Orobanche ballotae (Orobanchaceae) in Tunisia, a confirmation for the African parasitic flora

Study of the West Gondwana Floras during the Late Paleozoic: A paleogeographic approach in the Paraná Basin – Brazil

Variation in the lengths of restriction fragments (RFLPs) of the whole chloroplast DNA molecule was studied in 174 populations of Quercus ilex L. sampled over the entire distribution of this evergreen and mainly Mediterranean oak species. By using five endonucleases, 323 distinct fragments were obtained. From the 29 and 17 cpDNA changes identified as site and length mutations, respectively, 25 distinct chlorotypes were distinguished, mapped and treated cladistically with a parsimony analysis, using as an outgroup Q. alnifolia Poech, a closely related evergreen oak species endemic to Cyprus where Q. ilex does not grow. The predominant role of Q. ilex as maternal parent in hybridization with other species was reflected by the occurrence of a single very specific lineage of related chlorotypes, the most ancestral and recent ones being located in the southeastern and in the northwestern parts of the species' geographical distribution, respectively. The lineage was constituted of two clusters of chlorotypes observed in the 'ilex' morphotyped populations of the Balkan and Italian Peninsulas (including the contiguous French Riviera), respectively. A third cluster was divided into two subclusters identified in the 'rotundifolia' morphotyped populations of North Africa, and of Iberia and the adjacent French regions, respectively. Postglacial colonization probably started from three distinct southerly refugia located in each of the three European peninsulas, and a contact area between the Italian and the Iberian migration routes was identified in the Rhône valley (France). Chlorotypes identical or related to those of the Iberian cluster were identified in the populations from Catalonia and the French Languedoc region, which showed intermediate morphotypes, and in the French Atlantic populations which possessed the 'ilex' morphotype, suggesting the occurrence of adaptive morphological changes in the northern part of the species' distribution.

Bakanae disease of rice caused by Fusarium fujikuroi Nirenberg (Syn: F. moniliforme (Sheld.) [Teleomorph: Gibberella fujikuroi Wineland] is known to occur in almost all the rice growing countries. The disease causes substantial yield losses. In India, it is a major production constraint in north western parts especially in Basmati rice growing belt. The yield loss due to this disease has been reported to range from 3% to almost complete loss depending on extent of infection, variety and weather conditions. This review summarizes the available information on various aspects of the disease viz., history and geographical distribution, symptoms, economic importance pathogen biology, disease epidemiology and different management practices along with future lines of work.

Principal component analysis of specimen measurements revealed morphological variation within Chinese Calamagrostis epigeios correlated with differences in geographical distribution. We conducted a morphological examination of specimens from the range of the species, with the goal of developing a treatment for its Chinese members reflecting the global diversity complex. The confusing taxonomy of this complex is clarified with the recognition of three species in China, namely C. epigeios, C. extremiorientalis, and C. macrolepis. Calamagrostis epigeios is an exclusively temperate grass occurring in the northwestern, northern, and northeastern parts of China. It has spikelets 4–7 mm long, glumes equal or subequal, awn arising near the middle of the lemma back, upper leaf surface smooth and with shallow ribs and furrows. Calamagrostis extremiorientalis is a tropical and subtropical grass that occurs in the southwest provinces of China (except Xizang) throughout south central provinces and east to the northeastern parts of China. It is morphologically similar to C. epigeios. However, C. extremiorientalis has the awn arising from the upper one-third of the lemma back, upper leaf surface scabrid because of the presence of short stiff hairs, and with tall ribs and deep furrows. Calamagrostis macrolepis occurs in the northwestern, northern, and northeastern parts of China. It has a robust habit, spikelets 6.5–11 mm long, and glumes unequal, the upper 1–1.5 mm shorter than the lower. New synonyms, descriptions, and citations of representative specimens are provided for each species, along with an identification key.

Questions: How can predictions of potential species distribution derived from presence‐only data and different modelling algorithms be compared and evaluated? Where does suitable habitat for Juniperus oxycedrus exist within the study area and which bioclimatic variables prove to be most important in the prediction of J. oxycedrus potential distribution?Location: Central High Atlas, Morocco.Methods: Ecological niche factor analysis (ENFA), maximum entropy approach (MAXENT) and generalized linear models (GLM) were applied to either presence‐only data of J. oxycedrus (ENFA and MAXENT) or presence–absence data (GLM), using bioclimatic variables as predictors. Model accuracy of ENFA, MAXENT and GLM was assessed using their specific evaluation measures and prediction success by means of the minimal predicted area (MPA). Finally, the three maps of potential species distribution were intersected to investigate their consistency in the geographic distribution of predicted suitable habitat.Results: Species distribution models calculated by ENFA, MAXENT and GLM show good model quality according to their evaluation measures. However, calculation of MPA revealed considerable discrepancies in geographic distribution and spatial extent of areas predicted as suitable habitat for J. oxycedrus.Conclusion: Suitable habitat for J. oxycedrus is predicted using all applied modelling approaches in 8% of the study area (mostly the north‐western part). MAXENT gave the best results considering model accuracy and prediction success according to the MPA scores. Predictors representing maximum temperature and potential radiation were selected in all methods to explain species occurrences. This points to a possible shift of the species' potential distribution in cases of a rise in summer temperature due to climate change.

Dytiscus latissimus was recorded in a deep drainage ditch at the edge of the Bagno Bubnów fen in the Poleski National Park. Eight dead individuals (4♀♀ and 4 ♂♂) were found on 11.04.2019 in a poaching net for fish in which an otter Lutra lutra (Linnaeus, 1759) was caught and died. The remains of another three individuals (2♀♀ and 1♂) were found on the shore at the same site on 17.04.2020. This data is discussed on the background of data on the geographical distribution and habitat preferences of this species. The new record confirms the existence of a small island of its occurrence area in Central and Eastern Poland, the only one in the country outside the young glacial lake districts in the north-western and northern part of Poland. The new record also suggests that the habitat spectrum of the species may be at least locally wider than it is recognized – which is worth considering when looking for its potential sites.

BackgroundCalifornia is a world floristic biodiversity hotspot where the terms neo- and paleo-endemism were first applied. Using spatial phylogenetics, it is now possible to evaluate biodiversity from an evolutionary standpoint, including discovering significant areas of neo- and paleo-endemism, by combining spatial information from museum collections and DNA-based phylogenies. Here we used a distributional dataset of 1.39 million herbarium specimens, a phylogeny of 1083 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 9 genes, and a spatial randomization test to identify regions of significant phylogenetic diversity, relative phylogenetic diversity, and phylogenetic endemism (PE), as well as to conduct a categorical analysis of neo- and paleo-endemism (CANAPE).ResultsWe found (1) extensive phylogenetic clustering in the South Coast Ranges, southern Great Valley, and deserts of California; (2) significant concentrations of short branches in the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts and the South Coast Ranges and long branches in the northern Great Valley, Sierra Nevada foothills, and the northwestern and southwestern parts of the state; (3) significant concentrations of paleo-endemism in Northwestern California, the northern Great Valley, and western Sonoran Desert, and neo-endemism in the White-Inyo Range, northern Mojave Desert, and southern Channel Islands. Multiple analyses were run to observe the effects on significance patterns of using different phylogenetic tree topologies (uncalibrated trees versus time-calibrated ultrametric trees) and using different representations of OTU ranges (herbarium specimen locations versus species distribution models).ConclusionsThese analyses showed that examining the geographic distributions of branch lengths in a statistical framework adds a new dimension to California floristics that, in comparison with climatic data, helps to illuminate causes of endemism. In particular, the concentration of significant PE in more arid regions of California extends previous ideas about aridity as an evolutionary stimulus. The patterns seen are largely robust to phylogenetic uncertainty and time calibration but are sensitive to the use of occurrence data versus modeled ranges, indicating that special attention toward improving geographic distributional data should be top priority in the future for advancing understanding of spatial patterns of biodiversity.

SUMMARY Long-period records of surface waves from WWSSN, GDSN, IDA and GEOSCOPE stations are analysed to retrieve purely continental dispersion of the African continent in the period range of 20-200 s for Rayleigh waves and 20-125 s for Love waves. The phase and group velocities are obtained by two-station and single-station methods, with earthquakes within or near the continent. A regionalization without any a priori constraints is performed over the whole African continent to retrieve local phase and group velocities. Phase- and group-velocity geographical distributions show in the northeast of Africa, near the Red Sea, a region with lower velocities extending to the west, and high velocities in the northwestern and southern parts of Africa. At long periods, there is a general agreement with global models, but the resolution is improved in this regional study. In the resulting 3-D structure, cratonic areas show a fast lithosphere from the NW to the SE. Whereas the high SV velocities of the NW area extend deeper than 200 km, lower velocities appear below this depth in the centre. In the Red Sea region low velocities are locally deep-rooted, with a slow lithospheric layer 150 km thick extending to the west. In this region polarization anisotropy is evidenced by Love-Rayleigh incompatibility. Short-period lateral variations are used to model the crustal thickness.

Current understanding of phylogeographical structure and genetic diversity of Siberian roe deer remains limited mainly due to small sample size and/or low geographical coverage in previous studies. Published data suggest at least two phylogroups: western (Ural Mountains and Western Siberia) and eastern (east from lake Baikal, including the Korean peninsula), but their phylogenetic relationship remains unclear. Combined sequences of cytochrome b (1140 bp) and the mtDNA control region (963 bp) were analyzed from 219 Siberian roe deer from 12 locations in Russia, Mongolia, and South Korea, which cover a large part of its range, to assess genetic diversity and phylogeographical status. Special emphasis was placed on the demographic history and genetic features of central, peripheral, and isolated populations. Results of median‐joining network and phylogenetic tree analyses indicate that Siberian roe deer from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean are genetically diverse and that geographical distribution and composition of haplogroups coincide with previously described ranges of the subspecies Capreolus pygargus pygargus and Capreolus pygargus tianschanicus. We found that peripheral populations in the northwestern parts of the species range (Urals), as well as the isolated population from Jeju Island, are genetically distinct from those in the core part of the range, both in terms of genetic diversity and quantitative composition of haplogroups. We also found that northwestern (Urals) and northern (Yakutia) peripheral populations share the same haplogroup and fall into the same phylogenetic clade with the isolated population from Jeju Island. This finding sheds light on the taxonomic status of the Jeju Island population and leads to hypotheses about the discordance of morphological and genetic evolution in isolated populations and specific genetic features of peripheral populations.

The European scorpion Euscorpius borovaglavaensis Tropea, 2015 is a morphologically cryptic species that is distinguishable only with difficulty from E. tergestinus (C. L. Koch, 1837). It is distributed in the middle part of the Dinaric Alps chain and along part of the Eastern Adriatic coast, specifically, in Croatia (Middle Dalmatia, Lika karst upland), as well as in the southern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The new findings reported here have enhanced our knowledge of its geographic distribution in Croatia. Detailed morphological analyses highlighted the importance of carination in the ventral metasomal segments as morphological traits. Phylogenetic analyses, based on the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene, have revealed the existence of two distinct lineages. One of them, distributed in the northwestern part of the range, is described here as E. b. flavus n. ssp., while the nominal subspecies occurs in the southeastern part. A time-calibrated phylogenetic analysis has established their divergence around 0.9 million years ago, coinciding with the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) period. In contrast to the nominal subspecies, E. b. flavus n. ssp. exhibits significant phylogeographic structuring, indicating recent isolation events in multiple glacial microrefugia after the initial divergence, followed by a final Holocene dispersal in the northwestern direction deep between the mountain chains.

Abstract. Schistosoma japonicum in China has been one of the most serious public problems. Subspecies of the pomatiopsid snail species Oncomelania hupensis is well known as the intermediate S. japonicum host. We used the simple sequence repeat anchored PCR (SSR-PCR) to assess the systematic position of the snail populations from the northwestern part of Guangxi Province, and to assess the degree to which SSR-PCR derived relationships are congruent with the allozymes, COI, and AFLPs results. For 19 populations studied, the genetic distance D ranged from 0.00 to 0.73, with an average value 0.22 ± 0.013. The cophenetic correlation coefficient for the Complete-link cluster, Single-link cluster, UPGMA cluster and NJ cluster was 0.932, 0.906, 0.939 and 0.733, respectively. The goodness of fit for these clusters except NJ cluster was very good. These results were very similar to the results of the AFLPs analysis data. The patterns of genetic differentiation are basically consistent with geographic distribution and shell sculptural and shape characters. These patterns thus serve as the basis for subdivision of O. hupensis into four discrete subspecies, O. h. hupensis (Gredler, 1881), O. h. robertsoni (Bartsch, 1946), O. h. tangi (Bartsch, 1936), and O. h. guangxiensis (Liu, 1981).

Abundance, distribution and population structure of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus in a springtime right whale feeding area in the southwestern Gulf of Maine

Mutations in the lipoprotein lipase (LPL) gene, leading to partial or total inactivation of the enzyme, result in a hereditary clinical syndrome called familial LPL deficiency. The French Canadian population, which is primarily and historically located in the province of Québec, has the highest worldwide frequency of LPL-deficient patients. We have analyzed the prevalence, spatial distribution, and genealogy in the Québec population of a LPL gene mutation, M-207 (P207L in conventional notation), which changes the amino acid proline to leucine in position 207 of the LPL protein and inactivates the enzyme. Our results show that M-207 is the most prevalent LPL gene mutation among French Canadians and accounts for the largest proportion of LPL-deficient patients in this population. Genealogical reconstruction of French Canadian LPL-deficient patients point to 16 founders of M-207, all of whom migrated to Québec in the early seventeenth century from the north-western part of France, especially from the region of Perche. Most of the carriers of M-207 are, at present, found in Charlevoix, Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean regions of eastern Québec. On the basis of the number of homozygote M-207 LPL-deficient patients so far identified, we estimate that there are at least 31,000 carriers of this mutation in the province of Québec. This constitutes a large pool of individuals at risk for atherosclerosis and other lipid-related diseases, since LPL deficiency is considered to be a significant contributing factor in the etiology and development of these diseases.

Phylogeography of Cuban Rivulus: Evidence for allopatric speciation and secondary dispersal across a marine barrier

Three taxa of macromycetes, Otidea alutacea, Otidea bufonia and Phylloscypha phyllogena, were first recorded in Tunisia. Occurrences of Humaria hemisphaerica and Peziza vesiculosa were confirmed from the northwestern part of Tunisia more than 100 years after their first records in the northeast and the southwestern parts of the country, respectively. The species reported belong to three families of the Pezizales order (Otideaceae, Pezizaceae and Pyronemataceae). Short descriptions of their distinctive macroscopic and microscopic features, ecology and geographical distribution in Tunisia are given. The locality, the data of collection and field photographs for each species are also presented.