Digestive flexibility in females of the subterranean rodent ctenomys talarum in their natural habitat
✍ Scribed by Juana C. del Valle; Alejandra A. López Mañanes
- Publisher
- Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 240 KB
- Volume
- 315A
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1932-5223
- DOI
- 10.1002/jez.658
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✦ Synopsis
We studied the occurrence of digestive strategies at different levels in females of the subterranean herbivorous rodent Ctenomys talarum living in their natural habitat. We determined the dimensions of different parts of the gastrointestinal tract and organs along as the activity of key digestive enzymes(sucrase, maltase and N-aminopeptidase) in small intestine in females seasonally caught. Females of C. talarum did not show seasonal variations in the mass of the different parts of the gastrointestinal tract. In nonreproductive females large intestine was longer in autumn, whereas reproductive females did not show seasonal variations in the length of the different parts of the gut. Females of C. talarum exhibited a high sucrose, maltase and N-aminopeptidase activity in small intestine, although these activities were higher in small intestine of females caught in autumn (nonreproductive) than in females caught in winter (reproductive). The results show that C. talarum females exhibit characteristics in the gut at the morphological and biochemical level, which could represent digestive strategies to face the constraints imposed by their costly particular way of life.
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## Abstract We validated the Coat‐a‐Count^®^ radioimmunoassay (RIA) kit for measuring testosterone in plasma samples of the subterranean rodent __Ctenomys talarum__ and evaluated testosterone levels in free‐living and captive individuals. The performance of the assay was evaluated by the assessment