Novel insights into insect mediated polystyrene biodegradation through bacterial genome analyses.

Plastic pollution is a significant environmental challenge of contemporary age. Polystyrene (PS), among the most commonly used plastic polymers worldwide, is highly durable and difficult to degrade. Despite various disposal strategies, PS continues to impact biodiversity, human health, and ecosystems.

The complete mitochondrial genome of the shining leaf chafer (Duftschmidt, 1805) (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae).

The complete mitochondrial genome of the shining leaf chafer was sequenced and is herein described. The mitogenome consists of a circular molecule of 16,805 bp, with an overall AT content of 75.7%.

SmithHunter: a workflow for the identification of candidate smithRNAs and their targets.

Background: SmithRNAs (Small MITochondrial Highly-transcribed RNAs) are a novel class of small RNA molecules that are encoded in the mitochondrial genome and regulate the expression of nuclear transcripts. Initial evidence for their existence came from the Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum, where they have been described and whose activity has been biologically validated through RNA injection experiments. Current evidence on the existence of these RNAs in other species is based only on small RNA sequencing.

De novo assembly and annotation of Popillia japonica's genome with initial clues to its potential as an invasive pest.

Background: The spread of Popillia japonica in non-native areas (USA, Canada, the Azores islands, Italy and Switzerland) poses a significant threat to agriculture and horticulture, as well as to endemic floral biodiversity, entailing that appropriate control measures must be taken to reduce its density and limit its further spread. In this context, the availability of a high quality genomic sequence for the species is liable to foster basic research on the ecology and evolution of the species, as well as on possible biotechnologically-oriented and genetically-informed control measures.

Results: The genomic sequence presented and described here is an improvement with respect to the available draft sequence in terms of completeness and contiguity, and includes structural and functional annotations.

The complete mitochondrial genome of (Hymenoptera: Scelionidae), the candidate for the biological control of (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae).

The samurai wasp (Ashmead, 1904) is a parasitoid hymenopteran that came into the limelight as the natural enemy of . Here, we present the complete sequence of the mitochondrial genome of the CREATJ laboratory strain, naturally recovered in Italy in 2018. The molecule conforms to the typical model of animal mitochondrial genomes.

EZmito: a simple and fast tool for multiple mitogenome analyses.

Complete mitochondrial genome data are frequently applied to address phylogenetic/phylogeographic issues at different taxonomic levels in ecology and evolution. While sample preparation/sequencing is becoming more and more straightforward thanks to dropping costs for next-generation sequencing (NGS), data preparation and visualization remains a manually intensive step that may lead to errors if improperly conducted. We have elaborated, and here introduce, EZmito, a simple and intuitive, freely accessible Web Server aimed at automating some of these tasks.

Re-Evaluating the Internal Phylogenetic Relationships of Collembola by Means of Mitogenome Data.

Collembola are an ancient and early diverging lineage of basal hexapods that occur in virtually all terrestrial habitats on Earth. Phylogenetic relationships between the different orders of Collembola are fiercely debated. Despite a range of studies and the application of both morphological and genetic approaches (singly or in combination) to assess the evolutionary relationships of major lineages in the group, no consensus has been reached.

Evidence for Cryptic Diversity in the "Pan-Antarctic" Springtail and the Description of Two New Species.

The invertebrate terrestrial fauna of Antarctica is being investigated with increasing interest to discover how life interacts with the extreme polar environment and how millions of years of evolution have shaped their biodiversity. Classical taxonomic approaches, complemented by molecular tools, are improving our understanding of the systematic relationships of some species, changing the nomenclature of taxa and challenging the taxonomic status of others. The springtail has previously been described as the only species with a "pan-Antarctic" distribution.

Going Deeper into High and Low Phylogenetic Relationships of Protura.

Proturans are small, wingless, soil-dwelling arthropods, generally associated with the early diversification of Hexapoda. Their bizarre morphology, together with conflicting results of molecular studies, has nevertheless made their classification ambiguous. Furthermore, their limited dispersal capability (due to the primarily absence of wings) and their euedaphic lifestyle have greatly complicated species-level identification.

Assessing the Efficiency of Molecular Markers for the Species Identification of Gregarines Isolated from the Mealworm and Super Worm Midgut.

Protozoa, of the taxon Gregarinasina, are a heterogeneous group of Apicomplexa that includes ~1600 species. They are parasites of a large variety of both marine and terrestrial invertebrates, mainly annelids, arthropods and mollusks. Unlike coccidians and heamosporidians, gregarines have not proven to have a negative effect on human welfare; thus, they have been poorly investigated.

Cryptic Diversity Hidden within the Leafminer Genus (Diptera: Agromyzidae).

Leafminer insects of the genus are small flies whose larvae feed on the internal tissue of some of the most important crop plants for the human diet. Several of these pest species are highly uniform from the morphological point of view, meaning molecular data represents the only reliable taxonomic tool useful to define cryptic boundaries. In this study, both mitochondrial and nuclear molecular markers have been applied to investigate the population genetics of some Tunisian populations of the polyphagous species , one of the most important pest of chickpea cultivars in the whole Mediterranean region.

First record of gregarines (Apicomplexa) in seminal vesicle of insect.

Gregarines (Apicomplexa) are a diverse group of protozoan parasites, which infects gut and other body cavities of invertebrate hosts. In reproductive system of insects, gregarine has been reported only in the accessory glands and spermathecae of females; therefore, this is the first report of a gregarine species in seminal vesicles of insects. Different developmental stages, including sporozoytes, oocysts and trophozoites were described from morphological descriptions using light and electron transmission microscopy.

MtPAN(3): site-class specific amino acid replacement matrices for mitochondrial proteins of Pancrustacea and Collembola.

Phylogenetic analyses of Pancrustacea have generally relied on empirical models of amino acid substitution estimated from large reference datasets and applied to the entire alignment. More recently, following the observation that different sites, or groups of sites, may evolve under different evolutionary constraints, methods have been developed to deal with site or site-class specific models. A set of three matrices has been here developed based on an alignment of complete mitochondrial pancrustacean genomes partitioned using an unsupervised clustering procedure acting over per-site physiochemical properties.

Repeated regions in mitochondrial genomes: distribution, origin and evolutionary significance.

All complete or nearly complete mitochondrial genomes of Metazoa (2819) have been subject to bioinformatic analysis to investigate the distribution and features of repeated and palindromic sequences. Repeats are ubiquitous, with 29.9% of genomes containing at least one and 1.

Internal consistency as a method to assess the quality of dating estimates using multiple markers.

Multiple tools are available to infer time in phylogentic reconstructions and multiple markers/genes are generally used to obtain more solid reconstructions, opening to the issue of which marker performs better in dating. Following the observation that multiple markers, applied to the same group of taxa or even to the same topology, generally produce different time estimates, we suggest two new estimators: DD(jk) to quantify the discordance between two ultrametric dated trees with identical topology and ID(j) to quantify the discordance of one tree with respect to a study-set of trees in terms of their date estimates. Furthermore we suggest a procedure based on a stepwise exclusion algorithm to rank trees from the most to the least consistent with the study-set of trees based on their time estimates.

The mitochondrial genome of Sinentomon erythranum (Arthropoda: Hexapoda: Protura): an example of highly divergent evolution.

Background: The phylogenetic position of the Protura, traditionally considered the most basal hexapod group, is disputed because it has many unique morphological characters compared with other hexapods. Although mitochondrial genome information has been used extensively in phylogenetic studies, such information is not available for the Protura. This has impeded phylogenetic studies on this taxon, as well as the evolution of the arthropod mitochondrial genome.