Transposable elements often accumulate in nonrecombining regions, such as Y chromosomes. Contrary to this trend, a new Silene retrotransposon described here, has spread recently all over the genome of plant Silene latifolia, except its Y chromosome. This coincided with the latest steps of sex chromosome evolution in this species.

Two new species of the genus Terebra are described conchologically to the Atlantic coast of Colombia. The species are Terebra colombiensis and T. sterigmoides. They are differentiable mainly because of their sculpture, protoconch and spire angle. They are part of a group of Western Atlantic terebrids informally called “T. doellojuradoi complex” and differ from the Brazilian species in having we...

In the plant genus Silene, separate sexes and sex chromosomes are believed to have evolved twice. Silene species that are wholly or largely hermaphroditic are assumed to represent the ancestral state from which dioecy evolved. This assumption is important for choice of outgroup species for inferring the genetic and chromosomal changes involved in the evolution of dioecy, but is mainly based on ...

The Hawaiian endemic Silene are a small group of woody or semiwoody representatives from a large, predominantly herbaceous, species-rich genus. We here investigated the origin and number of introductions of the endemic Hawaiian Silene based on phylogenetic relationships inferred from DNA sequences from both the plastid (the rps16 intron) and the nuclear (ribosomal internal transcribed sequences...

Plants affect the spatial distribution of soil microorganisms, but the influence of the local abiotic context is poorly documented. We investigated the effect of a single plant species, the cushion plant Silene acaulis, on habitat conditions, and microbial community. We collected soil from inside (In) and outside (Out) of the cushions on calcareous and siliceous cliffs in the French Alps along ...

The genus Sibogasyrinx has to date included only four species of rare deep-water Conoidea, each known from few specimens. In shell characters it strongly resembles three distantly-related genera, two which, Comitas and Leucosyrinx, belong a different family, the Pseudomelatomidae. A molecular phylogenetic analysis large amount material Conoidea revealed existence much additional undescribed div...

One of the long-standing mysteries in genomic evolution is the observation that much of the genome is composed of repetitive DNA, resulting in inter- and intraspecific variation in nuclear DNA content. Our discovery of a negative correlation between nuclear DNA content and flower size in Silene latifolia has been supported by our subsequent investigation of changes in DNA content as a correlate...

The disproportionately large involvement of the X-chromosome in the isolation of closely related species (the large-X effect) has been reported for many animals, where X-linked genes are mostly hemizygous in the heterogametic sex. The expression of deleterious recessive mutations is thought to drive the frequent involvement of the X-chromosome in hybrid sterility, as well as to reduce interspec...