The Australian endemic ant genus Myrmecorhynchus is reviewed. The genus is known from three species (M. carteri Clark, M. emeryi André and M. nitidus Clark) which are restricted to eastern and southern Australia. Myrmecorhynchus musgravei Clark and M. rufithorax Clark are newly synonymised with M. emeryi André. All species are found in forested areas where they nest arboreally or, less commonly...

The sex-inducing pheromone of Volvox carteri is a glycoprotein that triggers development of males and females at a concentration below 10(-16) M. Evidence is presented for the existence of a novel mechanism of signal amplification operating within the extracellular matrix of this multicellular organism. A family of 70 kDa matrix glycoproteins denoted pherophorins bear a C-terminal domain being ...

Hydrogen gas functions as a key component in the metabolism of a wide variety of microorganisms, often acting as either a fermentative end-product or an energy source. The number of organisms reported to utilize hydrogen continues to grow, contributing to and expanding our knowledge of biological hydrogen processes. Here we demonstrate that Volvox carteri f. nagariensis, a multicellular green a...

Flagella-generated fluid stirring has been suggested to enhance nutrient uptake for sufficiently large micro-organisms, and to have played a role in evolutionary transitions to multicellularity. A corollary to this predicted size-dependent benefit is a propensity for phenotypic plasticity in the flow-generating mechanism to appear in large species under nutrient deprivation. We examined four sp...

Volvox is a very interesting oogamous organism that exhibits various types of sexuality and/or sexual spheroids depending upon species or strains. However, molecular bases of such sexual reproduction characteristics have not been studied in this genus. In the model species V. carteri, an ortholog of the minus mating type-determining or minus dominance gene (MID) of isogamous Chlamydomonas reinh...