Orientia, Rickettsia, and the microbiome in rodent attached chiggers in North Carolina, USA.

Chiggers are larval mites that pose a significant health risk globally via the spread of scrub typhus. However, fundamental studies into the bacterial microbiome in North America have never been considered. In this investigation, chiggers were collected in the wild from two locally common rodent host species (i.

Developmental programming of sarcoplasmic reticulum function improves cardiac anoxia tolerance in turtles.

Oxygen deprivation during embryonic development can permanently remodel the vertebrate heart, often causing cardiovascular abnormalities in adulthood. While this phenomenon is mostly damaging, recent evidence suggests developmental hypoxia produces stress-tolerant phenotypes in some ectothermic vertebrates. Embryonic common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) subjected to chronic hypoxia display improved cardiac anoxia tolerance after hatching, which is associated with altered Ca2+ homeostasis in heart cells (cardiomyocytes).

The ontogeny of white leghorn chicken (Gallus domesticus) blood chemistry changes in response to acute exposure to 10 % O.

The embryonic chicken is a valuable model for studying the maturation of cardiovascular physiology and the responses of this organ system to environmental manipulations such as acute hypoxia. Hypoxia determines not only the general cardiovascular response but also is a tool to determine the system's maturation of reflexive control. Several studies suggest embryonic chicken's regulation of the cardiovascular response to hypoxia, but no studies have measured the blood chemistry changes that accompany these responses.

Temperature effects on blood gases in embryonic American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis).

Numerous studies report on the influence of temperature on blood gases in ectothermic vertebrates, but there is merely a cursory understanding of these effects in developing animals. Animals that develop in eggs are at the mercy of environmental temperature and are expected to lack the capacity to regulate gas exchange and may regulate blood gases by means of altered conductance for gas exchange. We, therefore, devised a series of studies to characterize the developmental changes in blood gases when embryonic alligators were exposed to 25, 30 and 35 °C.