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December 2003 - present
Publications
Publications (56)
Predicting the impacts of non-native species remains a challenge. As populations of a species are genetically and phenotypically variable, the impact of non-native species on local taxa could crucially depend on population-specific traits and adaptations of both native and non-native species. Bitterling fishes are brood parasites of unionid mussels...
Sinanodonta woodiana (Lea, 1834) is an invasive species which has spread rapidly across Europe over the last few.decades. Although it is
already well established throughout Italy (both in lakes and in rivers), during a regular monitoring of the mussel communities in Northern
Italy, this species was found for the first time in the fluvial natural re...
In this study we analyzed at a submeso-geographic scale (2 km) the genetic diversity of two sub-populations of Platynereis dumerilii and correlated this with the physical characteristics of the marine currents along the western Black Sea coast. For this purpose, we developed a set of 13 new polymorphic microsatellite markers and used them to assess...
In this study, we used data from morphology and three DNA markers to assess the taxonomic status of the putative bivalve species Hypanis colorata and Hypanis angusticostata in a Black Sea lagoon, the Razelm Lake in Romania. The morphological data (the shape of shell ribs and the multivariate analysis of morphometric variance of three variables cons...
Lucanus cervus (Linnaeus, 1758) is one of the largest Coleoptera species in Europe and one of the most recognizable. It is a saproxylic species living in woodlands and wooded urban habitats and spending its larval stages inside tree trunks below or near soil level, feeding on decaying wood. The stag beetle has a wide distribution covering the entir...
The unique aquatic Pontocaspian (PC) biota of the Black Sea Basin (BSB) is in decline. The lack of detailed knowledge on the status and trends of species, populations, and communities hampers a thorough risk assessment and precludes effective conservation. This paper reviews PC biodiversity trends in the BSB (Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, an...
Helix pomatia is one of the most well known species of land snails across Europe and it presents economical importance due to its consumption as food. The preliminary results of the genetic comparison between two populations, one of them under the pressure of exploitation, are presented here. As expected, most indices revealed a disequilibrium in t...
Until the beginning of the 21st century, the famous medicinal leech was thought to be represented by only one species, Hirudo medicinalis. However, recent publications have demonstrated that under that name, at least five different species of medicinal leeches were hidden. During the last decade, the biogeography of Western-Palaearctic leeches has...
Aim The unique aquatic Pontocaspian (PC) biota of the Black Sea Basin (BSB) is in decline. Lack of detailed knowledge on the status and trends of species, populations and communities hampers a thorough risk assessment and precludes effective conservation. This paper aims to review PC biodiversity trends using endemic molluscs as a model group. We a...
Dr. Dumitru Murariu was born on September 21, 1940 in Ungureni, Botoşani County, as the first child in a peasant family. He attended primary and secondary school in his home village. Since the beginning he proved himself to be one of the brightest students in the class and, as a consequence, the school teachers advised his parents to have him conti...
Scolelepis neglecta Surugiu, 2016 is a polychaete species that was described from the Cantabrian coast of Asturias (northern Spain) based only on anterior fragments from museum collections. Recently collected live material of S. neglecta from the intertidal muddy sand flats of the Villaviciosa estuary (Asturias, Bay of Biscay, northern Spain), had...
Abstract The long-term survival of a species requires, among other things, gene flow between populations. Approaches for the evaluation of fragmentation in the frame of freshwater habitats consider only a small amount of the information that combined demography and geography are currently able to provide. This study addresses two species of Austrop...
Two new feather mite species of the genus Montesauria Oudemans, 1905, collected from thrushes (Turdidae) in India, are described: Montesauria hernandesi sp. n. from Turdus dissimilis Blyth, 1847 and M. caerulea sp. n. from Myophonus caeruleus (Scopoli, 1786). Both species belong to the merulae species group, being morphologically closest to other t...
A new species of the feather mite genus Trouessartia (Trouessartiidae) is described from the Large Niltava Niltava grandis (Blyth) (Passeriformes, Muscicapidae) in Northeast India (Meghalaya, Jaintia Hills, Shnongrim village). Trouessartia niltavae Constantinescu, sp. n. is morphologically closely related (no phylogenetic meaning) to T. bulligera G...
Understanding the invasive potential of species outside their native range is one of the most pressing questions in applied evolutionary and ecological research. Admixture of genotypes of invasive species from multiple sources has been implicated in successful invasions, by generating novel genetic combinations that facilitate rapid adaptation to n...
Genus Isophya is one of the most species-rich genera from the European Orthoptera, comprising 97 taxons described so far, commonly known as plump bushcrickets. Based on their morphology, most of these taxa are grouped in several species complexes. One of these is “Isophya pyrenaea” species complex with 14 species, some of them recently described (W...
A new species of the feather mite genus Proterothrix (Proctophyllodidae: Pterodectinae) is described from the Large Niltava Niltava grandis (Blyth) (Passeriformes, Muscicapidae) in northeast India (Meghalaya, Jaintia Hills, Shnongrim village). Proterothrix chachulae Constantinescu, sp. n. differs from all known species of the genus by having in mal...
The Curve-tailed Plump Bush-cricket, Isophya camptoxypha (Fieber, 1853), is a species with a Central European distribution, in the Carpathians and Eastern Alps, being reported from: Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Austria. The habitat preferences of this species comprise subalpine mesophytic meadows, dominated by dicotyledonous broa...
The terrestrial snail Helix pomatia (Gastropoda: Stylommatophora: Helicidae) is one of the largest gastropod species in Europe. This species is strictly protected in some European Union countries; however, at the same time, it is also farmed and commercialized for human consumption. Here, we describe 11 microsatellite markers that are very useful i...
The Carpathians are one of the largest mountain ranges in Europe and played an important role in the survival of boreo-alpine taxa during Pleistocene. Pholidoptera transsylvanica is an alpine bush-cricket, endemic to the Carpathians, found in Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine with the most numerous and biggest populations located in Romania. The species i...
In this study we analyzed comparatively the host-parasite associations between two fish
host species invasive in Europe (Lepomis gibbosus and
Pseudorasbora parva) and one known generalist parasite species, the
copepod Lernaea cyprinacea. We used a fragment of the hypervariable
region D1-D2 of the 28S rRNA to confirm that the copepod specimens colle...
The use of DNA barcoding in alien invasions has recently proved to be a powerful tool in delineating dispersal pathways and clarifying doubtful identifications. Morphological similarities between Anadara kagoshimensis (Tokunaga, 1906) and Anadara inaequivalvis (Bruguière, 1789) require the use of genetic markers in identifying the ark shell species...
The Transylvanian bush-cricket, Pholidoptera transsylvanica, is a protected mesophytic species endemic to the Carpathian Mountains grasslands. We developed 14 polymorphic microsatellite markers in order to investigate the population genetic structure of this species. These markers were tested on a population sample and the average number of alleles...
We describe here eight polymorphic microsatellite markers for Nannospalax leucodon, an exclusively subterranean and highly specialized rodent species which exhibits range contractions and population declines in Europe. The level of polymorphism was tested on 36 individuals of blind mole rat from Doubroudja region, in South-Eastern part of Romania....
The sequences alignment consisted of 509bp with 63 variable positions, out of which 43 are parsimony informative. Average pairwise genetic distances were 2.9% among all specimens. The largest distance was observed between Isophya ciucasi and Isophya camptoxypha 6.4%. The average pairwise genetic distances calculated on the whole Isophya genusis 15%...
Abstract Ten microsatellite loci were isolated and characterized for Stys's bush-cricket, Isophya stysi Cejchan (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae), an endemic Orthoptera species to the Carpathian Basin, using an enriched genomic library procedure. The polymorphism of these loci were tested in two populations of I. stysi, and the number of alleles per locu...
The invasive softshell clam (Mya arenaria Linnaeus, 1758) is native to the northwestern region of the Atlantic Ocean. This species has been introduced in the northeast Pacific and along the European coasts, due to intense naval transports and aquaculture, and it is now present in all the European seas. In this paper we describe seven new microsatel...
Hypanis colorata (Eichwald, 1829) (Cardiidae: Lymnocardiinae) is a bivalve relict species with a Ponto-Caspian distribution and is under strict protection in Romania, according to national regulations. While the species is depressed in the western Black Sea lagoons from Romania and Ukraine, it is also a successful invader in the middle Dniepr and V...
Sinanodonta woodiana (Lea, 1834) is a large Unionid species with a real invasion success. It colonized Europe, Central America, the Indonesian Islands and recently North America. The species life cycle involves a larval parasitic stage on freshwater fish species which contributes to the spread of the mussel. In this paper we describe, for the first...
Infestation of the pumpkinseed Lepomis gibbosus (Teleostei: Cyprinidae) by the copepod Lernaea Cyprinacea (Crustacea) - some ecological aspects
The copepod Lernaea cyprinacea Linnaeus, 1758 is known by the large spectrum of fish hosts which it infests, and to which it can cause haemorrhages and ulcerations. The paper focuses on some aspects of the...
The major aim of this study is to describe the first microsatellite loci for the stone-crayfish (Austropotamobius torrentium), by cross-species am-plification. Austropotamobius torrentium is a priority species in the EU Habitats Directive and it needs effective conservation management efforts throughout Europe. We tested cross-species amplification...
In this study we proposed a phylogenetic analysis based on molecular markers of 16S rRNA and 12S rRNA mitochondrial genes in four salmonid species from Romania. For this purpose, a PCR amplification of one fragment from each mitochondrial gene mentioned above was performed, followed by direct sequencing, the analysis of nucleotide variation and a p...
This paper is a synthesis of the faunistic data present in the specialized literature on the alien decapod species identified in the Romanian fauna
The present study represents a preliminary analysis of the 16S rRNA and 12S rRNA mitochondrial sequences in five salmonid species adapted in Romania: Salmo trutta fario, Salmo labrax, Salvelinus fontinalis, Onchorhynchus mykiss and Thymallus thymallus. By comparing the obtained sequences with similar sequences from GenBank database and analysis of...
This paper is a synthesis of the faunistic data in the literature on invasive freshwater bivalve species recorded in Romania. It presents data on the history of spread and distribution of Dreissena polymorpha, Dreissena bugensis, Corbicula fluminea and Sinanodonta woodiana in the Danube basin in Romania and the lower sections of its main tributarie...
Present Limnocardiidae species are relicts of a spread fauna during the geological past, in the Pontic-Aral-Caspian range. Family Limnocardiidae has a distribution range formed of the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea and the lagoons of the Black Sea. In the Romanian fauna, three genera were reported as belonging to this family: Didacna Eichwald, 1838, Adacna...
In this paper we present some aspects regarding the diversity of the Orthoptera communities in a comparative way, from three grasslands from Comana forest, the main component of Comana Natural Park. We analyze the data collected systematically in May, July and September during a two years period using synecological and diversity indices. A total of...
In 2006 and 2007 living individuals of Sinanodonta woodiana (Lea 1834) were collected from the eastern part of Romania. These samples represent the first report of this invasive species in the region and indicate that this alien species has colonized the main aquatic basins of Romania.
In this paper we propose an evaluation of four DNA extraction methods in terms of DNA quantity, quality and success of the subsequent PCR amplifications of nuclear and mitochondrial loci. Individuals from the following freshwater invasive mussels in Romania were used to asses the efficiency of the DNA extraction methods: Dreissena polymorpha, Dreis...
The occurence of Dreissena bugensis (Andrusov 1897) from the Romanian Danube is reported. This represents the most westward occurrence point of quagga mussel in Europe.
In this paper we report the first occurrence of the rotan Perccottus glenii Dybowski, 1877 and the black bullhead Ameiurus melas Rafinesque, 1820 in the Romanian sector of the Danube. Given the present distribution range in Europe, it is possible that the reported specimen of rotan (Perccottus glenii) belongs to a different population than the prev...
In this paper we present qualitative data on the distribution of the terrestrial and aquatic mollusk fauna from the Romanian sector of the Danube, between Calafat and Olteniþa. We identified 54 terrestrial and aquatic mollusk species, 10 of them being bivalves and 44 gastropods. Also, we mention the presence of Sinanodonta woodiana (Lea, 1834) from...
A method called variable-stringency PCR was designed to identify the sex of an unknown origin human sample. The reaction amplified a specific 281/285 bp product from male DNA, and some random DNA products from both male and female samples by using specific primers for the alphoid region of the Y chromosome. The amplification of Y chromosome alphoid...
The DNA sequence of the mitochondrial 5'COI gene region was analysed in the follow deer Dama dama (Linnaeus, 1758) (Mammalia: Cervidae). The sequence was submitted to GenBank under the accession number EF675699 and will allow the identification of the species through the DNA barcoding technique.
