BOTTON, M. L.*; LOVELAND, R. E.: The Diminishing Abundance of Horseshoe Crabs in Delaware Bay: Potential Impacts on Migrant Shorebirds Migratory shorebirds on staging areas typically concentrate their feeding on unusually abundant prey species, enabling them to rapidly increase mass prior to the next leg of their migration. Delaware Bay is the most important staging […]

Quinn, N.J.: Reef Check – Papua New Guinea’s participation in a global assessment of human effects on coral reefs Villagers in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have used coral reefs for thousands of years. Recent human development in PNG has altered the use of coral reefs. Today more reefs are fished commercially, used by tourist divers, […]

Green, A.K.*; Ward, D.: Dispersal of hemiparasitic mistletoe (Plicosepalus acaciae) by the Yellow-vented Bulbul (Pycnonoyus xanthopygos) among Acacia trees in Israel Infection by the mistletoe (Plicosepalus acaciae) may exacerbate the already low and infrequent recruitment of Acacia raddiana, A. tortilis, and A. gerrardii negevensis (70% of foraging attempts) only when fruits were abundant in the […]

SNYDER, M.J.*; ROSSI, S.: Alterations in Stress Proteins Correlate with Space Competition in Sessile Marine Invertebrates. Competition for space among sessile marine invertebrates, following larval settlement, can involve aggressive behaviors and the production of biologically active substances. These strategies have been widely studied in benthic cnidarians, for which the destructive nature of such responses to […]

Parham, J.F.*; Simison, W.B.; Kozak, K.H.; Feldman, C.R.: A reassessment of some recently described Chinese turtles Over the past 16 years, herpetologists described 13 new species of turtles. Most of these are based on specimens purchased from the pet trade. Herpetologists collected only two of these species, the rest have not been observed in the […]

MART� MUS, M.*; BERGSTR�M, J.: The skeleto-muscular system of hyolithids Hyolithids are Palaeozoic bilaterians with a calcareous exoskeleton consisting of a conical conch, an operculum and a pair of long, curved “spines” called helens. They belong to the group Hyolitha, which includes other operculate, conical forms lacking helens. Hyoliths were protostomes likely related both with […]

GIRIBET, G: The big picture of metazoan evolution: a combined approach In this talk I will discuss some of the most debated metazoan relationships, and will present results of a combined analysis of morphology and multiple molecular loci, including sequence data of 350 species representing all metazoan phyla.

MALLATT, Jon M; CHEN , Jun-Yuan: The Cambrian fossil Haikouella and the origin of the craniates Haikouella lanceolatum is a fossil deuterstome that is known from many well-preserved specimens from the Early Cambrian of China (Nature 402:518). It has been interpreted as craniate-like or else as resembling the basal deuterostome, but here we analyze its […]

JACOBS, David K: Operational and biological factors bias molecular rate calculation leading to spurious early divergence dates for the metazoan radiation. Many have employed an assumption of a molecular clocks combined with statistical methods to extrapolate from known tie points in the fossil record to infer divergence times. These methods applied to amino acid sequence […]

PASSAMANECK, Y.J.*; HALANYCH, K.M.: Molluscan phylogenetics inferred from 28S rDNA and 18S rDNA sequences. The Mollusca are recognized as one of the most diverse and specious of metazoan phyla. The relationships between the major groups within this clade have been a subject of ongoing debate. In particular, the origins of aplachophorans and polyplachophorans, which are […]