EAACI position paper on occupational rhinitis

The present document is the result of a consensus reached by a panel of experts from European and non-European countries on Occupational Rhinitis (OR), a disease of emerging relevance which has received little attention in comparison to occupational asthma. The document covers the main items of OR including epidemiology, diagnosis, management, socio-economic impact, preventive strategies and medicolegal issues. An operational definition and classification of OR tailored on that of occupational asthma, as well as a diagnostic algorithm based on steps allowing for different levels of diagnostic evidence are proposed. The needs for future research are pointed out. Key messages are issued for each item

Mature Modifications and Sexual Dimorphism

Allometric growth between different parts of the shell often hampers the identification of mollusk shells, particularly in such cases where preadult shell growth varies strongly. Especially in gastropods, the terminal aperture is often less variable and yields morphological information essential for species determination (e.g. Vermeij 1993; Urdy et al. 2010a, b). In fossil mollusk shells, the adult aperture (peristome)is often missing, partially due to an early death, and partially due to destructive processes, which occurred post mortem (taphonomy). Therefore, the entire shell ontogeny is known only from a small fraction of all ammonoid taxa (e.g., Landman et al. 2012). Nevertheless, knowledge of the adult shell of ammonoids is very important since it can yield morphological information essential for systematics and for the reconstruction of various aspects of their paleobiology