Search results for "Embryonic Structure"
showing 10 items of 624 documents
Starvation tolerance of rotifers produced from parthenogenetic eggs and from diapausing eggs: a life table approach
2006
Monogonont rotifers have to cope with environmental variation by producing diapausing stages.Cyclically, parthenogenetic rotifers produce females by (i) parthenogenetic eggs and (ii) sexuallyproduced eggs. Parthenogenetic eggs hatch shortly after ovoposition, frequently while they are carriedby their mothers. Sexual eggs go into dormancy and hatch in the sediment, in response to specificenvironmental cues. Therefore, it is expected that post-diapause and parthenogenetic offspring wouldface different environments. Moreover, resource allocation is higher in diapausing eggs than inparthenogenetic eggs. In this study, the response to starvation of females obtained from partheno-genetic eggs and …
Assessing the efficacy of direct conservation interventions: clutch protection of the leatherback marine turtle in the Dominican Republic
2014
AbstractThe beaches of Jaragua National Park in the Dominican Republic are the country's last known major nesting site for the leatherback marine turtle Dermochelys coriacea. This nesting aggregation is threatened by widespread illegal egg take, and clutch relocation and artificial incubation have been carried out as protection measures since 1974. We assess the efficacy of such efforts and investigate how artificial incubation may be influencing the success and sex ratios of clutches. We compare hatching success, incubation duration and embryo mortality in in-situ clutches (n = 43) with those incubated artificially at sites in the east and west of the Park (n = 35 and n = 31, respectively)…
Hatching and viability of rotifer diapausing eggs collected from pond sediments
2006
SUMMARY 1. Planktonic rotifers inhabiting variable environments produce diapausing eggs that accumulate in the sediment of lakes and ponds, forming egg banks that may withstand adverse periods. A common assumption in zooplankton diapausing egg bank studies is to count as viable all eggs in the sediment that look healthy. This assumption should be challenged by asking how effectively ‘healthy-looking’ eggs represent viable eggs. 2. In this study, viability of more than 1100 ‘healthy-looking’ diapausing eggs belonging to the Brachionus plicatilis species complex was assessed in a laboratory hatching experiment. Eggs were collected at different depths from sediment cores obtained from 15 ponds…
Joint brood guarding in parent bugs — an experiment on defence against predation
1995
Females of Elasmucha grisea defend their eggs and small nymphs against invertebrate predators. Females sometimes guard their clutches side by side on the same birch leaf. We studied benefits of this joint guarding both in the field and in the laboratory. We found that adjacent females had significantly larger clutches than solitary females. In the laboratory, we studied the effectiveness of joint versus single defence against ant (Formica uralensis) predators. We established female pairs from initially singly guarding females by cutting off pieces of leaves with egg clutches and pasting them beside another female guarding her clutch. In the control group the females with their clutches were…
Hypohidrotic Ectodermal Dysplasia with total anodontia: A case report
2011
Ectodermal dysplasia is a hereditary disorder that occurs as a consequence of disturbances in the ectoderm of the developing embryo. The triad of nail dystrophy, alopecia or hypotrichosis and palmoplantar hyperkeratosis is usually accompanied by a lack of sweat glands and a partial or complete absence of primary and/ or permanent dentition. A case report illustrating the prosthetic rehabilitation of a seven year old boy with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia associated with total anodontia is presented.
Mother and offspring fitness in an insect with maternal care: phenotypic trade-offs between egg number, egg mass and egg care
2014
Background Oviparous females have three main options to increase their reproductive success: investing into egg number, egg mass and/or egg care. Although allocating resources to either of these three components is known to shape offspring number and size, potential trade-offs among them may have key impacts on maternal and offspring fitness. Here, we tested the occurrence of phenotypic trade-offs between egg number, egg mass and maternal expenditure on egg care in the European earwig, Forficula auricularia, an insect with pre- and post-hatching forms of maternal care. In particular, we used a series of laboratory observations and experiments to investigate whether these three components no…
Regulation of Macromolecular Synthesis during Sea Urchin Development
1979
Immediately following fertilization the sea urchin egg enters a period of very rapid cell division that cleaves the egg cell into about one thousand proportionately smaller cells, which form the swimming blastula, i.e. a larval form that is less vulnerable to environmental injuries since it is capable of actively swimming away from them.
Early asymmetric cues triggering the dorsal/ventral gene regulatory network of the sea urchin embryo
2014
Dorsal/ventral (DV) patterning of the sea urchin embryo relies on a ventrally-localized organizer expressing Nodal, a pivotal regulator of the DV gene regulatory network. However, the inceptive mechanisms imposing the symmetry-breaking are incompletely understood. In Paracentrotus lividus, the Hbox12 homeodomain-containing repressor is expressed by prospective dorsal cells, spatially facing and preceding the onset of nodal transcription. We report that Hbox12 misexpression provokes DV abnormalities, attenuating nodal and nodal-dependent transcription. Reciprocally, impairing hbox12 function disrupts DV polarity by allowing ectopic expression of nodal. Clonal loss-of-function, inflicted by b…
Inhibitory activities of short linear motifs underlie Hox interactome specificity in vivo
2015
Hox proteins are well-established developmental regulators that coordinate cell fate and morphogenesis throughout embryogenesis. In contrast, our knowledge of their specific molecular modes of action is limited to the interaction with few cofactors. Here, we show that Hox proteins are able to interact with a wide range of transcription factors in the live Drosophila embryo. In this context, specificity relies on a versatile usage of conserved short linear motifs (SLiMs), which, surprisingly, often restrains the interaction potential of Hox proteins. This novel buffering activity of SLiMs was observed in different tissues and found in Hox proteins from cnidarian to mouse species. Although th…
Sea urchin embryos as a model system for studying autophagy induced by cadmium stress
2011
It is well known that sea urchin embryos are able to activate different defense strategies against stress. We previously demonstrated that cadmium treatment triggers the accumulation of metal in embryonic cells and the activation of defense systems depending on concentration and exposure time, through the synthesis of heat shock proteins and/or the initiation of apoptosis. Here we show that Paracentrotus lividus embryos exposed to Cd adopt autophagy as an additional stratagem to safeguard the developmental program. At present, there are no data focusing on the role of this process in embryo development of marine organisms. In this paper we utilized different techniques to detect autophagy i…