Invertebrate Zoology - Science topic

Cells of most bacterial species are around 2 micrometers in length, with some of the largest specimens reaching 750 micrometers. Using fluorescence, x-ray, and electron microscopy in conjunction with genome sequencing, we characterized Candidatus ( Ca. ) Thiomargarita magnifica, a bacterium that has an average cell length greater than 9000 micromet...

The Neogastropoda (Mollusca, Gastropoda) encompass more than 15,000 described species of marine predators, including several model organisms in toxinology, embryology and physiology. However, their phylogenetic relationships remain mostly unresolved and their classification unstable. We took advantage of the many mitogenomes published in GenBank to...

Terrestrial isopods (Oniscidea) are crustaceans that thrive in terrestrial environments. This study provides an overview of the major topics in terrestrial isopod research during the last 70 years in order to provide an example of publication practices in invertebrate zoology and to examine how basic research in this area is transferred to its appl...

The veined squid, Loligo forbesii Steenstrup, 1856, occurs at the European Shelf areas including the Azores and represents a valuable resource for the European commercial fishery in the North East Atlantic. However, very little is known about its population structure and phylogeography. This lack of knowledge also impedes the development of sustain...

Understanding of 21st century learning is a demand for teachers as a pedagogical framework in the learning process. Schools must also implement competencies not only focusing on mastering the content of the main subjects, but also academic content at a higher level. In general, science learning in the classroom emphasizes practical work rather than...

A popular piece about the world invasion by hammerhead flatworms. In French.

Aedes albopictus is a major vector of arboviruses. Better understanding of its sex determination is crucial for developing mosquito control tools, especially genetic sexing strains. In Aedes aegypti, Nix is the primary gene responsible for masculinization and Nix-expressing genetic females develop into fertile, albeit flightless, males. In Ae. albo...

Described from Namibia, Trichophiala devylderi Aurivillius, 1879 is a species for which, apart from the original description of female “types”, little is known. Building upon recent observations in the field, investigations in various museums that preserve specimens, and a review of the literature, we describe for the first time the habitat, the kn...

A tribute is paid to Philippe Bruneau de Miré (1921-2021) a french ecologist, entomologist, explorer and humanist

Climate change profoundly alters the phenology of insects, yet the mechanisms at play remain particularly elusive for univoltine species. Those species typically have to deal with contrasting thermal conditions across their development and life stages occurring at different seasons may have different thermal sensitivity. A modeling framework taking...

Trichogramma are parasitic microwasps much used as biological control agents. The genus is known to harbor tremendous diversity, at both inter- and intra-specific levels. The successful selection of Trichogramma strains for biocontrol depends on characterizing the existing diversity in this group, especially regarding oviposition performance and be...

Editorial: Osmia, Journal of Hymenopterology

RESUMO: O presente produto educacional, caracterizado como proposta de ensino, visa desenvolver processos metodológicos e instrumentos para validação de métodos alternativos ao uso de animais como recurso didático. Neste intuito, objetivou-se avaliar como acadêmicos de Ciências Biológicas interagem com métodos alternativos em aulas práticas de zool...

RESUMO: O presente produto educacional, caracterizado como proposta de ensino, visa desenvolver processos metodológicos e instrumentos para validação de métodos alternativos ao uso de animais como recurso didático, especificamente em aulas de zoologia de invertebrados. Para tal, as experiências de três turmas de estudantes de primeiro ano de ciênci...

Este estudo educacional buscou avaliar o uso de aulas de campo como estratégia pedagógica para o ensino de Zoologia de Invertebrados e a relevância desta metodologia para o desenvolvimento profissional de licenciandos em Ciências Biológicas. Para isso foram realizadas quatro aulas de campo em praias da região metropolitana de São Luís (Maranhão) co...

Este estudo educacional buscou avaliar o uso de aulas de campo como estratégia pedagógica para o ensino de Zoologia de Invertebrados e a relevância desta metodologia para o desenvolvimento profissional de licenciandos em Ciências Biológicas.

Mosquitoes are considered one of the most important threats worldwide due to their ability to vector pathogens. They are responsible for the transmission of major pathogens such as malaria, dengue, zika, or chikungunya. Due to the lack of treatments or prophylaxis against many of the transmitted pathogens and an increasing prevalence of mosquito re...

In the ocean, most hosts acquire their symbionts from the environment. Due to the immense spatial scales involved, our understanding of the biogeography of hosts and symbionts in marine systems is patchy, although this knowledge is essential for understanding fundamental aspects of symbiosis such as host–symbiont specificity and evolution. Lucinida...

The presence of alien mollusc species in an ecosystem has a negative impact on the endemic mollusc fauna and can result in economic losses. The West African land snail Tomostele musaecola (Morelet) was previously recorded from numerous localities in the Western Hemisphere. In this paper, we provide a new locality of this malacophagous snail in the...

The development of electronic learning materials is very necessary for the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic which requires lecture activities to be carried out online. This was carried out to support physical distancing to break the chain of transmission of COVID-19. Currently, there are not many electronic learning materials available that lead to s...

This descriptive study aims to determine the reasoning of the formal-post formal operations of biology teacher candidates in three aspects of lectures. The research sample consisted of 76 students who took part in the 2019/2020 academic year lectures which were taken using the purposive technique. The sample consisted of 29 students in the General...

The COVID‐19 global pandemic caused instructors to pivot to remote and online teaching, an especially challenging task in hands‐on classes such as invertebrate biology. In this special 25th anniversary issue of Invertebrate Biology, the authors present a variety of clever and effective ways to help invertebrate biology instructors adapt to teaching...

There is a great importance for undergraduate biology students to study organisms in their natural context. Safety concerns surrounding the global COVID‐19 pandemic prevented Marine Invertebrate Zoology students at the University of Tampa from participating in traditional faculty‐led field trips during the Fall of 2020. Instead, students were assig...

Background: In recent years, the breeding of honeybees has gained significant scientific interest, and numerous theoretical and practical improvements have been made regarding the collection and processing of their performance data. It is now known that the selection of high-quality drone material is crucial for mid to long-term breeding success. H...

O estudo aqui apresentado objetivou avaliar o processo de ensino-aprendizagem de Zoologia de Invertebrados no curso de Biologia, tendo como foco as interações, ludicidade e inteligências múltiplas. A pesquisa possui caráter qualitativo e os dados foram coletados utilizando as técnicas de observação sistemática e questionário misto. Constatou-se que...

Ants are well-known for their amazing load carriage performances. Yet, the biomechanics of locomotion during load transport in these insects has so far been poorly investigated. Here, we present a study of the biomechanics of unloaded and loaded locomotion in the polymorphic seed-harvesting ant Messor barbarus (Linnaeus, 1767). This species is char...

This study aims at obtaining pre-service biology teachers’ metacognitive skills in invertebrate zoology. A number of pre-service biology teachers that take invertebrate zoology course at a state university in Sumatera, Indonesia, were involved as participants in this study. Data on metacognitive skills were collected using metacognitive skills inst...

Ильясов Р.А., Николенко А.Г., Квон Х.В. Генетическое улучшение медоносной пчелы для разведения в экстремальных климатических условиях. В книге: Концептуальные и прикладные аспекты научных исследований и образования в области зоологии беспозвоночных. 328 с. Томск: Издательство Томского государственного университета, 26–28 октября 2020. 214-217 с. DO...

Background: Competition is a common social interaction among shrimp and depending on its intensity, it can affect heritable variation and response to selection. Little is known about the variance of indirect genetic effects (IGE) under competitive and non-competitive conditions in shrimp. In this study, we used extended mixed linear models to esti...

Cnidarians are known to undergo reverse development as a survival mechanism against adverse environmental conditions. Polyp bail-out consists in the polyps' detachment from the mother colony due to stressful conditions, followed by a complete tissue and cells rearrangement and in some cases in a regression into a simple, ciliated form. Here we desc...

The diclidophorid Flexophora ophidii Prost & Euzet, 1962, the type- and only species of the genus Flexophora Prost & Euzet, 1962, has never been redescribed neither reported since its original description. The latest lacked a diagnosis of the genus that remains unavailable to date. Flexophora ophidii is redescribed and illustrated based on examinat...

Malacology is the scientific branch of Invertebrate Zoology dealing with the study of the Phylum Mollusca. It includes soft-bodied invertebrates and topics such as taxonomy, systematics, taphonomy, biostratigraphy, evolution, ecology, biogeography, biotic resources, and human interactions. Applied to Palaeontology and Archaeology, Malacology enable...

Effective visuomotor coordination is a necessary requirement for the survival of many terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial animal species. We studied the kinematics of aerial pursuit in the blowfly Lucilia sericata using an actuated dummy as target for freely flying males. We found that the flies perform target tracking in the horizontal plane and targ...

Ascidians with very similar embryos but highly divergent genomes are thought to have undergone extensive developmental system drift. We compared, in four species ( Ciona and Phallusia for Phlebobranchia, Molgula and Halocynthia for Stolidobranchia), gene expression and gene regulation for a network of six transcription factors regulating peripheral...

Background The land flatworm Amaga expatria Jones & Sterrer, 2005 (Geoplanidae) was described from two specimens collected in Bermuda in 1963 and 1988 and not recorded since. Methods On the basis of a citizen science project, we received observations in the field, photographs and specimens from non-professionals and local scientists in Martinique...

A short paper in "The Conversation" about the invasion of Guadeloupe and Martinique (French West Indies) by land flatworms.

Two new species of Fulgoridae collected in Philippines are described: Egregia palawanica n. sp. from Palawan and Pyrops kozlovi n. sp. from Mindanao.

EDITORIAL The community working on insects as feed and food recently moved towards a much more precise definition, use and reporting of insect diet composition. These efforts need to be matched by much more precise definition, use and reporting of its metabolic fate within the insect body, if the added workload is to fulfil its aims. OPEN ACCESS ht...

We used the COI marker, the most popular DNA barcode for the animal kingdom, to assess the taxonomic status of Corsican populations of eight groups of species of ants that occur both on Corsica and the European mainland. (i) In two groups, we detected no genetic differentiation between Corsica and the continent. Absence of differentiation across va...

Sib mating increases homozygosity, which therefore increases the risk of inbreeding depression. Selective pressures have favoured the evolution of kin recognition and avoidance of sib mating in numerous species, including the parasitoid wasp Venturia canescens. We studied the female neurogenomic response associated with sib mating avoidance after f...

Urban Aedes mosquitoes are vectors of many viruses affecting human health such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika viruses. Insecticide resistance and environmental toxicity risks hamper the effectiveness of chemical control against these mosquito vectors. Alternative control methods, such as the use of mosquito-specific entomopathogenic viruses should...

The structure of the kinetid (flagellar or ciliary apparatus) is known to be of phylogenetic significance in sponges (Phylum Porifera) and can provide information about evolutionary relationships. Here, we report on the larval kinetid structure of two closely related species, Oscarella lobularis and O. tuberculata (Homoscleromorpha, Oscarellidae)....

The yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina nigrithorax (Hymenoptera: Vespidae, Lepeletier 1836), is native to Southeast Asia and has been unintentionally introduced in France. The species is spreading in many areas of the world. The European Union has classified V. velu-tina as a species of concern because the hornet significantly affects beekeeping...

Background: Culicoides obsoletus is an abundant and widely distributed Holarctic biting midge species, involved in the transmission of bluetongue virus (BTV) and Schmallenberg virus (SBV) to wild and domestic ruminants. Females of this vector species are often reported jointly with two morphologically very close species, C. scoticus and C. montanus...

Homoscleromorpha is a recently recognized class within the phylum Porifera. While molecular analyses support monophyly of Homoscleromorpha, morphological data are largely lacking. Here, we investigate and comparatively analyze the detailed morphology of kinetids (flagellar apparatus) in choanocytes of ten Oscarella species. The kinetid is known to...

The Viviparidae, commonly known as River Snails, is a dominant group of freshwater snails with a nearly worldwide distribution that reaches its highest taxonomic and morphological diversity in Southeast Asia. The rich fossil record is indicative of a probable Middle Jurassic origin on the Laurasian supercontinent where the group started to diversif...

A new myxozoan species belonging to the genus Henneguya was isolated from the serous membrane of the visceral cavity of the hognosed catfish Brochis multiradiatus from Peruvian Amazon. Whitish plasmodia, macroscopically visible, were found in four of the thirty examined fishes. Mature myxospores were ellipsoidal in shape in frontal view and had a t...

The massive use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) has drastically changed the environment for malaria vector mosquitoes, challenging their host-seeking behaviour and biting success. Here, we investigated the effect of a brief exposure to an ITN on the biting behaviour of Anopheles mambiae mosquitoes and the interaction between such behaviour and t...

The name for the brachyuran subfamily Dasygyiinae Holmes, 1900, recently recognised by Guinot & Van Bakel (2020) in the majoid family Inachoididae Dana, 1851, cannot be used as it is a junior synonym of Collodinae Stimpson, 1871. The present note diagnoses a new name, Paradasygyiinae subfam. nov., for the monotypic genus Paradasygyius Garth, 1958.

Resumo: No ensino de Biologia, o uso do método tradicional aliado a presença de conteúdos de difícil assimilação, tem sido um dos principais fatores que promovem a desmotivação dos estudantes. No entanto, o uso de jogos didáticos na escola pode contribuir para um aprendizado mais dinâmico e motivado. Este trabalho teve como objetivo avaliar a contr...

Based on light and scanning electron microscopical studies, a new nematode parasite, Paracapillaria (Paracapillaria) gastrica n. sp. (Capillariidae), is described from the stomach of the marine fish (variegated lizardfish) Synodus variegatus (Lacépède) (Aulopiformes: Synodontidae) from off New Caledonia. This species is mainly characterised by the...

Wing venation is a character system commonly used in the systematics of fossil insects, but the existing documentation for extant forms is often insufficient to allow robust identification of extinct forms. The existing literature suggests that the small stonefly family Styloperlidae Illies, 1966, for which no fossils have ever been identified, mig...

A short paper in French in "The Conversation" about covid-19 epidemiology and biodiversity.

Brain wiring is remarkably precise, yet most neurons readily form synapses with incorrect partners when given the opportunity. Dynamic axon-dendritic positioning can restrict synaptogenic encounters, but the spatiotemporal interaction kinetics and their regulation remain essentially unknown inside developing brains. Here we show that the kinetics o...

A short paper in French in "The Conversation" about the invasion of Metropolitan France by the land flatworm Obama nungara. Article en français dans "The Conversation" à propos de l'invasion de la France Métropolitaines par le Plathelminthe terrestre Obama nungara.

A short paper in English in "The Conversation" about the invasion of Metropolitan France by the land flatworm Obama nungara. This paper was written for a general public and was based on our scientific paper published in PeerJ: https://peerj.com/articles/8385/ . Article en anglais dans "The Conversation" à propos de l'invasion de la France Métrop...

Aphids are renowned plant parasites of agriculture, horticulture and forestry, causing direct physical damage by sucking phloem and especially by transmission of plant pathogenic viruses. The huge yield loss they cause amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars globally, and because of this damage and the intense efforts expended on control, some 2...

Invertebrates exhibit a wide range of diversity in body plan, physiology, behaviour, adaptation and preferences for habitat and food. Their relationship with the environment is unique and multidimensional. This book is organized into two sections containing chapters on the frontier areas of research in ecophysiology and management-related problems...

This work provides a preliminary inventory of West African Coccinellidae. This was based on the West African Coccinellidae (WAC) specimens in the holdings of insect collections at the Laboratoire de Zoologie des Invertébrés Terrestres at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop (IFAN), Senegal and the Biodiversity Center at the Int...