Biodiversity assessment demands objective measures, because ultimately conservation decisions must prioritize the use of limited resources for preserving taxa. The most general framework for the objective assessment of conservation worth are those that assess evolutionary distinctiveness, e.g. Genetic (Crozier 1992) and Phylogenetic Diversity (Faith 1992), and Evolutionary History (Nee & May 19...

For terrestrial animals and plants, a fundamental cost of living is water vapor lost to the atmosphere during exchange of metabolic gases. Here, by bringing together previously developed models for specific taxa, we integrate properties common to all terrestrial gas exchangers into a universal model of water loss. The model predicts that water loss scales to gas exchange with an exponent of 1 a...

This study was carried out to determine seasonal variation and zooplankton community structure in Karataş Lake, Southern Turkey. Zooplankton samples were collected seasonally between 2002 and 2003 in two stations using a zooplankton net of 55-µm mesh size. A total of 42 taxa were identified, including 19 taxa (45.2 %) Rotifera, 16 taxa (38.1 %) Cladocera, and 7 taxa (16.7 %). Copepoda. Among th...

This study was carried out to determine seasonal variation and zooplankton community structure in Karataş Lake, Southern Turkey. Zooplankton samples were collected seasonally between 2002 and 2003 in two stations using a zooplankton net of 55-µm mesh size. A total of 42 taxa were identified, including 19 taxa (45.2 %) Rotifera, 16 taxa (38.1 %) Cladocera, and 7 taxa (16.7 %). Copepoda. Among th...

An interesting wood-inhabiting pyrenomycete was discovered while collecting for the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory currently being conducted in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This species is unique in possessing superficial ascomata with reddish tubercles and ascospores that develop an apical swollen brown cell and a long, basal hyaline cell. Because these ascospore characters fit th...

Abstract An interesting specimen of Ficus L. was collected from the Idukki district Kerala. Based on detailed examination with protologues, literatures and type specimens, plant identified as virens Aiton var. dispersa Chantaras. This is first report occurrence this taxon in India. A description, photographs, illustrations, comparison allied taxa identification key are provided.

Sexual dimorphism is a phenotypic differentiation between males and females of the same species. Thrips display a wide variety of sexual dimorphism between taxa including size, ornamentation and coloration (Crespi 1986, Mound 2005, Tyagi et al. 2008). During recent surveys on the thrips fauna in subtropical China, Aroidothrips longistylus Ananthakrishnan, an interesting and little known sexuall...

In phylogenetic analysis, one possible approach to minimize missing data in DNA supermatrices consists in sampling sequences from different species to obtain a complete sequence for all genes included in the study. We refer to those complete sequences as composite taxa because DNA sequences that are combined belong to different species. An alternative approach is to analyze incomplete supermatr...

In the past few years my interactions with the species I study have been restricted to strings of nucleotides spread across an LCD screen. Bioinformatics has provided me with an amazing window into some of the most interesting algae on Earth, but it has also made me feel distanced from my research organisms, and biology as a whole. This opinion article touches upon these feelings and asks wheth...

Gypsophila with approximately 150 speciesrepresents the fourth largest genus of Caryophyllaceae and the second genus of tribe Caryophylleae. Iran is the second main center of Gypsophila diversity with 38 species in the world. Considering Gypsophila as one of the most polymorphic genus of the family andalmost half of its taxa distributed in Iran as endemic, thus makes it as a significant genus f...