TY - JOUR A1 - Dunlop, Jason A1 - Apanaskevich, Dmitry A1 - Lehmann, Jens A1 - Hoffmann, Rene A1 - Fusseis, Florian A1 - Ehlke, Moritz A1 - Zachow, Stefan A1 - Xiao, Xianghui T1 - Microtomography of the Baltic amber tick Ixodes succineus reveals affinities with the modern Asian disease vector Ixodes ovatus JF - BMC Evolutionary Biology N2 - Background: Fossil ticks are extremely rare, whereby Ixodes succineus Weidner, 1964 from Eocene (ca. 44-49 Ma) Baltic amber is one of the oldest examples of a living hard tick genus (Ixodida: Ixodidae). Previous work suggested it was most closely related to the modern and widespread European sheep tick Ixodes ricinus (Linneaus, 1758). Results: Restudy using phase contrast synchrotron x-ray tomography yielded images of exceptional quality. These confirm the fossil's referral to Ixodes Latreille, 1795, but the characters resolved here suggest instead affinities with the Asian subgenus Partipalpiger Hoogstraal et al., 1973 and its single living (and medically significant) species Ixodes ovatus Neumann, 1899. We redescribe the amber fossil here as Ixodes (Partipalpiger) succineus. Conclusions: Our data suggest that Ixodes ricinus is unlikely to be directly derived from Weidner's amber species, but instead reveals that the Partipalpiger lineage was originally more widely distributed across the northern hemisphere. The closeness of Ixodes (P.) succineus to a living vector of a wide range of pathogens offers the potential to correlate its spatial and temporal position (northern Europe, nearly 50 million years ago) with the estimated origination dates of various tick-borne diseases. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0777-y VL - 16 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoffmann, Rene A1 - Lemanis, Robert A1 - Wulff, Lena A1 - Zachow, Stefan A1 - Lukeneder, Alexander A1 - Klug, Christian A1 - Keupp, Helmut T1 - Traumatic events in the life of the deep-sea cephalopod mollusc, the coleoid Spirula spirula JF - ScienceDirect: Deep Sea Research Part I - Oceanographic Research N2 - Here, we report on different types of shell pathologies of the enigmatic deep-sea (mesopelagic) cephalopod Spirula spirula. For the first time, we apply non-invasive imaging methods to: document trauma-induced changes in shell shapes, reconstruct the different causes and effects of these pathologies, unravel the etiology, and attempt to quantify the efficiency of the buoyancy apparatus. We have analysed 2D and 3D shell parameters from eleven shells collected as beach findings from the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura), West-Australia, and the Maldives. All shells were scanned with a nanotom-m computer tomograph. Seven shells were likely injured by predator attacks: fishes, cephalopods or crustaceans, one specimen was infested by an endoparasite (potentially Digenea) and one shell shows signs of inflammation and one shell shows large fluctuations of chamber volumes without any signs of pathology. These fluctuations are potential indicators of a stressed environment. Pathological shells represent the most deviant morphologies of a single species and can therefore be regarded as morphological end-members. The changes in the shell volume / chamber volume ratio were assessed in order to evaluate the functional tolerance of the buoyancy apparatus showing that these had little effect. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2018.10.007 VL - 142 IS - 12 SP - 127 EP - 144 ER -