The phylogenetics and phylogeography of the Jamaican fruit-eating bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) were examined based on analysis of DNA sequence variation in the mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene for 176 individuals representing all 13 subspecies of A. jamaicensis (sensu Simmons 2005). Results document that A. jamaicensis (sensu Simmons 2005) comprises 3 monophyletic assemblages that are separated ph...

An assignment of colors to objects induces a natural integer weight on each tree that has these objects as leaves. This weight is called “parsimony length” in biostatistics and is the basis of the “maximum parsimony” technique for reconstructing evolutionary trees. Equations for the average value (over all binary trees) of the parsimony length of both fixed and random colorations are derived us...

BACKGROUND Marine sponges can associate with abundant and diverse consortia of microbial symbionts. However, associated bacteria remain unexamined for the majority of host sponges and few studies use phylogenetic metrics to quantify symbiont community diversity. DNA fingerprinting techniques, such as terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms (T-RFLP), might provide rapid profiling of t...

Ferrets (Mustela furo) were domesticated from polecats (M. putorius, M. eversmannii) over 2000 years ago. Following their introduction to Britain, they escaped and hybridized with native European polecats (M. putorius). Native polecats declined to the point of near extinction prior to World War I, but have recently begun to expand from a Welsh refugium. Concern has arisen as to the extent of po...

L. Vigilant et al. (1) recently presented "the strongest support yet for the placement of [their] common mtDNA [mitochondrial DNA] ancestor in Africa some 200,000 years ago." This support stems from a tree estimated by maximum parsimony from mtDNA sequence data with the use of the computer program PAUP (2). The African origin is inferred from this tree because (i) the most basal splits are amon...

Larvae of Oliera argentinana, Brèthes 1916 (Lepidoptera: Cecidosidae) were rediscovered inducing spindle-shaped galls enclosed within swollen stems of Schinus (Anacardiaceae) in central Argentina and Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil. Male, female, immature stages, and plant galls of O. argentinana are redescribed, using optical and scanning electron microscopy. The genus Olie...

We used phylogenetic analyses based on multiple gene sequences (partial nr SSU and LSU rDNA, partial pt LSU rDNA, psaA and rbcL) from 148 strains (including three outgroups) and scale ultrastructure to examine phylogenetic relationships among species of the colonial genera Synura and Tessellaria. The phylogenetic tree based on the combined dataset was congruent with ultrastructural characterist...

materials and methods an oligogearray® (an oligonucleotide-based gene expression array platform) containing 126 wnt signaling pathway-related genes was used to compare gene expressions between primary hcc and adjacent non-tumorous liver tissues from 10 patients with hcc. selected differential genes were identified with real-time rt-pcr and immunohistochemistry (ihc). in particular, the protein ...

background escherichia coli is one of the most causative pathogen of urinary tract infection. urinary tract infections (utis) are the second most common cause of morbidity and remain a serious health concern among the clinicians. the severity of uti caused by uropathogenic e. coli (upec) is due to the expression of a wide spectrum of virulent factors such as adhesin coding operons. little is kn...

Members of genus Neotyphodium are asexual derivatives of sexual Epichloë species and maintain endophytic relationships with many cool-season grasses. Most Neotyphodium species analyzed so far are interspecific hybrids with combined or partial genomes of two or three ancestral species. In this study we characterized Neotyphodium isolates from Cinna arundinacea, a perennial cool-season grass from...