Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) occur across most of the world's drylands and are sensitive indicators of dryland degradation. Accounting for shifts in biocrust composition is important for quantifying integrity of arid and semi-arid ecosystems, but the best methods for assessing biocrusts are uncertain. We investigate the utility of surveying biocrust morphogroups, a reduced set of biotic c...

Since Frank Livingstone proposed the idea that there are no races, only clines, in 1962, little has changed how anthropologists study and, ultimately, estimate ancestry. How we talk about of human variation may have changed—shifting away from "racial" labels and toward those supposed ancestral origins—but methods use to label analyze groups, however termed, remained same. The author suggests a ...

Analysis of benthic foraminiferal assemblages was performed in Callovian deposits of the Farsian Formation Northeastern Alborz; Iran. The sequence of Callovian at the Goznawwi area consists mainly of soft marls , which contain high-diversity calcareous assemblages. In this foraminiferal succession nine morphogroups were differentiated according to shell architecture (general shape, mode of coil...

Abstract The systematics status of the constituent species M. mystacinus morphogroup in Himalayan region has long been marred by uncertainty. Lack integrative studies combining morphological and genetic data from specimens recently collected this hampered our understanding cryptic variations complex taxonomic group. To address issue, new material India Nepal was obtained vouchered holdings vari...

Macroalgae have been a key ecological component of marine ecosystems since the Proterozoic period and are common fossil forms in Cambrian Burgess Shale-type Lagerstätten. However, most cases, it is difficult to place these early algae into modern groups because little distinctive morphology preserved. Here, we describe new form macroalgae, Qingjiangthallus cystocarpium gen. & sp. nov., from Qin...

South American Camelids (SAC) were of great economic and cultural importance for pre-Hispanic societies in the Andes still are important rural Andean communities. However, understanding their specific role function over time is hampered by lack reliable taxonomic identification archaeological remains. Although this problem has been acknowledged since 1970s, SAC from contexts mostly relies on fi...

Fusarium lateritium is a globally distributed plant pathogen. It was recently reported as the causal agent of nut gray necrosis (NGN) on hazelnut. Isolate characterization within F. lateritium was undertaken to investigate how morphological and molecular diversity was associated with host and geographic origin. Morphological studies combined with inter-simple-sequence repeat (ISSR) analysis, an...

A new Salmonella enterica phage, Det7, was isolated from sewage and shown by electron microscopy to belong to the Myoviridae morphogroup of bacteriophages. Det7 contains a 75-kDa protein with 50% overall sequence identity to the tail spike endorhamnosidase of podovirus P22. Adsorption of myoviruses to their bacterial hosts is normally mediated by long and short tail fibers attached to a contrac...

Abstract Phagotrophic protists (formerly protozoa) are a highly diverse, polyphyletic grouping of generally unicellular, heterotrophic eukaryotes that key regulators the soil microbiome. The biodiversity and ecology phagotrophic still largely uncharacterized, especially in Antarctic, which possesses some harshest terrestrial environments known potentially many physiologically unique scientifica...