Italian Journal of Zoology最新文献

{"title":"Seasonal changes in group size and composition of Chinkara (Gazella bennettii shikarii) (Mammalia: Bovidae) in central Iran","authors":"H. Akbari, H. Moradi, H.-R. Rezaie, N. Baghestani","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1072250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1072250","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The social structure and seasonal changes in group size of Chinkara (Gazella bennettii shikarii Groves, 1993) were studied in central Iran during a year. A total of 397 groups were observed between September 2013 and September 2014 in Dare Anjir Wildlife Refuge, Siakooh National Park and Booruie Wildlife Refuge. We assessed the seasonal group-size variation in these regions and found that the largest groups formed in autumn and winter. Chinkara groups never exceeded eight individuals in the studied areas. Solitary Chinkaras were observed very often in the study areas. The mean group size of Chinkara had significant difference between seasons in two protected areas. As a result, Chinkara group size in central Iran is one of the smallest ever documented in the world. Such small group sizes are likely due to the arid environment and poor-quality vegetation of the studied regions. The sex ratio was skewed significantly towards females in Dare Anjir Wildlife Refuge and Booruie Wildlife Refuge.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"98 1","pages":"609 - 615"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81183214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bibliometric ups and downs","authors":"F. Boero","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1069955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1069955","url":null,"abstract":"Bibliometrics is the science that, among other issues regarding books, articles and other publications, analyzes the performance of scientific journals. The Impact Factor (IF) is the most popular measure of the influence of a journal, and its size is usually used to rank tribunes. If the IF is large, the journal is good. Just as with the hopes of economists, with GDP and other economical paraphernalia, the expectation is that the IF grows every year, and we editors anxiously wait for the publication of the IF by the Institute for Scientific Information. This year our IF decreased a little bit, from 0.865 to 0.761. As Editor-in-Chief, I should commit hara-kiri! Another metric, however, savedmy life. It is the Cited Half-Life (CHL). Never heard about it? The IF measures how much the articles are cited three or five years after publication. The CHL measures for how long the articles keep being cited. I am proud to tell you that the CHL of the Italian Journal of Zoology reached >10 this year. We never had such result. This is the top value of this measure: it means infinity. So, our articles are now more or less immortal. Maybe they will not be cited much soon after publication, but they will not disappear from the radar of those who study zoology, according to this bibliometric measure. What is more important? The IF or the CHL? The answer is clear: the IF. Nobody cares about the CHL, so why bother? I suggest a little study. Inspect the rankings of the journals in the various disciplines and order them according to either IF or CHL. You will be surprised. Usually, the larger the IF the smaller the CHL, and vice versa. The papers that appear in highly impacting journals, with due exceptions, are rapidly forgotten. They are worth gold as soon as they are out, but their value decays very rapidly. The reason is that there are ‘rapidly evolving’ disciplines, and there are others that evolved already. In this case, rapidly evolving might be expressed also with ‘rapidly decaying’ disciplines, since their highly impacting articles are soon forgotten. Our problem is not the IF – those who have it large are right in praising their size – but we should not be ashamed by our size, we have other resources to counterbalance this poor measure. Our problem is that we are not even aware that CHL exists, and this leads to inferiority complexes in respect to other disciplines. They have such a large IF, and ours is so tiny! Maybe it might be wise to merge these two values and find a cumulative index that considers both aspects. Something like IF × CHL. But if you multiply a tiny number for infinity (CHL >10 is infinity) you have infinity. Whereas if you multiply a huge number for a number that is not infinity, the cumulative index is lower than infinity. I fear that the guys who practice disciplines with tiny CHL would not like this measure. That’s why they do not care about CHL. As usual, the fault is ours: we should care about CHL much more than about the IF. We dev","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"20 1","pages":"299 - 299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84455954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The echinoderm innate humoral immune response","authors":"M. Chiaramonte, R. Russo","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1061615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1061615","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Multicellular organisms have an immune system, which is essential for the survival of living beings. Interest in the immune system has been expanded since common characteristics of innate immunity between Drosophila melanogaster (Meigen, 1830) and mammals were discovered in the 1980. Since then, immunology has mainly focused on the adaptive immune system that seems to be restricted to vertebrates. Unlike the innate immunity, the adaptive one is acquired after exposure to a specific antigen (Ag) and includes: antigen-presenting cells such as macrophages, proliferation of B and T lymphocytes, Ag-specific antibody/cytokine production and immunological memory. Innate immunity is instead a process of cellular defense at low specificity, which is designed to prevent and combat infectious agents that penetrate at the tissue level, and may be the only form of immunity present in invertebrates such as sea urchins. The immune system of invertebrates acts through (i) cellular components (cell-mediated immunity) in which the effectors of defense reactions are represented by immune cells; (ii) soluble factors (humoral immunity), secreted by the immune cells, such as lectins, agglutinins, lysins, antimicrobial peptides and the prophenoloxidase (proPO) activating system, which act in parallel with the immune cells to fight pathogens and other foreign substances. Here we aim to deepen the study on humoral immunity of invertebrates, especially referring to the phylum Echinodermata because of its features shared with protostomes and other deuterostomes, and suggesting a key step during evolution.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"12 1","pages":"300 - 308"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87835966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transfer of egg white proteins with reference to lysozyme during the development of Meleagris gallopavo (Galliformes: Phasianidae) embryos","authors":"S. J. Shbailat, H. Safi","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1060268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1060268","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The egg white and egg yolk are the two main sources of nutrients for the developing avian embryo. The egg white should be transferred into the yolk in order to be consumed by the embryo. How the egg white ultimately reaches the egg yolk is largely unexplored in the turkey Meleagris gallopavo. Here, we explored the routes of egg white transfer in fertilized turkey eggs. Initially, we tested the electrophoretic pattern of the proteins in different egg compartments throughout development. Then, we used lysozyme as a reference protein to follow the egg white transfer, and we measured its activity using Micrococcus lysodeikticus as a substrate. We found that several presumptive egg white protein bands appeared in the different egg compartments. Also, the electrophoretic patterns in the intestinal fluid and thick yolk were marked by the disappearance of large bands and the appearance of small ones at late developmental stages. Moreover, we detected a chronological appearance of lysozyme activity in the different egg compartments. The activity appeared in the extraembryonic and amniotic fluids on day 15, in the intestinal fluid on day 16 and in the thick yolk on day 17, and it increased in general with the progress of development. Our results suggest that the main route of egg white transfer is albumen sac – extraembryonic cavity – amniotic cavity – intestinal lumen – egg yolk. Furthermore, the transferred egg white proteins seem to undergo digestion in the intestinal lumen and egg yolk at late developmental stages.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"847 1","pages":"349 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82938453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Partial separation of climatic niche between two cryptic species of Leptidea (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) in the Alpine–Adriatic region","authors":"F. Gallo, S. Beretta, G. Salogni, L. Bonato","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1061614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1061614","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Many cryptic species have been recently recognized in the European butterfly fauna, and climatic determinants have been investigated to explain the usually parapatric distribution of these species. Cryptic species of Leptidea, however, are often sympatric throughout Europe, with variable ecological interactions and segregation patterns. Focusing on the highly diverse landscape between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea, we evaluated the climatic and geomorphological correlates of the fine distribution of L. sinapis and L. juvernica, by means of discriminant analysis on 151 sites in a representative region. In addition to reliable records selected from collections and from the literature, we identified 104 specimens from 89 sites by analysing the morphometric variation of male and female genitalia and filtering for consistency between all alternative identification methods hitherto developed for this species complex. We found that L. sinapis is widespread from the coastal plain to the inner mountains, up to 1800 m above sea level (a.s.l.), whereas L. juvernica is restricted to the mountainous areas, inhabiting also the bottom of pre-alpine valleys, as low as 200 m a.s.l. Despite that the two species are often syntopic, L. juvernica is more frequent in areas with more intense rainfall and steeper slopes, whereas L. sinapis may occur in a broader range of conditions, also in warmer sites with a wider temperature range.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"1 1","pages":"573 - 581"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89773000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Habitat discrimination of big-scale sand smelt Atherina boyeri Risso, 1810 (Atheriniformes: Atherinidae) in eastern Algeria using somatic morphology and otolith shape","authors":"A. Boudinar, L. Chaoui, K. Mahé, M. Cachera, M. Kara","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1051139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1051139","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Somatic morphology and otolith shape were used to discriminate four samples of Atherina boyeri from three different habitats: Mellah lagoon (n = 269), Annaba Gulf (144 punctuated and 194 unpunctuated individuals) and Ziama inlet (n = 147) in eastern Algeria. For each individual, somatic morphology was described with 13 metrics and eight meristic measurements, while the otolith contour shape of 452 individuals from the three habitats was analysed using Fourier analysis. Then, two discriminant analyses, one using the 13 metric measurements and the other using Fourier descriptors, were used in order to discriminate populations of A. boyeri. The results of the discriminant analyses based on the two methods were similar, and showed that this species could be discriminated into three distinct groups: (1) marine punctuated, (2) lagoon and marine unpunctuated and (3) estuarine. These results are consolidated by the comparison of the Mayr, Linsley and Usinger coefficient of difference for the meristic parameters according to the location origin, where the difference reached a racial or even sub-specific level for some characters, depending on which pairs of populations were compared.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"14 1","pages":"446 - 453"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89654118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"New records of jellyfish species in the Marmara Sea","authors":"M. Isinibilir, I. N. Yilmaz, Nazlı Demirel","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1040858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1040858","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This manuscript reports the first observations of three species of Hydrozoa (Podocorynoides minima, Koellikerina fasciculata and Gastroblasta raffaelei) and one species of Scyphozoa (Discomedusa lobata) in the Marmara Sea that were sampled in 2006–2011. Their possible introduction pathways, some ecological and distributional details are briefly discussed here.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"118 1","pages":"425 - 429"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76555392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"First records of Carybdea marsupialis proliferation (Cnidaria: Cubozoa) along the eastern Tunisian coast (Central Mediterranean)","authors":"Sonia K. M. Gueroun, Melissa J Acevedo, O. D. Yahia, A. Deidun, V. Fuentes, S. Piraino, M. Yahia","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1045945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1045945","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The cubozoan jellyfish Carybdea marsupialis Linnaeus, 1758 is recorded for the first time from the eastern Tunisian coast (Hammamet beach). A few specimens (three adult individuals) were first recorded in July 2005. In spite of several jellyfish monitoring campaigns carried out along the Tunisian coasts in recent years, new records of C. marsupialis from the same location were only made years later, in July and August 2014, consisting of aggregations of adult jellyfish (mean density of 1.1 ± 1.0 ind. m−3), which may pose a severe threat to bathers due to their painful stings. The mean morphometric parameter values from 55 C. marsupialis specimens sampled during the same period are reported here, and the possible causes for box jellyfish proliferation in the Hammamet coastal zone are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"232 1","pages":"430 - 435"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75573450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Environmental impact on the antioxidant responses in Corbicula fluminea (Bivalvia: Veneroida: Corbiculidae) from the Danube River","authors":"J. Vranković","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1043963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1043963","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present study aims to assess the biological effects of different environmental pollution on the Asian clam Corbicula fluminea. Biomarkers indicative of oxidative stress (superoxide dismutase, SOD; catalase, CAT; glutathione peroxidase, GPx; glutathione reductase, GR; and the phase II biotransformation enzyme glutathione-S-transferase, GST) were measured in clams collected within the Serbian sector of the Danube River Basin at three locations: Višnjica, Zemun and Bela stena. Clams from Višnjica exhibited significantly higher SOD, CAT and GST activities than clams from the other two locations (p < 0.05), whereas GPx and GR activities do not have such a marked pattern. An alteration in the activity of SOD, CAT and GST reflects the presence of certain pro-oxidative chemicals that can lead to oxidative stress in clams at the Višnjica site. In conclusion, the noted antioxidant disparities among clam populations from different locations reflected physiological sensitivity of C. fluminea to environmental change, supporting its use as a sentinel organism in biomonitoring investigations.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"28 1","pages":"378 - 386"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80977274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fistularia commersonii (Teleostea: Fistulariidae): walking through the Lessepsian paradox of mitochondrial DNA","authors":"D. Sanna, F. Scarpa, T. Lai, P. Cossu, M. Falautano, L. Castriota, F. Andaloro, M. C. Follesa, P. Francalacci, M. Curini-Galletti, M. Casu","doi":"10.1080/11250003.2015.1046958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/11250003.2015.1046958","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Mediterranean Lessepsian migrations excite the interest of biologists who are devoted to inferring the effects of selection on the genetic structure of immigrants. The bluespotted cornetfish Fistularia commersonii is an Indo-Pacific species that was first recorded in the Levantine cost of Mediterranean, and within a few years, it rapidly expanded throughout the entire basin. Studies on its genetic variability, performed via mitochondrial sequencing of the Mediterranean specimens, suggest that a limited number of mitochondrial lineages passed through the Suez Canal. However, nuclear markers provide a scenario, with a high genetic variability among the Mediterranean F. commersonii migrants, along with the occurrence of haplotype sharing between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The aim of this study was to enlarge the number of Mediterranean sites in order to evaluate if the rapid expansion and different patterns of spread of F. commersonii in the basin could have led to a genetic structuring. The analysis was carried out by sequencing mitochondrial D-loop I in individuals from Sardinia, Sicily, Tunisia, Lampedusa, Libya and Lebanon. Sequences available from previous studies were included in the data set, allowing us to obtain a data set that likely represents the entire distribution range of the species. Results suggest the possible occurrence of two mitochondrial lineages involved in the Mediterranean invasion of F. commersonii, a bottleneck may have caused a loss in the genetic variation, leading to the fixation of specific lineages as an adaptive response to the new environmental conditions.","PeriodicalId":14615,"journal":{"name":"Italian Journal of Zoology","volume":"126 9 1","pages":"499 - 512"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74165045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}