Some centrosaurines have a vestigial nasal

horn. The antorbital selleck chemical cavity is vestigial in Thyreophora, Iguanodontia and Ceratopsidae. I recommend that this information be exploited to increase public awareness of the evidence for macroevolution. “
“The giant mole-rat Fukomys mechowii is a cooperatively breeding, subterranean rodent inhabiting the Miombo woodland and savanna of south-central Africa, with reproduction occurring throughout the year. Across species within the family Bathyergidae, ovulation can be either induced by mating or spontaneous and the particular mechanism may correlate with patterns of seasonality, dispersal and opportunities for mating. We investigate the control of ovulation in F. mechowii, a species closely related to a spontaneously ovulating species but found in a habitat more typical of mole-rats

with induced ovulation. Six wild-caught, non-reproductive females were removed from their natal colonies and non-invasively monitored for ovarian cyclicity by measuring urinary progesterone every 2 days, over 217 days. All six females had elevated progesterone profiles indicative of the luteal phase of the ovarian cycle, whether singly housed, separated from a male by a mesh screen (i.e. non-physical contact), or paired with a vasectomised male (full physical contact), although progesterone concentrations BKM120 order were significantly enhanced in the latter condition. Together with observations that Adenosine triphosphate male penile morphology is similar to other spontaneously ovulating bathyergids, these results strongly suggest that while ovarian cyclicity may occur spontaneously in F. mechowii, the presence of a male may have an additional stimulatory effect on ovulation. Comparative phylogenetic analysis revealed a positive correlation between seasonality in breeding and induced ovulation. Furthermore, a likelihood-based

reconstruction suggests that induced ovulation is the ancestral state for the Bathyergidae and that this trait has been convergently lost in at least two lineages, giving rise to a spontaneous mode of ovulation. “
“How patterns of morphological and genotypic variation co-occur in natural populations is a fundamental issue to understand underlying forces involved in the process of differentiation. Micropogonias furnieri represents a good model to test the influence of evolutionary forces in the processes of spatial differentiation, because of the variability of environments it inhabits. The main objective of this work was to characterize phenotypic variation in several populations of M. furnieri by means of geometric morphometric techniques. The phenotypic variation pattern found was compared with the genetic structure, derived from microsatellites analyses. In addition, we examined the hypothesis that genetic drift is a sufficient explanation of the patterns of phenotypic variances and covariances within and among populations.