Ultrastructural and Histological Analysis of Dark Spot Syndrome in Siderastrea siderea and Agaricia agaricites

Dark Spot Syndrome (DSS) typically manifests in scleractinian corals as lesions of varying color, size, shape and location that can result in skeletal changes and tissue death. A causative agent for DSS has not yet been identified. The objective of this study was histological and ultrastructural comparison of the cellular and skeletal characteristics of DSS-affected and healthy Siderastrea siderea and Agaricia agaricites. The greater resolution possible with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed microbial activity and tissue changes not resolvable utilizing histology. DSS-affected tissue had less integrity, with increasing cellular degradation and vacuolization. A high concentration of electron dense inclusions, which appear to be zymogen granules, was concentrated in the calicodermis and adjacent gastrodermal layer. Numerous endolithic fungal cells were observed directly adjacent to the calicodermis in DSS-affected S. siderea. Numerous unidentified endolithic cells were observed directly adjacent to the calicodermis in DSS-affected A. agaricites. These observations suggest that the coral may be using a digestive enzyme as a defensive mechanism against endolithic cellular invasion

Syrian hamster dermal cell immortalization is not enhanced by power line frequency electromagnetic field exposure

Several epidemiological studies have suggested associations between exposure to residential power line frequency electromagnetic fields and childhood leukaemia, and between occupational exposure and adult leukaemia. A variety of in vitro studies have provided limited supporting evidence for the role of such exposures in cancer induction in the form of acknowledged cellular end points, such as enhanced mutation rate and cell proliferation, though the former is seen only with extremely high flux density exposure or with co-exposure to ionizing radiation. However, in vitro experiments on a scale large enough to detect rare cancer-initiating events, such as primary cell immortalization following residential level exposures, have not thus far been reported. In this study, large cultures of primary Syrian hamster dermal cells were continuously exposed to power line frequency electromagnetic fields of 10 100 and 1000 μT for 60 h, with and without prior exposure to a threshold (1.5 Gy), or sub-threshold (0.5 Gy), immortalizing dose of ionizing radiation. Electromagnetic field exposure alone did not immortalize these cells at a detectable frequency (≥ 1 × 10−7); furthermore, such exposure did not enhance the frequency of ionizing radiation-induced immortalization. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Relative gut lengths of coral reef butterflyfishes (Pisces: Chaetodontidae)

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Coral Reefs 30 (2011): 1005-1010, doi:10.1007/s00338-011-0791-x.Variation in gut length of closely related animals is known to generally be a good predictor of dietary habits. We examined gut length in 28 species of butterflyfishes (Chaetodontidae), which encompass a wide range of dietary types (planktivores, omnivores, corallivores). We found general dietary patterns to be a good predictor of relative gut length, although we found high variation among groups and covariance with body size. The longest gut lengths are found in species that exclusively feed on the living tissue of corals, while the shortest gut length is found in a planktivorous species. Although we tried to control for phylogeny, corallivory has arisen multiple times in this family, confounding our analyses. The butterflyfishes, a speciose family with a wide range of dietary habits, may nonetheless provide an ideal system for future work studying gut physiology associated with specialisation and foraging behaviours.This project was funded in part by a National Science Foundation (USA) Graduate Research Fellowship to MLB.2012-06-1

Competition and habitat quality influence age and sex distribution in wintering rusty blackbirds.

Bird habitat quality is often inferred from species abundance measures during the breeding and non-breeding season and used for conservation management decisions. However, during the non-breeding season age and sex classes often occupy different habitats which suggest a need for more habitat-specific data. Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) is a forested wetland specialist wintering in bottomland hardwood forests in the south-eastern U. S. and belongs to the most steeply declining songbirds in the U.S. Little information is available to support priority birds such as the Rusty Blackbird wintering in this threatened habitat. We assessed age and sex distribution and body condition of Rusty Blackbirds among the three major habitats used by this species in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley and also measured food availability. Overall, pecan groves had the highest biomass mainly driven by the amount of nuts. Invertebrate biomass was highest in forests but contributed only a small percentage to overall biomass. Age and sex classes were unevenly distributed among habitats with adult males primarily occupying pecan groves containing the highest nut biomass, females being found in forests which had the lowest nut biomass and young males primarily staying in forest fragments along creeks which had intermediate nut biomass. Males were in better body condition than females and were in slightly better condition in pecan groves. The results suggest that adult males occupy the highest quality habitat and may competitively exclude the other age and sex classes

Evaluating summarised radionuclide concentration ratio datasets for wildlife

Concentration ratios (CRwo-media) are used in most radioecological models to predict whole-body radionuclide activity concentrations in wildlife from those in environmental media. This simplistic approach amalgamates the various factors influencing transfer within a single generic value and, as a result, comparisons of model predictions with site-specific measurements can vary by orders of magnitude. To improve model predictions, the development of 'condition-specific' CRwo-media values has been proposed (e.g. for a specific habitat). However, the underlying datasets for most CRwo-media value databases, such as the wildlife transfer database (WTD) developed within the IAEA EMRAS II programme, include summarised data. This presents challenges for the calculation and subsequent statistical evaluation of condition-specific CRwo-media values. A further complication is the common use of arithmetic summary statistics to summarise data in source references, even though CRwo-media values generally tend towards a lognormal distribution and should, therefore, be summarised using geometric statistics. In this paper, we propose a statistically-defensible and robust method for reconstructing underlying datasets to calculate condition-specific CRwo-media values from summarised data and deriving geometric summary statistics. This method is applied to terrestrial datasets from the WTD. Statistically significant differences in sub-category CRwo-media values (e.g. mammals categorised by feeding strategy) were identified, which may justify the use of these CRwomedia values for specific assessment contexts. However, biases and limitations within the underlying datasets of the WTD explain some of these differences. Given the uncertainty in the summarised CRwo-media values, we suggest that the CRwo-media approach to estimating transfer is used with caution above screening-level assessments