The Jaw Adductor Muscle Complex in Teleostean Fishes: Evolution,Homologies and Revised Nomenclature (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii)

The infraclass Teleostei is a highly diversified group of bony fishes that encompasses 96% of all species of living fishes and almost half of extant vertebrates. Evolution of various morphological complexes in teleosts, particularly those involving soft anatomy, remains poorly understood. Notable among these problematic complexes is the adductor mandibulae, the muscle that provides the primary force for jaw adduction and mouth closure and whose architecture varies from a simple arrangement of two segments to an intricate complex of up to ten discrete subdivisions. The present study analyzed multiple morphological attributes of the adductor mandibulae in representatives of 53 of the 55 extant teleostean orders, as well as significant information from the literature in order to elucidate the homologies of the main subdivisions of this muscle. The traditional alphanumeric terminology applied to the four main divisions of the adductor mandibulae – A₁, A₂, A₃, and Aω – patently fails to reflect homologous components of that muscle across the expanse of the Teleostei. Some features traditionally used as landmarks for identification of some divisions of the adductor mandibulae proved highly variable across the Teleostei; notably the insertion on the maxilla and the position of muscle components relative to the path of the ramus mandibularis trigeminus nerve. The evolutionary model of gain and loss of sections of the adductor mandibulae most commonly adopted under the alphanumeric system additionally proved ontogenetically incongruent and less parsimonious than a model of subdivision and coalescence of facial muscle sections. Results of the analysis demonstrate the impossibility of adapting the alphanumeric terminology so as to reflect homologous entities across the spectrum of teleosts. A new nomenclatural scheme is proposed in order to achieve congruence between homology and nomenclature of the adductor mandibulae components across the entire Teleostei.     

Prognostic value of rising mean platelet volume during hospitalization in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention

Background

The prognostic significance of changes in mean platelet volume (MPV) during hospitalization in ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients underwent primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) has not been previously evaluated. The aim of this study was to determine the association of in-hospital changes in MPV and mortality in these patients.

Methods

Four hundred eighty consecutive STEMI patients were enrolled in this retrospective study. The patients were grouped as survivors (n?=?370) or non-survivors (n?=?110). MPV at admission, and at 48–72?h was evaluated. Change in MPV (MPV at 48–72?h minus MPV on admission) was defined as ΔMPV.

Results

At follow-up, long-term mortality was 23%. The non-survivors had a high ΔMPV than survivors (0.37 (??0.1–0.89) vs 0.79 (0.30–1.40) fL, p?<? 0.001). A high ΔMPV was an independent predictor of all cause mortality ((HR: 1.301 [1.070–1.582], p?=?0.008). Morever, for long-term mortality, the AUC of a multivariable model that included age, LVEF, Killip class, and history of stroke/TIA was 0.781 (95% CI:0.731–0.832, p?<? 0.001). When ΔMPV was added to a multivariable model, the AUC was 0.800 (95% CI: 0.750–0.848, z?=?2.256, difference p?=?0.0241, Fig. 1). Also, the addition of ΔMPV to a multivariable model was associated with a significant net reclassification improvement estimated at 24.5% (p?=?0.027) and an integrated discrimination improvement of 0.014 (p?=?0.0198).

Conclusions

Rising MPV during hospitalization in STEMI patients treated with pPCI was associated with long-term mortality.

     

A morphological supermatrix‐based phylogeny for the Neotropical fish superfamily Anostomoidea (Ostariophysi: Characiformes): phylogeny,missing data and homoplasy

Although 11 studies have addressed the systematics of the four families and 281 fish species of the ecomorphologically diverse Anostomoidea, none has proposed a global hypothesis of relationships. We synthesized these studies to yield a supermatrix with 463 morphological characters among 174 ingroup species, and inferred phylogeny with parsimony and Bayesian optimization. We evaluated the applicability of the supermatrix approach to morphological datasets, tested its sensitivity to missing data, determined the impact of homoplastic characters on phylogenetic resolution, and determined the distribution of homologies and homoplasies on the topology. Despite more than 60% missing data, analyses supported the monophyly of all families, and phylogenetic structure degraded only with inclusion of species with high percentages of missing data and in analyses limited to homoplasies. The latter differs modestly from the full matrix indicating phylogenetic signal in homoplastic characters. Character distributions differ across the phylogeny, with a greater prevalence of homologies at deeper nodes and homoplasies nearer the tips than expected by chance. This may suggest early diversification into distinct bauplans with subsequent diversification of faster evolving character systems. The morphological supermatrix approach is powerful and allows integration of classical data with modern methods to examine the evolution of multiple character systems.     

Building activity and longevity of queenless groups of the Oriental hornet,Vespa orientalis

The effect of group size on behavioral parameters of the Oriental hornet,Vespa orientalis, was assessed experimentally under laboratory conditions. Hornet groups of various sizes (ranging from 1 to 100 individuals per group) comprised of young individuals (0–24 hr of age) devoid of a queen were placed in artificial breeding boxes (ABBs). The following three quantitative parameters were evaluated: the amount and rate of building as a function of the number of hornets in the group, the rate of oviposition as, related to group size and the longevity of hornets as a function of their group size. The probability for the occurrence of these events was similarly considered and additional behavioral parameters were only assessed qualitatively. Results of this investigation revealed a relation between the three mentioned quantitative behavioral parameters and the number of hornets per group. The number of hornets per group was positively related to the extent of building, the number of cells built by a group is , but negatively related to the rate of building. As for the delay of building, a non-monotone relation was found. The relation between number of hornets per group and the oviposition delay was found to be non-monotone; the number of hornets per group and their longevity were found to be inversely related. Discrepanices were recorded on the very small (1–2 individuals) or very large (100 individuals) hornet groups.     

Oxidative addition of the C-O bond of amino acid esters to Rh(I) forming chelating acyl complexes

Esters of N-acylated amino acids and the sterically demanding phosphine 2-(di-ortho-tolylphosphino)phenol react within 1 h at room temperature with the Rh(I) centers of [Cl(μ-Cl)Rh(cyclooctene)₂]₂ to give products of oxidative addition of the ester carbonyl-O bond. The N-acyl carbonyl oxygen is bound to the Rh in these initial adducts, but is displaced upon addition of PMe₃, PhPMe₂, NH₂NMe₂, or the thioether function of a methionine derivative. Remarkably, both initial products from achiral amino acids and their ligand adducts are formed as single five-coordinate diastereomers in essentially quantitative yields. However, asymmetric induction by chiral amino acid derivatives of proline and phenylalanine on the stereochemistry at Rh was modest. Finally, the identities of infrared absorptions of acyl and amide groups in the complexes were established unequivocally by synthesis and spectroscopy of N-acetylglycine esters with a ¹³C label at either the ester or amide carbonyl group.     

On the distribution of the nucleotides in the seven completely sequenced DNAs

Several Markov chain models (up to fourth order) have been fitted to the sequences of the seven DNAs presented in Fuchs et al. (1980). Two methods for determining the order of Markov chain are applied to the data. The two methods lead to different conclusions and we dicuss these discrepancies. When the distribution of the nucleotides in a DNA sequence is investigated, it is suggested that the study on the order of the Markov model should be supplemented with additional analysis.     

UMPU and Alternative Tests for Association in 2 × 2 Tables

The use of the uniformly most powerful among the unbiased (UMPU) test was recently suggested for the study of gametic association between two polymorphic loci as an alternative to the Fisher's exact test (Zapata and Alvarez, 1997, Annals of Human Genetics 61, 71-77). However, the proposed test is not UMPU for two-sided alternatives. In this study, we present the UMPU test, discuss criticisms against the use of randomized tests, and compare the power of several tests. We show that, in many practical cases, the use of the UMPU test is less than desirable and propose the alternative adjusted-more extreme tables (A-MET) and the equal-tails (ET) tests. We suggest that some of the general arguments against the use of randomized tests can be alleviated by a newly proposed extended p-value definition.