| post-messinian evolutionary relationships across the sicilian channel: mitochondrial and nuclear markers link a new green toad from sicily to african relatives. | little attention has been paid to the consequences of the last landbridge between africa and sicily on mediterranean biogeography. previous paleontological and scarce molecular data suggest possible faunal exchange later than the well-documented landbridge in the messinian (5.3 my); however, a possible african origin of recent terrestrial sicilian fauna has not been thoroughly tested with molecular methods. to gain insight into the phylogeography of the region, we examine two mitochondrial and t ... | 2008 | 18294389 |
| discrimination of group numerousness under predation risk in anuran tadpoles. | for social animals, group size discrimination may play a major role in setting the trade-off between the costs and benefits of membership. several anuran tadpoles show different degrees of social aggregation when exposed to the risk of predation. despite the importance of aggregative behaviour as an anti-predatory response, the mechanism underlying tadpole choice of the group to join to has not been sufficiently investigated. to establish whether visual cues provide sufficient information to ena ... | 2019 | 30673973 |
| invasive predator snake induces oxidative stress responses in insular amphibian species. | the presence of predators induces physiological stress responses in preys to avoid being captured. a stressful situation enhances reactive oxygen species production with potential damage to macromolecules and alterations in oxidant defences levels. the antioxidant enzyme response of the endemic majorcan midwife toad (alytes muletensis) and the balearic green toad (bufotes balearicus) tadpoles against an invasive predator, the viperine snake (natrix maura) was investigated. tadpoles were introduc ... | 2016 | 27213671 |
| effects of salinity stress on bufo balearicus and bufo bufo tadpoles: tolerance, morphological gill alterations and na(+)/k(+)-atpase localization. | freshwater habitats are globally threatened by human-induced secondary salinization. amphibians are generally poorly adapted to survive in saline environments. we experimentally investigated the effects of chronic exposure to various salinities (5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 35% seawater, sw) on survival, larval growth and metamorphosis of tadpoles from two amphibian populations belonging to two species: the green toad bufo balearicus and the common toad bufo bufo. in addition, gill morphology ... | 2013 | 23474321 |
| histochemical and structural characterization of egg extra-cellular matrix in bufonid toads, bufo bufo and bufotes balearicus: molecular diversity versus morphological uniformity. | the extra-cellular matrix of fertilized eggs in the bufonid toads bufo bufo and bufotes balearicus was studied to clear the relationships between structural and molecular diversity. histochemical (pas, ab ph 2.5 and ph 1.0, beta-elimination pas) and lectin-histochemical (con a, wga, succinyl-wga, pna, rca-1, dba, sba, aaa, uea-i, lta) techniques were used and the observations were made under light and electron microscopy. both species present a fertilization envelope (fe) and two jelly layers (j ... | 2014 | 25091902 |
| a cryptic heterogametic transition revealed by sex-linked dna markers in palearctic green toads. | in sharp contrast to birds and mammals, most cold-blooded vertebrates have homomorphic (morphologically undifferentiated) sex chromosomes. this might result either from recurrent x-y recombination (occurring e.g. during occasional events of sex reversal) or from frequent turnovers (during which sex-determining genes are overthrown by new autosomal mutations). evidence for turnovers is indeed mounting in fish, but very few have so far been documented in amphibians, possibly because of practical d ... | 2011 | 21338434 |