More than 230,000 known species representing 31 metazoan phyla populate the world's
oceans. Perhaps another 1,000,000 or more species remain to be discovered. There is …

More than two third area of our planet is covered by oceans and assessment of marine
biodiversity is a challenging task. With the increasing global population, there is a tendency …

Molluscs comprise the second largest phylum of animals (after arthropods), occurring in
virtually all habitats. Some are commercially important, a few are pests and some carry …

'Biodiversity'means the variety of life and it can be studied at different levels (genetic,
species, ecosystem) and scales (spatial and temporal). Last decades showed that marine …

Background Among metazoans, retention of functional diet-derived chloroplasts
(kleptoplasty) is known only from the sea slug taxon Sacoglossa (Gastropoda …

Cryptic species are an important concept of modern biodiversity studies and a potential
basis for immensely increasing the amount of biological diversity worldwide; however, the …

The Caribbean is a biodiversity hotspot for photosynthetic sea slugs, with about 27
described species in the genus Elysia Risso, 1818. However, many species are poorly …

DNA barcoding can highlight taxa in which conventional taxonomy underestimates species
richness, identifying mitochondrial lineages that may correspond to unrecognized species …

Secondary metabolites often function as antipredator defenses, but when bioactive at low
concentrations, their off-target effects on other organisms may be overlooked. Candidate …

When conditions fluctuate unpredictably, selection may favor bet-hedging strategies that
vary offspring characteristics to avoid reproductive wipe-outs in bad seasons. For many …