A taxonomic review of the centipede genus Scolopendra Linnaeus, 1758 (Scolopendromorpha, Scolopendridae) in mainland Southeast Asia, with description of a new species from Laos

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The Centipede Genus Scolopendra in Mainland Southeast Asia: Molecular Phylogenetics, Geometric Morphometrics and External Morphology as Tools for Species Delimitation

Copyright: © 2015 The PLOS ONE Staff. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License [4.0], which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file S1 is the corrected, republished version of the article. The attached file S2 is the original, uncorrected version of the article

Evolution of whole-body enantiomorphy in the tree snail genus Amphidromus

Diverse animals exhibit left–right asymmetry in development. However, no example of dimorphism for the left–right polarity of development (whole-body enantiomorphy) is known to persist within natural populations. In snails, whole-body enantiomorphs have repeatedly evolved as separate species. Within populations, however, snails are not expected to exhibit enantiomorphy, because of selection against the less common morph resulting from mating disadvantage. Here we present a unique example of evolutionarily stable whole-body enantiomorphy in snails. Our molecular phylogeny of South-east Asian tree snails in the genus Amphidromus indicates that enantiomorphy has likely persisted as the ancestral state over a million generations. Enantiomorphs have continuously coexisted in every population surveyed spanning a period of 10 years. Our results indicate that whole-body enantiomorphy is maintained within populations opposing the rule of directional asymmetry in animals. This study implicates the need for explicit approaches to disclosure of a maintenance mechanism and conservation of the genus

An annotated type catalogue of seven genera of operculate land snails (Caenogastropoda, Cyclophoridae) in the Natural History Museum, London

The collection of the seven cyclophorid snail genera housed in the Natural History Museum, London (NHM), includes 95 available species-level names belonging to the genera Pterocyclos Benson, 1832, Cyclotus Swainson, 1840, Myxostoma Troschel, 1847, Rhiostoma Benson, 1860, Scabrina Blanford, 1863, Crossopoma Martens, 1891, and Pearsonia Kobelt, 1902. Lectotypes are here designated for twelve available species-level names to stabilise existing the nomenclature. A complete catalogue of these types, including colour photographs, is provided for the first time. After examining these type specimens, an unpublished manuscript name was found and is described herein as Pterocyclos anamullayensis Sutcharit & Panha, sp. n.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

Notes on the sinistral helicoid snail Bertia cambojiensis (Reeve, 1860) from Vietnam (Eupulmonata, Dyakiidae)

Since the time of the original description there have been no precise locality records in Cambodia of Bertia cambojiensis (Reeve, 1860) and it was believed to be extinct. In 2012, a joint Natural History Museum survey with Vietnamese colleagues rediscovered living populations of this huge sinistral helicoid snail in a protected area of southern Vietnam. The genitalia and radula morphology are re-assessed and type specimens of all recognised congeners are figured herein. The unique morphological characters of this species are a small and simple penis, well-developed amatorial organ complex that incorporates four amatorial organ ducts, a short gametolytic organ complex and spiked papilla, and radula morphology with unicuspid teeth. The type locality of B. cambojiensis, which has been contentious, is determined here to be in the vicinity of ‘Brelum’, Vietnam, near the border with Cambodia. In addition, the nucleotide sequences of barcoding genes COI, 16SrRNA and 28S fragments were provided for further comparison.Copyright Chirasak Sutcharit et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.NHM Repositor

Annotated checklist of the land snail fauna from Southern Cambodia (Mollusca, gastropoda)

10.3897/zookeys.948.51671ZooKeys20209481-4

A snail-eating snake recognizes prey handedness

Specialized predator-prey interactions can be a driving force for their coevolution. Southeast Asian snail-eating snakes (Pareas) have more teeth on the right mandible and specialize in predation on the clockwise-coiled (dextral) majority in shelled snails by soft-body extraction. Snails have countered the snakes’ dextral-predation by recurrent coil reversal, which generates diverse counterclockwise-coiled (sinistral) prey where Pareas snakes live. However, whether the snake predator in turn evolves any response to prey reversal is unknown. We show that Pareas carinatus living with abundant sinistrals avoids approaching or striking at a sinistral that is more difficult and costly to handle than a dextral. Whenever it strikes, however, the snake succeeds in predation by handling dextral and sinistral prey in reverse. In contrast, P. iwasakii with little access to sinistrals on small peripheral islands attempts and frequently misses capturing a given sinistral. Prey-handedness recognition should be advantageous for right-handed snail-eating snakes where frequently encountering sinistrals. Under dextral-predation by Pareas snakes, adaptive fixation of a prey population for a reversal gene instantaneously generates a sinistral species because interchiral mating is rarely possible. The novel warning, instead of sheltering, effect of sinistrality benefitting both predators and prey could further accelerate single-gene ecological speciation by left-right reversal