Determining the most likely source of an invasive pest species might help to improve their management by establishing efficient quarantine measures and heading the search of efficient biological control agents. Planococcus ficus is an invasive mealybug pest of vineyards in Argentina, California, Mexico, Peru and South Africa. This mealybug pest had a previously known geographic distribution spa...

The giant barrel sponge Xestospongiatestudinaria is an ecologically important species that is widely distributed across the Indo-Pacific. Little is known, however, about the precise biogeographic distribution and the amount of morphological and genetic variation in this species. Here we provide the first detailed, fine-scaled (<200 km(2)) study of the morphological and genetic composition of X....

In order to clarify the genetic differences between Onchocerca dewittei japonica, the causative agent of zoonotic onchocerciasis in Japan and a related undescribed Onchocerca sp., both parasitizing wild boar (Sus scrofa) of which the infective larval stages are indistinguishable from each other, we compared the sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) gene region from...

The diversity of Epinephelus species was investigated throughout Thailand. Random amplified polymorphic DNA successfully produced 1300 bands that were phylogenetically informative and used to construct cladograms. Values of pairwise genetic similarity (S) within species ranged from 0.65 in E. erythrurus to 0.99 in E. malabaricus. The interspecific values of S ranged from 0.23 between E. malabar...

Schistosoma species have traditionally been arranged in groups based on egg morphology, geographical origins, and the genus or family of snail intermediate host. One of these groups is the 'S. indicum group' comprising species from Asia that use pulmonate snails as intermediate hosts. DNA sequences were obtained from the four members of this group (S. indicum, S. spindale, S. nasale and S. inco...

Four gene regions were sequenced for 30 species of jumping spiders, most from the subfamily Dendryphantinae, to investigate their molecular phylogeny and evolution. These are three regions from the mitochondria (ca. 560 bp of 16S plus adjacent tRNA, 1047 bp of cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1), and 414 bp of NADH1 (ND1) and one region from the nuclear genome (ca. 750 bp of 28S). Parsimony and likeliho...

Japan is a country of high specific diversity of Onchocerca with eight species, the adults of two not yet known. Onchocerca dewittei japonica, a common filarial parasite of wild boar, had been proved to be the agent of five zoonotic onchocerciasis in Kyushu island with morphological and molecular studies. The sixth case, at Hiroshima in the main island, was identified to the same Onchocerca spe...

BACKGROUND The aim of the current study was to assess the mRNA levels of two mitochondria-related genes, including nuclear-encoded NRF1 (nuclear respiratory factor 1), mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM), and mitochondrial-encoded cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (MT-CO1) genes in various stages of the human oocyte maturation. METHODS Oocytes were obtained from nine infertile women with...

The aims of this study were to diagnose coenurosis by means of computerized tomography (CT) scan imaging and molecular characterization of the CO1 gene using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Sheep and calves were necropsied, and CT scans on the cephalic region were performed on the animals. Sections of brain tissue infected with parasites were then stained with hematoxylin and eosin for mic...

A 2-year-old female donkey (Equus asinus) was euthanized in the Pathology Department of Firat University, Elazig, Turkey. Necropsy disclosed the presence of 7 hydatid cysts distributed throughout the lung parenchyma. One of those cysts represented the parasite material of the present study and was molecularly identified through sequencing of a fragment of cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) an...