The identity of Chiromantes obtusifrons (Dana, 1851), previously considered widespread in the tropical West Pacific region to the eastern Indian Ocean, is revised and found to be a species-complex. Chiromantes obtusifrons is now considered endemic to the Hawaiian Is., and four new species are described from Guam, Taiwan and Christmas Island. Two species live sympatrically in Taiwan. Species sep...

The short-term osmoregulatory ability and salinity tolerance of Chiromantes ortmanni was studied in the laboratory.C. ortmanni is a non-burrowing, high shore mangrove crab often subjected to extreme salinity  uctuations. They were found to be exceptional osmoregulators in salinities ranging from0‰ to 65‰ after threedays. They could also osmoregulate in 80‰ for at least 24 hours, but 96‰ proved...

Recent improvements in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies can facilitate the obtainment of mitochondrial genomes. However, it is not clear whether NGS could be effectively used to reconstruct the mitogenome with high gene rearrangement. These high rearrangements would cause amplification failure, and/or assembly and alignment errors. Here, we choose two frogs with rearranged gene ord...

Polystoma okomuensis is described as a new species of the Polystomatidae parasitic in the urinary bladder of Boulenger's striped frog Phlyctimantis boulengeri in the Okomu National Park, Edo State, Nigeria. Although other African polystomes have been reported from Nigeria, this is the first to be described from the country and the first from Phlyctimantis. It is distinguished from other African...

Three new species of lotic breeding Hynobius, formerly assigned to H. boulengeri, are described from the Kyushu region, southwestern Japan. They differ from all the known congeners by a unique combination of body size, character ratios, coloration, mtDNA, and allozymic characteristics. Together with H. stejnegeri they form a clade, which is not a sister group of H. boulengeri, and their speciat...

Introgression may lead to discordant patterns of variation among loci and traits. For example, previous phylogeographic studies on the genus Quasipaa detected signs of genetic introgression from genetically and morphologically divergent Quasipaa shini or Quasipaa spinosa. In this study, we used mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence data to verify the widespread introgressive hybridization in t...

Repeatability of physiological response variables, such as the stress hormone corticosterone, across numerous sampling occasions is an important assumption for their use as predictors of behaviour, reproduction and fitness in animals. Very few studies have actually tested this assumption in free-living animals under uncontrolled natural conditions. Non-invasive urine sampling and standard captu...

Brackish water crabs infected with Paragonimus ohirai metacercariae have been reported in various regions in Japan. However, infected crabs have not been identified in Tokyo. We therefore collected the crab, Chiromantes dehaani, between August 2002 and July 2003 from 12 locations along the Arakawa River that flows through Tokyo. Of the 922 captured crabs, 177 (19%) from 6 locations were infecte...