Tropical volcanoes are an important but understudied ecosystem, and the relationships between plant species diversity and compositional change and elevation may differ from mountains created by uplift, because of their younger and more homogeneous soils. We sampled vegetation over an altitudinal gradient on Mt. Rinjani, Lombok, Indonesia. We modeled alpha- (plot) and beta- (among plot) diversity (Fisher’s alpha), compositional change, and biomass against elevation and selected covariates. We also examined community phylogenetic structure across the...

Understanding the factors that contribute to loss of genetic diversity in fragmented populations is crucial for conservation measurements. Land-bridge archipelagoes offer ideal model systems for identifying the long-term effects of these factors on genetic variations in wild populations. In this study, we used 9 microsatellite markers to quantify genetic diversity and differentiation of 810 pond frogs (Pelophylax nigromaculataus) from 24 islands of the Zhoushan Archipelago and 3 sites on nearby mainland China and estimated the...

The ideal DNA barcode for plants remains to be discovered, and the candidate barcode rbcL has been met with considerable skepticism since its proposal. In fact, the variability within this gene has never been fully explored across all plant groups from algae to flowering plants, and its performance as a barcode has not been adequately tested. By analyzing all of the rbcL sequences currently available in GenBank, we attempted to determine how well a region...

Background: Inferring of parentage in natural populations is important in understanding the mating systems of a species, which have great effects on its genetic structure and evolution. Muricidae, a large group (approximately 1,600 species) of marine gastropods, are poorly investigated in patterns of multiple paternity and sperm competition based on molecular techniques. The veined Rapa whelk, Rapana venosa, a commercially important muricid species with internal fertilization, is an ideal species to study the occurrence and...