Global climate change poses one of the greatest threats to species persistence. Most analyses of the potential biological impacts have focused on changes in mean temperature, but changes in thermal variance will also impact organisms and populations. We assessed the effects of acclimation to daily variance of temperature on dispersal and exploratory behavior in the terrestrial isopod Porcellio ...

Paguristione uniuropodus gen. n., sp. n. infests Paguristes sp. in the East China Sea. Paguristione gen. n. differs from the closely related genera Pseudione and Pagurion by its females having indistinct lateral plates on the last two pleomeres and its male with a long tapering pleon of six pleomeres, lacking both pleopoda and uropoda.

Invasive species can have profound impacts on communities and it is increasingly recognized that such effects may be mediated by parasitism. The 'enemy release' hypothesis posits that invaders may be successful and have high impacts owing to escape from parasitism. Alternatively, we hypothesize that parasites may increase host feeding rates and hence parasitized invaders may have increased comm...

Populations that undergo a process of rapid evolution present excellent opportunities to investigate the mechanisms driving or restraining adaptive divergence. The genetic variance-covariance matrix (G) is often considered to constrain adaptation but little is known about its potential to evolve during phenotypic divergence. We compared the G-matrices of ancestral and recently established ecoty...

The evolution of current terrestrial life was founded by major waves of land invasion coinciding with high atmospheric oxygen content. These waves were followed by periods with substantially reduced oxygen concentration and accompanied by the evolution of novel traits. Reproduction and development are limiting factors for evolutionary water-land transitions, and brood care has probably facilita...

Halacarsantia acutasp. n. is described from Wistari Reef, Capricorn Group, southern Great Barrier Reef, the first record of the genus from Australia. The new species differs from its congeners in having antenna flagellum composed of 8 articles; epipod apically acute, without setae, broad maxilliped endite and pereopod 1 basis with a short projection. A key to species of the genus is provided.

UNLABELLED The terrestrial isopod (Porcellio scaber) was used to assess the remediation efficiency of limestone and a mixture of gravel sludge and red mud as stabilizing agents of Pb, Zn and Cd in industrially polluted soil, which contains 800, 540 and 7mgkg(-1) of Pb, Zn and Cd, respectively. The aim of our study was to compare and evaluate the results of the biological and non-biological asse...

Cymodoce waegelei sp. nov. is described from the subtidal zone of the Iranian coasts of the Persian Gulf using both morphological and molecular data. C. waegelei sp. nov. is most similar to C. tribullis Harrison & Holdich, 1984 from Australia, Vietnam and Singapore. Analysis of DNA barcodes and nuclear 28S rDNA: D8 expansion segments clearly support the existence of two distinct species. Cymodo...

Three species of obligate subterranean asellids were previously known from Ohio, all assigned to the stygia Group of the genus Caecidotea: C. stygia, C. filicispeluncae, and C. rotunda. Caecidotea insula, n. sp., is described here from two caves on South Bass Island, Ottawa County, Ohio. This island is only 7 km from the Canadian border. The new species is assigned to an assemblage proposed her...

The new cymothoid species, Elthusa winstonisp. n., a branchial parasite of fishes from the family Acanthuridae Bonaparte, 1835 in Hawaii, is described and figured. The female adults can be distinguished by the strongly vaulted body and compacted body shape; rostrum with a small median point; short antennae which are close together (only 6 articles in both antennula and antenna); short and wide ...