@article {1499, title = {Feeding habits and multifunctional classification of soil-associated consumers from protists to vertebrates}, journal = {Biological Reviews}, volume = {97}, year = {2022}, month = {20/01/2022}, pages = {1057-1117}, abstract = {

Soil organisms drive major ecosystem functions by mineralising carbon and releasing nutrients during decomposition processes, which supports plant growth, aboveground biodiversity and, ultimately, human nutrition. Soil ecologists often operate with functional groups to infer the effects of individual taxa on ecosystem functions and services. Simultaneous assessment of the functional roles of multiple taxa is possible using food-web reconstructions, but our knowledge of the feeding habits of many taxa is insufficient and often based on limited evidence. Over the last two decades, molecular, biochemical and isotopic tools have improved our understanding of the feeding habits of various soil organisms, yet this knowledge is still to be synthesised into a common functional framework. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the feeding habits of consumers in soil, including protists, micro-, meso- and macrofauna (invertebrates), and soil-associated vertebrates. We have integrated existing functional group classifications with findings gained with novel methods and compiled an overarching classification across taxa focusing on key universal traits such as food resource preferences, body masses, microhabitat specialisation, protection and hunting mechanisms. Our summary highlights various strands of evidence that many functional groups commonly used in soil ecology and food-web models are feeding on multiple types of food resources. In many cases, omnivory is observed down to the species level of taxonomic resolution, challenging realism of traditional soil food-web models based on distinct resource-based energy channels. Novel methods, such as stable isotope, fatty acid and DNA gut content analyses, have revealed previously hidden facets of trophic relationships of soil consumers, such as food assimilation, multichannel feeding across trophic levels, hidden trophic niche differentiation and the importance of alternative food/prey, as well as energy transfers across ecosystem compartments. Wider adoption of such tools and the development of open interoperable platforms that assemble morphological, ecological and trophic data as traits of soil taxa will enable the refinement and expansion of the multifunctional classification of consumers in soil. The compiled multifunctional classification of soil-associated consumers will serve as a reference for ecologists working with biodiversity changes and biodiversity?ecosystem functioning relationships, making soil food-web research more accessible and reproducible.

}, keywords = {fatty acids, feeding preferences, food resources, functional traits, gut content, omnivory, Soil fauna, soil food web, stable isotopes, trophic guilds}, issn = {1464-7931}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12832}, url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12832}, author = {Potapov, Anton M. and Beaulieu, Fr{\'e}d{\'e}ric and Birkhofer, Klaus and Bluhm, Sarah L. and Degtyarev, Maxim I. and Devetter, Miloslav and Goncharov, Anton A. and Gongalsky, Konstantin B. and Klarner, Bernhard and Korobushkin, Daniil I. and Liebke, Dana F. and Maraun, Mark and Mc Donnell, Rory J. and Pollierer, Melanie M. and Schaefer, Ina and Shrubovych, Julia and Semenyuk, Irina I. and Sendra, Alberto and Tuma, Jiri and T{\r u}mov{\'a}, Michala and Vassilieva, Anna B. and Chen, Ting-Wen and Geisen, Stefan and Schmidt, Olaf and Tiunov, Alexei V. and Scheu, Stefan} } @article {toxins12040230, title = {Centipede Venom Peptides Acting on Ion Channels}, journal = {Toxins}, volume = {12}, year = {2020}, month = {05/04/2020}, pages = {1-18}, abstract = {

Centipedes are among the oldest venomous arthropods that use their venom to subdue the prey. The major components of centipede venom are a variety of low-molecular-weight peptide toxins that have evolved to target voltage-gated ion channels to interfere with the central system of prey and produce pain or paralysis for efficient hunting. Peptide toxins usually contain several intramolecular disulfide bonds, which confer chemical, thermal and biological stability. In addition, centipede peptides generally have novel structures and high potency and specificity and therefore hold great promise both as diagnostic tools and in the treatment of human disease. Here, we review the centipede peptide toxins with reported effects on ion channels, including Nav, Kv, Cav and the nonselective cation channel polymodal transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1).

}, keywords = {animal toxin, centipede venom, drug discovery, ion channel, peptide drug}, issn = {2072-6651}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins12040230}, url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/12/4/230}, author = {Chu, YanYan and Qiu, PeiJu and Yu, RiLei} } @article {427, title = {Diversity and evolution of the P450 family in arthropods}, journal = {Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology}, volume = {127}, year = {2020}, month = {22/10/2020}, pages = {1-22}, abstract = {

The P450 family (CYP genes) of arthropods encodes diverse enzymes involved in the metabolism of foreign compounds and in essential endocrine or ecophysiological functions. The P450 sequences (CYPome) from 40 arthropod species were manually curated, including 31 complete CYPomes, and a maximum likelihood phylogeny of nearly 3000 sequences is presented. Arthropod CYPomes are assembled from members of six CYP clans of variable size, the CYP2, CYP3, CYP4 and mitochondrial clans, as well as the CYP20 and CYP16 clans that are not found in Neoptera. CYPome sizes vary from two dozen genes in some parasitic species to over 200 in species as diverse as collembolans or ticks. CYPomes are comprised of few CYP families with many genes and many CYP families with few genes, and this distribution is the result of dynamic birth and death processes. Lineage-specific expansions or blooms are found throughout the phylogeny and often result in genomic clusters that appear to form a reservoir of catalytic diversity maintained as heritable units. Among the many P450s with physiological functions, six CYP families are involved in ecdysteroid metabolism. However, five so-called Halloween genes are not universally represented and do not constitute the unique pathway of ecdysteroid biosynthesis. The diversity of arthropod CYPomes has only partially been uncovered to date and many P450s with physiological functions regulating the synthesis and degradation of endogenous signal molecules (including ecdysteroids) and semiochemicals (including pheromones and defense chemicals) remain to be discovered. Sequence diversity of arthropod P450s is extreme, and P450 sequences lacking the universally conserved Cys ligand to the heme have evolved several times. A better understanding of P450 evolution is needed to discern the relative contributions of stochastic processes and adaptive processes in shaping the size and diversity of CYPomes.

}, keywords = {Detoxification, Ecdysteroid metabolism, Gene clusters, Orthologous groups, P450 Evolution}, issn = {0965-1748}, doi = {10.1016/j.ibmb.2020.103490}, url = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S096517482030179X}, author = {Dermauw, Wannes and Van Leeuwen, Thomas and Feyereisen, Ren{\'e}} } @article {419, title = {Four myriapod relatives {\textendash} but who are sisters? No end to debates on relationships among the four major myriapod subgroups}, journal = {BMC Evolutionary Biology}, volume = {20}, year = {2020}, month = {04/11/2020}, pages = {1-15}, abstract = {

Background: Phylogenetic relationships among the myriapod subgroups Chilopoda, Diplopoda, Symphyla and Pauropoda are still not robustly resolved. The first phylogenomic study covering all subgroups resolved phylogenetic relationships congruently to morphological evidence but is in conflict with most previously published phylogenetic trees based on diverse molecular data. Outgroup choice and long-branch attraction effects were stated as possible explanations for these incongruencies. In this study, we addressed these issues by extending the myriapod and outgroup taxon sampling using transcriptome data.

Results: We generated new transcriptome data of 42 panarthropod species, including all four myriapod subgroups and additional outgroup taxa. Our taxon sampling was complemented by published transcriptome and genome data resulting in a supermatrix covering 59 species. We compiled two data sets, the first with a full coverage of genes per species (292 single-copy protein-coding genes), the second with a less stringent coverage (988 genes). We inferred phylogenetic relationships among myriapods using different data types, tree inference, and quartet computation approaches. Our results unambiguously support monophyletic Mandibulata and Myriapoda. Our analyses clearly showed that there is strong signal for a single unrooted topology, but a sensitivity of the position of the internal root on the choice of outgroups. However, we observe strong evidence for a clade Pauropoda+Symphyla, as well as for a clade Chilopoda+Diplopoda.

Conclusions: Our best quartet topology is incongruent with current morphological phylogenies which were supported in another phylogenomic study. AU tests and quartet mapping reject the quartet topology congruent to trees inferred with morphological characters. Moreover, quartet mapping shows that confounding signal present in the data set is sufficient to explain the weak signal for the quartet topology derived from morphological characters. Although outgroup choice affects results, our study could narrow possible trees to derivatives of a single quartet topology. For highly disputed relationships, we propose to apply a series of tests (AU and quartet mapping), since results of such tests allow to narrow down possible relationships and to rule out confounding signal.

}, keywords = {Arthropod phylogeny, conflict, Confounding signal, Internal rooting, Phylogenetics, phylogenomics, Quartet topology, RNA-Seq, Transcriptomes}, issn = {1471-2148}, doi = {10.1186/s12862-020-01699-0}, url = {https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-020-01699-0}, author = {Szucsich, Nikolaus U. and Bartel, Daniela and Blanke, Alexander and B{\"o}hm, Alexander and Donath, Alexander and Fukui, Makiko and Grove, Simon and Liu, Shanlin and Macek, Oliver and Machida, Ryuichiro and Misof, Bernhard and Nakagaki, Yasutaka and Podsiadlowski, Lars and Sekiya, Kaoru and Tomizuka, Shigekazu and Von Reumont, Bj{\"o}rn M. and Waterhouse, Robert M. and Walzl, Manfred and Meng, Guanliang and Zhou, Xin and Pass, G{\"u}nther and Meusemann, Karen} }