Lizards - Science topic

We are not clad fish but clad apes. Though the Deep Ones are known among the lost tribes, who are worshipping the elder gods. For further reference, read up on the works of Abdul Alhazred.

Is it a free, or is it pay to play?

According to my knowledge It sounds like you're experiencing an issue with retrieving a sequence you previously identified in the Transcriptome Shotgun Assembly (TSA) or Sequence Read Archive (SRA) databases. There are several possible reasons why you might not be able to find the sequence now:Data Updates and Revisions:NCBI frequently updates its databases, and during such updates, certain sequences might be revised, reclassified, or even removed if they were found to be erroneous or redundant.Check if the TSA or SRA datasets have been updated or if there are new versions available.Sequence Relocation:Sometimes, sequences are reannotated and moved to different databases or given new accession numbers. It's possible that your sequence has been reclassified under a new ID.Try searching for the sequence using different identifiers or keywords.Database Removal or Privacy Settings:Occasionally, datasets are removed from public access due to various reasons, such as the submitter retracting the data or issues related to data privacy or quality.If the dataset was removed, there might be an associated notice or publication retraction.Search Parameters:Ensure that your BLAST search parameters are set correctly. Changes in the database or search settings might affect your ability to find the sequence.Double-check the search parameters, including the database you are querying, the search sensitivity, and the filters applied.Technical Issues:There might be temporary technical issues with the NCBI servers or your internet connection.Try accessing the databases from a different network or at a different time.Steps to Troubleshoot and Find the SequenceCheck Database Versions:Look for any recent updates or changes to the TSA or SRA databases. NCBI often provides release notes or updates about significant changes.Alternative Search Strategies:Use different BLAST programs (e.g., BLASTn, tBLASTn) and adjust the search parameters.Try using other related databases, such as GenBank, if the sequence might have been moved.Search Using Metadata:If you remember any specific metadata (e.g., sample ID, study title, organism details), use those to search the NCBI database or related publications.Contact NCBI Support:If you believe the sequence should still be available but cannot find it, consider reaching out to NCBI support for assistance. They can provide insights into any changes in the database that might affect your search.Explore Published Literature:If the sequence was part of a study, check the corresponding publication for any updates or supplementary data that might explain the sequence's current status.Use Archived Data:Check if you saved any local copies of the sequence or associated data when you first identified it. Having a copy can help you reference it accurately and potentially realign it with updated databases.

if the genus gets too large and the species difficult to differentiate I call the genus a 'supergenus' eg, the genus Thyone amongst dendrchiortid holothuroids (please note the apostrophe before and after) but this has no nomenclatural status. If, on the other hand, there are too many different types within a species, which are difficult to separate, I call them cryptic/sibling species, or simply eg. the Thyone fusus complex, using the type species of the genus. Hope this helps.

HANDS!!!

To test the efficacy of a head starting program for a specific lizard species using the simulation software Vortex, you will need to create state variables and a transition function to model the growth and development of the lizards.

A state variable is a variable that represents the status of the system being modeled. In this case, you would need to define state variables that represent the characteristics of the lizard population, such as the number of individuals, their age, size, or body condition.

The transition function is a mathematical formula that describes how the state variables change over time. The transition function takes the current state variables as inputs and calculates the new values for the state variables based on the underlying biological processes that drive the growth and development of the lizards.

Here is a general outline of how you could write the transition function:

This is just a general outline and the specific details of the transition function will depend on the characteristics of the species you are modeling, the data available, and the goals of your simulation. It is advisable to consult with a specialist in the field of simulation modeling or in the biology of the species you are modeling to ensure the validity of your model.

It is very possible as I stumbled on an article reporting Shigella from feces of geckos!!!

Mattia De Vivo Thanks for your helpful advice!

Visit also the following useful RG link: https://www.researchgate.net/topic/Lizards

A negative effect, especially the rise in temperature, which increases the activity of parasites and microorganisms

Hi, shruti. GAPDH, beta-actin and 18s are well-established housekeeping genes. Coming to your question, 18s is endogenous in eukaryotes. Hence in case you are working with eukaryotic ones, it is highly recommended to use either GAPDH, Beta-actin or 18 s to perform qPCR from cDNA samples. (based on the reference levels). However, 16s rRNA is highly used for prokaryotes.

As far as I am aware most geckos have pleurodont teeth. Check with Aaron Bauer: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron-Bauer-2

Determing the value of electroejaculation as a method of semen collection in lizards and chelonians. Read that paper

Anesthesia is an intervention that one should expect to alter RNA expression!

Since DNA is insoluble in ethanol and isopropanol, the addition of alcohol, followed by centrifugation, will cause the DNA proteins to come out of the solution. When DNA concentration in the sample is heavy, the addition of ethanol will cause a white precipitate to form immediately.

Sarah, suggesting these papers may answer to your query, hopefully. Best

Varanus bengalensis ? See here:

I believe that a discovery as intriguing as this must pass, not only to worry about preserving this species, but also to conduct studies in its habitat to continue its preservation. I also think it is interesting to carry out studies in its food chain. This discovery could open more doors for even smaller animals. Conducting research on the types of bacteria that maintain their habitat is also very important.

Hi,

when your additional observation is on the exact position than the position from telemetry you could weight the telemetry point. This would affect a kernel density, but not a 100% mcp. For the mcp data points outside the mcp you get from telemetry alone would be interesting.

Best, Christoph

Hi Adriano,

I wasn't physically measuring pH from frog's skin. I was working in vitro with the peptides that are secreted from frogs and toads. I was studying their fibrillation characteristics, so I needed to know what was the right range of pH where these single fibrils of peptides start bundling together to form aggregates. Frogs and other toads don't have a complex immune system like in the animal kingdom. So, the hypothesis is that they use their secreted peptides to help them evade any microbial attacks on their body. Some of these peptides are amyloid forming peptides and are antimicrobial in nature.

I suggest you follow https://www.real-statistics.com/one-way-analysis-of-variance-anova/nominal-ordinal-chi-square-test/

Use the regional checklists of all herpetofauna, not just lacertidae and you will find some checklists.

I may be proven wrong, but I don't believe the technology is quite there yet for using GPS with small lizards. My friend is using some relatively small ones on clouded monitors, but they would be too large for a smaller lizard species. I don't think the GPS loggers/transmitters are small enough yet (and also the accuracy is likely not ideal for tracking movements of small animals with relatively small movements). I think the best way to do it is with eternally attached small radio transmitters (we use holohil) and manual tracking (unfortunately). - Sorry if this reply is too late to be of help, I just now saw it.

All the best ,Amos

Ciliatus and Sasinorum have hybridized in captivity. Feel free to message me for details.

I think the suggestions of Tropiduridae and Microlophus are correct. I would also suggest uploading this image at www.iNaturalist.com. There is a giant community of Herpetologists there who can provide an accurate ID for you.

Following

Bauer, Aaron M., et al. "Revision of the giant geckos of New Caledonia (Reptilia: Diplodactylidae: Rhacodactylus)." Zootaxa 3404.1 (2012): 1-52.

Hi Margalit,

The following two links might be useful for you. All the best.

https://wiki.xenbase.org/xenwiki/index.php/Extraction_of_DNA_from_Single_Embryos_(Sive_et_al._2000)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00071668.2012.760035?journalCode=cbps20

Hola Diego,

El procedimiento para el análisis de excretas para cepas de Salmonella luego de la colecta de las heces directamente de la cloaca o del terrario de una diversidad de reptiles es descrita en Corrente et al. (2004).

Te dejo un link con el método. (http://bit.ly/3a8S5Ji)

J.

Some information about a common Spherodactylid in America (Gonatodes albogularis):

1.

2. Factors Affecting Orientation and Habitat Selection in some Geckos (By HAROLD HEATWOLE)

3. https://books.google.nl/books?id=aK2uDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=gonatodes+albogularis+forrageo&source=bl&ots=bOB6V5BLsw&sig=ACfU3U0Ngl36HB6JQPla8yl4FsGtq6B9Kg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiGuLLg_rznAhXN2qQKHaBDCbgQ6AEwEHoECA0QAQ#v=onepage&q=gonatodes%20albogularis%20forrageo&f=false (sorry it's in spanish)

Use Sudan black dye or diazo dye

Damian; My colleague used india ink for the tattoo. As I remember, the marks lasted more than a year...the duration of the study. Cheers, Jim Des Lauriers

Dear Jalal,

They're good photos of interesting mites! I would also recommend contacting Dr Monika Fajfer, who has been publishing several excellent works on the Pterygosomatidae. See, for example:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b291/067e07fa08044c3689d6b52a79935f073e37.pdf

Her contact details are given on the title page, and she may be able to help.

Kind regards, Owen.

Thank you

This maybe useful to you:

With best regards,

Sudesh

What may seem like a simple metric can become very complex. The basic number you are looking for is catch per unit effort with effort being time-constrained or area-constrained. An important assumption is that all members of the target population are equally catchable (males, females, juveniles) at all sites (habitats) using whatever technique you used. Factors that affect these numbers include time of year, time of day, and weather conditions. Many population models also assume a closed system, that is births, deaths, immigration, and emigration will not significantly change the population size or demographics. As long as these factors are understood and included in the survey protocol you should be able to generate meaningful numbers.

Within either the time or area constrained methods you must consider technique (e.g., visual encounter surveys, pit falls, box traps, or other device used for capturing target species, etc.). With the visual encounter survey if you were marking and releasing the animals as you encountered them you may need to subtract the time required to mark and collect other data such as sex and size. Not knowing the scope of your survey efforts or the number of animals encountered, I do not know if that is an important factor for your study. If a device is used to capture the animal then the numbers are more straight forward: x number of animals per y length of time (trap-days or trap-hours) assuming equal number of traps per unit area.

In a study we conducted of Bog Turtles at 4 sites in New York we found that we did not capture a sufficient number of individuals on a single survey day to make meaningful population estimates. We pooled data for each site and for all sites combined made on 3 successive surveys conducted approximately 2 weeks apart during the period from peak spring emergence to onset of nesting. We repeated this study over a 4 year period. We choose the Schumacher-Eschmeyer method for our data analysis which is designed to work with data sets that include multiple resample efforts. Because these populations are relatively small only 1 of the 4 sites produced a population estimate within the 95% confidence limits.

@Emmanuel, it was a good discussion, good points were placed on the table, thanks for that!

Thanks Shai and all who kindly answered! Actually we established a new Uromastyx longevity record of at least 46 years! It is documented in the following note:

You can use a gastric lavage technique depending on what you're interested in. See Legler and Sullivan 1979 or Durtsche 2000.

I would recommend looking into the range of microscopes provided by Dino-Lite. See the following link:

https://www.dino-lite.com/

Hi John,

Please send me an email and I will be happy to trouble shoot with you. I am a senior molecular biologist at Biomeme and will definitely be able to help you further.

My email is: mieke@biomeme.com

Thanks

Dear Dr Pa Medica , wish your message will reach to concerned authorities.

Vits D & K have rarely been measured in WHOLE prey, apart from a few fishes, as they're just not valuable food sources for humans or economically important livestock species. Literature values typically isolated studies - hence need for comprehensive database development!

Please also have a look at this useful ResearchGate link.

The only way I know to perform this analysis is to dissect the stomach and count the number of lizards it contains. For upper middle class adults living in the Boston area, any whole number greater than or equal to one would be cause for alarm. This procedure is not likely to have any negative effect on the lizards, however, the procedure which led to the lizards being in the stomach is very likely to have been destructive to them.

This Link may help you Shikha

This is an extremely bad practice of Zoologica Scripta to put species description into online supplementary material. Unfortunately (if the description meets all the criteria of ICZN online publication) there is no other way just referring to the online supplement. I think authors describing new species should avoid publication in such journals even-thought it has "high impact factor"

Hi Gregor,

It does look like Leiocephalus carinatus, yet the subspecies armouri does not occur on Cuba. It is probably safe to go with the nominate. If you have the specimen, you could use the dichotomous key in the book by Schwartz & Henderson (1985) to check the ID (see attached).

Good luck!

Best,

Danny

Refer this attached paper...

Author used A Sonosite portable ultrasound (Vet 180 plus) unit with a curvilinear probe (C11/7-4 MHz Transducer) for scans.

In West Africa there is a park manager on the W national park trapping Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus) with Havahart trap too. He had a big succes

Thank you all for your help!

Have you seen this paper? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jzs.12115/abstract. They could not unambiguously resolve whether there is gene flow in contact zones between the species or not. So, a very interesting question to dig into.

According to the key by Arnold & Ovenden (2002), in P. taurica:

"Collar usually distinctly serrated, throat scales fairly coarse, bod scales usually well keeled

while in P. muralis:

"Collar more or less smooth-edged, body scales often not very distinctly keeled, or smooth".

Don't know how much this helps.

Hi Chris, take a look at google images to see pictures of gecko eyes:

Here is what my students said:

"They are between approximately 12,000-55,000 years old and are found the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California, USA. Most of them have been found within microfossil matrix sorting methods." She said several of them appear possibly to be horned lizards (Phrynosomatidae). 

Thanks everyone!

I think is a female of the variable species draco sumatranus Schlegel, 1844.

Many thanks, Evgeny. Being an article in French, I would probably not be likely to find it in regular searches.

Maybe helpfull for you

I'm currently looking at a range of baits to attract animals to a specific model of kill trap. As well as being interested in whether animals find one bait more attractive than an other I also want to know which species show an interest in the bait so we can assess potential risk to non-target species. One problem with not catching an animal is that in the absence of any other information you don't know if you didn't catch it because the bait wasn't attractive enough or because the animal wasn't there in the first place. We have used motion triggered CCTV to record animal activity in the vicinity of the trap. It is surprising how many animals of even the target species walk straight past the trap/bait as if it is not there or give it a brief sniff before walking away. Taking this approach for an initial trial might give you a better idea of the encounter rate vs the capture rate and might reveal some aspects of animal behaviour that could help you improve trap performance.

Perhaps this paper (in German) has the answer:

Röll, B. (2004). Lygodactylus luteopicturatus Pasteur, 1965 [1964]: ein Synonym von Lygodactylus picturatus (Peters, 1870)(Sauria, Gekkonidae). Sauria, Berlin, 25(1), 33-37.

Best regards!

Dear Abhishek and Gordon, thank you for the information

Thanks, Stephen. Now Im absaolutely sure.

Andrey

Image 1 & 2 : Physignathus cocincinus

Image 3 & 4 : Mihails Pupins

Hi Manon. Nº 2 Varanus niloticus or V. dumerilli (I cannot be 100% sure from the photo) and 5 definitely V. dumerilii.

Genus Uromastix is correct but, as said above, locations are crucial for determining the species.

Please find attached a photo of myself (1st at left) about 10 years old in NE Angola with a V. niloticus recently roadkilled.

All the best and goog luck with your valuable nd fascinating work,

´JP

Sphenomorphus sanctus

I have had similar issues with spinal cord slices. I started coating the slides with gelatin.https://www.rndsystems.com/resources/protocols/protocol-preparation-gelatin-coated-slides-histological-tissue-sections

You don't need to do the filtering step as long as you are careful not to add dust to the solution. It had been working well for me. Also, make sure that just prior to sectioning you let the slides warm up on some warm (not hot) surface for 15min at least - it really helps to prevent detachment later on. Good luck!

Reptile red blood cell lifespan has been studied extensively and is much longer than mammals and birds. A review can be found in Biology of the Reptilia. 

Your methodology is going to vary considerably depending on your specific ecological adaptation research question (e.g., sprint speed, climbing ability, body size, sexual size dimorphism, color/patterning, reproductive mode, etc., etc.).  I would first recommend you conduct an extensive literature review of your particular species of interest (or species group) and the particular adaptation you are interested in exploring.  The chances are good that someone else has worked with your study species (or a closely related species) and/or the adaptation you interested in studying.

So for example, you may want to investigate the ecological adaptations of a freshwater turtle species that has populations living in both flowing and non-flowing conditions.  If you look in the literature, turtle populations have adapted to these different flow conditions by evolving different shell shapes; those that live in high flow conditions are more streamlined while those that live in low flow conditions are more robust.  So to answer this question you would want to design a field study to investigate shell morphology (quantify different shell measurements like carapace length, width, and height) at different sites with different flow regimes.  This field study could then be validated by lab studies in a flow-through system to measure swimming efficiency and/or shell drag.  I have attached a great study by Rivera who did just this study.  

There are numerous other papers using similar studies to research ecological adaptations of herpetofauna. Herpetological Conservation and Biology publishes papers like this regularly, and the papers are freely accessible to the public at this web address (www.herpconbio.org).  I hope that this is helpful.

Monitors are variable in body pattern, you can recognize individuals by colouration details. Why not to use camera traps or primary photofixation (photographing all individuals in the area) and monitor them electronically after (I mean install traps and use "face recognition" software to compare individuals you will see on the photos)

Apart from Agama mwanzae you will certainly see Acanthocercus atricollis and if you make a "stop-over" at Olduvai Gorge Acanthocercus cyanogaster with a bit of luck. Agama armata is rather difficult to find as they tend to live on the open plains where you won't be able to search or leave your vehicle (unless you have a permit and a ranger with you for safety). You may be lucky and see one around the kopjes. All three species are sympatric with A. mwanzae but of course there exists a niche differentiation. A. agama is a purely West-African species and does not occur in the Serengeti. Cheers, Wolfgang

Hello Debaprasad, unfortunately I don't have it but perhaps you can contact taxonomists in this field like Aaron Bauer. He did quite a bit of work on Indian Gekkonids (Hemidactylids). Hopefully he can provide you a key. 

Best of luck and kind greetings, Tariq

Hello Daniel,

If you want to look at parentage using molecular markers there are two main methods: 1) microsatelites or 2) next-generation sequencing (NGS). 

Microsatelites are a common method that have been around for a while. The cons are in optimization and develop of new microsatelites and the difficulty of cross-amplifying primers from distant species. Below is an example from a lab-mate of mine who works on snakes using microsatelites to determine parentage.

There are also several other examples of studies like this for reptiles including lizards.

If you are working with Varanus there are some microsatelites already developed which is really helpful, see link below.

NGS is a little bit newer and has typically been more expensive but costs have really started to get comparable now. The lab I am in has made the switch to a NGS method called ddRAD and one student is using this to examine parentage in a snake species that does not have microsatelites developed already.

I hope this answers your question, or maybe just adds new ones, but hopefully this was helpful.

Best Regards

Really sad. I mean that I don't care much about taxonomical status, well it could be that they are under some concepts are not species at all. But from my experience, every population of animal could be distinguished if you find appropriate marker. Sometimes this could be done only with microsatellites, sometimes - morphology (I have such study with vipers populations). I've got strange result which points on introduction of L. bilineata and source population is somewhere in Italy according to genetics. But sample is old and low quality so I need other line of evidence for such conclusion. Probably going to museum and really thorough morphological description will give me an answer...

I suggested washing in alcohol because years ago it was shown that washing with water removes some soluble picrates formed after fixation...creating artificial speces (that may be detected at high magnification)....yes, 6hrs fixation is enough if the tssue slices are just a few mm across.. Recommended time is at least overnight (ca. 18 hrs.).

for removal of yellow color it is recommended that you can use Lithium Carbonate ( but it is absolutely not required for small pieces). Whatever little yellow remains gets washed when you stain the slides

Dear David,

we did some studies with corticosteroid stimulation in reptiles (did not publish yet). After stimulation, lizards had steroids in faeces. I think that reptiles are ready to activate as well as deactivate glucocorticosteroids.