The e¡ect of dredging on bottom structure was assessed, to estimate the damage in£icted on the benthic macrofauna left on the dredge path and to evaluate aggregations of scavengers within the track. Sediment suspended during dredging rapidly resettled both on sand and sandy-mud bottoms. Dredge tracks were deeper on sandy-mud sediments and persisted longer than in sandy sediments. The disappeara...

The state of knowledge of the alien marine Mollusca in Italy is reviewed and updated. Littorina saxatilis (Olivi, 1792), Polycera hedgpethi Er. Marcus, 1964 and Haminoea japonica Pilsbry, 1895are here considered as established on the basis of published and unpublished data, and recent records of the latter considerably expand its known Mediterranean range to the Tyrrhenian Sea. COI sequences ob...

When culturing the pileitrama of young fruit bodies of the two mycoparasitic agarics, Asterophora lycoperdoides (Bull.: Fr.) Ditmar and A. parasitica (Bull.: Fr.) Singer, two tremelloid yeasts were detected (Laaser et al., 1988, 1989; Prillinger, 1987a). The term tremelloid was suggested by Oberwinkler (Laaser et al., 1988; Oberwinkler pers. comm.) for budding yeasts having a cup-shaped parenth...

In the waters surrounding Banco Chinchorro in the Mexican Caribbean are spawning and nursery areas for many types of fish. In this natural environment, as opposed to under controlled laboratory conditions, it is almost impossible to link an individual egg to the adult that laid it. This makes identifying the species of the eggs difficult. However, DNA barcodes have made this easier. In the pres...

DNA barcoding is a method promising fast and accurate identification of animal species based on the sequencing of the mitochondrial c oxidase subunit (COI) gene. In this study, we explore the prospects for DNA barcoding in one particular fish group, the billfishes (suborder Xiphioidei--swordfish, marlins, spearfishes, and sailfish). We sequenced the mitochondrial COI gene from 296 individuals f...