The redwood forests support an unknown but large number of invertebrate species and, over all seasons, more than two hundred species of vertebrates (A. Cooperrider, unpub. comp.). Beyond this, knowledge of the redwoods fauna is surprisingly limited. Despite the enormous public attention that has been focused on redwood forests in recent years, comparatively little has been written about the eco...

Recent collections of pontoniine shrimps from Heron Island, southern Great Barrier Reef, have provided further additions to the Australian marine fauna. A new species, Periclimenes poriphilus sp. nov., is described and illustrated. It is the first species of its genus to be found actually in a sponge host. Several other Periclimenes species have been reported as associates of sponges. Periclime...

We studied representatives of seven vetigastropod families in an extremely well-preserved Plio-Pleistocene mollusc fauna found in relatively deep water sediments (c. 200-300 m paleodepth) from the north-western Philippines. The fauna is systematically described and its paleoenvironmental and paleobiogeographical character is explored. Twenty-six species of gastropods were studied, three of whic...

The thrips fauna of Norfolk Island is a curious mix of endemics and adventives, with notable absences that include one major trophic group. A brief introduction is provided to the history of human settlement and its ecological impact on this tiny land mass in the western Pacific Ocean. The Thysanoptera fauna comprises about 20% endemic and almost 50% widespread invasive species, and shows limit...

The biogeography and evolutionary history of the shallow marine fauna in the western Indian Ocean (WIO) is poorly known, as are the consequences of ancient and recent biodiversity-generating processes. Inwater surveys of scleractinian corals show maximum diversity in a core region centered on the northern Mozambique Channel. Maximum species richness is at ≈300 with a threshold of ≈250 that diff...

Global environmental changes affect not only the aboveground but also the belowground components of ecosystems. The effects of seasonal drought and air warming on the genus level richness of Collembola, and on the abundance and biomass of the community of Collembola and mites were studied in an acidic and a calcareous forest soil in a model oak-ecosystem experiment (the Querco experiment) at th...

Knowledge of the horse fly fauna (Diptera: Tabanidae) of Lebanon is fragmentary, while the local fauna of most neighboring countries has been fairly well researched. Within the framework of the 20-year project "The ecology and zoogeography of the Lepidoptera of the Near East," we regularly collected biting flies in the whole region, including Lebanon. During this time we recorded 14 horse fly s...

Phlebotomines (Diptera: Psychodidae) are vectors of several etiological agents of human and animal diseases, including protozoans of the gender Leishmania. Precarious socioeconomic conditions and uncontrolled population growth directly influence the transmission risk of parasites and the urbanization of vector species, previously restricted to wild environments. The Marajó Archipelago is consid...

Understanding the evolutionary history of the species in a particular region provides insights into how that fauna was formed. Of particular interest to biogeographers is examining the impact a geographical barrier had in generating temporal genetic diversity among codistributed species. We examined the impact a major New World barrier, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (IT) in southern Mexico, had on...

The field of ancient DNA (aDNA) has recently been in a state of exponential growth, largely driven by the uptake of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques. Much of this work has focused on the mammalian megafauna and ancient humans, with comparatively less studies looking at micromammal fauna, despite the potential of these species in testing evolutionary, environmental and taxonomic theor...