Effects of anthropogenic light on anuran calling site.

The natural environment can be negatively impacted by a variety of human activities, including the production of artificial light at night. Recent studies suggest that pollution from anthropogenic light alters animal behavior. Despite being highly nocturnal, little attention has been given to anurans and the effects artificial light at night has on their behavior.

Evolutionary analyses of visual opsin genes in frogs and toads: Diversity, duplication, and positive selection.

Among major vertebrate groups, anurans (frogs and toads) are understudied with regard to their visual systems, and little is known about variation among species that differ in ecology. We sampled North American anurans representing diverse evolutionary and life histories that likely possess visual systems adapted to meet different ecological needs. Using standard molecular techniques, visual opsin genes, which encode the protein component of visual pigments, were obtained from anuran retinas.

Problems with mitigation translocation of herpetofauna.

Mitigation translocation of nuisance animals is a commonly used management practice aimed at resolution of human-animal conflict by removal and release of an individual animal. Long considered a reasonable undertaking, especially by the general public, it is now known that translocated subjects are negatively affected by the practice. Mitigation translocation is typically undertaken with individual adult organisms and has a much lower success rate than the more widely practiced conservation translocation of threatened and endangered species.

Evaluating the Use of Bortezomib and Eculizumab in Desensitization of Transplant Patients.

: To systematically review the existing literature concerning the utilization of bortezomib and eculizumab to determine if there is enough evidence to warrant their routine use in desensitization protocols for high-risk transplant candidates. : PubMed, Google Scholar, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched using the terms bortezomib, eculizumab, desensitization, transplant, highly-sensitized, pre-sensitized, and antibody-mediated rejection (AMR).

Synergistic effects of the invasive Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera) and climate change on aquatic amphibian survival.

Changes in climate and the introduction of invasive species are two major stressors to amphibians, although little is known about the interaction between these two factors with regard to impacts on amphibians. We focused our study on an invasive tree species, the Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera), that annually sheds its leaves and produces leaf litter that is known to negatively impact aquatic amphibian survival. The purpose of our research was to determine whether the timing of leaf fall from Chinese tallow and the timing of amphibian breeding (determined by weather) influence survival of amphibian larvae.

Geographic variation in sexual selection among populations of an iguanid lizard, Sauromalus obesus (=ater).

Geographic variation in selection pressures may result in population divergence and speciation, especially if sexual selection varies among populations. Yet spatial variation in targets and intensity of sexual selection is well studied in only a few species. Even more rare are simultaneous studies of multiple populations combining observations from natural settings with controlled behavioral experiments.