Search results for " evolution."

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 10

2020

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates published elsewhere are provided as Suppl. material 1.

Diversity of macrofungi and exploitation of edible mushroom resources in the National Park “Appennino Lucano, Val D'Agri, Lagonegrese” (Italy)

2015

An investigation on the macrofungal diversity of the National Park “Appennino Lucano, Val D’Agri, Lagonegrese” (Basilicata, southern Italy) was carried out, together with an evaluation of wild edible mushrooms in agro-forest ecosystems and their possible exploitation as a new source of food and revenue in rural and under-developed areas of this region. An unpublished list of 249 mushroom taxa (229 Basidiomycota and 20 Ascomycota), mostly belonging to the genera Tricholoma, Tuber, Russula, Amanita, Boletus, Lactarius, Mycena, Agaricus, Clitocybe and Hygrophorus, growing in this important natural area is provided together with ecological characterization of the recorded specimens. Inonotus ob…

Exploration of the Oxynoticeratidae ornamental morphospace using the discrete cosine transform (DCT) to analyze rib patterns.

2006

The discrete cosine transform (DCT) is a Fourier-related transform widely used in signal processing and well suited to analyzing open outlines such as ammonite ribs. The method is applied here to depict and decipher the ribbing morphospace of a large group of Lower Jurassic ammonites composed of the Oxynoticeratidae and their close ancestors. Because they are clearly associated with buoyancy and/or swimming ability, the usually clearly involute, comparatively smooth and compressed shells of these ammonites may well be misleading taxonomic markers. In this context, quantitative analysis of the ribbing pattern using the DCT may significantly improve our perception of the ornamental patterns e…

Climatic influence on the growth pattern ofPanthasaurus maleriensisfrom the Late Triassic of India deduced from paleohistology

2020

Metoposaurids are representatives of the extinct amphibian clade Temnospondyli, found on almost every continent exclusively in the Late Triassic deposits. Osteohistologically, it is one of the best-known temnospondyl groups, analyzed with a wide spectrum of methods, such as morphology, morphometry, bone histology or computed modelling. The least known member of Metoposauridae isPanthasaurus maleriensisfrom the Pranhita-Godavari basin in Central India, being geographically the most southern record of this family. For the first time the bone histology of this taxon was studied with a focus on the intraspecific variability of the histological framework and the relationship between the observed…

2020

While many morphological, physiological, and ecological characteristics of organisms scale with body size, some do not change under size transformation. They are called invariant. A recent study recommended five criteria for identifying invariant traits. These are based on that a trait exhibits a unimodal central tendency and varies over a limited range with body mass (type I), or that it does not vary systematically with body mass (type II). We methodologically improved these criteria and then applied them to life history traits of amphibians, Anura, Caudata (eleven traits), and reptiles (eight traits). The numbers of invariant traits identified by criteria differed across amphibian orders…

Ornamentation of dermal bones of Metoposaurus krasiejowensis and its ecological implications

2018

Background Amphibians are animals strongly dependent on environmental conditions, like temperature, water accessibility, and the trophic state of the reservoirs. Thus, they can be used in modern palaeoenvironmental analysis, reflecting ecological condition of the biotope. Methods To analyse the observed diversity in the temnospondyl Metoposaurus krasiejowensis from Late Triassic deposits in Krasiejów (Opole Voivodeship, Poland), the characteristics of the ornamentation (such as grooves, ridges, tubercules) of 25 clavicles and 13 skulls were observed on macro- and microscales, including the use of a scanning electron microscope for high magnification. The different ornamentation patterns fo…

Complete nucleotide sequence of the mitochondrial genome of a salamander, Mertensiella luschani

2003

The complete nucleotide sequence (16,650 bp) of the mitochondrial genome of the salamander Mertensiella luschani (Caudata, Amphibia) was determined. This molecule conforms to the consensus vertebrate mitochondrial gene order. However, it is characterized by a long non-coding intervening sequence with two 124-bp repeats between the tRNA Thr and tRNA Pro genes. The new sequence data were used to reconstruct a phylogeny of jawed vertebrates. Phylogenetic analyses of all mitochondrial protein-coding genes at the amino acid level recovered a robust vertebrate tree in which lungfishes are the closest living relatives of tetrapods, salamanders and frogs are grouped together to the exclusion of cae…

Developments in Amphibian Parental Care Research: History, Present Advances, and Future Perspectives

2020

Abstract Despite rising interest among scientists for over two centuries, parental care behavior has not been as thoroughly studied in amphibians as it has in other taxa. The first reports of amphi...

Merging cranial histology and 3D-computational biomechanics : A review of the feeding ecology of a Late Triassic temnospondyl amphibian

2021

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is a useful method for understanding form and function. However, modelling of fossil taxa invariably involves assumptions as a result of preservation-induced loss of information in the fossil record. To test the validity of predictions from FEA, given such assumptions, these results could be compared to independent lines of evidence for cranial mechanics. In the present study a new concept of using bone microstructure to predict stress distribution in the skull during feeding is put forward and a correlation between bone microstructure and results of computational biomechanics (FEA) is carried out. The bony framework is a product of biological optimisation; bon…

Visible implant elastomer (VIE) success in early larval stages of a tropical amphibian species

2020

AbstractAnimals are often difficult to distinguish at an individual level, but being able to identify individuals can be crucial in ecological or behavioral studies. In response to this challenge, biologists have developed a range of marking (tattoos, brands, toe-clips) and tagging (PIT, VIA, VIE) methods to identify individuals and cohorts. Animals with complex life cycles are notoriously hard to mark because of the distortion or loss of the tag across metamorphosis. In frogs, few studies have attempted larval tagging and none have been conducted on a tropical species. Here, we present the first successful account of VIE tagging in early larval stages (Gosner stage 25) of the dyeing poison…