Animal Adaptations: Evolution of Forms and Functions

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Malaria is endemic in at least 87 countries, notably in a greater part of sub-Saharan Africa and large areas of Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, currently inhabited by at least 40% of the world’s population, placing 2.5 billion people at risk ( Guerra et al., 2008; Hay and Snow, 2006). Newmark, W. D., Boshe, J. I., Sariko, H. I. & Makumbule, G. K. Effects of a highway on large mammals in Mikumi National Park Tanzania. Afr. J. Ecol. 34, 15–31 (1996). The incidence of PAHs in a significant number of our day-by-day food substances represents a grave risk to humans. Human exposure to high concentrations of PAHs via food consumption may bring about injurious and harmful impacts [43]. Contaminants in food have been accounted for by numerous researchers and every one of the potential contaminants can be connected to an assortment of harmful impacts. Every adverse effect observed relies upon various components, like exposure intensity, rate or frequency, duration, route and dose, and/or concentration; subtleties of the individual like age and health status [44], [45], [46]. Most PAHs are capable of causing cancer that accounts for the significant effect of the risk characterizations. However, it is often hard to attribute a given health effect in epidemiological studies to a particular PAH compound since PAHs exist as a mixture of different PAH compounds [47]. In general, the higher molecular weight PAHs are more hydrophobic, toxic and recalcitrant [48]. Rajan Saxena, Indian management academic and the Vice-Chancellor of the SVKM's NMIM deemed university in Mumbai Plant material: The stem bark of A. boonei was collected from the wild in Anyigba, Kogi State, Nigeria and was identified at the Herbarium unit of the Department of Biological Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria-Nigeria. The specimen was documented and assigned voucher number 9001.

Hematological profiles of mice infected with chloroquine sensitive Plasmodium berghei NK-65 treated groups (Group B-G), compared with uninfected experimental control group A Evening injections of aMT and MT significantly reduced testes weight and tubule diameter of SO and Px animals maintained under NDL, LP and SP ( Fig 1, Table 2). Morning injections, under all conditions, were without any significant effect on the testes ( Fig. 2, Table 3). Even though AVC probabilities on wide road segments were similar to probabilities on narrow roads, the exposure of an individual/animal group to AVC while traversing a 4-lane segment was found to be almost double than the exposure on 2-lane segment. This risk of exposure was highest for species with large group sizes. Greater exposure on 4-lane roads at moderate traffic levels could cause more roadkill than on 2-lane roads, while on 2-lane roads the same traffic levels could become a barrier to animal movement. Jaarsma, C. F., van Langevelde, F. & Botma, H. Flattened fauna and mitigation: traffic victims related to road, traffic, vehicle, and species characteristics. Transp. Res. Part D 11, 264–276. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2006.05.001 (2006).

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Ridout, M. & Linkie, M. Estimating overlap of daily activity patterns from camera trap data. J. Agric. Biol. Environ. Stat. 14, 322–337 (2009). Laboratory mice: Albino mice weighing between 20-30 g were used for this study. The mice were obtained from Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria-Nigeria and were housed in the experimental animal house of Kogi State University, Anyigba-Nigeria and were fed with formulated feeds from vital feeds, Jos, Nigeria and water was administered ad libitum. The guide for care and use of laboratory Animals (1996) of the Institute of Laboratory Animal Research (ILAR) Commission on life Science, National Research Council was duly followed. D’Amico, M., Periquet, S., Roman, J. & Revilla, E. Road avoidance responses determine the impact of heterogeneous road networks at a regional scale. J. Appl. Ecol. 53(1), 181–190. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12572 (2015). Leblond, M., Dussault, C. & Ouellet, J.-P. Avoidance of roads by large herbivores and its relation to disturbance intensity. J. Zool. 289, 32–40. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2012.00959.x (2013). While home sanitation and individual cleanliness are consistently significant, regular hand washing with soap and fast running water for a minimum of 20 seconds has been heavily encouraged in reducing the spread of the disease [13]. Other practices, like frequent sanitizing and cleaning different surfaces, can likewise serve as an extra defensive measure just as proper hygiene [14].

We placed vehicle input points at the beginning of the link, and data collection points midway along the road, and specified the hourly traffic volume at each vehicle input point. The average harmonic speed of traffic flow at each traffic volume and free flow speeds of different traffic components were selected as data collection measurement attributes (outputs of the simulation). Each simulation was run for 600 s (10 min) with 20 replicates. Simulation resolution of 10 time steps/second was set to maximize speed data collection at data collection points. Species characteristics With respect to different traffic compositions in a traffic flow (in terms of types of vehicles) specified in Supplementary Table S1, traffic flow speeds for different heterogeneity scenarios namely H 1–H 9 were simulated using VISSIM for hourly traffic volumes ranging from 100 to 2400 vehicles per hour (as defined in Section A of Methods under ‘ Road and traffic characteristics’). The traversability model 37 did not consider animal activity near roads. For an animal-vehicle collision to take place, an animal and a vehicle must co-occur on the road. We accounted for this by using animal activities near the road as a proxy for the probability of an animal encountering a road. Creation of edge habitats by linear intrusions like roads facilitate the use of such habitats by some ungulate species. Consequently for edge-tolerant species like chital and wild pig 38 that were found to use road-forest edges, hourly roadkill risk is a function of hourly traffic volume since their activities near the road coincide with peak hours of traffic activity (Chital and Traffic Overlap Coefficient Dhat1 = 0.82; Wild pig and Traffic Overlap Coefficient Dhat1 = 0.82). Hence use of roadside habitat by chital and wild pig, makes them more vulnerable to mortality effects. For gaur and sambar that are generally crepuscular and nocturnal species with low road-forest edge use, the roadkill risk is a direct consequence of its activity in the early morning or late evening hours (Supplementary Table S4). The AVC probability across different heterogeneity scenarios showed variability, largely as a consequence of the speeds of traffic flow. Results show that the highest AVC probabilities occurred for traffic compositions with higher proportions of heavy vehicles. Since heavy vehicles impede the cumulative traffic flow speed, the probability of occurrence of a vehicle at any point on the road increases, consequently translating to higher probabilities of hit mostly for slow-moving and group living animals. On the contrary, in a traffic flow with high flow speed, there is greater inter-vehicular distance available which translates to higher probability of an animal to cross the road without encountering a vehicle. This finding has implications for speed-regulating mitigation measures like speed breakers and rumble strips that can potentially decrease inter-vehicular distances at medium–high traffic volumes, leading to creation of a barrier-like situation for animal movement.

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Human risk assessment has been investigated to find out the potential hazard resulting from human exposure to poisonous substances present in various foodstuffs and environmental matrices. These investigations are generally used to help with meeting guidelines like those specified by administrative bodies like WHO and numerous others [42]. The major point of human risk evaluation is, to ensure the protection of consumers against the impacts of poisons in water or foods. Thus, it is important to guarantee that contaminants of interest in food or water don’t surpass the normal daily intake. Champion, H. G. & Seth, S. K. A Revised Survey of the Forest Types of India (Manager of Publications Govt. of India, New Delhi, 1968).

Among the six study species, lowest AVC probabilities were observed for tiger and leopard, primarily because these are solitary fast moving species. Body size had negligible effect on AVC probability 23, but increase in group size increased the probability resulting in higher AVC probabilities for group living species. Among social species, lower group size of sambar translated to lower AVC probability than chital and wild pig, despite having similar maximum running speeds. Group size of gaur was similar to that of wild pig; yet gaur had the highest AVC probabilities across all heterogeneity scenarios as a result of its low running speed. The Indian Roads Congress. Two-Laning of Highways Through Public Private Partnership: Manual of Specifications & Standards. Secretariat for the Committee on Infrastructure Planning Commission, Yojana Bhavan, Parliament Street, New Delhi. (2010). accessed 12 July 2019; https://niti.gov.in/planningcommission.gov.in/docs/sectors/ppp_report/reports_guidelines/Manuals%20of%20Standards%20and%20Specifications/Manual%20of%20Specifications%20&%20Standards%20for%20Two-laning%20of%20Highways.pdfAlso, hematological profiles were normalized in the groups of mice infected and treated with effective dosages of A. boonei except for the MCV and MCHC values which did not vary significantly in the different groups of experimental mice, an indication of a typical feature of normocytic-normochromic anemia ( Menezes et al., 2004). Effect of morning injections of melatonin (aMT), 5- methoxytryptamine (MT) and saline (Sal) on the testes weight (g/100g body weight) of sham-operated (SO) and pinealectomized (Px) F. pennanti exposed to. natural daylength (NDL), long photoperiod (14L:10D) and short photoperiod (10L:14D) during the gonad active phase. Table 2 Orlowski, G. & Nowak, L. Factors influencing mammal roadkills in the agricultural landscape of south-western Poland. Pol. J. Ecol. 54, 283–294 (2006). When the aqueous extracts of A. boonei was administered at the different dosages 100, 200, 400 and 800 mg kg -1 to mice infected with P. berghei, it was observed that the net effect of this extracts was such that it appears to normalize hematological indices in the groups of mice infected and treated with the plant extract when compared with the data obtained for the experimental control groups of mice ( Table 3, 4). Table 1: Fellendorf, M. & Vortisch, P. Microscopic Traffic Flow Simulator VISSIM. In Fundamentals of Traffic Simulation. International Series in Operations Research and Management Science (ed. Barcelo, J.) 63–93 (Springer, Berlin, 2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6142-6_2.