Search results for "ALAN"

New national and regional bryophyte records, 48

2016

Andreaea rothii has been recorded for the first time in Croatia. It is a boreo-temperate suboceanic species (Hill et al., 2007) relatively rare in SE Europe, since it is known only from Romania (Ellis et al., 2014d), Slovenia and Serbia (Sabovljevic´ et al., 2008 ; Hodgetts, 2015). The species was found in the Papuk Mountains, situated in the mainly lowland area of NE Croatia. In this region Papuk is the largest and highest mountain range, with peaks between 800 and 900 m a.s.l. They are characterized by high geological diversity dominated by metamorphic rocks, such as different types of schists, as well as granites. The climate is temperate, moderately warm without an explicit dry period. …

2017

By the possession of unique exocrine scent glands, Opiliones (harvestmen) arise as a perfect model for studies on the evolutionary history of secretion chemistry. Among gland compounds of harvestmen, it is the quinones that represent recurring elements across the secretions of all suborders. Reliable data on quinone-distribution, however, is only known for Laniatores (benzoquinones) and Cyphophthalmi (naphthoquinones). We here unraveled the quinone-distribution across scent gland secretions of the third large harvestman suborder, the Palpatores (= Eu- and Dyspnoi): Naphthoquinones were found in phalangiid Eupnoi across all subfamilies as well as in nemastomatid (and at least one ischyropsal…

Odor diversity decreases with inbreeding in the antHypoponera opacior

2016

Reduction in heterozygosity can lead to inbreeding depression. This loss of genetic variability especially affects diverse loci, such as immune genes or those encoding recognition cues. In social insects, nestmates are recognized by their odor, that is their cuticular hydrocarbon profile. Genes underlying hydrocarbon production are thought to be under balancing selection. If so, inbreeding should result in a loss of chemical diversity. We show here that cuticular hydrocarbon diversity decreases with inbreeding. Studying an ant with a facultative inbreeding lifestyle, we found inbred workers to exhibit both a lower number of hydrocarbons and less diverse, that is less evenly proportioned pro…

Chaenothecopsis schefflerae (Ascomycota: Mycocaliciales): a widespread fungus on semi-hardened exudates of endemic New Zealand Araliaceae

2017

Ascomycetes specialised to live on hardened plant exudates occur worldwide, but the number of species so far described is relatively small (c.30). Particularly within the genus Chaenothecopsis (Ascomycota:Mycocaliciales), many species produce their ascomata on hardened but still relatively fresh outpourings of conifer resin or angiosperm exudate. Temperate rainforests of New Zealand provide habitat for several endemic Chaenothecopsis species, including Chaenothecopsis schefflerae, which was previously known from a single sample collected from the exudate of Schefflera digitata (Araliaceae) in the early 1980s. Here we show that C.schefflerae is neither lost nor very rare, but occurs sporadic…

Very high MHC Class IIB diversity without spatial differentiation in the mediterranean population of greater Flamingos.

2017

WOS: 000397335400001

Biased predation could promote convergence yet maintain diversity within Müllerian mimicry rings of Oreina leaf beetles.

2019

Mullerian mimicry is a classic example of adaptation, yet Muller's original theory does not account for the diversity often observed in mimicry rings. Here, we aimed to assess how well classical Mullerian mimicry can account for the colour polymorphism found in chemically defended Oreina leaf beetles by using field data and laboratory assays of predator behaviour. We also evaluated the hypothesis that thermoregulation can explain diversity between Oreina mimicry rings. We found that frequencies of each colour morph were positively correlated among species, a critical prediction of Mullerian mimicry. Predators learned to associate colour with chemical defences. Learned avoidance of the green…

Intensity of male-male competition predicts morph diversity in a color polymorphic lizard.

2017

Sexual selection is one of the main processes involved in the emergence and maintenance of heritable colour polymorphisms in a variety of taxa. Here we test whether the intensity of sexual selection, estimated from population sex ratio, predicts morph diversity in Podarcis muralis, a colour polymorphic lizard with discrete white, yellow, orange, white-orange, and yellow-orange male and female phenotypes (i.e. morphs). In a sample of 116 Pyrenean populations and 5421 lizards, sex ratios (m/f) vary from 0.29 to 2.5, with the number of morphs for each sex ranging from 2 to 5. Male-biased sex ratios are associated with increased morph diversity as measured with Shannon's diversity index. The ma…

DNA Taxonomy Confirms the Identity of the Widely-Disjunct Mediterranean and Atlantic Populations of the Tufted Ghost Crab Ocypode cursor (Crustacea: …

2019

The distribution area of the tufted ghost crab Ocypode cursor includes two widely separate sub-areas, i.e. the tropical and subtropical Atlantic coasts of Africa and Macaronesia, and the central-eastern Mediterranean basin. The current disjunct distribution of the species is possibly the remnant of a previous wider and continuous distribution area that was fragmented during the Pleistocene, with the disappearance of the species from the temperate Atlantic Ocean and the western Mediterranean basin, and its survival in the warmer areas of the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. Such disjunction is thus compatible with an ancient isolation between the Mediterranean and Atlantic populat…

Responses of marine mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis (Bivalvia: Mytilidae) after infection with the pathogen Vibrio splendidus

2019

International audience; Bivalve molluscs possess effective cellular and humoral defence mechanisms against bacterial infection. Although the immune responses of mussels to challenge with pathogenic vibrios have been largely investigated, the effects at the site of injection at the tissue level have not been so far evaluated. To this aim, mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis were herein in vivo challenged with Vibrio splendidus to assess the responses induced in hemolymph and posterior adductor muscle (PAM), being the site of bacterial infection. The number of living intra-hemocyte bacteria increased after the first hour post-injection (p.i.), suggesting the occurrence of an intense phagocytosi…

Sorting Motifs Involved in the Trafficking and Localization of the PIN1 Auxin Efflux Carrier

2016

In contrast with the wealth of recent reports about the function of μ-adaptins and clathrin adaptor protein (AP) complexes, there is very little information about the motifs that determine the sorting of membrane proteins within clathrin-coated vesicles in plants. Here, we investigated putative sorting signals in the large cytosolic loop of the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) PIN-FORMED1 (PIN1) auxin transporter, which are involved in binding μ-adaptins and thus in PIN1 trafficking and localization. We found that Phe-165 and Tyr-280, Tyr-328, and Tyr-394 are involved in the binding of different μ-adaptins in vitro. However, only Phe-165, which binds μA(μ2)- and μD(μ3)-adaptin, was found …