Annelida, one of the most successful animal phyla, exhibits an amazing variety of morphological forms. Disparity between some of the forms is so great that until molecular tools were used, some annelid lineages (for example, echiurids and pogonophorans) were not commonly recognized as belonging to the group. Although it is easy to assign annelids to a given family, understanding the deeper rela...

Segmentation of the major body axis into repeating units is arguably one of the major inventions in the evolution of animal body plan pattering. It is found in current day vertebrates, annelids and arthropods. Most segmented animals seem to use a clock-and-wavefront type mechanism in which oscillations emanating from a posterior growth zone become transformed into an anterior posterior sequence...

The notochord is considered an evolutionary novelty and one of the defining characters of chordates. A new study of an annelid challenges this view and proposes an earlier evolutionary origin in the most recent common ancestor of chordates and annelids.

Opistocystidae Cernosvitov, 1936 is a largely Neotropical oligochaete taxon containing seven species. Its familial status has never been formally challenged, although possible close relationships with Naididae and Phreodrilidae have been noted. Mitochondrial 12S and 16S rDNA, and nuclear 18S rDNA, of a range of aquatic oligochaete taxa, including Trieminentia corderoi (Opistocystidae), were ana...

Paramaldane, new genus, with type species Paramaldane glandicincta sp. n., and Maldane adunca sp. n. (Maldanidae, Polychaeta) are described based on material from the coast of south China. The new genus Paramaldane is similar to Maldane Grube, 1860 and Sabaco Kinberg, 1867, but it clearly differs from all genera within the subfamily Maldaninae by a unique combination of characters: the cephalic...

The microRNA miR-7 is perfectly conserved from annelids to humans, and yet some of the genes that it regulates in Drosophila are not regulated in mammals. We have explored the role of lineage restricted targets, using Drosophila, in order to better understand the evolutionary significance of microRNA-target relationships. From studies of two well characterized developmental regulatory networks,...

The self-assembled morphologies of amphiphilic ABC star triblock copolymers consisting of hydrophilic A blocks and hydrophobic B and C blocks and the blends with their counterpart linear AB diblock copolymers in solution are investigated by 2D real-space implementation of self-consistent field theory (SCFT) simulation. The star triblock copolymers self-assemble in solution to form various micel...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.622.9420.].

Recent work on quiescent states in Caenorhabditis elegans suggests that worms exhibit behaviours reminiscent of satiety and sleep in mammals. At a molecular level, signalling through the EGF receptor and protein kinase G promotes quiescent states in both worms and flies, suggesting conserved mechanisms for sleep-like behaviours.

Venezuela possesses a great variety of coastal environments allowing for a high diversity of marine species. However, systematic studies on marine invertebrates are scarce, especially on polychaetes. The family Syllidae is poorly known, and only 14 genera and 42 species have been reported from this country. A total of 13 genera and 26 species the Syllidae were identified from benthic samples co...