Predation of gypsy moth egg masses was studied in Slovakia from 1999 –2002. Predation on naturally laid egg masses was recorded and linear regression was used to test the hypothesis that predation follows a type II vs. type III functional response. We also investigated the role of egg mass predation in gypsy moth population dynamics. The relative contribution of invertebrates vs. vertebrates as...

What Is an Ascidian? Ascidians, or sea squirts, are invertebrate chordates that belong to the earliest branch in the chordate phylum, the subphylum Urochordata or Tunicata (Figure 1A). Ascidian larvae possess a prototypical chordate body plan Joseph C. Corbo,1,3 Anna Di Gregorio,2 and Michael Levine2,3 Department of Pathology Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston, Massa...

This exchange stems from an on-going debate between advocates of crown clade (e.g., Gauthier et al., 1988; Rowe, 1988; Laurin, 1998) and those of apomorphybased (e.g., Ahlberg and Clack, 1998; Lee, 1999; Padian et al., 1999; Anderson, 2001) definitions of widely used taxon names (see Table 1 for a glossary of terms). Both types of definitions have advantages: apomorphy-based definitions usually...

Four chordate characters — dorsal hollow nerve cord, notochord, gill slits, and endostyle — are compared morphologically, molecularly, and functionally with similar structures in hemichordates to assess their putative homologies. The dorsal hollow nerve cord and enteropneust neurocord are probably homoplasies. The neurocord (= collar cord) may be an autapomorphy of Enteropneusta that innervates...

Early evaluations of sauropod diversity in the Cretaceous of India recognized three genera, “Titanosaurus,” Antarctosaurus, and Laplatasaurus, each of which was thought to have closely related species on other southern landmasses. Recent systematic work has challenged the validity of the genus “Titanosaurus” and the supposed close relationship between its constituent species, particularly those...

•We examined scierai rings from 44 species of Pelecaniformes and found nonrandom variation in numbers of scierai ossicles among genera, but little or no variability within genera. Phaethon, Fregata, and Pelecanus retain the primitive 15 ossicles per ring, while the most recent common ancestor of the Sulae (Phalacrocoracidae, Anhinga, and Sulidae) is inferred to have had a derived reduction to 1...

words from school subjects will be more difficult to define and categorize, will be more confusable, and will show other theoretically and pedagogically interesting differences from concrete words. With respect to the meaning of larger verbal units, such as sentences and paragraphs, experimental research has also demonstrated a major role for imagery processes. Paivio and Begg (1971b) showed th...

•De novo reference genome assemblies of four non-teleost ray-finned fishes•Basal fishes have key limb development regulatory elements•Lung-related genes in early hold the for lung origin•Cardio-respiratory systems’ co-evolution during air breathing evolution Rich fossil evidence suggests that many traits and functions related to terrestrial were present long before ancestor lobe- fishes. Here, ...