness among neuroscientists that it is beneficial to become more open about the benefits of our research. We should inform the public about our research to gain support and to combat misinformation.

A useful resource - presumably known to all of us - is www.brainfacts.org, and there are other comparable websites. You can also work together with organizations such as "Speaking of research", and talk to the press when you uncover something new and exciting. I can recommend the paper on this topic by Holder (2014).

All the best,

Pieter Roelfsema

Holdert, T (2014) Standing up for science: The antivivisection movement and how to stand up to it. EMBO Rep. Jun;15(6):625-30

Hello Yunpeng, it is an interesting problem. I was wondering whether you'd like to do either animal classification or fine-grained animal recognition. The former aims at naming different animals, e.g. tell cat from dog, the latter aims at tell sub-categories of the animal, e.g. tell Affenpinscher from German pinscher. If the former, it is kind of easier, you might use a good classifier (e.g SVM, Random Forest, or more advanced Deep Learning) based on the features extracted from the face bounding box. The latter is relatively more difficult, you might need to localize some key parts on the animal face, like the eyes, months, nose tips, etc, Then extract features from them and feed the features to a classifier. I hope this will help, 

We had also problem with extremely jumpy mice :D Thanks any way 

Thank you, Mehran, Alex. Should I test it recommended by NCCLS also?

You could get data from some hunting bag statistics. But only for those animals which are counted for hunting bags and which really died!