Chinese—English bilinguals residing in the US were interviewed about their experience of using emotional expressions. They judged L1-Mandarin expressions as feeling stronger than L2-English expressions. Respondents nonetheless preferred to express their emotions in English, citing more relaxed social constraints in English-speaking environments. Electrodermal monitoring was conducted on a similar sample of Chinese—English bilinguals in order to determine how physiological reactivity corresponds to self-reports. For those who had both good Mandarin and good self-reported English ability, English and Mandarin emotional expressions elicited similar magnitude skin conductance responses (SCRs), with the exception of the category of endearments (e.g., Thank you, I miss you, I love you ), where larger SCRs occurred for English expressions. Given cross-cultural reports that English-speaking societies encourage more open expression of positive emotion than do Chinese cultures, hearing English endearments may have led to easy retrieval of personal situations with strong emotional resonances; these memories then resulted in increased affect and increased SCRs. However, ratings of the emotional intensity of endearments were similar in the two languages, thus conflicting with the SCR findings. Additionally, English childhood reprimands were rated as less intense than L1-Mandarin reprimands, consistent with other studies showing that childhood reprimands are felt to be more intense in the native language. Future work will be needed to understand the conditions under which physiological responses differ from self-report.
The arboreal frog, Chiromantis hansenae (Family: Rhacophoridae), is one of only a handful of South‐East Asian amphibian species reported with parental care. We present the first systematic observational and experimental study confirming offspring benefits as a result of this care, which has a number of unusual life‐history characteristics. Eggs are unusually small, breeding takes place in large pools, and females attend the eggs. Field observations and an adult removal experiment demonstrated a critical contribution of egg attendance to offspring survivorship. Harsh environmental conditions for offspring appeared to be the prime mover of parental care in this species, with desiccation as the main source of mortality when attending adults are absent. Results confirm females to be the caregivers, making C. hansenae a rare case of maternal egg attendance in a non‐directly developing anuran.
Small, isolated populations often experience increased inbreeding and decreased heterozygosity, which increases the potential risk of inbreeding depression.The relationship between inbreeding and sperm health is well-documented in a variety of taxa, but has yet to be explored in amphibians. The dusky gopher frog, Lithobates sevosus, is a critically endangered species with years of documented inbreeding and low genetic variability as a consequence of isolation and population size reduction. This study investigated the effects of inbreeding on sperm quality in captive L. sevosus using an outbred, sister species (Lithobates pipiens) as a standard for comparison. We found L. sevosus to have severely reduced sperm quality in terms of total motility, forward progressive motility, concentration, and viability. Additionally, we observed a significant, negative relationship between total sperm motility and mean kinship within captive-bred individuals. These data serve to enhance our understanding of the role inbreeding plays in amphibians, and to provide valuable insight into new risk factors declining amphibian populations may face. K E Y W O R D S assisted reproductive technologies, captive breeding, dusky gopher frog, fertility, Lithobates sevosus
Novel conservation methods have become increasingly important in protecting our remaining biodiversity in the face of unprecedented rates of species declines. One method of maintaining genetic and species diversity is through germplasm cryopreservation. However, our knowledge of cryopreservation relies heavily on studies in domestic or aquaculture species. Moreover, most studies are narrowly focused on a single species. Consequently, the broader application of these methods to wildlife conservation is often unknown or assumed. Here, we examine the response of four anuran species from two families (Anaxyrus fowleri, Anaxyrus baxteri, Lithobates pipiens, and Lithobates sevosus) to three sperm cryopreservation treatments (5, 10, and 15% N,N-dimethylformamide with 10% trehalose). Within each family, we selected a congeneric species pair with one common, nonthreatened species and one endangered species. We found that endangered species had significantly lower initial sperm quality, though recovery rate of sperm after cryopreservation was not significantly different between nonthreatened and endangered species. Overall, responses to the three treatments were consistent across species, with 5% DMFA with 10% trehalose producing the highest recovery rates in all four species. In addition, cryopreserved sperm were used to successfully produce hatchlings in both of the nonthreatened species. Our results demonstrate that standardized methods developed for anurans can be applied more widely across families and can be transferred from model species to species of conservation concern.These findings form a basis for further exploration into cryopreservation as an effective tool for wildlife conservation in amphibians. K E Y W O R D Samphibian, assisted reproductive technology, Bufonidae, cryobiology, Ranidae, sperm motility
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