Informed conservation management requires exact knowledge on the species diversity of taxon group in focus within a geographic area, specifically occurrence endemics. In Turkey, there are three water frog taxa genus Pelophylax; one is widespread P. bedriagae, other two geographically restricted to either Thrace (P. ridibundus) or Anatolian Lake district caralitanus). The status Beyşehir caralit...

We describe the edopoid temnospondyl Nigerpeton ricqlesi from the Upper Permian Moradi Formation of northern Niger on the basis of two partial skulls and tentatively associated postcranial material. This crocodile-like taxon displays several edopoid characters states such as a long prenarial region with enlarged premaxillae, elongated vomers, large, posteriorly tapering choanae. and a jugal tha...

BACKGROUND Baurusuchidae is a group of extinct Crocodyliformes with peculiar, dog-faced skulls, hypertrophied canines, and terrestrial, cursorial limb morphologies. Their importance for crocodyliform evolution and biogeography is widely recognized, and many new taxa have been recently described. In most phylogenetic analyses of Mesoeucrocodylia, the entire clade is represented only by Baurusuch...

Zieria Sm. (Rutaceae, Boronieae) is predominantly native to eastern Australia except for one species, which is endemic to New Caledonia. For this study, sequence data of two non-coding chloroplast regions (trnL-trnF, and rpl32-trnL), one nuclear region (ITS region) and various morphological characters, based on Armstrong's (2002) taxonomic revision of Zieria, from 32 of the 42 described species...

Bats and their parasites are increasingly investigated for their role in maintenance and transmission of potentially emerging pathogens. The islands of the western Indian Ocean hold nearly 50 bat species, mostly endemic and taxonomically well studied. However, investigation of associated viral, bacterial, and external parasites has lagged behind. In the case of their ectoparasites, more detaile...

A new species, Swiftia comauensis, is described from Chile. It occurs in shallow waters from 18 to 59 m in the Patagonian fjord region and seems to be endemic to the northern part of the region. The species is characterized by having straggly colonies with sparse branching and long drooping branches, prominent polyp mounds, and long, thin spindles; the colonies are bright orange with pale yello...

A dentary fragment containing the last two molars (m2-3) from the Late Cretaceous (Santonian-?Campanian) Bostobe Formation exposed at the locality of Shakh Shakh, northeast Aral Sea region, Kazakhstan, is attributed to a new taxon of Zhelestidae, Zhalmouzia bazhanovi, gen. et sp. nov. This specimen is only the second mammal described from Shakh Shakh, the unidentifiable eutherian Beleutinus orl...

The former Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical-IICT (Lisbon, Portugal), recently integrated into the University of Lisbon, gathers important natural history collections from Portuguese-speaking African countries. In this study, we describe the bird collection from the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, which was fully taxonomically checked and georeferenced. The IICT bird c...

A new endemic land snail species of the family Discidae, Atlantica (Canaridiscus) saproxylophaga Alonso, G. Holyoak & Yanes 2011, was recently described from La Gomera, Canary Islands (in Yanes et al. 2011). According to Rähle & Allgaier (2011) it is provisorily considered as belonging to the genus Discus. This species lives in the laurel forest and has the largest shell of all the Discidae hit...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Microsatellite primers were developed for a widespread limestone endemic sedge, Carex eburnea, to facilitate investigation of the genetic diversity and phylogeography of this taxon and its closest relative, C. mckittrickensis. METHODS AND RESULTS Forty-eight primer pairs were designed from Illumina sequence data and screened for suitability. Fourteen of these primer pairs...