National Museum of Natural History

Global origins of tuna and billfish fisheries reveal the transition from coastal access to oceanic exploitation

Ocean ecosystems have played a crucial role in people’s lives around the world for millennia. However, questions persist about when, why, and how people first began removing biomass from offshore habitats and established fisheries in distant, oceanic environments. We explore the...

Ecological fitting in a deceptive trap flower: Aristolochia gibertii recruits native drosophilid flies outside South America

Deceptive pollination, in which plants lure pollinators without offering rewards, represents a sophisticated evolutionary strategy. The trap-flowers of Aristolochia provide an excellent system to study the coordinated evolution of floral morphology, chemistry, and phenology. Howe...

The chromosomal genome sequence of the boulder star coral, Orbicella franksi (Gregory, 1895) (Scleractinia: Merulinidae)

We present a genome assembly from a specimen of Orbicella franksi (boulder star coral; Cnidaria; Anthozoa; Scleractinia; Merulinidae). The genome sequence has a total length of 496.97 megabases. Most of the assembly (95.24%) is scaffolded into 15 chromosomal pseudomolecules. The...

Stolephorus lotus, a New Anchovy (Teleostei: Clupeiformes: Engraulidae) from the Northern Territory, Australia

Babu Rao, 1966, in having a long maxilla (posterior tip just reaching or extending slightly beyond the posterior margin of the opercle), indented posterior preopercular margin, anal fin with 16-18 branched fin rays, and 21-23 lower gill rakers, and lacking a predorsal scute and p...

The genome sequence of Dermanura phaeotis (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae, Stenodermatinae; Miller, 1902)

We present a genome assembly from an individual male Dermanura phaeotis (Chordata; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Phyllostomidae). The genome sequence is 2.2 Gb in span. The majority of the assembly is scaffolded into 30 chromosomal pseudomolecules, with the X and Y sex chromosomes assemb...

Microsynteny Analysis Clarifies the Early Diversification of Cypriniform Fishes

While genomic data are powerfully informative for phylogenetic inference, traditional sequence-based analyses can be confounded by issues like homoplasy and incomplete lineage sorting, leaving deep nodes unresolved. Synteny, the conservation of gene order along a chromosome, pres...

Storage timescales and the crystal growth history recorded in the layered reservoir of the Unit 3 Kulanaokuaiki Tephra Member of the Uēkahuna Ash from Kīlauea volcano

Abstract The Kulanaokuaiki Tephra Unit 3 (900 C.E.) was a subplinian basaltic scoria eruption, the largest known to have occurred at Kīlauea’s summit. The initiation mechanism and cause(s) of this highly hazardous eruption remain poorly understood, particularly as this style of a...

Integrative taxonomy reveals multiple Mediterranean invasions by Indo-Pacific Dorvillea (Annelida, Dorvilleidae)

Abstract Biological invasions are a major driver of global biodiversity loss, with the Mediterranean Sea among the most heavily invaded marine regions. However, identification and monitoring of Non-Indigenous Species (NIS) are hindered by taxonomic uncertainty and cryptic diversi...

Quaternary Arctic planktonic foraminifera: morphological differentiation and taxonomic reassessment of subpolar spinose taxa

Abstract. Planktonic foraminifera in the modern Arctic Ocean are dominated by the non-spinose polar species Neogloboquadrina pachyderma. Acmes of two spinose, presumed subpolar taxa in Quaternary central Arctic sediment cores are therefore anomalous, implying significantly differ...

Operation Melilli, forensic humanitarian medico legal activities on the largest known Mediterranean disaster: the shipwreck of April 18th, 2015

On April 18th, 2015, a boat carrying about 1,000 migrants sank in the Strait of Sicily, prompting one of the most complex recovery missions ever conducted in the Mediterranean. Operation Melilli was the first time a European Government authorized the recovery of a sunken migrant...