Bulletin of the Iraq Natural History Museum

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of Royal jelly RJ on morphology and motility of mice sperms. Sperms were collected from the cauda region of the epididymis of each 10 mice from the treatment and control groups. Direct activation techniques and evaluation of sperm morphology were carried out. Dhino microscope was used for sperm measurement. The inspection was carried out in Salamatic laboratory for pathological analysis in 2015.The result revealed that all of the sperm function parameters registered significant activation in the treatment group. There was a significant increase in both the percentage of the sperm motility grade A and the progressive motility (A+B) of the treatment group. Spermatozoon with different lengths were noticed. The study explains that this difference may be due to the presence of different sperm developmental stages and not to the increase in the number and sizes of mitochondria in the mid-peace during activation or not to the sliding movement of microtubules in the axon of spermatozoon. These findings provide evidence that RJ can play an important role only in improving the male mice motility and which may open the way for further researches to demonstrate the possibility of using RJ in artificial insemination in field animals.

The Eurasian marsh frog Pelophylax ridibundus is a widespread species in Iraq. Examination of intestine of 25 marsh frogs collected in Al-Diwaniya city, middle of Iraq during the period from September to November 2014 revealed the presence of Nematotaenia dispar (Cestoda), Cosmocerca commutata and Cosmocercoides variabilis (Nematoda). Infection rates and intensity have been presented in this paper.

The present work provides a list of all amphibians and reptiles recorded from Iraq up to 2014. It includes 115 species (105 species of reptiles and 10 species of amphibians) dating back to 25 families (20 families of reptiles and 5 families of amphibians). Conservation status of each species was mentioned.

The results revealed that the incidence of Rhizoctonial damping-off of tomato was 65% and 67% in both rotations. Substrates of pine leaf litter and mushcom 2 suppressed infection reaching 59 and 60%. Mushcom1 restricted disease occurrence to 53%. In contrast, formulated Th + B. subtillus revealed a noticeable disease reduction reaching 33.16%, due to nutrients incited from mushroom thallus. The highest occurrence of damping-off (92 and 94 %) was found in control (sandy loam soil) during rotations. However, partial suppressive of Trichoderma spp. against R. solani was detected in different substrates. Mortality was 90% in control (non-amended soil). Finally, a comparable reduction of disease observed on tomato grown in mushcom 1 and mushcom 2 during rotations particularly when amended with T.h. B. subtillus.

This study was conducted to provide a detailed description of the osteology features of Alburnus amirkabiri from the Qareh Chai river, markazi province, Iran. For this purpose, eight specimens of A. amirkabiri were collected from the Qareh Chai River by electrofishing and fixed in 4% buffered formalin after anesthesia. The specimens were cleared and stained for osteological examination and its detailed osteological characterizations and differences with available osteological data of other members of the genus Alburnus were provided.