Zuzana Varadínová

Charles University in Prague | CUNI · Department of Zoology (PF)

We present an open (publicly available) and updatable database of the karyotypes of Blattodea which is available at http://web.natur.cuni.cz/zoologie/arthropods/blattodeadatabase/index.html. This database currently contains data on chromosome numbers and sex chromosome systems for 355 (209 cockroaches and 146 termites) cytogenetically and/or geogra...

Background Apicomplexa is a diverse phylum comprising unicellular endobiotic animal parasites and contains some of the most well-studied microbial eukaryotes including the devastating human pathogens Plasmodium falciparum and Cryptosporidium hominis . In contrast, data on the invertebrate-infecting gregarines remains sparse and their evolutionary r...

Blaberoidea, comprised of Ectobiidae and Blaberidae, is the most speciose cockroach clade and exhibits immense variation in life history strategies. We analysed the phylogeny of Blaberoidea using four mitochondrial and three nuclear genes from 99 blaberoid taxa. Blaberoidea (excl. Anaplectidae) and Blaberidae were recovered as monophyletic, but Ect...

The family of sheath-tailed bats (Emballonuridae) constitutes a considerable part of the bat fauna of the Middle East. This region on the crossroad of three biogeographical realms represents the sole significant extension of the family range into the Palaearctic, otherwise the family is distributed mostly in the tropics. Three emballonurid species...

Although French Guiana is one of the greatest hotspots of cockroach biodiversity on Earth, there are still undocumented species. From both newly collected and museum specimens, we provide species descriptions for Buboblatta vlasaki sp. nov., Lamproblatta antoni sp. nov., and Euhypnorna bifuscina sp. nov. and report new geographic records for specie...

Cockroaches have rarely been documented as pollinators. In this paper we examine whether this is because they might be inefficient at pollination compared to other pollinators. Clusia blattophila, a dioecieous shrub growing on isolated rocky outcrops in French Guiana, is pollinated by Amazonina platystylata cockroaches and provides a valuable syste...

The harvestman family Neogoveidae (suborder Cyphophthalmi) is distributed across Neotropics, south-eastern USA and Western and Central Africa. Nevertheless, the core of its known diversity lies in Americas. The sole genus known from Africa is Parogovia, with only three species described so far. Here we describe a new species, Parogovia parasironoid...

Although cockroaches (Blattodea s. str.) exhibit high proportion of species with reduced wings, the underlying evolutionary forces remain unclear. Wing reduction in insects is generally considered advantageous for females and a trade-off between investment into the flying apparatus and reproduction is predicted to explain its evolution. However, wh...

A new species of the genus Pipistrellus is described from the Dhofar region, southern Arabia. The new species occurs in a very limited area lesser than 1,000 km², situated in the belt of relative humid savannah habitats of coastal Arabia between easternmost Yemen and south-western Oman. This bat represents the eighth pipistrelle species known from...

Cockroaches have long been recognized as a major source of allergens in the human environment. As some allergens produced by cockroaches are accumulated within their tiny faeces and may persist unseen in the environment, development of a reliable method for monitoring cockroach faeces distribution and abundance is crucial. Our aim was to explore th...

Flat grain beetles of the genus Cryptolestes (Coleoptera: Laemophloeidae) are one of the economically most important stored-product pests which feed on many kinds of agricultural products, especially grains. Nine of more than 40 described Cryptolestes species are recognized as stored-product pests and two of the pest species have a cosmopolitan dis...

Several species of the genus Cryptolestes Ganglbauer, 1899 (Coleoptera: Laemophloeidae) are commonly found in stored products. In this study, five species of Cryptolestes, with almost worldwide distribution, were obtained from laboratories in China, Czech Republic and the USA: Cryptolestes ferrugineus (Stephens, 1831), Cryptolestes pusillus (Schönh...

Animals live in groups for a wide variety of reasons. The main benefits are related to anti-predator behaviour, foraging, mate finding, and/or reduction of energetic costs. In this paper we present a game-theoretical model that supports the waste recycling hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the organic waste materials produced by the members o...

Cockroaches (Blattaria) are considered universally gregarious insects. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that even related species and/or males and females of the same species may exhibit different aggregation patterns. We compared aggregation behaviour in six cockroach species belonging to three groups: Eublaberus, Blaberus, and Gromphadorhi...