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Sodium is critical for many physiological functions in insects. Herbivorous insects should expend considerable energy to compensate for sodium deficiency due to low sodium concentration in most inland plants u...
Methods of alignment masking, which refers to the technique of excluding alignment blocks prior to tree reconstructions, have been successful in improving the signal-to-noise ratio in sequence alignments. Howe...
Domestic animals and their wild relatives differ in a wide variety of aspects. The process of domestication of the domestic guinea pig (Cavia aperea f. porcellus), starting at least 4500 years ago, led to changes...
Visual acuity, the ability of the visual system to distinguish two separate objects at a given angular distance, is influenced by the optical and neuronal properties of the visual system. Although many factors...
Entoprocta is a small phylum of tentacle-bearing spiralian lophotrochozoans that comprises mainly marine representatives, with only two known freshwater species. One of them, Loxosomatoides sirindhornae Wood, 200...
The phylogenetic status of the aplacophoran mollusk taxon Solenogastres (Neomeniomorpha) is controversially discussed. Some authors propose the clade to represent the most basal branch within Mollusca, while o...
Studies on the development of the nervous system and the musculature of invertebrates have become more sophisticated and numerous within the last decade and have proven to provide new insights into the evoluti...
With about 120 colour morphs currently assigned to six nominal species, the genus Tropheus is an ideal model to study evolutionary divergence of populations in allopatry. The morphology of Tropheus has been descr...
The foraging behavior of blood-sucking arthropods is the defining biological event shaping the transmission cycle of vector-borne parasites. It is also a phenomenon that pertains to the realm of community ecol...
The insecticides dichlorvos, paradichlorobenzene and naphthalene have been commonly used to eradicate pest insects from natural history collections. However, it is not known how these chemicals affect the DNA ...
Parental care often increases offspring survival, but is costly to the parents. A trade-off between the cost and benefit of care is expected, so that when care provisioning by both parents is essential for the...
The Recombination Activating Proteins, RAG1 and RAG2, play a crucial role in the immune response in vertebrates. Among the nuclear markers currently used for phylogenetic purposes, Rag1 has especially enjoyed eno...
Using an understudied taxon (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) found on a tropical island (Mauritius) where native flora and fauna have been threatened by 400 years of habitat modification and introduced species, we te...
This study reports progress in assembling a DNA barcode reference library for Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera ("EPTs") from a Canadian subarctic site, which is the focus of a comprehensive biodivers...
The Palearctic region supports relatively few avian species, yet recent molecular studies have revealed that cryptic lineages likely still persist unrecognized. A broad survey of cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) sequ...
Among metazoans, retention of functional diet-derived chloroplasts (kleptoplasty) is known only from the sea slug taxon Sacoglossa (Gastropoda: Opisthobranchia). Intracellular maintenance of plastids in the sl...
Studies on sex ratios in social insects provide among the most compelling evidence for the importance of kin selection in social evolution. The elegant synthesis of Fisher's sex ratio principle and Hamilton's ...
The invasive Chondrostoma nasus nasus has colonized part of the distribution area of the protected endemic species Chondrostoma toxostoma toxostoma. This hybrid zone is a complex system where multiple effects suc...
Zebra finches can be trained to use the geomagnetic field as a directional cue for short distance orientation. The physical mechanisms underlying the primary processes of magnetoreception are, however, largely...
Many animals face some form of conflict over reproductive opportunities. Queen selection in social insect colonies represents a high-stakes conflict where competition occurs among multiple queens for a few or ...
When mating effort (e.g. via ejaculates) is high, males are expected to strategically allocate their resources depending on the expected fitness gains from a given mating opportunity. One mechanism to achieve ...
Male field crickets produce pure-tone calling songs to attract females. Receivers are expected to have evolved a "matched filter" in the form of a tuned sensitivity for this frequency. In addition, the periphe...
Electric fish navigate and explore their dark and turbid environment with a specialised electric sense. This active electrolocation involves the generation and perception of an electric signal and fish have pr...
Mesopsammic acochlidians are small, and organ complexity may be strongly reduced (regressive evolution by progenesis), especially in microhedylacean species. The marine interstitial hedylopsacean Pseudunela cornu...
Primary agametic-asexual reproduction mechanisms such as budding and fission are present in all non-bilaterian and many bilaterian animal taxa and are likely to be metazoan ground pattern characters. Cnidarian...
Many fish species experience long periods of fasting in nature often associated with seasonal reductions in water temperature and prey availability or spawning migrations. During periods of nutrient restrictio...
Multidirectional interactions in social networks can have a profound effect on mate choice behavior; e.g., Poecilia mexicana males show weaker expression of mating preferences when being observed by a rival. This...
In order to understand the role of herbivores in trophic webs, it is essential to know what they feed on. Diet analysis is, however, a challenge in many small herbivores with a secretive life style. In this pa...
Free-living flatworms ("Turbellaria") are appropriate model organisms to gain better insight into the role of stem cells in ageing and rejuvenation. Ageing research in flatworms is, however, still scarce. This...
Faces, as socially relevant stimuli, readily capture human visuospatial attention. Although faces also play important roles in the social lives of chimpanzees, the closest living species to humans, the way in ...
Although some mechanisms of habitat adaptation of conspecific populations have been recently elucidated, the evolution of female preference has rarely been addressed as a force driving habitat adaptation in na...
Molecular phylogenies are being published increasingly and many biologists rely on the most recent topologies. However, different phylogenetic trees often contain conflicting results and contradict significant...
Echinoderms and chordates belong to the same monophyletic taxon, the Deuterostomia. In spite of significant differences in body plan organization, the two phyla may share more common traits than was thought pr...
The axial complex of echinoderms (Echinodermata) is composed of various primary and secondary body cavities that interact with each other. In sea urchins (Echinoidea), structural differences of the axial compl...
Europe is characterised by several high mountain systems dominating major parts of its area, and these structures have strongly influenced the evolution of taxa. For species now restricted to these high mounta...
Despite their increasing evolutionary importance, basic knowledge about the priapulid worms remains limited. In particular, priapulid development has only been partially documented. Following previous descript...
Poly- and oligophagous insects are able to feed on various host plants with a wide range of defense strategies. However, diverse food plants are also inhabited by microbiota differing in quality and quantity, ...
The European grayling (Thymallus thymallus) is a salmonid fish native to Europe, with a distribution ranging from England and France to the Ural Mountains of north-western Russia. The majority of grayling populat...
Cataglyphis fortis ants forage individually for dead arthropods in the inhospitable salt-pans of Tunisia. Locating the inconspicuous nest after a foraging run of more than 100 meters demands a remarkable orientat...
Menopause is a seemingly maladaptive life-history trait that is found in many long-lived mammals. There are two competing evolutionary hypotheses for this phenomenon; in the adaptive view of menopause, the ces...
Despite significant methodological progress, Brachiopoda remains one of the lophotrochozoan phyla for which no recent ontogenetic data employing modern methodologies such as fluorescence labelling and confocal...
Sympatric corvid species have evolved differences in nesting, habitat choice, diet and foraging. Differences in the frequency with which corvid species use their repertoire of feeding techniques is expected to...
We compared here the suitability and efficacy of traditional morphological approach and DNA barcoding to distinguish filarioid nematodes species (Nematoda, Spirurida). A reliable and rapid taxonomic identifica...
The fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera; Noctuidae) consists of two distinct strains with different host plant preferences for corn and rice. To assess whether pheromonal-mediated behavioral isolatio...
The Falkland Islands and Patagonia are traditionally assigned to the Magellan Biogeographic Province. Most marine species in Falkland waters are also reported from southern Patagonia. It remains unclear if rel...
The extraction of genetic information from preserved tissue samples or museum specimens is a fundamental component of many fields of research, including the Barcode of Life initiative, forensic investigations,...
The new animal phylogeny disrupts the traditional taxon Articulata (uniting arthropods and annelids) and thus calls into question the homology of the body segments and appendages in the two groups. Recent work...
Associations between animal species require that at least one of the species recognizes its partner. Parabioses are associations of two ant species which co-inhabit the same nest. Ants usually possess an elabo...
Ants and termites are the most abundant animals on earth. Their ecological success is attributed to their social life. They live in colonies consisting of few reproducing individuals, while the large majority ...
In order to increase the weak database concerning the organogenesis of Acoela – a clade regarded by many as the earliest extant offshoot of Bilateria and thus of particular interest for studies concerning the ...
Frontiers in Zoology