The phylogeny of ground beetles of supertribe Trechitae is inferred using DNA sequences of genes that code for 28S ribosomal RNA, 18S ribosomal RNA, and wingless. Within the outgroups, austral psydrines are inferred to be monophyletic, and separate from the three genera of true Psydrina (Psydrus, Nomius, Laccocenus); the austral...
Many declining and commercially important populations are supplemented with captive-born individuals that are intentionally released into the wild. These supplementation programs often create large numbers of offspring from relatively few breeding adults, which can have substantial population-level effects. We examined the genetic effects of supplementation on a wild population of...
Patterns of β diversity are commonly used to infer underlying ecological processes. In this study, we examined the effect of spatial configuration of habitat capacity on different metrics of β diversity, i.e., β diversity measured as turnover and as variation. For β diversity as turnover, a monotonic species spatial turnover...
Motivation: The goal of any parentage analysis is to identify as many parent-offspring relationships as possible, while minimizing incorrect assignments. Existing methods can achieve these ends, but require additional information in the form of demographic data, thousands of markers, and/or estimates of genotyping error rates. For many non-model systems, it...
Wildlife epidemiological outcomes can depend strongly on the composition of an ecological community, particularly when multiple host species are affected by the same pathogen. However, the relationship between host species richness and disease risk can vary with community context and with the degree of spillover transmission that occurs among co-occurring...
Symbiotic relationships between cnidarians and dinoflagellates within the genus
Symbiodinium are critically important for the success of coral reefs. These symbionts
provide their hosts with photosynthetically-fixed carbon in exchange for nutrients
and shelter. Symbiodinium is a phylogenetically diverse genus that is often typed by
sequencing the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer...
Coastal lagoons are very heterogeneous systems covering a wide range of physiographical and hydrological characteristics. The hypothesis of the present investigation was to test physiographical and hydrological characteristics of coastal lagoons affecting their physico-chemical properties and their buffer capacity against nutrient enrichment. We compared data collected during a whole annual...
The near-term progression of ocean acidification (OA) is projected to bring about sharp changes in the chemistry of coastal upwelling ecosystems. The distribution of OA exposure across these early-impact systems, however, is highly uncertain and limits our understanding of whether and how spatial management actions can be deployed to ameliorate...
For many historical and contemporary experimental studies in marine biology, seawater carbonate chemistry remains a ghost factor, an uncontrolled, unmeasured, and often dynamic variable affecting experimental organisms or the treatments to which investigators subject them. We highlight how environmental variability, such as seasonal upwelling and biological respiration, drive variation in...
Background:
New strategies to combat the global scourge of schistosomiasis may be revealed by increased understanding of the mechanisms by which the obligate snail host can resist the schistosome parasite. However, few molecular markers linked to resistance have been identified and characterized in snails.
Methodology/Principal Findings:
Here we test six...