has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Psychological and Quantitative Foundations (Educational Measurement and Statistics) at the August 2014 graduation. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Looking back, once again I realize that I am surrounded by some great people, the people that I love and trust. The whole process of writing this disser...

Abstract Lake Titicaca, in the High Andes of Perú and Bolivia, harbours world’s third most speciose ancient-lake amphipod radiation on record. A minimum nineteen species Hyalella derived from at least five independent colonization episodes concentrate this high altitude water body, although actual number present has not yet been established could be much higher. Herein, we take advantage descri...

Although the high infection rate of microscopic sarcocyst occurs in cattle, to the best of our knowledge,there is no report about the identification of macroscopic sarcocyst in Iran. In this work, Sarcosystis hirsutawas first isolated from slaughtered cattle. In a 2-year-old slaughtered cattle, morphological examinationrevealed 3-5 mm in length cysts distributed in different striated muscles, p...