Angiogenic imbalance in maternal and cord blood is associated with neonatal birth weight and head circumference in pregnancies with major fetal congenital heart defect.

Objectives: To ascertain whether abnormalities in neonatal head circumference and/or body weight are associated with levels of angiogenic/antiangiogenic factors in the maternal and cord blood of pregnancies with a congenital heart defect (CHD) and to assess whether the specific type of CHD influences this association.

Methods: This was a multicenter case-control study of women carrying a fetus with major CHD. Recruitment was carried out between June 2010 and July 2018 at four tertiary care hospitals in Spain.

Smelling in the dark: Phylogenomic insights into the chemosensory system of a subterranean beetle.

The chemosensory system has experienced relevant changes in subterranean animals, facilitating the perception of specific chemical signals critical to survival in their particular environment. However, the genomic basis of chemoreception in cave-dwelling fauna has been largely unexplored. We generated de novo transcriptomes for antennae and body samples of the troglobitic beetle Speonomus longicornis (whose characters suggest an extreme adaptation to a deep subterranean environment) in order to investigate the evolutionary origin and diversification of the chemosensory gene repertoire across coleopterans through a phylogenomic approach.

Geographic variation in acclimation responses of thermal tolerance in South African diving beetles (Dytiscidae: Coleoptera).

Understanding sources of variation in animal thermal limits is critical to forecasting ecological responses to climate change. Here, we estimated upper and lower thermal limits, and their capacity to respond to thermal acclimation, in several species and populations of diving beetles (Dytiscidae) from diverse geographic regions representative of variable climate within South Africa. We also considered ecoregions and latitudinal ranges as potential predictors of thermal limits and the plasticity thereof.

A redefinition of the genus Troglocharinus Reitter, 1908, with description of new species (Coleoptera, Leiodidae, Cholevinae, Leptodirini).

We redefine the genus Troglocharinus Reitter, 1908 based on a phylogenetic analysis with a combination of mitochondrial and molecular data. We recovered the current Speonomites mengeli (Jeannel, 1910) and S. mercedesi (Zariquiey, 1922) as valid, separate species within the Troglocharinus clade, not directly related to Speonomites Jeannel, 1910, a finding corroborated by a detailed study of the male and female genitalia.