This successful series on mite ontogeny and morphological diversity has published three volumes (Zhang et al. 2018, 2019, 2020). I am happy to announce here the publication of another volume. This ...volume consists of seven papers: one on Mesostigmata (Ma et al. 2020), three on Oribatida (Seniczak et al. 2020a,b; Fan et al. 2020) and three on Trombidiformes (Gu et al. 2020; Wu et al. 2020; Xu et al. 2020).). I am grateful to my co-editors (Dr Marut Fuangarworn, Dr Qing-Hai Fan Dr Tianci Yi) and the reviewers for their support. I also thank all the authors for their contributions.
Summary
Flooding causes oxygen deprivation in soils. Plants adapt to low soil oxygen availability by changes in root morphology, anatomy, and architecture to maintain root system functioning. ...Essential traits include aerenchyma formation, a barrier to radial oxygen loss, and outgrowth of adventitious roots into the soil or the floodwater. We highlight recent findings of mechanisms of constitutive aerenchyma formation and of changes in root architecture. Moreover, we use modelling of internal aeration to demonstrate the beneficial effect of increasing cortex‐to‐stele ratio on sustaining root growth in waterlogged soils. We know the genes for some of the beneficial traits, and the next step is to manipulate these genes in breeding in order to enhance the flood tolerance of our crops.
See also the Editorial on this article by Sasidharan et al., 229: 5–7.
Se determinó la relación existente entre la estructura morfológica de la glándula mamaria y los rasgos morfométricos corporales de 266 cabras criollas Motilona de la región Norte de Santander ...(Colombia) pertenecientes a sistemas orientados a la producción de leche y carne. Se evaluaron características morfológicas de la glándula mamaria como: vista lateral y posterior de las extremidades posteriores, inserción anterior y profundidad de la ubre, altura y anchura de inserción posterior de la ubre, ligamento suspensor, diámetro e implantación de los pezones. Los rasgos morfométricos corporales evaluados corresponden a la longitud de la cabeza y cara, anchura de la cabeza, alzada de la cruz, anchura de la grupa, diámetro longitudinal, dorso esternal y bicostal, longitud de la grupa, perímetro de la caña y tórax. Adicionalmente, se registró el peso vivo de los animales. Se estimaron los coeficientes de correlación de Pearson. Los resultados mostraron que existe una correlación positiva entre los rasgos morfométricos corporales y el peso vivo de los animales. Las correlaciones entre el peso vivo de los animales y los rasgos morfológicos de la glándula mamaria fueron bajas para la anchura de inserción posterior de la ubre y el ligamento suspensor de la ubre; y para los demás rasgos no fueron significativas. Este estudio sugiere que la población de cabras Motilona presenta un alto grado de homogeneidad en sus rasgos y su estructura morfológica es apropiada para la producción de leche.
Animal Phylogeny and Its Evolutionary Implications Dunn, Casey W; Giribet, Gonzalo; Edgecombe, Gregory D ...
Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics,
11/2014, Volume:
45, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In recent years, scientists have made remarkable progress reconstructing the animal phylogeny. There is broad agreement regarding many deep animal relationships, including the monophyly of animals, ...Bilateria, Protostomia, Ecdysozoa, and Spiralia. This stability now allows researchers to articulate the diminishing number of remaining questions in terms of well-defined alternative hypotheses. These remaining questions include relationships at the base of the animal tree, the position of Xenacoelomorpha, and the internal relationships of Spiralia. Recent progress in the field of animal phylogeny has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of development, morphology, genomes, and other characters. A remarkable pattern emerges-there is far more homoplasy for all these characters than had previously been anticipated, even among many complex characters such as segmentation and nervous systems. The fossil record dates most deep branches of the animal tree to an evolutionary radiation in the early Cambrian with roots in the Late Neoproterozoic.
1. In vertebrates, bite force is a measure of whole organism performance that is associated with both cranial morphology and dietary ecology. Mechanistic studies of bite force production have ...identified morphological features associated with bite force, and linked bite force with diet, but this approach has rarely been used in mammals. 2. Mammals are a good system with which to investigate the function of the feeding apparatus because of the relative simplicity of their skulls and their high dietary diversity. Phyllostomid bats are one of the most trophically and morphologically diverse groups of mammals, but we know little about the relative importance of biomechanical variables in producing bite force or how these variables vary with diet. 3. We combined in vivo measurements of bite force with assessments of muscular and bony morphology to build and validate a model describing the mechanics of bite force production in 25 species of bats. We used this model to investigate how bats with different diets vary in biomechanical parameters that contribute to bite force. In addition to traditional dietary categories, we used a functional definition of diet that reflects the mechanical demands (hardness) of the food items in the natural diet. 4. Our model provided good predictions of in vivo bite forces and highlighted behavioural variation that is inherent in the in vivo data. The temporalis generates the highest moment about the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) axis, but the moment generated by the masseter is the most important variable in explaining variation among species. The dietary classification based on the hardness of the diet was more effective than traditional dietary categories in describing biomechanical differences among groups. The temporalis generated the highest proportion of the moment about the TMJ axis in species with very hard and hard diets, the masseter was most important for species with soft diets, and the medial pterygoid was most important for species with liquid diets. 5. Our results highlight the utility of combining a modelling approach with in vivo data when conducting ecomorphological studies, and the importance of ecological classifications that reflect functional importance of performance traits.
Azhdarchid pterosaurs, the largest flying vertebrates, remain poorly understood, with fundamental aspects of their palaeobiology unknown. X-ray computed tomography reveals a complex internal ...micro-architecture for three-dimensionally preserved, hyper-elongate cervical vertebrae of the Cretaceous azhdarchid pterosaur, Alanqa sp. Incorporation of the neural canal within the body of the vertebra and elongation of the centrum result in a “tube within a tube” supported by helically distributed trabeculae. Linear elastic static analysis and linearized buckling analysis, accompanied with a finite element model, reveal that as few as 50 trabeculae increase the buckling load by up to 90%, implying that a vertebra without the trabeculae is more prone to elastic instability due to axial loads. Subsuming the neural tube into the centrum tube adds considerable stiffness to the cervical series, permitting the uptake of heavy prey items without risking damage to the cervical series, while at the same time allowing considerable skeletal mass reduction.
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•Trabeculae in a pterosaur cervical vertebra are helically arranged.•As few as 50 trabeculae increase the buckling load by up to 90%.•Subsuming the neural tube into the centrum adds stiffness to the cervical series.
Imaging Anatomy ; Paleontology ; Paleobiology ; Animal Morphology ;
The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a commercial probiotic, Sanolife PRO‐F, on water quality, growth performance, blood profiles and intestinal morphometry of monosex Nile tilapia. A ...field trial was conducted for 10 weeks in which tilapia fingerlings (20 ± 1.26 g) were randomly distributed into three replicate ponds which were subdivided into three treatment groups, receiving Sanolife PRO‐F at 0 (B0), 0.1 (B1) and 0.2 (B2) g/kg diet, respectively. The results showed a significant improvement in growth performance, feed conversion ratio and blood profiles in tilapia fed on treated diets. The whole intestinal lengths, anterior and terminal intestinal villi heights and anterior goblet cells count were greater in tilapia fed on treated diets. There were no noticeable differences in growth and intestinal morphology between tilapia fed on B1 and B2 diets. The ammonia concentration in water was lower with B1 diet while electric conductivity, salinity and total dissolved solids were higher with the B2 diet. The pH level of pond water was enhanced by both diets, B1 and B2. In conclusion, application of Sanolife PRO‐F at 0.1–0.2 g/kg diet might have beneficial effects on growth, immunity, stress responses and gut health and function as well as the water quality of farmed Nile tilapia.
The world fauna of the flat wasps (Bethylidae) is represented by about 3,000 valid species. The skeletal morphology of bethylids is still not adequately understood and the terminology is generally ...not standardized between its internal taxa and with other Hymenoptera families. The same scenario exists in most of the families in this order. To address this problem, we describe the external skeletal morphology of Bethylidae. We review the terms used to describe skeletal features in the Hymenoptera in general and a consensus terminology is proposed for Bethylidae, which is linked to the online Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology. The morphology of the studied specimens is illustrated with photos and line drawings. We also discuss the morphological variation at both subfamilial and generic ranks. Our analyses challenge hundreds of inappropriate, confused or imprecise terms traditionally used for Hymenoptera morphology. As a result, we have applied hundreds of updates of the terminology available online at the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology.
Evolutionary change in animal morphology results from alteration of the functional organization of the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) that control development of the body plan. A major mechanism of ...evolutionary change in GRN structure is alteration of
cis-regulatory modules that determine regulatory gene expression. Here we consider the causes and consequences of GRN evolution. Although some GRN subcircuits are of great antiquity, other aspects are highly flexible and thus in any given genome more recent. This mosaic view of the evolution of GRN structure explains major aspects of evolutionary process, such as hierarchical phylogeny and discontinuities of paleontological change.
Herein, we update the diagnosis and description of the genus Krantzolaspina Datta & Bhattacharjee and provide a list of the three valid species including new combinations and synonyms, as follows: 1) ...Krantzolaspina angustatus (Ishikawa, 1987) comb. nov. (= Indutolaelaps jiroftensis Hajizadeh et al., 2017syn. nov .), 2) K. rebatii Datta & Bhattacharjee, 1989 and 3) K. solimani (Metwali, 1983) comb. nov. Finally, we re-describe K. angustatus (Ishikawa, 1987) comb. nov. based on the holotype from Japan, voucher specimens from Iran and additional females that we found in soil samples from oil palm plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. Keywords: Gamasina , monotype, morphology, oriental region, rainforest, tropical lowland
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