species identification is always important. records of sea urchins and sand dollars species ‎‎(echinodermata, echinoidea) is given from iranian waters. nine species of echinoderms were ‎identified through the study. the species identification was made using morphological ‎characteristics and review of checklist key. nine species were identified here, including ‎echinometra mathaei, prionocidari...

Studies in tunicates such as Ciona have revealed new insights into the evolutionary origins of chordate development. Ciona populations are characterized by high levels of natural genetic variation, between 1 and 5%. This variation has provided abundant material for forward genetic studies. In the current study, we make use of deep sequencing and homozygosity mapping to map spontaneous mutations...

Frogs have two inner ear organs, each tuned to a different range of frequencies. Female treefrogs (Hylidae) of three species in which males produce calls with a bimodal spectrum (Hyla chrysoscelis, H. versicolor, H. arenicolor) preferred alternatives with a bimodal spectrum to alternatives with a single high-frequency peak. By contrast, females of H. avivoca, in which males produce calls with a...

A total of 305 individuals from a hybrid population of North American tree frogs was characterized for allozyme and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genotype. Species-specific mating behaviors had suggested the potential for directional hybridization, in which matings between Hyla cinerea males and Hyla gratiosa females numerically predominate over the reciprocal combination. Such directional bias lea...

Effective acoustic communication in the face of intense conspecific background noise constitutes a constant sensory challenge in chorusing and colonial species. An evolutionary approach suggests that behavioural and environmental constraints in these species should have shaped signal design and signalling behaviour to enable communication in noisy conditions. This could be attained both through...

This study reports two new species and one new species record of tanaidomorphan tanaidaceans from Taiwan. The leptocheliid Leptochelia taitungensis sp. nov. can be separated from the most similar species, Leptochelia tarda, in the Leptochelia dubia/savignyi group by having long distal spines on the maxilliped endites and the male having two-articled uropod exopods. The tanaidid Zeuxo shitipinge...

We compared two haploid genotypes of one Ciona savignyi individual and identified codons at which these genotypes differ by two nonsynonymous substitutions. Using the C. intestinalis genome as an outgroup, we showed that both substitutions tend to occur in the same genotype. Only in 53 (34.4%) of 154 codons, one substitution occurred in each of the two genotypes, although 77 (50%) of such codon...

We engage the experimental and computational challenges of de novo regulatory module discovery in a complex and largely unstudied metazoan genome. Our analysis is based on the comprehensive characterization of regulatory elements of 20 muscle genes in the chordate, Ciona savignyi. Three independent types of data we generate contribute to the characterization of a muscle-specific regulatory modu...