For more than 20 years an undescribed species of Prosoeca has been referred to in numerous publications by pollination biologists, evolutionary biologists and ecologists, originally as being part of the Prosoeca peringueyi Lichtwardt, 1920, pollination guild. Ongoing research in these and related fields has necessitated the formal description of this large-bodied, striking new species, with a proboscis 1.5-2.3 x body length (mean proboscis length ± SD 36.25 ± 3.90 mm). Prosoeca marinusi Barraclough sp. nov. is described from a long series from the Hantam National Botanical Garden, Nieuwoudtville, Bokkeveld Plateau, Northern Cape Province, South Africa. The species is a narrow-range endemic and is restricted to the Nieuwoudtville area. Observations on the biology of the species are also presented. Prosoeca marinusi Barraclough sp. nov. is the only or main pollinator of at least four plant species (all regional endemics) in the family Iridaceae that flower from August to September. During August, Lapeirousia oreogena Goldblatt and Babiana vanzyliae L. Bolus are the main host flowers, while later in the spring season, Babiana framesii L. Bolus is most abundant in the Nieuwoudtville area.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4497.3.5 | DOI Listing |
PLoS Genet
January 2025
Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The synaptonemal complex (SC) is a protein-rich structure essential for meiotic recombination and faithful chromosome segregation. Acting like a zipper to paired homologous chromosomes during early prophase I, the complex is a symmetrical structure where central elements are connected on two sides by the transverse filaments to the chromatin-anchoring lateral elements. Despite being found in most major eukaryotic taxa implying a deeply conserved evolutionary origin, several components of the complex exhibit unusually high rates of sequence turnover.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Biol
January 2025
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Virchowweg 12, 10117 Berlin, Germany; Marine Biological Laboratory, 7 Mbl St., Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA; Berliner Hochschule für Technik, Luxemburger Straße 10, 13353 Berlin, Germany. Electronic address:
Cellular processes are remarkably effective across diverse temperature ranges, even with highly conserved proteins. In the context of the microtubule cytoskeleton, which is critically involved in a wide range of cellular activities, this is particularly striking, as tubulin is one of the most conserved proteins while microtubule dynamic instability is highly temperature sensitive. Here, we leverage the diversity of natural tubulin variants from three closely related frog species that live at different temperatures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZookeys
December 2024
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA.
Solenogastres is a group of mollusks with evolutionary and ecological importance. Nevertheless, their diversity is underestimated and knowledge about the distribution of the approximately 300 formally described species is limited. Factors that contribute to this include their small size and frequent misidentification by non-specialists.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Hazard Mater
December 2024
Faculty of Environmental Science and Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650050, PR China; Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, PR China; Key Laboratory of Yunnan Province for Synthesizing Sulfur-containing Fine Chemicals, The Innovation Team for Volatile Organic Compounds Pollutants Control and Resource Utilization of Yunnan Province, The Higher Educational Key Laboratory for Odorous Volatile Organic Compounds Pollutants Control of Yunnan Province, Kunming 650500, PR China. Electronic address:
The catalytic degradation of malodorous sulfur-containing volatile organic compounds (S-VOCs), especially methanethiol (CHSH), faces an enormous challenge in striking a balance between activity and stability. Herein, we develop the time-tandem and spatial-extended strategy for synthesizing t-MoO/meso-SiO nano-reactor-type catalysts and reveal the migration and transformation behaviors of both carbon and sulfur species at the mesoscopic scale to break the catalytic CHSH activity and stability trade-off. The dynamic evolution of active centers from initial oxygen sites and acid sites to sulfur vacancies in MoS during the reaction process as well as the formation of a new dimethyl disulfide (CHSSCH) reaction pathway are identified as the main reason for the catalysts' superior activity and sulfur resistance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Department of Vertebrate Zoology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskiye Gory, 10 GSP-1, Moscow, Russia.
Animal translocations provide striking examples of the human footprint on biodiversity. Combining continental-wide genomic and DNA-barcoding analyses, we reconstructed the historical biogeography of the Asian black-spined toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus), a toxic commensal amphibian that currently threatens two biodiversity hotspots through biological invasions (Wallacea and Madagascar). The results emphasize a complex diversification shaped by speciation and mitochondrial introgression that comprises two distinct species.
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