TREATMENT OF CRYPTOSPORIDIUM SERPENTIS INFECTION IN A KING COBRA ( OPHIOPHAGUS HANNAH) WITH PAROMOMYCIN.

Feces collected from a wild-caught, young adult king cobra ( Ophiophagus hannah) were repeatedly positive for Cryptosporidium on both direct immunofluorescent antibody (DFA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and sequencing identified the organism as Cryptosporidium serpentis. Infection was subclinical, as the snake was in good body condition and active, and readily consumed dead rats that were scented with snake skin. A course of paromomycin, inserted in feeder rats, was initiated at 360 mg/kg, orally, twice weekly for 6 wk.

Formants provide honest acoustic cues to body size in American alligators.

In many vertebrates, acoustic cues to body size are encoded in resonance frequencies of the vocal tract ("formants"), rather than in the rate of tissue vibration in the sound source ("pitch"). Anatomical constraints on the vocal tract's size render formants honest cues to size in many bird and mammal species, but it is not clear whether this correlation evolved convergently in these two clades, or whether it is widespread among amniotes (mammals, birds, and non-avian reptiles). We investigated the potential for honest acoustic cues in the bellows of adult American alligators and found that formant spacing provided highly reliable cues to body size, while presumed correlates of the source signal did not.