Rhizocephalan barnacles have been reported to parasitize a wide range of king crab species (Lithodidae). So far all these parasites have been assigned to a single species, Briarosaccus callosus Boschma, 1930, which is assumed to have a global distribution. Here we investigate Briarosaccus specimens from three different king crab hosts from the fjord systems of Southeastern Alaska: Lithodes a…
Allotetraploid wild emmer wheat, Triticum dicoccoides (TD) 2n¼28, the progenitor of most cultivated bread wheat, is an ecological specialist and excellent model organism for advancing evolutionary theory, wheat evolution, and wheat improvement. The center of origin and diversity of TD is northeastern Upper Galilee and the Golan. Elsewhere in the Fertile Crescent, it occurs in semi‐isolate…
Cepaea’ vindobonensis has been shown to be closely related to Caucasotachea in recent molecular studies. The phylogenetic relationships within this clade and especially the phylogenetic position of ‘Cepaea’ vindobonensis were, however, not well resolved. Our phylogenetic analyses on the basis of an increased number of molecular genetic loci from the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes unamb…
A systematic revision, redescription and a first generic conspectus on a worldwide basis of the scarcely studied plant bug tribe Monaloniini (Insecta: Heteroptera: Miridae: Bryocorinae) is given. This reclassification is of great significance to agriculture as some monaloniines are major pests of cocoa, cashew, tea and other foodplants. A key to genera is given, as well as generic diagnoses …
Hydrozoan cnidarians are widespread in modern environments, but their polyps or hydroids, when not biomineralized, are generally rare in the fossil record. To assess the affinities of four hydrozoan taxa previously described on the basis of supposed fossils of non-biomineralized hydroids, we re-analysed the type specimens of these taxa using a combination of light and electron microscopic tools…
1. ‘Dated-tip’methods ofmolecular dating useDNAsequences sampled at different times, to estimate the age of their most recent common ancestor. Several tests of ‘temporal signal’ are available to determine whether data sets are suitable for such analysis.However, it remains unclear whether these tests are reliable. 2. We investigate the performance of several tests of temporal signal,…
1. The controlled adjustment of body temperature (Tb) by animals in relation to ambient temperature (Ta), or heterothermy, is a phenomenon that has a clear adaptive value. Heterothermy results in a substantial reduction in energy expenditure and water loss, but it also incurs costs, such as the energy cost required for rewarming, energy cost of excretion of metabolic wastes, delayed developm…
1. Secondary hole-nesting birds that do not construct nest holes themselves and hence regularly breed in nest boxes constitute important model systems for field studies in many biological disciplines with hundreds of scientists and amateurs involved. Those research groups are spread overwide geographic areas that experience considerable variation in environmental conditions, and researchers pr…
1. The body condition of free-ranging animals affects their response to stress, decisions, ability to fulfil vital needs and, ultimately, fitness. However, this key attribute in ecology remains difficult to assess, and there is a clear need for more integrativemeasures than the common univariate proxies. 2. We propose a systems biology approach that positions individuals along a gradient fro…
Male stag beetles possess colossal mandibles, which they wield in combat to obtain access tofemales. As with many other sexually selected weapons, males with longer mandibles win more fights. However, variation in the functional morphology of these structures, used in male-male combat, is less well understood. In this study, mandible bite force, gape, structural strength, and potential tradeoff…
1. Understanding species spatial occurrence patterns and their environmental dependence is one of the fundamental goals in ecology and evolution. Often, occurrence models are built with presence-only data because absence data are unavailable. We compare the strengths and limitations of the recently developed presence-only modellingmethod, Maxlike, with themorewidely usedMaxent. 2. In spite …
1. Integral projectionmodels (IPMs) use information on how an individual’s state influences its vital rates – survival,growth and reproduction – to make population projections. IPMs are constructed from regression models predicting vital rates from state variables (e.g. size or age) and covariates (e.g. environment). By combining regressions of vital rates, an IPM provides mechanistic i…
Establishing phylogenetic relationships of miniature fishes is challenging in taxa with developmental truncation. Within the Characiformes, developmental truncation appears to be relatively rare, with the Neotropical genus Priocharax being an example. Priocharax includes three miniature species among the smallest of the order and has been hypothesized to belong to the Heterocharacinae. The p…
Comprising about 17 500 described species, bees constitute a well-established clade of pollen-feeding Hymenoptera (Michener 2007). In the last 15 years, our understanding of bee phylogeny and evolution has made great progress due to increasing use of nucleotide sequences and model-based phylogenetic methods (Danforth et al. 2013). Molecular data have provided new insights into phylogenetic r…
1. Speed regulations of watercraft in protected areas are designed to reduce lethal collisions with wildlife but can have economic consequences.We present a quantitative framework for investigating the risk of deadly collisions between boats and wildlife. 2. We apply encounter rate theory to demonstrate how marine mammal–boat encounter rate can be used to predict the expected number of de…
There is a close association between parthenogenesis and polyploidy. For this reason, we undertook a karyological analysis to test whether the parthenogenetic Marmorkrebs, Procambarus fallax forma virginalis, possesses an enlarged set of chromosomes. For this purpose, we karyotyped the Marmorkrebs, the sexual form of P. fallax (together called P. fallax complex), and the closely related species…
The pace of change in microbiology has accelerated in recent years as molecular techniques, applied to microbial pathogens, elucidate the pathogenesis of many infectious diseases and improve the reliability of diagnostic test procedures. Today, microbiology occupies a central position in the veterinary curriculum and has developed into a subject of vast complexity. Since the publication of Vete…
The book is divided into 12 chapters starting with basic information and bringing the student quickly to the level of detail and comprehension needed for Step 1. There is both a ‘‘bug’’ approach followed by an organ-systems approach. They include critical signs/ symptoms, epidemiology, etiology, pathogenesis of infections and immune diseases along with the mechanisms of preventing i…