Abstract The emergence of reproductive isolation is key in maintaining within- and between-species diversity one the initial steps speciation. In Iberian Peninsula, diverging populations Brachionus plicatilis rotifer create an ideal system to shed light on mechanisms that give rise isolation. Herein, we quantify degree behavioural two groups B. populations, namely, neighbouring by adaptation lo...

The toxicity of leachates from two municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills in Southern Italy was characterized using a toxicity identification evaluation procedure. The chemical and physical fractionation techniques were: pH adjustment, pH adjustment/filtration, pH adjustment/C(18) solid phase extraction, graduated pH and EDTA chelation. All the samples exhibited acute toxicity towards the bacter...

Little information is known about bioaccumulation of atrazine or the effects it has on consumers that ingest atrazine-contaminated prey. For that reason, freshwater microalgae Chlorella vulgaris cultures were exposed to different concentrations of atrazine for twenty-four hours and were then used as an exclusive food source for Brachionus calyciflorus for three days with the intent to evaluate ...

The evolution of sex is a classic problem in evolutionary biology. While this topic has been the focus of much theoretical work, there is a serious dearth of empirical data. A simple yet fundamental question is how sex affects the mean and variance in fitness. Despite its importance to the theory, this type of data is available for only a handful of taxa. Here, we report two experiments in whic...

A single Brachionus rotifer can consume thousands of algae cells per hour causing an algae pond to crash within days of infection. Thus, there is a great need to reduce rotifers in order for algal biofuel production to become reality. Copper can selectively inhibit rotifers in algae ponds, thereby protecting the algae crop. Differential toxicity tests were conducted to compare the copper sensit...

Brachionus sessilis Varga, 1951 is an epizoic rotifer living exclusively on cladocerans of the genus Diaphanosoma. Current taxonomic knowledge relies solely on limited morphological information, whereas there is no type material. Here, we aim to resolve issues concerning its morphology and taxonomy using both morphological and genetic characters on material sampled from Lake Balaton (Hungary), ...