Taricha torosa

Number of Pages: 4Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Phylogenetic relationships of African Caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona): insights from mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences

Africa (excluding the Seychelles) has a diverse caecilian fauna, including the endemic family Scolecomorphidae and six endemic genera of the more cosmopolitan Caeciliidae. Previous molecular phylogenetic studies have not included any caecilians from the African mainland. Partial 12S and 16S mitochondrial gene sequences were obtained for two species of the endemic African Scolecomorphidae and five species and four genera of African Caeciliids, aligned against previously reported sequences for 16 caecilian species, and analysed using parsimony, maximum likelihood, Bayesian and distance methods. Results are in agreement with traditional taxonomy in providing support for the monophyly of the African Caeciliid genera Boulengerula and Schistometopum and for the Scolecomorphidae. They disagree in indicating that the Caeciliidae is paraphyletic with respect to the Scolecomorphidae. Although more data from morphology and/or molecules will be required to resolve details of the interrelationships of the African caecilian genera, the data provide strong support for at least two origins of caecilians in which the eye is reduced and covered with bone, and do not support the hypotheses that the caecilian assemblages of Africa, and of East and of West Africa are monophyletic

Standardized Testing of Non-Standard Photovoltaic Pavement Surfaces

Emerging photovoltaic products have expanded the applications for the technologies into markets previously unconsidered for what was thought to be a delicate electronic product. One company leading this effort, Solar Roadways, Incorporated, is producing pavement replacing photovoltaic systems and proposing their use in everything from sidewalks to runways. Current pavement testing methods cannot be applied to these non-homogenous structures to identify if they can support the required loads. However, the standards called out specifically for pavements may be able to be translated to these products and their non-homogenous structures and non-standard materials to identify if they are able to perform similarly to standard pavements. This research modified existing test standards in several ways: rigid pavements standards for advanced loading, structural adhesive standards for shear loading, structure specific standards for moisture conditioning, and application specific standards for freeze/thaw cycling. These modifications are due to the fact that the materials in these emerging products do not have established tests to evaluate their performance in non-traditional applications. The future of electronics is dependent on product unique applications. This, in turn, requires finding methods of testing them based on application, extrapolation, or correlation to traditional material testing which enables faster product development and subsequent roll out

Phylogenetic relationships of Indian caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona) inferred from mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences

India has a diverse caecilian fauna, including representatives of three of the six currently recognized families, the Caeciliidae, Ichthyophiidae, the endemic Uraeotyphlidae, but previous molecular phylogenetic studies of caecilians have not included sequences for any Indian caecilians. Partial 12S and 16S mitochondrial gene sequences were obtained for a single representative of each of the caecilian families found in India and aligned against previously reported sequences for 13 caecilian species. The resulting alignment (16 taxa, 1200 sites, of which 288 cannot be aligned unambiguously) was analyzed using parsimony, maximum-likelihood, and distance methods. As judged by bootstrap proportions, decay indices, and leaf stabilities, well-supported relationships of the Indian caecilians are recovered from the alignment. The data (1) corroborate the hypothesis, based on morphology, that the Uraeotyphlidae and Ichthyophiidae are sister taxa, (2) recover a monophyletic Ichthyophiidae, including Indian and South East Asian representatives, and (3) place the Indian caeciliid Gegeneophis ramaswamii as the sister group of the caeciliid caecilians of the Seychelles. Rough estimates of divergence times suggest an origin of the Uraeotyphlidae and Ichthyophiidae while India was isolated from Laurasia and Africa and are most consistent with an Indian origin of these families and subsequent dispersal of ichthyophiids into South East Asia

The horofunction boundary of the Hilbert geometry

We investigate the horofunction boundary of the Hilbert geometry defined on an arbitrary finite-dimensional bounded convex domain D. We determine its set of Busemann points, which are those points that are the limits of `almost-geodesics'. In addition, we show that any sequence of points converging to a point in the horofunction boundary also converges in the usual sense to a point in the Euclidean boundary of D. We prove that all horofunctions are Busemann points if and only if the set of extreme sets of the polar of D is closed in the Painleve-Kuratowski topology.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures; minor changes, examples adde

The evolution of parental care in salamanders

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56413/1/MP169.pd

Systematics of caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona) of the family Scolecomorphidae

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57149/1/OP713.pd

Geographic variation and systematics of salamaders of the genus Dicamptodon Strauch (Ambystomatidae)

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56393/1/MP149.pd