Although the biodiversity informatics community has recognized and understood complexity of modeling information about scientific names associated taxonomic concepts for more than three decades, many original questions problems remain unresolved today. Because most data is anchored to names, these are governed by Codes nomenclature, effort progress focused on structures centered around rather c...

The relationships among Old World chats and flycatchers (Muscicapidae) have recently been clarified in two independent molecular phylogenetic studies (Sangster et al. 2010, Zuccon & Ericson 2010). Both studies recovered a well-supported clade of predominantly blue flycatchers of the genera Niltava, Cyornis, Eumyias and Cyanoptila, some species traditionally included in the genus Rhinomyias and ...

A new type of photoreceptor for the phylum Arthropoda, found in the class Collembola (Arthropoda, Hexapoda) is reported. This new light-sensitive structure consists of a pair of interocular vesicles present in the genus Vesicephalus Richards, 1964 and is anatomically related to the cluster of ommatidia. The absence of a lens, the presence of a rabdome in the upper part of the vesicle and the re...

Quercus persica and Pistacia mutica are two known and prevalent forest trees of Baneh and Marivan from Kurdistan province (W Iran). Thirty-five fungal isolates were obtained from 50 bark samples of Q. persica collected in Sept. and Mar. 2010–11. The aim of this study was to identify fungi associated with oak trees of Kurdistan province. Based on morphological features and authentic keys (Ellis ...

A new taxon with Dyrithium-like characteristics was collected from Lake Fuxian in China. The taxon is typical of the Amphisphaeriaceae in that it has relatively large, ostiolate, immersed ascomata, unitunicate asci with a J+ subapical ring, and brown ascospores. It is similar to Dym'thium in that it has muriform ascospores, but considerable confusion surrounds this genus. In Dyrithium asci are ...

It is well known among phylogeneticists that adding an extra taxon (e.g. species) to a data set can alter the structure of the optimal phylogenetic tree in surprising ways. However, little is known about this "rogue taxon" effect. In this paper we characterize the behavior of balanced minimum evolution (BME) phylogenetics on data sets of this type using tools from polyhedral geometry. First we ...