Extant members of the ancient insect order of stoneflies exhibit a disjunct, antitropical distribution, with one major lineage exclusively occurring in the Southern Hemisphere and the other, with few exceptions, on the Northern continents. Here, we address the biogeographic distribution and phylogenetic relationships of stoneflies using a phylogenetic workflow that combines both transcriptomic and Sanger sequence datasets with heterogeneous taxon coverage. We used a dataset comprising 2997 genes derived from the transcriptomes of 30 species...

Long-distance dispersal (LDD) is an essential event for species colonization and expansion in oceanic island ecosystems. Endozoochory by birds is an important factor promoting the LDD of plant seeds, but its contribution to interisland seed dispersal is still unclear. Here, we show possible seed dispersal by a seed predator pigeon, the Japanese wood pigeon Columba janthina, among oceanic islands in the Izu archipelago, Japan. Although some previous studies showed that most seeds swallowed by this...

Presbycusis is the cumulative effect of aging on hearing. Recent studies have shown that common mitochondrial gene deletions are closely related to deafness caused by degenerative changes in the auditory system, and some of these nuclear factors are proposed to participate in the regulation of mitochondrial function. However, the detailed mechanisms involved in age-related degeneration of the auditory systems have not yet been fully elucidated. In this study, we found that FOXG1 plays an important...

Rapidly accumulating genetic data from environmental sequencing approaches have revealed an extraordinary level of unsuspected diversity within marine phytoplankton, which is responsible for around 50% of global net primary production. However, the phenotypic identity of many of the organisms distinguished by environmental DNA sequences remains unclear. The rappemonads are a plastid-bearing protistan lineage that to date has only been identified by environmental plastid 16S rRNA sequences. The phenotypic identity of this group, which does not...

Structural maintenance of chromosomes (SMC) protein complexes are common in Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota. SMC proteins, together with the proteins related to SMC (SMC-related proteins), constitute a superfamily of ATPases. Bacteria/Archaea and Eukaryotes are distinctive from one another in terms of the repertory of SMC proteins. A single type of SMC protein is dimerized in the bacterial and archaeal complexes, whereas eukaryotes possess six distinct SMC subfamilies (SMC1-6), constituting three heterodimeric complexes, namely cohesin, condensin,...

Plants growing under reduced water availability can affect insect herbivores differently, in some instances benefitting them. However, the forces mediating these positive impacts remain mostly unclear. To identify how water availability impacts plant quality and multitrophic interactions, we conducted manipulative field studies with two populations of the specialist herbivore Pieris rapae, and its host plant, Rorippa indica. We found that P. rapae larvae experienced higher survival on R. indica growing under low water availability compared...

Understanding the mechanisms behind the seasonal emergences of herbivorous insects is ecologically important. However, little is known about the effect of meteorological factors and the other individuals in cicada emergence timing in fluctuating environments. Particularly, due to the long lifecycle and subterranean larval stages of cicada species, investigating their seasonal outbreaks is difficult. To overcome this, we reconstructed a time-series dataset that consists of cicada emergence and meteorological factors, leveraging a long-term collection of cicada...

The mouse Igf2/H19 locus is regulated by genomic imprinting, in which the paternally methylated H19 imprinting control region (ICR) plays a critical role in mono-allelic expression of the genes in the locus. Although the maternal allele–specific insulator activity of the H19 ICR in regulating imprinted Igf2 expression has been well established, the detailed mechanism by which the H19 ICR controls mono-allelic H19 gene expression has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we evaluated the...

Presbycusis is the cumulative effect of aging on hearing. Recent studies have shown that common mitochondrial gene deletions are closely related to deafness caused by degenerative changes in the auditory system, and some of these nuclear factors are proposed to participate in the regulation of mitochondrial function. However, the detailed mechanisms involved in age-related degeneration of the auditory systems have not yet been fully elucidated. In this study, we found that FOXG1 plays an important...

Natural and anthropogenic disasters have the capability to cause sudden extrinsic environmental changes and long-lasting perturbations including invasive species, species expansion, and influence evolution as selective pressures force adaption. Such disasters occurred on March 11th 2011, in Fukushima, Japan when an earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown of a nuclear power plant all drastically reformed anthropogenic land use. Here, we demonstrate, using genetic data, how wild boar (Sus scrofa leucomystax) have persevered against these environmental changes, including...

The data were generated and analyzed in the manuscript entitled "Signs of the plastid: Enzymes involved in plastid-localized metabolic pathways in a eugregarine species". This work is currently accepted to be published in Parasitology International. As of April 17, 2021, we have no detail about the manuscript (e.g., issue, volume, page number, DOI number). We generated the transcriptome data from the apicomplexan parasites/symbionts isolated from three terrestrial arthropods, namely the centipede Scolopocryptops rubiginosus and two...