Showing papers in "Mammalian Biology in 2007"

TL;DR: The pattern of haplotype differentiation obtained for both species indicated a possible bottleneck that would have occurred 110,000 years ago, which also affected other pinnipeds, suggesting that populations from both oceans correspond to different evolutionarily significant units.

TL;DR: It is proposed that sunning behaviour of sloths may speed up their fermentation rate, and ultimately, might have been an important selective factor in the evolution of derived upside-down posture of sloth.

TL;DR: Principal components analysis (PCA), the phalangeal index of the third digital ray in the hands and feet, and the relationship between second and fourth digital ray were used to investigate intrinsic autopodial proportions as well as to provide a base for comparisons between hands and Feet.

TL;DR: Day length and snow depth together predicted rather well the probability of animals being active during winter and raccoon dogs were more often active at night than during the light hours, they also showed rather much diurnal activity.

TL;DR: Sequence variation in the hypervariable domain-1 of the mitochondrial (mt) control region of hares with different coat colour from north-central Tunisia and NW Egypt is studied to test Petter's hypothesis that North African hares belong to L. capensis, and indicated occurrence of introgression and/or shared ancestral polymorphism.

TL;DR: It was found that abundance, distance of water bird prey before attack, and prey size were significant predictors of waterbird consumption by the Geoffroy's cat.

TL;DR: Hares shared most food items with several wild and domestic herbivores in northern Patagonia, and exhibited important dietary similarities with plain and mountain vizcachas, goats and horses, and an interspecific competition for food is highly probable.

TL;DR: Growth characteristics of horseshoe bats in northern Bulgaria provide the first evidence for an influence of climate on the growth of individuals in the centre of the species’ distributions, and a clear relationship between the climatic conditions prevailing in each year and the final size of individuals born respectively in those years is found.

TL;DR: An updated distribution of Pudu puda in Argentina is provided, with georeferenced sighting localities, and some qualitative features of its habitat such as forest type and understory are provided, and the effects of human settlements, cattle and invasive mammals are analysed.

TL;DR: The lack of coincidence between rats and other small rodents suggests the existence of a differential response of rats to environmental factors of the poultry farms.

TL;DR: A new species of Myzopoda (Myzopodidae), an endemic family to Madagascar that was previously considered to be monospecific, is described and is notably different in pelage coloration, external measurements and cranial characters from M. aurita.

TL;DR: To clarify the systematics of the species of silky mice occurring in the driest portion of the temperate Monte Desert in Argentina, qualitative and quantitative external and cranial characters, cytogenetics and molecular relationships, were studied and two centers of diversification are proposed to explain the evolution of Eligmodontia.

TL;DR: A population of Microtus arvalis Pallas, 1779, living in a weed strip was studied by capture–recapture method over a 2-year period, with a pronounced peak abundance at the end of June in the second year related to a shift in sex ratio in favour of females in this year.

TL;DR: A third population may exist on the mainland in coastal forests (391210S, 731140W) (Vilà et al. 2004) as discussed by the authors, which is considered the second most endangered mammal in Chile (Cofré and Marquet 1999) and is classified as Critically Endangered, CR C2a (ii), in the Red List of the IUCN (Jiménez and McMahon 2004).

TL;DR: The ecomorphology of 10 insectivorous bat species at three study zones in western Madagascar was examined using 567 specimens and based on 6 external, 11 cranial, 12 dental, and 11 wing measurements found most taxa showed clear intra-site separation and little inter-site variation.

TL;DR: It is concluded that the non-invasive method applied for the first time in this species was useful for the evaluation of the endocrine status and its relation with behaviour.

TL;DR: A new record is furnished on the south-eastern distributional limits of a small marsupial, Marmosops ocellatus (formerly M. dorothea), in midwestern Brazil and its geographic distribution is updated, revealing an apparent sexual dimorphism.

TL;DR: The most abundant phyllostomid bat species in the two dry forests studied are those that include fruit and/or nectar-pollen from columnar cacti as an important proportion of their diets.

TL;DR: Detailed study on new fossil remains of extinct feliform nimravides allows a new hypothesis concerning interrelationships within this family to be proposed, which indicates lack of sister relationships of Nimravinae and Barbourofelinae.

TL;DR: The present discriminant analysis based on seven metric variables of the occipital bone related to skull length (condylobasal length) resulted in a high (95.1%) overall probability of correct separation of the two species in East Africa.

TL;DR: Phylogenetic inference of cytochrome b sequences from two specimens of the proposed new species shows them to be distinct from Sorex cinereus and from five sympatric SoreX species, supporting their designation as members of a new species.

TL;DR: The results underline the importance of diet composition for growth rates and the timing of gonadal activation during early development in this species.

TL;DR: It is assumed that sexual activity in L. acutus begins at an age of 7–8 GLGs and that the reproductive season of this species in the northeastern Atlantic starts in February, and the ultrastructure of the spermatozoon is similar to that of the related Lagenorhynchus obliquidens.

TL;DR: Discriminant analysis using the unstandardized residuals shows a clear separation between N. confucianus and N. fulvescens on the basis of the first discriminant function mainly influenced by interorbital width and length of incisive foramen.

TL;DR: The evolution of the canine intrabullar septum could have involved a series of heterochronies towards increasingly paedomorphic states in several lineages of the tribe Canini, and the ontogenetic criterion cannot be used for inference of the polarity of septal character states within the Caninae.

TL;DR: Genetic comparisons between H. nubicolens and adjacent populations of H. desmarestianus are undertaken, also including available DNA sequences from other parts of the range of Heteromyinae.