Morphological characters of statoblasts (including floatoblasts and sessoblasts) in freshwater bryozoans have been important in phylactolaemate systematics and identification in that older phylogenetic hypotheses relied heavily on statoblast morphology. To assess the reliability of statoblast characters in drawing conclusions about phylogeny, we examined the phylogenetic distribution of metric ...

The major threat to crops posed by fungal diseases results in the use by growers of enormous amounts of chemicals. Of these, quinol oxydation inhibitors (QoIs) are probably the most successful class of agricultural fungicides. QoIs inhibit mitochondrial respiration in fungi by binding to the Qo site of the cytochrome bc1 complex, blocking electron transfer and halting ATP synthesis. Unfortunate...

We report here a human case of Taenia asiatica infection which was confirmed by genetic analyses in Dali, China. A patient was found to have symptoms of taeniasis with discharge of tapeworm proglottids. By sequencing of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (cox1) gene, we observed nucleotide sequence identity of 99% with T. asiatica and 96% with T. saginata. Using the cytochrome b (...

In order to evaluate differentiate genetic differences among Schistosoma japonicum isolates from Dali Ancient City, Xizhou and Yongsheng County, Yunnan Province, China, mitochondrial col, cytb, nd1, nd6, and nd4l were PCR amplified and sequenced, revealing nucleotide difference(s) among these strains of 8, 1, 5, 4, and 0, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that S. japonicum from the thr...

The common vole (Microtus arvalis) has been a model species of small mammal for studying end-glacial colonization history. In the present study we expanded the sampling from central and eastern Europe, analyzing contemporary genetic structure to identify the role of a potential 'northern glacial refugium', i.e. a refugium at a higher latitude than the traditional Mediterranean refugia. Altogeth...

Sternechus subsignatus Boheman (Curculionidae: Sternechini) is one of the primary Curculionidae species that reduces soybean yield in Brazil. Initially, outbreaks were reported in southern Brazil in 1973; but, more recent, outbreaks were reported in Bahia (summer 1997-1998) and Maranhão (summer 2003-2004), two states in northeastern Brazil. A putative related species, S. pinguis (Fabricius), wa...

The barn owl (BO) and the collared scops owl (CSO) are common nocturnal raptors throughout Thailand. Blood samples from 23 adult BOs and 14 CSOs were collected and processed for complete blood cell counts and parasite morphological examinations. Two Haemoproteus-positive samples were processed for ultrastructural observation. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis for a partial cytochrome b g...

The unicellular blood parasites in the order Haemosporida are highly diverse, infect many vertebrates, are responsible for a large disease burden among humans and animals, and have reemerged as an important model system to understand the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of host-parasite interactions. The phylogenetics and systematics of Haemosporida are limited by poor sampling of different...