Description of a new Pygopleurus species (Col.: Glaphyridae), with a list of recorded species of the genera Pygopleurus and Eulasia from Iran

A new species of the family Glaphyridae, Pygopleurus deuvei sp. n., is described from Iran and compared with its closely-related species. This species was collected during a joint expedition conducted by Muséum national dâHistoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN) and Insect Taxonomy Research Department, Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, Iran in June 2002. Moreover, a list of the Iranian species of the genera Pygopleurus Motschulsky and Eulasia Truqui is provided

Unexpectedly diverse forest dung beetle communities in degraded rain forest landscapes in Madagascar

Tropical forests, which harbor high levels of biodiversity, are being lost at an alarming speed. Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot, has lost more than half of its original forest cover. Most of the remaining forests are small fragments of primary and secondary forest with differing degrees of human impact. These forests, as well as coffee and fruit plantations, may be important in supporting the forest-dependent biodiversity in Madagascar but this has been little studied. In Madagascar, dung beetles, which offer important ecosystem services, are largely restricted to forests. We examined the ability of fragmented and degraded forests to support dung beetle diversity, compared to the large areas of primary forest in eastern Madagascar. We found a general trend of a reduction of species with a loss of forest connectivity. In contrast, a higher level of forest disturbance was associated with higher species diversity. In several sites of low-quality forest as many or more species were found as in less disturbed and primary forests. The average size of dung beetles was smaller in the lower quality localities than in the primary forests. These findings suggest that many forest dung beetles in Madagascar are better adapted to forest disturbance than earlier expected, although they require some level of connectivity to surrounding forest. in Malagasy is available with online material.Peer reviewe

Anxiety, emotional processing and depression in people with multiple sclerosis.

BACKGROUND: Despite the high comorbidity of anxiety and depression in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), little is known about their inter-relationships. Both involve emotional perturbations and the way in which emotions are processed is likely central to both. The aim of the current study was to explore relationships between the domains of mood, emotional processing and coping and to analyse how anxiety affects coping, emotional processing, emotional balance and depression in people with MS. METHODS: A cross-sectional questionnaire study involving 189 people with MS with a confirmed diagnosis of MS recruited from three French hospitals. Study participants completed a battery of questionnaires encompassing the following domains: i. anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)); ii. emotional processing (Emotional Processing Scale (EPS-25)); iii. positive and negative emotions (Positive and Negative Emotionality Scale (EPN-31)); iv. alexithymia (Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire) and v. coping (Coping with Health Injuries and Problems-Neuro (CHIP-Neuro) questionnaire. Relationships between these domains were explored using path analysis. RESULTS: Anxiety was a strong predictor of depression, in both a direct and indirect way, and our model explained 48% of the variance of depression. Gender and functional status (measured by the Expanded Disability Status Scale) played a modest role. Non-depressed people with MS reported high levels of negative emotions and low levels of positive emotions. Anxiety also had an indirect impact on depression via one of the subscales of the Emotional Processing Scale ("Unregulated Emotion") and via negative emotions (EPN-31). CONCLUSIONS: This research confirms that anxiety is a vulnerability factor for depression via both direct and indirect pathways. Anxiety symptoms should therefore be assessed systematically and treated in order to lessen the likelihood of depression symptoms

Deforestation and apparent extinctions of endemic forest beetles in Madagascar

Madagascar has lost about half of its forest cover since 1953 with much regional variation, for instance most of the coastal lowland forests have been cleared. We sampled the endemic forest-dwelling Helictopleurini dung beetles across Madagascar during 2002–2006. Our samples include 29 of the 51 previously known species for which locality information is available. The most significant factor explaining apparent extinctions (species not collected by us) is forest loss within the historical range of the focal species, suggesting that deforestation has already caused the extinction, or effective extinction, of a large number of insect species with small geographical ranges, typical for many endemic taxa in Madagascar. Currently, roughly 10% of the original forest cover remains. Species–area considerations suggest that this will allow roughly half of the species to persist. Our results are consistent with this prediction

Multi-center evaluation of the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) assay and HbsAg confirmatory assay for the family of Access immunoassay systems

BACKGROUND: Accurate detection of Hepatitis B Surface Antigen (HBsAg) is an important aid in the diagnosis of patients infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV). A multi-center study was conducted to characterize the performance of the HBsAg assay on the family of Access immunoassay systems from Beckman Coulter. METHODS: The Access HBsAg assay was characterized in a multi-center study and compared to the Abbott AxSYM* and PRISM* HBsAg assays. The bioMérieux VIDAS* assay was used to resolve discrepant results. Reproducibility studies (intra-assay, inter-assay and inter-lot) were performed with pooled serum samples (negative sample, close to cut off, low, medium and high positive samples). Analytical sensitivity, subtype and genotype detection were studied with various commercial panels (SFTS panel, WHO 80/549, WHO 00/588, Teragenix HBV Genotype panel). A panel of recombinant HBsAg mutant proteins was tested to investigate reactivity towards genetic mutations. Clinical sensitivity was verified with seroconversion panels and samples from subjects with known HBV infection. Analytical specificity was studied with samples from patients with potential cross-reactive infections. Clinical specificity was validated among blood donors and a hospitalized population. RESULTS: The imprecision was < 10%. Analytical sensitivity was < or = 0.1 ng/mL (SFTS panel), 0.020 PEI Units/mL (ad panel), 0.024 PEI Units/mL (ay panel), 0.092 IU/mL with WHO 80/549 and 0.056 IU/mL with WHO 00/588. All genotype samples and HBsAg mutants were reactive with the Access HBsAg assay. Seroconversion panels tested showed no significant difference with the reference method. Sensitivity for subjects with known HBV infection was 100%. No interference with potentially cross-reactive infections was observed after confirmatory testing. Specificity was 99.96% (100% after confirmatory testing) in a blood donor population and 99.5% (100% after confirmatory testing) in a hospitalized population. Excellent separation of positive and negative populations was observed. CONCLUSIONS: The Access HBsAg and HBsAg Confirmatory assays meet all clinical and analytical performance requirements of assays for the detection of HBsAg

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

When using Framingham data, the prediction accuracy is not much decreased even with 50,000 SNPs that were randomly selected from 389,265 SNPs.

<p>When using Framingham data, the prediction accuracy is not much decreased even with 50,000 SNPs that were randomly selected from 389,265 SNPs.</p