Spiders are efficient hunters that prey on a variety of invertebrates and vertebrates. They rely strategies varying from the use toughened silk to venom. The genus Hersilia Audouin 1826 is called two-tailed spiders due its characteristic long spinnerets. It distributed across Afrotropical, Oriental Australasian realms. Currently there five species known occur in India: savignyi Lucas 1836, H. s...

Members of serpin superfamily are involved in wide array of cellular processes to control proteolytic activities of eukaryotic organisms. Vertebrate serpins are extensively studied and reported to be classified into six groups (V1-V6) based on gene structures. However, there is no study conducted for serpins in urochordates (the closest living invertebrates related to vertebrates) to date. To u...

Members of the oyster family Chamidae are common in Indo-Pacific subtidal habitats, adhering to the sides of rocks, where they are usually well hidden by a fine growth of algae that extends equally over the rocks and the oyster shells (Purchon 1968). Chamidae species are known for their efficient filter-feeding abilities and thus may compete with other benthic filter-feeders for both space and ...

The genomes of many marine invertebrates, including the purple sea urchin and the solitary ascidians Ciona intestinalis and Ciona savignyi, show exceptionally high levels of heterozygosity, implying that these populations are highly polymorphic. Analysis of the C. savignyi genome found little evidence to support an elevated mutation rate, but rather points to a large population size contributin...

The urochordate Ciona savignyi is an emerging model organism for the study of chordate evolution, development, and gene regulation. The extreme level of polymorphism in its population has inspired novel approaches in genome assembly, which we here continue to develop. Specifically, we present the reconstruction of all of C. savignyi's chromosomes via the development of a comprehensive genetic m...