Three living male darwinulid ostracods of a new species of the genus Vestalenula have been found in Yakushima, Japan. This is the first report of living darwinulid males for over 100 years and their morphology casts doubt on the two previous records from the late 1800' s. The presence of male darwinulids also calls into question the hypothesis that the family Darwinulidae is an exclusively anci...

We investigated the deep-sea fossil record of benthic ostracodes during periods of rapid climate and oceanographic change over the past 20,000 years in a core from intermediate depth in the northwestern Atlantic. Results show that deep-sea benthic community "collapses" occur with faunal turnover of up to 50% during major climatically driven oceanographic changes. Species diversity as measured b...

Passively dispersing aquatic invertebrates such as Ostracoda in restricted aquatic habitats such as bromeliads remain an intriguing observation considering the highly specialised dispersal vectors needed for efficient colonisation. Here we describe a new species of Elpidium, Elpidium merendonense sp. n., collected from bromeliads in the cloud forest from Cusuco National Park, Honduras. Elpidium...

Ancient lakes are often collectively viewed as evolutionary hot spots of diversification. East Africa's Lake Tanganyika has long been the subject of scientific interest owing to dramatic levels of endemism in species as diverse as cichlid fishes, paludomid gastropods, decapod and ostracod crustaceans and poriferans. It is the largest and deepest of the African rift lakes, and its endemic fauna ...

Complex organs such as eyes are commonly lost during evolution, but the timescale on which lost phenotypes could be reactivated is a matter of long-standing debate, with important implications for the molecular mechanisms of trait loss. Two phylogenetic approaches have been used to test whether regain of traits has occurred. One way is by comparison of nested, continuous-time Markov models of t...

Aquatic environments can be restricted with the amount of available food resources especially with changes to both abiotic and biotic conditions. Mosquito larvae, in particular, are sensitive to changes in food resources. Resource limitation through inter-, and intra-specific competition among mosquitoes are known to affect both their development and survival. However, much less is understood a...

Marine zooplankton research in Brazil has been primarily descriptive, with most studies focusing on community structure analysis and related issues. The composition and spatial distribution of several taxonomic groups are currently well known, although less-abundant and small-sized taxa as well as initial stages of almost all species have received little attention. Some numerically important ta...

Microfossils present in Quaternary micrites from Serra da Bodoquena, Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil, are here described for the first time. The studied taxa are: a) ostracods: Candona sp., Candonopsis sp., Cyclocypris sp., Cypria sp., Cypridopsis sp., Notodromas sp., Ilyocypris sp., Cyprideis sp., Wolburgiopsis cf. chinamuertensis (Musacchio 1970), Darwinula sp. and 5 morphotypes; b) microgas...