Drawing the Excalibur bug from the stone: adding credibility to the double-edged sword hypothesis of coreid evolution (Hemiptera, Coreidae).

A new genus and species of exaggerated antennae Coreidae is described from Myanmar amber of the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian stage). appears related to another Cretaceous coreid with exaggerated antennae, Du & Chen, 2021, but can be differentiated by the fourth antennal segment which is short and paddle-like, the undulating shape of the pronotum and mesonotum, and the shorter and thicker legs. The new coreid, with elaborately formed antennae and simple hind legs instead of the typical extant coreid morphology with simple antennae and elaborately formed hind legs, begs the question: why were the elaborate features of the antennae lost in favor of ornate hind legs? Features that are large and showy are at higher risk of being attacked by predators or stuck in a poor molt and subjected to autotomy and are therefore lost at a higher rate than simple appendages.

Disentangling interactions among mercury, immunity and infection in a Neotropical bat community.

1. Contaminants such as mercury are pervasive and can have immunosuppressive effects on wildlife. Impaired immunity could be important for forecasting pathogen spillover, as many land-use changes that generate mercury contamination also bring wildlife into close contact with humans and domestic animals.

, the hidden leaf insects - descriptions of a new leaf insect genus and thirteen species from the former celebicum species group (Phasmatodea, Phylliidae).

While the leaf insects (Phylliidae) are a well-supported group within Phasmatodea, the genus Illiger, 1798 has repeatedly been recovered as paraphyletic. Here, the Phyllium (Phyllium) celebicum species group is reviewed and its distinctiveness from the remaining Phylliini genera and subgenera in a phylogenetic context based on morphological review and a phylogenetic analysis of three genes (nuclear gene 28S and mitochondrial genes COI and 16S) from most known and multiple undescribed species is shown. A new genus, , is erected to partially accommodate the former members of the species group.

Four new species of Lacordaire (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae, Lamiinae) from Mexico with an identification key for the genus.

Since the description of its eight species, the Mesoamerican genus Lacordaire (Cerambycidae, Lamiinae, Apomecynini) has not been comprehensively studied, with only a few distributional records published in recent years. In this work, four new species of are described from Chiapas, Mexico: from the municipality of Escuintla, from San Cristobal, from Trinitaria, and from Jaltenango. An updated taxonomic key and illustrations of the new species are also provided.

Out of India, thrice: diversification of Asian forest scorpions reveals three colonizations of Southeast Asia.

The 'Out of India' hypothesis is often invoked to explain patterns of distribution among Southeast Asian taxa. According to this hypothesis, Southeast Asian taxa originated in Gondwana, diverged from their Gondwanan relatives when the Indian subcontinent rifted from Gondwana in the Late Jurassic, and colonized Southeast Asia when it collided with Eurasia in the early Cenozoic. A growing body of evidence suggests these events were far more complex than previously understood, however.

Lost lovers linked at long last: elusive female mystery solved after a century of being placed in a different genus (Phasmatodea, Phylliidae).

After successful laboratory rearing of both males and females from a single clutch of eggs, the genus Redtenbacher, 1906 (described only from males) and the species group within Phyllium (Pulchriphyllium) Griffini, 1898 (described only from females) are found to be the opposite sexes of the same genus. This rearing observation finally elucidates the relationship of these two small body sized leaf insect groups which, for more than a century, have never been linked before. This paper synonymizes the species group with Redtenbacher, 1906 in order to create a singular and clearly defined taxonomic group.

An Investigation of How Environmental Science Textbooks Link Human Environmental Impact to Ecology and Daily Life.

Making direct connections between humanity and the environment is of ever-increasing importance in the context of today's environmental crisis. We used qualitative content analysis of precollege- and college-level introductory environmental science textbook case studies to study how they portray humanity's link to the environment. We assessed case studies for how specific and data rich they are and for how they link together daily life, human impact, and ecological interactions.

CO reduction driven by a pH gradient.

All life on Earth is built of organic molecules, so the primordial sources of reduced carbon remain a major open question in studies of the origin of life. A variant of the alkaline-hydrothermal-vent theory for life's emergence suggests that organics could have been produced by the reduction of CO via H oxidation, facilitated by geologically sustained pH gradients. The process would be an abiotic analog-and proposed evolutionary predecessor-of the Wood-Ljungdahl acetyl-CoA pathway of modern archaea and bacteria.

A tiny ornithodiran archosaur from the Triassic of Madagascar and the role of miniaturization in dinosaur and pterosaur ancestry.

Early members of the dinosaur-pterosaur clade Ornithodira are very rare in the fossil record, obscuring our understanding of the origins of this important group. Here, we describe an early ornithodiran ( gen. et sp.

subgen. nov., the dancing leaf insects from Australia and Papua New Guinea with description of a new species (Phasmatodea, Phylliidae).

A new subgenus, , is described within Illiger, 1798 to accommodate three leaf insect species. One of the species included is newly described herein as Phyllium (Walaphyllium) lelantos from Papua New Guinea. This new subgenus of can be diagnosed by a following combination of features.

Cranial endocast of the stem lagomorph and brain structure of basal Euarchontoglires.

Early lagomorphs are central to our understanding of how the brain evolved in Glires (rodents, lagomorphs and their kin) from basal members of Euarchontoglires (Glires + Euarchonta, the latter grouping primates, treeshrews, and colugos). Here, we report the first virtual endocast of the fossil lagomorph , from the Orella Member of the Brule Formation, early Oligocene, Nebraska, USA. The specimen represents one of the oldest nearly complete lagomorph skulls known.

Morphological Characters Can Strongly Influence Early Animal Relationships Inferred from Phylogenomic Data Sets.

There are considerable phylogenetic incongruencies between morphological and phylogenomic data for the deep evolution of animals. This has contributed to a heated debate over the earliest-branching lineage of the animal kingdom: the sister to all other Metazoa (SOM). Here, we use published phylogenomic data sets ($\sim $45,000-400,000 characters in size with $\sim $15-100 taxa) that focus on early metazoan phylogeny to evaluate the impact of incorporating morphological data sets ($\sim $15-275 characters).

Ecological and evolutionary drivers of haemoplasma infection and bacterial genotype sharing in a Neotropical bat community.

Most emerging pathogens can infect multiple species, underlining the importance of understanding the ecological and evolutionary factors that allow some hosts to harbour greater infection prevalence and share pathogens with other species. However, our understanding of pathogen jumps is based primarily around viruses, despite bacteria accounting for the greatest proportion of zoonoses. Because bacterial pathogens in bats (order Chiroptera) can have conservation and human health consequences, studies that examine the ecological and evolutionary drivers of bacterial prevalence and barriers to pathogen sharing are crucially needed.

Notes on the leaf insects of the genus of Sumatra and Java, Indonesia, including the description of two new species with purple coxae (Phasmatodea, Phylliidae).

Within the last two years, the leaf insects of the genus of both the islands of Java and Sumatra have been reviewed extensively based on morphological observations. However, cryptic species which cannot be differentiated morphologically may be present among the various populations. Since it has frequently been demonstrated that analyses based on molecular data can bring clarity in such cases, we conducted a phylogenetic analysis based on three genes (nuclear gene 28S and mitochondrial genes COI and 16S) from the species of these islands.

Palaeophysiology of pH regulation in tetrapods.

The involvement of mineralized tissues in acid-base homeostasis was likely important in the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates. Extant reptiles encounter hypercapnia when submerged in water, but early tetrapods may have experienced hypercapnia on land due to their inefficient mode of lung ventilation (likely buccal pumping, as in extant amphibians). Extant amphibians rely on cutaneous carbon dioxide elimination on land, but early tetrapods were considerably larger forms, with an unfavourable surface area to volume ratio for such activity, and evidence of a thick integument.

Trabecular architecture of the capitate and third metacarpal through ontogeny in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla).

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) both knuckle-walk in adulthood but are known to develop their locomotor strategies differently. Using dentally defined age-groups of both Pan and Gorilla and behavioral data from the literature, this study presents an internal trabecular bone approach to better understand the morphological ontogeny of knuckle-walking in these taxa. Capitate and third metacarpal bones were scanned by μCT at 23-43 μm resolution with scaled volumes of interest placed centrally within the head of the capitate and base of the third metacarpal.

Cranial endocast of a stem platyrrhine primate and ancestral brain conditions in anthropoids.

Understanding of ancestral conditions for anthropoids has been hampered by the paucity of well-preserved early fossils. Here, we provide an unprecedented view of the cerebral morphology of the 20-million-year-old , the best-preserved early diverging platyrrhine known, obtained via high-resolution CT scanning and 3D digital reconstruction. These analyses are crucial for reconstructing ancestral brain conditions in platyrrhines and anthropoids given the early diverging position of Although small, the brain of is not lissencephalic and presents at least seven pairs of sulci on its endocast.

Evolutionary lability of host associations promotes phylogenetic overdispersion of co-infecting blood parasites.

Co-infections with multiple parasite taxa are ubiquitous in nature and have the potential to impact the co-evolutionary dynamics between host and parasite, though patterns of phylogenetic community structure of co-infecting parasites and the processes that generate these patterns have rarely been studied across diverse host-parasite communities. Here, we tested for the roles of host and parasite evolutionary history as well as environmental variables as drivers of phylogenetic community structure among co-infecting haemosporidian (malaria) parasites and their avian hosts in the North American boreal forest, a region characterized by an extraordinarily high blood parasite co-infection rate. We used multiple methods to identify non-random patterns of co-infection among parasite species and determined whether these patterns were influenced more by co-evolutionary host associations or environmental variables.

A Fly on the Cave Wall: Parasite Genetics Reveal Fine-scale Dispersal Patterns of Bats.

Dispersal influences the evolution and adaptation of organisms, but it can be difficult to detect. Host-specific parasites provide information about the dispersal of their hosts and may be valuable for examining host dispersal that does not result in gene flow or that has low signals of gene flow. We examined the population connectivity of the buffy flower bat, (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae), and its associated obligate ectoparasite, (Diptera: Streblidae), across a narrow oceanic channel in The Bahamas that has previously been implicated as a barrier to dispersal in bats.

Estimating Flight Style of Early Eocene Stem Palaeognath Bird Calciavis grandei (Lithornithidae).

Lithornithids are volant stem palaeognaths from the Paleocene-Eocene. Except for these taxa and the extant neotropical tinamous, all other known extinct and extant palaeognaths are flightless. Investigation of properties of the lithornithid wing and its implications for inference of flight style informs understood locomotor diversity within Palaeognathae and may have implications for estimation of ancestral traits in the clade.

Habitat fragmentation is associated with dietary shifts and microbiota variability in common vampire bats.

Host ecological factors and external environmental factors are known to influence the structure of gut microbial communities, but few studies have examined the impacts of environmental changes on microbiotas in free-ranging animals. Rapid land-use change has the potential to shift gut microbial communities in wildlife through exposure to novel bacteria and/or by changing the availability or quality of local food resources. The consequences of such changes to host health and fitness remain unknown and may have important implications for pathogen spillover between humans and wildlife.

Why is Amazonia a 'source' of biodiversity? Climate-mediated dispersal and synchronous speciation across the Andes in an avian group (Tityrinae).

Amazonia is a 'source' of biodiversity for other Neotropical ecosystems, but which conditions trigger in situ speciation and emigration is contentious. Three hypotheses for how communities have assembled include (1) a stochastic model wherein chance dispersal events lead to gradual emigration and species accumulation, (2) diversity-dependence wherein successful dispersal events decline through time due to ecological limits, and (3) barrier displacement wherein environmental change facilitates dispersal to other biomes via transient habitat corridors. We sequenced thousands of molecular markers for the Neotropical Tityrinae (Aves) and applied a novel filtering protocol to identify loci with high utility for dated phylogenomics.

Deeply conserved susceptibility in a multi-host, multi-parasite system.

Variation in susceptibility is ubiquitous in multi-host, multi-parasite assemblages, and can have profound implications for ecology and evolution in these systems. The extent to which susceptibility to parasites is phylogenetically conserved among hosts can be revealed by analysing diverse regional communities. We screened for haemosporidian parasites in 3983 birds representing 40 families and 523 species, spanning ~ 4500 m elevation in the tropical Andes.

Two new species of the sun-spider genus Gaucha from Argentina and Brazil (Solifugae, Mummuciidae).

Two new species in the South American sun-spider family Mummuciidae are herein described. Gaucha ramirezi sp. nov.