Western New Guinea remains one of the last biologically underexplored regions world, and much to be learned regarding diversity evolutionary history its fauna flora. During a recent ornithological expedition Kumawa Mountains in West Papua, we encountered an undescribed species Melanocharis berrypecker (Melanocharitidae) cloud forest at elevation 1200 m asl. Its main characteristics are iridesce...

An 852-base pair region of the cytochrome-b gene was sequenced for the brood parasitic cowbirds and 20 additional taxa of the New World blackbirds (Icterinae). The goal of the study was to determine (i) whether interspecific brood parasitism is multiply derived within the assemblage and (ii) the nature of the evolutionary transformation between various forms of interspecific brood parasitism. C...

Piper species are used for spices, in traditional and processed forms of medicines, in cosmetic compounds, in cultural activities and insecticides. Here barcode analysis was performed for identification of plant parts, young plants and modified forms of plants. Thirty-six Piper species were collected and the three barcode regions, matK, rbcL and psbA-trnH spacer, were amplified, sequenced and a...

Disturbances in the schedules of gene expression in developing interspecific fish hybrids have been used to draw inferences about the extent of gene regulatory divergence between species and about the degree to which this gene regulatory divergence is correlated with structural gene divergence, as estimated by genetic distance. Sperm from each of 10 different species representing six genera wit...

Among-site variation in metacommunities (beta diversity) is typically correlated with the distance separating the sites (spatial lag). This distance decay in similarity pattern has been linked to both niche-based and dispersal-based community assembly hypotheses. Here we show that beta diversity patterns in community composition, when supplemented with functional-trait information, can be used ...

Valid fish species identification is essential for biodiversity conservation and fisheries management. Here, we provide a sequence reference library based on mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I for a valid identification of 79 freshwater fish species from the Lower Paraná River. Neighbour-joining analysis based on K2P genetic distances formed non-overlapping clusters for almost all spe...