The megadiversity of the neotropical ichthyofauna has been associated to recent diversification processes, reflecting in subtle or lacking morphological differentiation between species, challenging the classical taxonomic identification. Leporinus friderici occurs in several river basins of South America, and its nominal taxonomic validity has been questioned. Its wide distribution within the B...

Disentangling the individual and interactive effects of multiple stressors on microbial communities is a key challenge to our understanding and management of ecosystems. Advances in molecular techniques allow studying microbial communities in situ and with high taxonomic resolution. However, the taxonomic level which provides the best trade-off between our ability to detect multiple-stressor ef...

Coral taxonomy has entered a historical phase where nomenclatorial uncertainty is rapidly increasing. The fundamental cause is mandatory adherence to historical monographs that lack essential information of all sorts, and also to type specimens, if they exist at all, that are commonly unrecognizable fragments or are uncharacteristic of the species they are believed to represent. Historical prob...

Traditional attempts to delineate floristic regions typically focus on species distributions, often ignoring the rich context that phylogenetic relationships can provide. In this study, we explore how phylogenetic relatedness, taxonomic composition, and regional phylogenetic structure change across a global biodiversity hotspot region, Yunnan, located in southwestern China. We propose a system ...

Because many animal species are undescribed, and because the identification of known species is often difficult, interim taxonomic nomenclature has often been used in biodiversity analysis. By assigning individuals to presumptive species, called operational taxonomic units (OTUs), these systems speed investigations into the patterning of biodiversity and enable studies that would otherwise be i...

Although invertebrates play a key role in the environment, their conservation and use in environmental monitoring is often considered “too difficult” and consequently ignored. One of the main problems in dealing with invertebrates is that even limited sampling can yield large numbers of specimens and an enormous diversity of species. Other problems include the taxonomic impediment (i.e. high pr...

In this study for the first-time microbial communities in the caves located in the mountain range of Hindu Kush were evaluated. The samples were analyzed using culture-independent (16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing) and culture-dependent methods. The amplicon sequencing results revealed a broad taxonomic diversity, including 21 phyla and 20 candidate phyla. Proteobacteria were dominant in both ...

The reliability of any survey of biodiversity through geologic time depends on the rigor and consistency by which taxa are recognized and samples are identified. The main goal of the Neogene Marine Biota of Tropical America (‘NMITA’) project is to create an online biotic database (http://nmita.geology.uiowa.edu) containing images and synoptic taxonomic information that are essential to collecti...