| how to maintain underground social relationships? chemosensory sex, partner and self recognition in a fossorial amphisbaenian. | maintaining social relationships depends on the ability to recognize partners or group members against other individuals. this is especially important in animals with relatively stable social groups. the amphisbaenian trogonophis wiegmanni is a semi blind fossorial reptile that spends its entire life underground where it interacts with mates and social partners. in this environment, visual cues are limited. chemosensory cues may rather allow conspecific social and partner recognition. we recorde ... | 2020 | 32813706 |
| novel parvovirus from the worm lizard trogonophis wiegmanni - first virus ever detected in amphisbaenian hosts. | to explore the diversity of some dna viruses in reptiles, a continuous screening is going on, in our laboratory, by pcr using different consensus primers designed for the detection of the most conserved genome regions of adeno-, herpes- and parvoviruses. the test material consists essentially of dead specimens collected randomly from private pet owners, local pet shops, or at occasional exotic pet fairs. here we report the partial sequence of a putative novel parvovirus obtained from a dead chec ... | 2014 | 24796576 |
| absence of haemoparasite infection in the fossorial amphisbaenian trogonophis wiegmanni. | blood parasites such as haemogregarines and haemosporidians have been identified in almost all groups of vertebrates. however, very little is known about biodiversity of these parasites and their effects on some major groups of reptiles such as amphisbaenians, a distinctive group with many morphological and ecological adaptations to fossorial life. conditions of the fossorial environment might also affect host-parasite relationships. we investigated the presence and the potential prevalence of t ... | 2016 | 27220552 |
| underground cryptic speciation within the maghreb: multilocus phylogeography sheds light on the diversification of the checkerboard worm lizard trogonophis wiegmanni. | biogeographic and evolutionary patterns in the north african portion of the western palaearctic are poorly known. a high fraction of undescribed diversity is expected in this region, especially in groups such as reptiles. here we used mitochondrial (12s, 16s, cytb) and nuclear (pomc, rag2, cmos) markers and morphological data to investigate phyletic diversification and phylogeographical structure in the amphisbaenian trogonophis wiegmanni endemic to the maghreb. phylogenetic and molecular dating ... | 2017 | 29196204 |