The purpose of this paper is to characterize the sonographic and radiographic features of hemipenes in male snakes and to use these features for gender determination. The sonographic and radiographic examination of 17 male and 10 female snakes, whose gender was determined previously by probing, were evaluated by one examiner who was unaware of the gender. Sonographically, hemipenes appeared funnel shaped with an echogenic thin wall and hypo to anechoic contents. Radiographically, hemipenes filled by positive contrast medium appeared as funnel-shaped radiopacities pointing caudally. Snake gender was correctly determined in all snakes using sonography (accuracy = 100%). Radiographic accuracy was 81.4%. Interpretation of radiographic examinations was limited by poor distribution of the contrast medium within the hemipenes.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-8261.2009.01540.x | DOI Listing |
Ecology
January 2025
Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA.
Phenotypic plasticity in body growth enables organisms to cope with unpredictable paucities in resource availability. Growth traits influence survival and reproductive success, and thereby, population persistence, and early-life resource availability may govern lifetime patterns in growth, reproductive success, and survival. The influence of early-life environment is decidedly consequential for indeterminately growing ectotherms, which rely on available resources and ambient temperatures to maximize fitness throughout life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCharacterizing the complex relationships between animals and their habitats is essential for effective wildlife conservation and management. Wildlife-habitat selection is influenced by multiple life-history requirements, which act over varying spatial and temporal scales, and result in dispersion patterns that can differ across ecological levels. For example, sites that attract intense communal use (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The underlying neural and/or perceptual mechanisms of different visual illusions are still unknown; thus, they continue to be the focus of many ongoing studies. Inconsistencies persist in the empirical findings for understanding how the perception of these illusions evolves over the course of development.
Methods: We assessed 513 participants between 6.
Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg
January 2025
Immunogenomic Lab, Institute of Genome Research, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, 18 Hoang Quoc Viet Road, Hanoi 10072, Vietnam.
Background: Vietnam harbours a high species richness of venomous snakes with >60 recognised species but snakebite pathology and treatment are still understudied, particularly in northern Vietnam.
Methods: A retrospective study from 2008 to 2020 was conducted, focusing on snakebite cases at the Poison Control Center of Bach Mai Hospital, a major centre in northern Vietnam for treating envenoming incidents.
Results: A total of 5805 snakebite cases were reported over 12 y.
Gen Comp Endocrinol
January 2025
Biological Sciences, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant, OK 74701, USA.
Exposure to acute stressors can induce multiple physiological changes in vertebrates such as altering circulating hormone and enzyme levels as well as leukocyte counts, and interactions between endocrine and immune function may produce suites of physiological changes following acute stress. Previously, we showed that presence of human observers elicited only a weak elevation of plasma corticosterone levels in cottonmouths. Additional variables, however, must be considered to understand if changes in physiological parameters are highly generalized or vary among sexes or with context.
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