Rabbits Tested Research Articles

Does a benign calicivirus reduce the effectiveness of rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) in Australia? Experimental evidence from field releases of RHDV on bait

Context. European rabbits are serious environmental and agricultural pests throughout their range in Australia. Rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) greatly reduced rabbit numbers in arid central Australia but had less impact in cooler, higher-rainfall areas. RHDV-like benign caliciviruses (bCVs) have been implicated in limiting the impact of RHDV in the higher-rainfall regions of Australia and also in Europe. Aims. Experimental releases of RHDV on bait were tested as a means of initiating disease outbreaks. Serological evidence of antibodies to bCVs was examined to determine whether they reduce mortality rates and/or spread of the released RHDV, and how that might influence the effectiveness of future RHDV releases for rabbit management. Methods. Four experimental releases were conducted in high-rainfall and coastal regions of southern Australia. Virus activity was implied from recapture rates and serological changes in marked rabbits, and genetic sequencing of virus recovered from dead rabbits. Changes in rabbit abundance were estimated from spotlight transect counts. Key results. Release of RHDV on bait produced disease outbreaks that challenged almost all animals within the general release area and spread up to 4 km beyond the release sites. Recapture rates were high in marked rabbits that possessed antibodies from previous exposure to RHDV and extremely low amongst rabbits that lacked any detectable antibodies. Rabbits carrying antibodies classified as being due to previous infection with bCVs had recapture rates that were dependent on circulating antibody titre and were ~55% of recapture rates in rabbits with clear antibodies to RHDV. Conclusions. This is the first quantified evidence that antibodies produced against bCVs provide significant protection against RHD outbreaks in field populations of rabbits. Implications. bCVs can greatly reduce the impact of RHDV on wild-rabbit populations in Australia and presumably elsewhere. RHDV can be effectively released on bait although further releases are likely to be of minor or inconsistent benefit for controlling rabbit numbers where bCVs are common.

Prey switching by stoats (Mustela erminea): a supplemental food experiment

Context Prey switching by invasive carnivorans to changing food supply could severely impact on endemic prey of conservation importance, but experimental evidence for prey switching in carnivorans is rare. Stoats (Mustela erminea) were introduced to New Zealand and now threaten survival of many native birds, reptiles and invertebrates. Aim Our primary objective was to see whether abundant food caused stoats inhabiting an alpine grassland site to alter the rate at which they preyed upon weta (Orthoptera : Hemiandrus sp.), hares (Lepus europeus), birds and mice (Mus musculus). Methods We used dead rabbits as supplemental food in a before-after-control-impact experiment. Stoat scats were collected from a treatment and non-treatment site before and following food supplementation. Percentage frequency occurrence of the different prey types was assessed for the two sites during each experimental phase. Conclusions Stoats ate fewer ground weta and hares, the two most abundant prey types, when supplemental food was added. In contrast, consumption of mice remained relatively stable at both sites throughout the experiment, and the consumption of birds declined at both sites. Implications Our experiment suggests that stoats may continue to eat scarce endemic prey at similar per capita rates even when alternative prey are available. However, endemic prey that are locally or regionally abundant may be indirectly impacted by fluctuations in alternative prey.

Involvement of molecular mimicry between human T‐cell leukemia virus type 1 gp46 and osteoprotegerin in induction of hypercalcemia

Human T-cell leukemia virus type-1 (HTLV-1) causes adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL), frequently associated with hypercalcemia and bone destruction. A positive correlation between the appearance of an antibody recognizing the central region (Asp197 to Leu216) on Gp46, gp46-197, and the severity of ATL has been demonstrated. In this study, five male Nihon Hakusyoku rabbits were immunized with a synthetic peptide corresponding to the gp46-197 region to clarify its action and mechanism. Two of the rabbits showed piloerection, anorexia, and somnolence, and died soon after booster administration. The serum calcium level of the dead rabbits was significantly high, compared to those of surviving rabbits. Interestingly, amino acid sequences homologous with gp46-197 were found in the carboxyl-terminal half of osteoprotegerin (OPG), an osteoclast inhibitory factor. To confirm the effect of the gp46-197 region on osteogenesis in vivo, the peptide was intraperitoneally administered to male Sprague-Dawley rats. The administration of the gp46-197 peptide resulted in a decrease of bone mineral density (BMD), a significant increase of serum calcium level, and inhibition of normal bone growth in both short- and long-term experiments. In rats, femoral growth inhibition by the gp46-197 peptide was restored by the coadministration of recombinant human OPG. Improvement by OPG in the adverse effect indicates that the central region of HTLV-1 Gp46 acts as an antagonist for OPG and leads to hypercalcemia.

Three cases of tularaemia in southern Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, November 2007

After contact with a dead rabbit in Baden-Wuerttemberg in southern Germany, three members of a family were infected with tularaemia in late summer 2007. The patients were a forest worker (Patient A) in his twenties, and his parents, both in their fifties. Tularaemia is very rare in Germany. From 2002 to 2006, between one and five cases were reported annually, with the exception of 2005 with 15 reported cases [1]. In 2007, 19 cases were reported, 11 of them in Baden-Wuerttemberg [2]. In the district in which the three cases occurred, no tularaemia cases had been reported in recent years.

Biological Safety of a Process for the Hydrolysis on-Farm of Dead Rabbits - Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Biological Hazards

SUMMARY Following a request from the Spanish Competent Authority, the EFSA Scientific Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) was asked to deliver a Scientific Opinion on the biological safety of a specific process for the Hydrolysis on-Farm of Dead Pigs. The application concerns the on-farm treatment of pig carcasses and other pig by-products 2 , which are considered as Category 2 animal by-products according to Reg. (EC) No 1774/2002, through an enzymatic hydrolysis in mesophilic and partially anaerobic conditions within a closed vat for a period of minimum six months. The intended end-use of the processed material is represented by its utilisation as organic fertilizer or soil improver, as composting material, as biogas production material or as a material to be delivered to a waste management unit for disposal. The BIOHAZ Panel concluded that, due to some deficiencies in the provided dossier, it was not possible to assess the safety of the process for the disposal or use of Category 2 animal byproducts. The BIOHAZ Panel does not recommend this process to be applied as an alternative method of disposal or use of Category 2 animal by-products.

Feasibility study of using PET to determine nitrogen concentration after high energy photon irradiation

The technique of photon activation analysis (PAA) is widely employed in many fields as an effective non-invasive tool for measuring elemental compositions and concentrations. In recent years there has been a revival and growing interest of PAA in general and for medical applications in particular. The feasibility of using a PET scanner (Ecat Exact 931) to determine nitrogen concentration in a dead rabbit is described. This method is based on the photon activation of 14N(γ,n)13N (T 1/2 = 9.9 min) using an 18 MV photon beam Medical Linear Accelerator (Varian 2300EX).

New Arts of Being

JùKrica Aesthetics New Arts of Being Steve Tomasula Telepresence and Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots Eduardo Kac University of Michigan Press http://www.press.umich.edu 325 pages; paperback, $27.95 Though internationally known for being the first artist to genetically alter a mammal with the explicit aim of making it a work of art, Eduardo Kac is also a historian and critic of this field, writing insightfully about the vast array of human and artificial bodies—genetically redesigned plants and animals, web cams, robots, switching circuits, and the like— that he and other artists have been offering as works of art for over twenty years. Now, Kac has gathered a number of these essays into Telepresence and Bio Art, a book that recasts the trajectory of art by tracing the development of his work from its modernist antecedents, through the computer-nerd-as-artist days of teletype art, to his latest biological art works. That is, one way to read "The Aesthetics of Telecommunications," "The Origin and Development of Robotic Art," "Transgenic Art," and the other (heavily-footnoted) essays of this book is as an apology for an art form whose reception often seems to range between sheer incomprehension and outrage—creating non-art, or Frankensteins. But it's all in a day's work for an artist who adopts phone lines or genetic code as his medium. Seen against the "fine" art aesthetics of the museum and commercial gallery scene, Kac's project reinvigorates art in ways reminiscent of the futurists by insisting that art participate in the "circulation of ideas" cycling through a culture that has come a long way from the days when cave paintings were the. supreme expression of an artist in tune with his culture, and his survival. For experience in the first world is no longer shaped by the terror ofthe hunt, or modernist alienation, but, as Kac points out, by globalization, digital culture, multiplicity of online relationships and identities—one for the boss, another for potential lovers—and integration of organic and artificial life. People no longer have to live with the nose they were born with—or the organs, or the body chemistry. But they do have to live in the world that results from these possibilities. Thus, Kac strives to engage viewers as "participants in situations involving biological elements, telerobotics [robots operated from a distance], interspecies interaction, light, language, distant places, time zones, video conferences, and the exchange and transformation of information via networks." If all art is representation, what Kac hopes to represent are the largely invisible networks we navigate in our interactions with one another— from a child's touch, to speech—but especially those that are mediated by a host of "new technologies. . .from cash stations to. . .surveillance systems." The medium may not be the entire message, but it is part of it. And the part that interests Kac contributes to who we think we are and how we relate to one another. Kac's influences are wide-ranging and the history he writes of his field is also a bildungsroman focusing on his aesthetics: Orson Welles's 1938 radio staging of War ofthe Worlds, and Gene Cooper's Thundervolt (1994), in which lightning strikes from around the US were networked through wiring worn by the artist. Mark Pauline's Rabot (1981-1982), a work that features a dead rabbit fitted with a mechanical exoskeleton so that it could be made to walk backwards, is also relevant here; as is Nam June Paik's Robot-456 (1965), a robot that Paik remotely controlled to walk out into Manhattan traffic, where it was promptly hit by a car, causing one observer to acclaim it as "the first accident of the twenty-first century." The early history Kac maps out is replete with NASA-mission-control-like photos of artists creating the Pong of network art, and Kac goes on to relate those heady days when "[t]he appearance of a new [web] site was a novel event," and artists were discovering the Internet as a space for social and aesthetic practice, a "conflation of medium and exhibition venue." Ifall art is representation, what Kac hopes...

The Poet as Landscape, and: Catbird, and: The Nest

The Poet as Landscape Any fool can make a claim to be anonymous. But when a leg enters the stream cold climbs to the brain and he feels general as light watching the narrow gorge littered with old car parts and cars. A river heaves by somewhere out of sight in a kind of camouflage. From broken branches a piece of clothing hangs as if it had just shed its occupant, turning away from him to its own tattered freedom, just as the sun casts its own perspective and cracked shadows begin their trek back in and down. No one built this ravine. Still it still curves away as if it had a plan, scratching a way where you can't tell if the flashing is water, glass, teeth, or the glint of foil. To get in he's crept under the fence, beside Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. He whistles like a ventriloquist, pretending that time too doesn't have to come from anywhere, not from that snailshell a thrush shatters, that hummingbird who could be anywhere, from woodpecker's braille or semaphore of the fractured rill. He watches things pretend to be themselves. One good shoe, its owner driven off, performs its lonely office for the lost, and that smooth blue slab of granite is a woman's belly tied to root and leafdrift, a phosphoric womb of entrances and flow open to transfigured birds and snakes whose mouths flame. They will not spare him. He moves on. He is all these motivations, these crossed-up immensities, staggering, breaking down to something coming through, a composting of Ford and bathtub, dead cat and rabbit, and gnawing on them all a large black dog. [End Page 115] Catbird Rump flashing in flight, as if trying to escape his own fire, he's eager as a schoolboy on the ground, scrambling in leaflitter, kicking up a brushpile, taking a worm, a beetle, or in the same movement a beakful of dead moss to rush to the nest, running and hopping so fast among rocks it seems he's flying, that rich gray not rock but moving it. To rest, he sings on a low branch dug full of little holes a song that could be the real thing but to some ears sounds like imitation. In any case, out comes a cat swallowed aeons ago when cats were just being invented. And there's the voice of Punch, ungreased wheels of the old red barrow, handfuls of crickets, gunshots, tanagers, leaves. The game's to find and sort: what's detail, what theme? He sits unbothered, grinding out his rhapsodies though clearly outclassed even by sparrow and chickadee. There he goes again, jumping off one of his better quarter notes to spear a flick among ferns and rake through the area, going after just about everything there, or that ever crossed and entered, swallowing it and making it song. [End Page 116] The Nest I'm walking near the woods trying to remember who said you don't own things, they own you, when I look down and see something. Dropping to my knees, I watch fat yellow- tinged bottoms disappear into the duststorms their wings stir up as they push down to stuff the stony soil with sweetness that keeps generations going. Others push up refreshed and lightened, continuing the dance through a rich world studded ultra-violet. I watch for what seem hours, silent, so to them I'm maybe an unflowered tree, dull bark, or bank. I watch until the mapled dark dims eyes that can no longer tell bee from dust or stones. So I stand, stretch again, look around. A few ox-eyed daisies glare from deep in white, and over all White Man Mountain grasps at whatever the sun's left, holds, then has to let go. Silent as an owl feather, I walk in the right direction, I think, back to the small house I have just...

A PATHOGENIC NEW SPECIES OF EIMERIA FROM THE PYGMY RABBIT, BRACHYLAGUS IDAHOENSIS, IN WASHINGTON AND OREGON, WITH DESCRIPTION OF THE SPORULATED OOCYST AND INTESTINAL ENDOGENOUS STAGES

In January 2003, fecal samples from 13 live pygmy rabbits, Brachylagus idahoensis (Merriam, 1891), were collected at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon, and sent to the University of New Mexico (UNM), Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be examined for coccidia. In July 2004, 14 more fecal samples were collected and sent to UNM, 6 from some of the same rabbits and 8 from 16 other rabbits (4 were pooled samples from siblings). In addition, tissue sections from 3 dead rabbits (2 from the Oregon Zoo, 1 from Washington State University) also were examined. Two of 4 (50%) pooled fecal samples and 8 of 17 (47%) 1-rabbit samples were positive for a single species of Eimeria, which we describe here as a new species. Sporulated oocysts were subspheroidal, 25.6 x 23.8 (22-28 x 21-27) microm, with a length:width (L:W) ratio of 1.1 (1.0-1.2). A micropyle (approximately 2 microm wide) and 0-1 polar granules were present, but an oocyst residuum was absent. Sporocysts were ellipsoidal, 13.4 x 8.1 (11-16.5 x 7.5-9) microm, with a L:W ratio of 1.7 (1.3-2.2), and they had a Stieda body and sporocyst residuum. Tissue sections showed a heavy infection of the villous epithelial cells of the proximal and mid-small intestine with coccidial endogenous stages, but no stages were found in liver hepatocytes. Meronts with approximately 46 (26-70) merozoites per infected cell appeared to be fully developed and were subspheroidal, 14.8 x 13.9 (13-18 x 10.5-16.5) microm. Developing macro- and microgamonts were indistinguishable from each other and were spheroidal to subspheroidal, 10.4 x 9.5 (9-11 x 7.5-10.5) microm. Mature macrogamonts were spheroidal to subspheroidal, 14.2 x 13.7 (12-17 x 11-16) microm, and mature microgamonts were smaller and subspheroidal, 11.9 x 10.8 (10.5-13 x 9-12) microm. This eimerian seems to be extremely pathogenic to young pygmy rabbits, and given the precarious nature of this unique genetic population, it appears to be an emerging pathogen that deserves immediate further study.

Serological evidence for a non-protective RHDV-like virus

The data were recorded during a Rabbit haemorrhagic disease outbreak that occurred in France in 2001 in a wild population of rabbits that we have been monitoring since 2000. These data suggested the existence of non-protective antibodies due to a putative RHDV-like virus. Twenty-one blood and 22 liver samples were taken from the 26 corpses of recently dead rabbits that were found. RHDV was found in all liver samples. A first screening for RHD antibodies, carried out using an ELISA based on the detection of VP60-RHDV antigen, showed that 20 of the rabbits were seropositive. Moreover, we determined antibody titres for 13 of these 20 seropositive samples. All were > or = 1/400. Such titres normally indicate antibody levels sufficient to confer protection to all known RHDV or RHDV-like strains. For 16 samples, we determined whether these rabbits had died of a chronic or an acute form of the disease, by employing monoclonal antibody (Mabs)--based differential ELISA. All had died of an acute form of RHD. Because the antibodies detected by this VP60-ELISA test are known to appear 5-6 days after infection and since acute RHD generally kills the rabbits 2-3 days after infection, we assumed that the detected antibodies must have been present before the exposure to the virus that killed these rabbits. A second detection of antibodies was made with Mabs that are specific for RHDV. The results were negative, showing that the antibodies detected with the VP60 ELISA test were not specific for RHDV. We sequenced a portion of the VP60 gene of viruses isolated in 17 rabbits. All RHDV isolates were very similar to the RHDV strains commonly isolated in France during this period, suggesting that this viral strain was not a putative variant that is not neutralised by antibodies. Therefore we conclude that the detected antibodies were probably due to a RHDV-like virus that induces the production of detectable but non-protective antibodies.

Chardin's Fur: Painting, Materialism, and the Question of Animal Soul

Jean-Sim�on Chardin's paintings of dead rabbits and hares are distinctive in the history of the game piece for their use of paint to create a tactile, material surrogate for fur. Emphasizing the haptic presence of the animal body, Chardin's vividly brushed pigments also enliven the furry surface as if to counteract the fact of the animal's death. Such attention to the body's materiality, including the subtle, emotional appeal of the vibrant fur, are compared with the radical materialist theories of Julien Offray de La Mettrie, who posited for animals and people alike a material soul inseparable from the body. While European paintings of dead animals had from their origins invoked concerns about the status of the soul in a mechanistic body, Chardin's fur suggests, as did the theories of La Mettrie, a sensitive, material "soul" for the animal--and perhaps, by extension, for the human as well.

SIGNIFICANCE OF STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS IN RABBITS IN ASSIUT GOVERNORATE دلالات وجود الميکروب المکور العنقودي الذهبي فى الأرانب بمحافظة أسيوط

A total of 67 rabbits (18 apparently healthy and 49 freshly dead rabbits were collected from different private rabbitaries at Assiut Governorate. All cases were subjected to post-mortem and bacteriological examinations for possible recovery of Staphylococcus aureus microorganisms. Only 15 positive cases of Staph. aureus were isolated with an incidence of 22.38% (out of 18 apparently normal rabbit, 2 (11.11%) rabbits were affected with Staph. aureus while, from 49 freshly dead rabbits 13 (26.53%) were positive for Staph. aureus. Experimental infection in 6-8 week-old rabbits via the subcutaneous (S/C) injection of isolated Staph. aureus led to 80% mortality with post-mortem lesions similar to a great extent to those of natural infection. Reisolation of inoculated bacteria was also done. The in vitro sensitivity testing of the isolated Staph. aureus against different antimicrobial agents showed that the examined isolates were highly sensitivite to ciprofloxacin, enerofloxacin, amikacin and gentamycin.

Outbreak of rabbit hemorrhagic disease in domestic lagomorphs.

Rabbit hemorrhagic disease (RHD) was diagnosed in domestic lagomorphs on a rabbit farm in Illinois. Clinical signs of RHD in affected rabbits included signs of depression, anorexia, fever, paddling, convulsions, and sudden death. Findings of necropsies and histologic evaluations of specimens of liver and spleen were indicative of RHD. In liver specimens obtained from dead rabbits, RHD viral antigen was detected via hemagglutination assay and viral antigen-detection ELISA. The source of the outbreak was traced to a rabbitry in Utah. As the disease spread, the outbreak involved rabbits in various regions of the United States; > 4,800 rabbits were euthanatized and buried as a result of the depopulation effort in several states. The economic impact of the disease can be considerable; if the disease is suspected, it is imperative that the appropriate state or federal veterinarian's office be contacted immediately.

‘The Gangs of New York’: the Mean Streets in History

First a confession: I'm a sucker both for costume drama and a good romance. And I love a good adventure story. Loved 'Pride and Prejudice'; when Mr Darcy finally professes his love to Miss Elizabeth Bennett, I get tearful. Adore almost any Merchant and Ivory film. And I can handle violence, whether the cartoonish sort of 'Batman' and 'Pulp Fiction' or the realism of 'Saving Private Ryan'. So, 'Gangs of New York' should have been right up my alley. It was not. Frankly, I could tolerate the romance as a modern-day love affair. Cameron Diaz is easy to look at, and I suspect DiCaprio has his admirers. But the dramatic core of the film belongs to the anti-hero, Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. The costumes which I thought caricatured individuals were nonetheless evocative of the era, especially in the gangs' stovepipe hats and dead rabbits. And the cinematography made it all look beautiful albeit, borrowing from the title of a book about New York in the 1920s by the historian Robert Allen, it is a 'horrible prettiness'.' For the heart of the film is mid nineteenth-century New York as a place of unending gang warfare, violence seen as embedded in ethnic conflict, nativism and racism. And the embeddedness of ethnic and racial violence in the very fabric of New York City's history is not an inappropriate message to take from New York's history. It is also of a piece with director Martin Scorsese's other films depicting the violent streets and peoples of New York: 'Mean Streets', 'Goodfellas', 'Raging Bull' and 'Taxi Driver'. Scorsese on 'Gangs' makes the connection explicit: this film is 'the foundation from which those works emerged. And, yes, there's no doubt. This is based on history. There's no doubt about it. But it is still a film that is more of an opera than history'.2 Scorsese's operatic invocation is probably lost to audiences, however: they see a film, which announces itself as set in New York City in 1846 and in 1862-63. Gangs also takes its title from Herbert Asbury's 1928 history of New York, which 'now a major motion picture', is prominently hawked in bookstores to a devouring public in a new toney edition with a Foreword by Jorge Luis Borges. Finally, credits thank the popular historian Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. Audiences have every reason to expect and to wonder 'is it true?'3 Popular narrative films work with dramatic conventions in which the history is more in the conception than in precise recounting of 'facts' what is usually referred to as dramatic licence. Sorsese's own expressionist style, as Wendy Plotkin has noted, portrays 'essential reality through exaggeration

Susceptibility to cartap-induced lethal effect and diaphragmatic injury via ocular exposure in rabbits.

Cartap is extensively used to control agricultural pests. Pertinent literatures have indicated that it causes no eye irritation [D.E. Ray, Insecticides derived from plants and other organisms, in: W.J. Hayes, E.R. Laws (Eds.), Handbook of Insecticide Toxicology, Classes of Insecticides, vol. 2, Academic Press, New York, 1991, p. 611; C. Tomlin, Cartap, in: C. Tomlin (Ed.), The Insecticide Manual, 12th ed., British Crop Protection Council, Surrey, UK, 2000, p. 144]; however, the instillation of a little cartap through the eye has caused death in rabbits. The aim of this study was to determine the ocular toxicity of cartap in New Zealand White rabbits. Cartap was directly instilled into the low conjunctival sac of eyes, at doses of 0, 5, 7.5, 10 and 12.5 mg/kg body weight. The changes in the enzymes and isoenzymes of creatine kinase (CK), lactate dehydrogenase (LD), as well as pathological changes in the muscles of the heart, thigh and diaphragm were determined in the cartap-treated rabbits. Moreover, the neuromuscular effect of cartap was examined using the isolated rabbit phrenic-nerve diaphragm model. The results indicated that rabbits developed severe signs and they died within 20 min of ocular instillation. The ocular LD50 of cartap was 8.1 mg/kg body weight. Treatment with cartap increased the activities of CK and LD enzymes and their isoenzymes, CK-1, CK-2, and CK-3 in serum, and CK-3 and LD-5 in the diaphragm. Microscopically, hypercontraction bands and the rupture of myofibers of the diaphragm were observed in dead rabbits. Cartap did not affect nerve-evoked twitch but induced irreversible contracture and twitch depression on the isolated rabbit's diaphragm. These results indicate that the rabbit is susceptible to cartap toxicity; the effect of cartap caused contracture and damage to the diaphragm might play a pivotal role in respiratory paralysis and death of rabbits during intoxication.

A Detailed Subgross Morphometric Study on the Auditory Ossicles of the New Zealand Rabbit

This study was designed to reveal, in detail, the features of the auditory ossicles of the New Zealand rabbit, one of the most frequently used animals in scientific researches. Heads of 10 dead adult New Zealand rabbits of both sexes weighing 2.5 +/- 0.2 kg were used in the study. The auditory ossicles were gently removed from their situs and observed. The auditory ossicles were three small bones: the malleus, the incus and the stapes. The lenticular bone seemed to be the lenticular process, as is in human beings. In general, macroanatomic features of the bones were similar to those reported in the literature. Findings in this study, however, differed greatly, especially in detail. There were statistically significant differences in the morphometric data of the features of the auditory ossicles between the right- and left-hand sides. Data from the right-hand side were significantly higher.

The Hands That Built America: A Class-Politics Appreciation of Martin Scorsese's The Gangs of New York

The mean streets of New York have seldom been meaner. Blood does not just run in them, it gallops, spilled by blades and bludgeons that slice and crack the bodies of the past in a violence that is at once ritualised and reverential. Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York, a $120 million epic inspired by Herbert Asbury’s 1928 ‘informal history’ of the same name, commences with a Žctitious 1846 gang battle in the Paradise Square, heart of the infamous Five Points district of lower Manhattan, pitting Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting and his Protestant ‘Know Nothing’ nativists against the Irish Catholic immigrant forces of Priest Vallon and the Dead Rabbits.

Relative abundance and seasonality of Calliphoridae and Sarcophagidae (Diptera), potential vectors of rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) in the South Island of New Zealand

In rabbit‐prone areas of the South Island of New Zealand, a field survey was undertaken of the incidence, relative abundance and seasonality of possible rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) vectors, blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) and fleshflies (Diptera: Sarcophagidae). Flies were trapped over a 4‐day period each month for a year except during the winter months. Liver‐baited Western Australian fly traps were set in Marlborough (three sites), the Mackenzie Basin (three sites) and Central Otago (six sites). Eight species of calliphorids (blowflies) and the sarcophagid (fleshfly), Hybopygia varia (Walker) were trapped. Numbers were generally higher at shrubby or grassy sites compared with bare open sites with little vegetation. More H. varia were trapped at sites grazed by cattle than at other sites. In March and November 1999, and January 2000, sticky traps attached to cages containing either a dead, live, or no rabbit were set up at two of the Central Otago sites where rabbit control had been poor (Sugar Loaf), and good (Locharburn), respectively. Blowflies were more abundant on sticky traps at the Locharburn site than at Sugar Loaf. Both groups of flies were attracted in significantly greater numbers to dead rabbits compared with live rabbits and empty cages. No evidence of RHDV was found on flies from either site, on any of the three dates. The implications of these results are discussed in the context of rabbit biological control.

Effects of ulinastatin on hypotension and hepatic circulation in brain dead rabbits

Effects of ulinastatin on hypotension and hepatic circulation in brain dead rabbits

Prolonged decline in the abundance of wild European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus and high immunity level over three years following the arrival of rabbit haemorrhagic disease

A free‐living population of European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus was monitored over three years, from 1996 to 1998, following the arrival of rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD) in 1995. The survey was based on nocturnal observations of individually marked rabbits to determine population size and on blood collection to determine whether rabbits carried RHD antibodies. We directly confirmed RHD outbreaks by examination of dead rabbits and detection of RHD virus (RHDV). Only one further recurrence of RHD was detected by this method, in 1996. Contrary to the initial outbreak, this second occurrence did not result in a major decrease in population size. No direct evidence of other outbreaks was detected in 1997 and 1998. However, the sparse data did not enable us to conclude that RHD was absent. Indeed, seroconversions in individual rabbits were noticed throughout the three years and the level of population immunity remained high, proving that either RHDV or RHD‐like viruses were present in the population. The influence of age, year and quarter on the serological status of the rabbits were analysed using a log‐linear model. The selected model showed that the proportion of rabbits with RHD antibodies varied with year and period of the year. Three years after the first occurrence of RHD, the population had not recovered to its level prior to the first outbreak. We assumed that predation by red foxes could be partly responsible for keeping the population low.