Abstract Background Amphioxus are non-vertebrate chordates characterized by a slow morphological and molecular evolution. They share the basic chordate body-plan and genome organization with vertebrates but lack their 2R whole-genome duplications and their developmental complexity. For these reasons, amphioxus are frequently used as an outgroup to ...
Heavy metal contamination across the food web is a growing concern because of increasing environmental discharges in industrial zones, atmospheric transport, and deposition and erosion during rainfall events. We examined the transfer pathways of chromium (Cr) and nickel (Ni) through a terrestrial trophic web and investigated the potential for their...
Published in PeerJ
The study of development is critical for revealing the evolution of major vertebrate lineages. Coelacanths have one of the longest evolutionary histories among osteichthyans, but despite access to extant representatives, the onset of their weakly ossified endoskeleton is still poorly understood. Here we present the first palaeohistological and skel...
Published in PeerJ
Background The megalichthyids are one of several clades of extinct tetrapodomorph fish that lived throughout the Devonian–Permian periods. They are advanced “osteolepidid-grade” fishes that lived in freshwater swamp and lake environments, with some taxa growing to very large sizes. They bear cosmine-covered bones and a large premaxillary tusk that ...
Published in Arabian Journal of Geosciences
Siwalik Group or Siwaliks is famous as a stratigraphic unit containing numerous fossiliferous pockets for vertebrate faunas of Neogene ages. The Middle Siwalik Subgroup (Late Miocene–early Pliocene of Neogene) comprises Nagri and Dhok Pathan formations. Tetraconodon magnus and Sivachoerus prior remains are extremely rare in the Siwaliks, and these ...
Published in Environmental Evidence
BackgroundHerbivores modify the structure and function of tundra ecosystems. Understanding their impacts is necessary to assess the responses of these ecosystems to ongoing environmental changes. However, the effects of herbivores on plants and ecosystem structure and function vary across the Arctic. Strong spatial variation in herbivore effects im...
Published in Marine Biodiversity
The Indo-West Pacific emperor shrimp, Zenopontonia rex (Kemp, 1922) from the family Palaemonidae, was hitherto known as a peaceful symbiotic crustacean, feeding on very small organisms or detritus and other organic particles trapped in its varied hosts’ mucus. However, at two occasions in Indonesia, Z. rex was observed capturing and subduing relati...
Bone biomineralization is a complex process in which type I collagen and associated non-collagenous proteins (NCPs), including glycoproteins and proteoglycans, interact closely with inorganic calcium and phosphate ions to control the precipitation of nanosized, non-stoichiometric hydroxyapatite (HAP, idealized stoichiometry Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) within ...
Published in Bone reports
Bone biomineralization is a complex process in which type I collagen and associated non-collagenous proteins (NCPs), including glycoproteins and proteoglycans, interact closely with inorganic calcium and phosphate ions to control the precipitation of nanosized, non-stoichiometric hydroxyapatite (HAP, idealized stoichiometry Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) within ...
Published in Genome Biology
BackgroundModern sequencing technologies should make the assembly of the relatively small mitochondrial genomes an easy undertaking. However, few tools exist that address mitochondrial assembly directly.ResultsAs part of the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) we develop mitoVGP, a fully automated pipeline for similarity-based identification of mitoch...
