Description of Imasa heleensis, gen. nov., sp. nov. (Imasidae, fam. nov.), a Deep-Branching Marine Malawimonad and Possible Key Taxon in Understanding Early Eukaryotic Evolution.

Malawimonadida is a deep-level (arguably "kingdom-scale") lineage of eukaryotes whose phylogenetic affinities are uncertain but of great evolutionary interest, as the group is suspected to branch close to the root of the tree of eukaryotes. Part of the difficulty in placing Malawimonadida phylogenetically is its tiny circumscription: at present, it comprises only two described and one cultured but undescribed species, all of them are freshwater suspension-feeding nanoflagellates. In this study, we cultivated and characterised Imasa heleensis gen.

Gene flow and rapid differentiation characterize a rapid insular radiation in the southwest Pacific (Aves: Zosterops).

As a dispersive lineage expands its distribution across a heterogeneous landscape, it leaves behind allopatric populations with varying degrees of geographic isolation that often differentiate rapidly. In the case of oceanic islands, even narrowly separated populations often differentiate, which seems contrary to the highly dispersive nature of the founding lineage. This pattern of highly dispersive lineages differentiating across narrow sea barriers has perplexed biologists for more than a century.

The exceptional value of intact forest ecosystems.

As the terrestrial human footprint continues to expand, the amount of native forest that is free from significant damaging human activities is in precipitous decline. There is emerging evidence that the remaining intact forest supports an exceptional confluence of globally significant environmental values relative to degraded forests, including imperilled biodiversity, carbon sequestration and storage, water provision, indigenous culture and the maintenance of human health. Here we argue that maintaining and, where possible, restoring the integrity of dwindling intact forests is an urgent priority for current global efforts to halt the ongoing biodiversity crisis, slow rapid climate change and achieve sustainability goals.

Biocultural approaches to well-being and sustainability indicators across scales.

Monitoring and evaluation are central to ensuring that innovative, multi-scale, and interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability are effective. The development of relevant indicators for local sustainable management outcomes, and the ability to link these to broader national and international policy targets, are key challenges for resource managers, policymakers, and scientists. Sets of indicators that capture both ecological and social-cultural factors, and the feedbacks between them, can underpin cross-scale linkages that help bridge local and global scale initiatives to increase resilience of both humans and ecosystems.

Oligotrophic lagoons of the South Pacific Ocean are home to a surprising number of novel eukaryotic microorganisms.

The diversity of microbial eukaryotes was surveyed by environmental sequencing from tropical lagoon sites of the South Pacific, collected through the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)'s Explore21 expedition to the Solomon Islands in September 2013. The sampled lagoons presented low nutrient concentrations typical of oligotrophic waters, but contained levels of chlorophyll a, a proxy for phytoplankton biomass, characteristic of meso- to eutrophic waters. Two 18S rDNA hypervariable sites, the V4 and V8-V9 regions, were amplified from the total of eight lagoon samples and sequenced on the MiSeq system.

Rapid diversification and secondary sympatry in Australo-Pacific kingfishers (Aves: Alcedinidae: Todiramphus).

Todiramphus chloris is the most widely distributed of the Pacific's 'great speciators'. Its 50 subspecies constitute a species complex that is distributed over 16 000 km from the Red Sea to Polynesia. We present, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive molecular phylogeny of this enigmatic radiation of kingfishers.

Phylogeny of the monarch flycatchers reveals extensive paraphyly and novel relationships within a major Australo-Pacific radiation.

Monarch flycatchers are a major component of Australo-Pacific and Wallacean avifaunas. To date, the family has received incomplete attention by molecular systematists who focused on subclades with minimal character and/or taxon sampling. As a result, Monarchidae taxonomy is still out-of-date, and biogeographic reconstructions have been based on poorly-resolved phylogenies, limiting their interpretation.

Difference in plumage color used in species recognition between incipient species is linked to a single amino acid substitution in the melanocortin-1 receptor.

Many studies demonstrate that differences in mating signals are used by incipient species in recognizing potential mates or sexual competitors (i.e., species recognition).

Explosive Pleistocene diversification and hemispheric expansion of a "great speciator".

Factors that influence speciation rates among groups of organisms are integral to deciphering macroevolutionary processes; however, they remain poorly understood. Here, we use molecular phylogenetic data and divergence time estimates to reconstruct the pattern and tempo of speciation within a widespread and homogeneous bird family (white-eyes, Zosteropidae) that contains an archetypal "great speciator." Our analyses show that the majority of this species-rich family constitutes a clade that arose within the last 2 million years, yielding a per-lineage diversification rate among the highest reported for vertebrates (1.

Plumage and song differences mediate species recognition between incipient flycatcher species of the Solomon Islands.

Changes in mating signals among populations contribute to species formation. Often these signals involve a suite of display traits of different sensory modalities ("multimodal signals"); however, few studies have tested the consequences of multimodal signal divergence with most focusing on only a single divergent signal or suite of signals of the same sensory modality. Populations of the chestnut-bellied flycatcher Monarcha castaneiventris vary in song and plumage color across the Solomon Islands.

Molecular phylogenetics of monarch flycatchers (genus Monarcha) with emphasis on Solomon Island endemics.

Systematic relationships among monarch flycatchers (genus Monarcha) are poorly understood despite dramatic patterns of morphological differentiation that have long attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists. With sequence data from the mitochondrial ND2 gene and Control Region, we produced a phylogenetic hypothesis for evolutionary relationships within Monarcha and among the biogeographically complex Solomon Island endemics. Outgroup analyses contradicted monophyly of the genus by imbedding a representative of the genus Clytorhynchus within one of two major clades recovered within Monarcha.

Single origin of a pan-Pacific bird group and upstream colonization of Australasia.

Oceanic islands have long served as natural laboratories for understanding the diversification of life. In particular, the many thousands of islands spanning the tropical Pacific support an unparalleled array of terrestrial communities whose patterns of diversity contributed fundamental insights to the development of classical speciation and biogeographic theory. Much of this work is founded on an assumption derived from traditional taxonomic approaches, namely that faunas on these widely separated archipelagos stem from a simple one-way, downstream flow of colonists from continents to islands.