The evolutionary history of the relict scorpion family Iuridae of the eastern Mediterranean.

Iuridae is a family of scorpions that exhibits a highly complex biogeographic and taxonomic history. Iuridae taxa are mainly found in Turkey and Greece, whereas a single species is found in northern Iraq. Several taxonomic revisions have been conducted on this family that initially comprised two genera.

Three new species of Olivierus (Scorpiones: Buthidae) from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Following Graham et al. (2019), the recently described desert species Olivierus gorelovi (Fet et al., 2018) from Central Asia is herein restricted to Turkmenistan and southern Uzbekistan.

Lynn Margulis and Boris Kozo-Polyansky: How the Symbiogenesis was translated from Russian.

This contribution details the complex history of the early work by Boris Kozo-Polyansky (1924) that became available in English translation 86 years after it was published in Russian. The great American naturalist Lynn Margulis-whose serial endosymbiosis theory was presciently predated by Kozo-Polyansky by four decades-was instrumental in organizing this resurrection and 'horizontal transfer' of knowledge, forgotten by that time even in Russia.

Genetic diversity among eight Dendrolimus species in Eurasia (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae) inferred from mitochondrial COI and COII, and nuclear ITS2 markers.

Background: Moths of genus Dendrolimus (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae) are among the major pests of coniferous forests worldwide. Taxonomy and nomenclature of this genus are not entirely established, and there are many species with a controversial taxonomic position. We present a comparative evolutionary analysis of the most economically important Dendrolimus species in Eurasia.

Permian scorpions from the Petrified Forest of Chemnitz, Germany.

Background: Paleozoic scorpions (Arachnida: Scorpiones) have been widely documented from the Carboniferous Period; which hosts a remarkable assemblage of more than sixty species including both putative stem- and crown-group fossils. By contrast the succeeding Permian Period is almost completely devoid of records, which are currently restricted to a trace fossil from the early Permian of New Mexico, USA and some limb fragments from the late Permian of the Vologda Region, Russia.

Results: ?Opsieobuthus tungeri sp.

Distribution and diversity of Nosema bombi (Microsporidia: Nosematidae) in the natural populations of bumblebees (Bombus spp.) from West Siberia.

Nosema bombi is an obligate intracellular parasite of bumblebees (Hymenoptera, Bombus spp.), which has significant negative effect on individual bumblebees, colony fitness, and development. Recently, several new genetic variants of N.

Two new species of Euscorpius (Scorpiones: Euscorpiidae) from Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece.

Two new species of Euscorpius Thorell, 1876 (subgenus Euscorpius s.str.) (Scorpiones: Euscorpiidae) are described based on morphology and the COI DNA barcoding marker: E.

Further observations on scorpion genera Hadrurus and Hoffmannihadrurus (Scorpiones, Caraboctonidae).

Multiple populations of Hadrurus pinteri from Baja California Sur, Mexico have been examined. It is demonstrated that the southern populations of this species have a larger number of accessory trichobothria (neobothriotaxy) than the northern populations, numbers exceeding the maximum currently recorded for the genus. Examination of carapace and chela coloration and its patterns show a close affinity between Hadrurus pinteri and the dark phase of Hadrurus concolorous.

Non-LTR retrotransposons in fungi.

Non-long terminal repeat (non-LTR) retrotransposons have contributed to shaping the structure and function of genomes. Fungi have small genomes, usually with limited amounts of repetitive DNA. In silico approach has been used to survey the non-LTR elements in 57 fungal genomes.

CR1 clade of non-LTR retrotransposons from Maculinea butterflies (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae): evidence for recent horizontal transmission.

Background: Non-long terminal repeat (non-LTR) retrotransposons are mobile genetic elements that propagate themselves by reverse transcription of an RNA intermediate. Non-LTR retrotransposons are known to evolve mainly via vertical transmission and random loss. Horizontal transmission is believed to be a very rare event in non-LTR retrotransposons.

The effect of model choice on phylogenetic inference using mitochondrial sequence data: lessons from the scorpions.

Chelicerates are a diverse group of arthropods, with around 65,000 described species occupying a wide range of habitats. Many phylogenies describing the relationships between the various chelicerate orders have been proposed. While some relationships are widely accepted, others remain contentious.

Divergent non-LTR retrotransposon lineages from the genomes of scorpions (Arachnida: Scorpiones).

We screened across the taxonomic diversity of order Scorpiones (22 species belonging to 21 genera and 10 families) for the presence of seven different clades of non-LTR retrotransposons in their genomes using PCR with newly designed clade-specific consensus-degenerate hybrid oligonucleotide primers. Scorpion genomes were found to contain four known non-LTR retrotransposon clades: R1, I, Jockey, and CR1. In total, 35 fragments of reverse transcriptase genes of new elements from 22 scorpion species were obtained and analyzed for three clades, Jockey, I, and CR1.

Evidence for recombination in scorpion mitochondrial DNA (Scorpiones: Buthidae).

There has been very little undisputed evidence for recombination in animal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) provided so far. Previous unpublished results suggestive of mtDNA recombination in the scorpion family Buthidae, together with cytological evidence for a unique mechanism of mitochondrial fusion in that family, prompted us to investigate this group in more details. First, we sequenced the complete mtDNA genome of Mesobuthus gibbosus, and chose two genes opposing each other (16S and coxI).