Diversity of hard-bottom fauna relative to environmental gradients in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard

A baseline study of hard-bottom zoobenthos in relation to environmental gradients in Kongsfjorden, a glacial fjord in Svalbard, is presented, based on collections from 1996 to 1998. The total species richness in 62 samples from 0 to 30 m depth along five transects was 403 species. Because 32 taxa could not be identified to species level and because 11 species are probably new to science, the total number of identified species was 360. Of these, 47 species are new for Svalbard waters. Bryozoa was the most diverse group. Biogeographic composition revealed features of both Arctic and sub-Arctic properties of the fauna. Species richness, frequency of species occurrence, mean abundance and biomass generally decreased towards the tidal glaciers in inner Kongsfjorden. Among eight environmental factors, depth was most important for explaining variance in the composition of the zoobenthos. The diversity was consistently low at shallow depths, whereas the non-linear patterns of species composition of deeper samples indicated a transitional zone between surface and deeper water masses at 15–20 m depth. Groups of “colonial” and “non-colonial” species differed in diversity, biogeographic composition and distribution by location and depth as well as in relation to other environmental factors. “Non-colonial” species made a greater contribution than “colonial” species to total species richness, total occurrence and biomass in samples, and were more influenced by the depth gradient. Biogeographic composition was sensitive to variation of zoobenthic characteristics over the studied depth range. A list of recorded species and a description of sampling sites are presented

Third Report on Chicken Genes and Chromosomes 2015

Following on from the First Report on Chicken Genes and Chromosomes [Schmid et al., 2000] and the Second Report in 2005 [Schmid et al., 2005], we are pleased to publish this long-awaited Third Report on the latest developments in chicken genomics. The First Report highlighted the availability of genetic and physical maps, while the Second Report was published as the chicken genome sequence was released. This report comes at a time of huge technological advances (particularly in sequencing methodologies) which have allowed us to examine the chicken genome in detail not possible until now. This has also heralded an explosion in avian genomics, with the current availability of more than 48 bird genomes [Zhang G et al., 2014b; Eöry et al., 2015], with many more planned

Congruence of tissue expression profiles from Gene Expression Atlas, SAGEmap and TissueInfo databases

BACKGROUND: Extracting biological knowledge from large amounts of gene expression information deposited in public databases is a major challenge of the postgenomic era. Additional insights may be derived by data integration and cross-platform comparisons of expression profiles. However, database meta-analysis is complicated by differences in experimental technologies, data post-processing, database formats, and inconsistent gene and sample annotation. RESULTS: We have analysed expression profiles from three public databases: Gene Expression Atlas, SAGEmap and TissueInfo. These are repositories of oligonucleotide microarray, Serial Analysis of Gene Expression and Expressed Sequence Tag human gene expression data respectively. We devised a method, Preferential Expression Measure, to identify genes that are significantly over- or under-expressed in any given tissue. We examined intra- and inter-database consistency of Preferential Expression Measures. There was good correlation between replicate experiments of oligonucleotide microarray data, but there was less coherence in expression profiles as measured by Serial Analysis of Gene Expression and Expressed Sequence Tag counts. We investigated inter-database correlations for six tissue categories, for which data were present in the three databases. Significant positive correlations were found for brain, prostate and vascular endothelium but not for ovary, kidney, and pancreas. CONCLUSION: We show that data from Gene Expression Atlas, SAGEmap and TissueInfo can be integrated using the UniGene gene index, and that expression profiles correlate relatively well when large numbers of tags are available or when tissue cellular composition is simple. Finally, in the case of brain, we demonstrate that when PEM values show good correlation, predictions of tissue-specific expression based on integrated data are very accurate

[Avian cytogenetics goes functional] Third report on chicken genes and chromosomes 2015

High-density gridded libraries of large-insert clones using bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) and other vectors are essential tools for genetic and genomic research in chicken and other avian species... Taken together, these studies demonstrate that applications of large-insert clones and BAC libraries derived from birds are, and will continue to be, effective tools to aid high-throughput and state-of-the-art genomic efforts and the important biological insight that arises from them

Pomiary wplywu pasozytow na kondycje ryb

A brief description of the fish condition indices is provided together with proper formulae, and examples of their application in parasitological studies. Author argues that, since some indices react comparatively slowly upon parasite-induced stress, and some respond quite rapidly, a whole set of indices should be used in order to provide researchers with complete picture of fish-parasite interactions

Wystepowanie pasozytniczych Metazoa leszcza [Abramis brama] w zbiornikach naturalnych i sztucznych w Polsce

Occurrence of parasitic Metazoa of bream (Abramis brama) in the natural and artificial reservoirs in Poland. The occurrence of parasitic Metazoa of bream in Poland was analyzed. Three types of reservoirs were studied - lakes, lakes heated with thermal effluents and artificial reservoirs. The estimated model S = 3.367 * ln(N) - 1.192 described relationship between sample size and richness of the component community of bream parasites in lakes. On the basis of this model the confidence intervals for each artificial reservoir and thermally affected lake were computed. The richness of the component communitites of bream did not depend on the type of reservoir (natural vs. Artificial). It was affected by the thermal eftluents (richer communities in heated lakes), geographical isolation of the reservoir, and young age of the reservoir. Most spectacular influence of the artificial origin of the reservoir was found in Monogenea (group missing in 5-year old reservoir) and Acanthocephalus anguillae (present in 1 out of 4 artificial reservoirs)

Where have all the fleas gone? Low levels of blue tit Parus caeruleus nests infestation

Prevalence of flea infestation in nests of Blue Tit Parus caeruleus was analyzed and compared with these of other hole-nesting birds. Nests were collected from nestboxes prior to youngs fledging. It was found that prevalence of fleas was very low in comparison to other studies of Blue Tits nests and to other bird species. The possible reasons of this low prevalence are discussed