North Atlantic deep-sea benthic biodiversity unveiled through sponge natural sampler DNA.

The deep-sea remains the biggest challenge to biodiversity exploration, and anthropogenic disturbances extend well into this realm, calling for urgent management strategies. One of the most diverse, productive, and vulnerable ecosystems in the deep sea are sponge grounds. Currently, environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is revolutionising the field of biodiversity monitoring, yet complex deep-sea benthic ecosystems remain challenging to assess even with these novel technologies.

Unveiling biogeographical patterns in the worldwide distributed Ceratitis capitata (medfly) using population genomics and microbiome composition.

Invasive species are among the most important, growing threats to food security and agricultural systems. The Mediterranean medfly, Ceratitis capitata, is one of the most damaging representatives of a group of rapidly expanding species in the family Tephritidae, due to their wide host range and high invasiveness potential. Here, we used restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) to investigate the population genomic structure and phylogeographical history of medflies collected from six sampling sites, including Africa (South Africa), the Mediterranean (Spain, Greece), Latin America (Guatemala, Brazil) and Australia.

Environmental DNA persistence and fish detection in captive sponges.

Large and hyperdiverse marine ecosystems pose significant challenges to biodiversity monitoring. While environmental DNA (eDNA) promises to meet many of these challenges, recent studies suggested that sponges, as "natural samplers" of eDNA, could further streamline the workflow for detecting marine vertebrates. However, beyond pilot studies demonstrating the ability of sponges to capture eDNA, little is known about the dynamics of eDNA particles in sponge tissue, and the effectiveness of the latter compared to water samples.

Metabarcoding of insect-associated fungal communities: a comparison of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large-subunit (LSU) rRNA markers.

Full taxonomic characterisation of fungal communities is necessary for establishing ecological associations and early detection of pathogens and invasive species. Complex communities of fungi are regularly characterised by metabarcoding using the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) and the Large-Subunit (LSU) gene of the rRNA locus, but reliance on a single short sequence fragment limits the confidence of identification. Here we link metabarcoding from the ITS2 and LSU D1-D2 regions to characterise fungal communities associated with bark beetles (Scolytinae), the likely vectors of several tree pathogens.

Population genetics and migration pathways of the Mediterranean fruit fly inferred with coalescent methods.

Background: Invasive species are a growing threat to food biosecurity and cause significant economic losses in agricultural systems. Despite their damaging effect, they are attractive models for the study of evolution and adaptation in newly colonised environments. The Mediterranean fruit fly, , as a member of the family Tephritidae, is one of the most studied invasive species feeding on many fruit crops in the tropics and subtropics worldwide.

Heritability of hsp70 expression in the beetle Tenebrio molitor: Ontogenetic and environmental effects.

Ectotherms constitute the vast majority of terrestrial biodiversity and are especially likely to be vulnerable to climate warming because their basic physiological functions such as locomotion, growth, and reproduction are strongly influenced by environmental temperature. An integrated view about the effects of global warming will be reached not just establishing how the increase in mean temperature impacts the natural populations but also establishing the effects of the increase in temperature variance. One of the molecular responses that are activated in a cell under a temperature stress is the heat shock protein response (HSP).

Variation in thermal sensitivity and thermal tolerances in an invasive species across a climatic gradient: lessons from the land snail Cornu aspersum.

The ability of organisms to perform at different temperatures could be described by a continuous nonlinear reaction norm (i.e., thermal performance curve, TPC), in which the phenotypic trait value varies as a function of temperature.