Sabah, a Malaysian state at the north-eastern tip of Borneo, is situated in one of the Earth's biodiversity hotspots yet its freshwater gastropod diversity remains poorly known. An annotated checklist of the freshwater gastropods is presented, based on specimens deposited in the BORNEENSIS collection of the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia. ...

The periwinkle Littorina littorea exhibits morphological variation among southern New England populations that appear to be genetically continuous. In dense populations, individuals have relatively elongate shells in comparison to individuals in sparse populations, which have rounder, globose shells. We experimentally demonstrate that this shell variation is a function of snail growth rate. Rap...

Seasonality impacts species distributions through changes of the environmental conditions that affect the presence of individuals at a given place. Although the dynamics of cave microclimates are well known, only a few studies have evaluated the effects of such dynamics on non-strictly cave species. Here we assessed if species exploiting subterranean environments show changes in habitat occupat...

Six species of Gastrocopta have been identified from the Pilbara region, Western Australia, by means of comparative analyses of shell and mtDNA variation. Three of these species, Gastrocopta hedleyi, Gastrocopta larapinta and Gastrocopta servilis, have been recorded in the Pilbara for the first time. Gastrocopta sp. CW1 is probably new to science and might be endemic to the region. By contrast,...

Many marine invertebrates have planktonic larvae with cilia used for both propulsion and capturing of food particles. Hence, changes in ciliary activity have implications for larval nutrition and ability to navigate the water column, which in turn affect survival and dispersal. Using high-speed high-resolution microvideography, we examined the relationship between swimming speed, velar arrangem...

The present work reports on the presence and distribution of an alien and invasive gastropod, Ferrissia fragilis (Tryon, 1863), in freshwater systems of the oceanic islands of the Azores archipelago. First registered in 2007, F. fragilis was found in S. Miguel, Santa Maria, and Graciosa. This study increases to 6 the number of freshwater species of mollusks occurring in the Azores. Remarks are ...

Modern human dispersal into Europe is thought to have occurred with the start of the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000-40,000 y ago. The Levantine corridor hypothesis suggests that modern humans from Africa spread into Europe via the Levant. Ksâr 'Akil (Lebanon), with its deeply stratified Initial (IUP) and Early (EUP) Upper Paleolithic sequence containing modern human remains, has played an impo...

We investigated the emergence of third-stage larvae (L3) of Umingmakstrongylus pallikuukensis from the slugs Deroceras laeve, Deroceras reticulatum, and the snail Catinella sp. in the laboratory and from D. laeve on the tundra. Third-stage larvae emerged from 8 of 8 D. laeve and 8 of 8 D. reticulatum housed at 20 C in darkness and from 9 of 10 D. laeve and 5 of 5 Catinella sp. housed at 21 C wi...