Phylogeny of fireflies (Coleoptera : Lampyridae) inferred from mitochondrial 16S ribosomal DNA, with references to morphological and ethological traits

We sequenced partial mitochondrial 16S ribosomal DNA (16S rDNA) of 18 firefly species from Southwest of China. Combined with homologous sequences previously reported, phylogenetic trees including Japanese, Korean and Chinese species were reconstructed by

A survey on relation of morphological, molecular and phylogenetic structure of zoanthids of the islands located in the Hormoz Strait (Hormoz, Qeshm, Larak, Hengam)

The order Zoantharia (Zoanthids) is one of the most neglected orders of cnidarians in the Persian Gulf. The present study aims to investigate the biodiversity of this order with morphological and molecular examination in the Persian Gulf. For this purpose, 123 colonies of zoanthids with variety of shape and colors have been collected from intertidal and shallow water zone of four islands, i. e. Hengam, Qeshm, Larak and Hormoz. After sampling, morphological characteristics of each specimen were recorded based on in situ photographs. Then DNA was extracted using the cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) method. Both mitochondrial 16S ribosomal DNA (mt 16S rDNA) and cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene fragments were amplified and sequenced. The results of preliminary morphological identification integrated with two mitochondrial markers sequencing demonstrated the presence of five different species in this region; Zoanthus sansibaricus, Palythoa mutuki, Palythoa cf. mutuki, Palythoa tuberculosa and Neozoanthus persicus?. Although at first sight, morphological properties were not successful to delineate zoanthid species, they become reliable criteria to identify and delineate species in field studies after molecular identification.

Characterization of the sleep architecture in two species of fruit bat

Bats (Chiroptera) are the second-most abundant mammalian order in the world, occupying a diverse range of habitats and exhibiting many different life history traits. In order to contribute to this highly underrepresented group we describe the sleep architecture of two species of frugivorous bat, the greater short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx) and the lesser dawn fruit bat (Eonycteris spelaea). Electroencephalogram (EEG) and electromyogram (EMG) data were recorded from multiple individuals (>= 5) by telemetry over a 72-h period in a laboratory setting with light/dark cycles equivalent to those found in the wild. Our results show that over a 24-h period both species spent more time asleep than awake (mean 15 h), less than previous reported for Chiroptera (20 h). C sphinx spent significantly more of its non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) and rapid eye movement sleep (REM) quotas during the light phase, while E. spelaea divided its sleep-wake architecture equally between both light and dark phases. Comparing the sleep patterns of the two species found that C. sphinx had significantly fewer NREM and REM episodes than E. spelaea but each episode lasted for a significantly longer period of time. Potential hypotheses to explain the differences in the sleep architecture of C. sphinx with E. spelaea, including risk of predation and social interaction are discussed. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Molecular and morphological analysis of endangered species Gymnodiptychus integrigymnatus (Teleostei: Cyprinidae)

Gymnodiptychus integrigymnatus is a critically endangered species endemic to the Gaoligongshan Mountains. It was thought to be only distributed in several headwater-streams of the Longchuanjiang River (west slope of the Gaoligongshan Mountains, belonging to the Irrawaddy River drainage). In recent years, dozens of G. integrigymnatus specimens have been collected in some streams on the east slope of the Gaoligongshan Mountains (the Salween drainage). We performed a morphological and genetic analyses (based on cytochrome b and D-loop) of the newly discovered populations of G. integrigymnatus to determine whether the degree of separation of these populations warrants species status. Our analysis from the cytochrome b gene revealed that nine individuals from the Irrawaddy drainage area and seven individuals from the Salween drainage area each have only one unique haplotype. The genetic distance between the two haplotypes is 1.97%. Our phylogenetic analysis revealed that G. integrigymnatus is closely related to highly specialized schizothoracine fishes. Analysis from the mitochondrial control region revealed that G. integrigymnatus has relatively high genetic diversity (pi was 0.00891 and h was 0.8714), and individuals from different river drainages do not share the same haplotypes. The AMOVA results indicated 87.27% genetic variability between the Salween and Irrawaddy populations. Phylogenetic trees show two major geographic groups corresponding to the river systems. We recommend that G. integrigymnatus should be considered as a high priority for protected species status in the Gaoligongshan Mountains National Nature Reserve, and that the area of the Gaoligongshan Mountains National Nature Reserve should be expanded to cover the entire distribution of G. integrigymnatus. Populations of G. integrigymnatus from different river systems should be treated as evolutionarily significant units.

Morphological Phylogeny of the Water Snake Subfamily Homalopsinae (Serpent: Colubridae)

水蛇亚科属于游蛇科,包含10个属。其中7个属为单型属。选取水蛇亚科14个形态学特征进行支序分析,并利用计算机软件Hennig86对水蛇亚科中8个属之间的系统发育关系进行初步探讨,结果显示水蛇亚科分为两支Gerarda和Fordonia两个属构成姊妹群,Cerberus、Erpeton和Homalopsis三个属也构成单系群,与Vorisetal(2002)的分子系统树相同,但Cantoria属的地位则与Vorisetal(2002)的明显不同。

Morphological decomposition in Arabic ASR systems

In recent years, the use of morphological decomposition strategies for Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has become increasingly popular. Systems trained on morphologically decomposed data are often used in combination with standard word-based approaches, and they have been found to yield consistent performance improvements. The present article contributes to this ongoing research endeavour by exploring the use of the 'Morphological Analysis and Disambiguation for Arabic' (MADA) tools for this purpose. System integration issues concerning language modelling and dictionary construction, as well as the estimation of pronunciation probabilities, are discussed. In particular, a novel solution for morpheme-to-word conversion is presented which makes use of an N-gram Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) approach. System performance is investigated within a multi-pass adaptation/combination framework. All the systems described in this paper are evaluated on an Arabic large vocabulary speech recognition task which includes both Broadcast News and Broadcast Conversation test data. It is shown that the use of MADA-based systems, in combination with word-based systems, can reduce the Word Error Rates by up to 8.1 relative. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.