Whiteflies, Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) are major insect pests that affect many crops such as cassava, tomato, beans, cotton, cucurbits, potato, sweet potato, and ornamental crops. Bemisia tabaci transmits viral diseases, namely cassava mosaic and cassava brown streak diseases, which are the main constraints to cassava production, causing huge losses to many small-scale farmers. The aim of this ...

Biting midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera, Ceratopogonidae) are vectors of several viruses of veterinary relevance, and they can cause insect bite hypersensitivity. As the morphological identification of these tiny insects is a difficult task in many cases, alternative approaches are expedient. With the aim to develop real-time PCRs, we determined partial mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I...

Exploring marine sponges from shallow tropical reefs of the Caribbean and western Central Pacific, as part of large biodiversity (Moorea Biocode Project) and evolutionary (Porifera Tree of Life) research projects, we encountered 13 skeleton-less specimens, initially divided in two morphological groups, which had patterns of coloration and oxidation typical of taxa of the order Verongida (Demosp...

Mitochondria are semi-autonomous organelles of eukaryotic cells. They perform crucial functions such as generating most of the cellular energy through the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system and some other metabolic processes. In addition, mitochondria are involved in regulation of cell death and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. Also, mitochondria play important roles in carcinog...

Polyphyly of the genus Delavalia Brady, 1869 has been postulated previously based on intuitive methods, but no phylogenetic study was ever conducted. A chance discovery of seven sympatric species of this genus in the highly industrialized Gwangyang Bay in South Korea, in addition to one species each from the closely related genera Stenhelia Boeck, 1865 and Onychostenhelia Itô, 1979, prompted a ...

DNA metabarcoding is a robust method for environmental impact assessments of freshwater ecosystems that enables the simultaneous multi-species identification complex mixed community samples from different origins using extracellular and total genomic DNA. The development evaluation protocols haplotype level resolution require attention, specifically basic population genetic applications, i.e., ...