Japan is considered a global hot spot of biodiversity. With regard to species diversity, insects
are no exception. To date, more than 32,000 insect species have been identified in Japan …

In order to understand molecular and genetic mechanism of color pattern formation, not only
adult phenotypes but also processes and mechanisms of color production and pattern …

Secondary calibrations (calibrations based on the results of previous molecular dating
studies) are commonly applied in divergence time analyses in groups that lack fossil data; …

Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species, published in 2014, was the
first catalogue of its kind and covered all living and fossil snakes described between 1758 …

Species delimitation and species concepts have been a matter of debate among biodiversity
researchers in the last decades, resulting in integrative taxonomy approaches and the use of …

The evolutionary history of the Mexican sierras has been shaped by various geological and
climatic events over the past several million years. The relative impacts of these historical …

Abstract The temperate South American lizard genus Liolaemus is the one of the most
widely distributed and species-rich genera of lizards on earth. The genus is divided into two …

Myrmecophytic plants utilise defensive services offered by obligate ant partners nesting in
their domatia in a novel means of survival in tropical habitats. Although much is known about …

Aim Due to their spatial isolation, oceanic islands are natural systems to study evolutionary
divergence. The Ogasawara Islands belong to the most isolated archipelagos on Earth and …

Aim Vicariance events have been proposed as a major source of lineage divergence on
continental islands, whereas dispersal events followed by isolation have been proposed as …