Radiodonts are a diverse clade of Lower Palaeozoic stem-group euarthropods that played a key role in the emergence of complex marine trophic webs. The latest addition to the group, Cambroraster falcatus, was recently described from the Wuliuan Burgess Shale, and is characterized by a unique horseshoe-shaped central carapace element. Here we report the discovery of Cambroraster sp. nov. A, a new species from the Cambrian Stage 3 Chengjiang Lagerstätte of South China. The new occurrence of Cambroraster demonstrates that some of the earliest known radiodonts had already evolved a highly derived carapace morphology adapted to an essentially eudemersal life as sediment foragers.

Junglefowl display adaptive characters like seasonal breeding, well-established social hierarchy, explorative behaviour, territoriality, aggression and short ranged flight, however, they are smaller, produce less and mature later than commercial breeds. Non-green junglefowl cocks display eclipse plumage – a reliable indicator of genetic purity and a trait that has been disappeared from chickens. Junglefowl show high sexual dimorphism, however, intra-sex level variation is considerably limited. There are conflicting reports on viability of hybrids from junglefowl, however, red junglefowl crossed with chickens invariably produce fertile offspring. Although junglefowl and chickens share common parasites and diseases, junglefowl exhibit high variability in natural immunity and are relatively resilient to infection. Junglefowl prefer secondary forests and village environs, demonstrating their propensity for human landscapes. Habitat preference and historical, ritual and leisure activities of ancient man might have resulted in junglefowl being recruited for domestication. Particularly, native chickens share a number of phenotypic characters with junglefowl, however, cosmopolitan chickens have experienced high phenotypic input from world-wide dispersal and adaptation to a wide range of management and breeding regimes. Based on morphological scores and behavioural ecology, red junglefowl resembles chickens and amongst the junglefowls, red and Ceylon junglefowl are closely related, whereas grey and green junglefowl have been found to be distant.

Antarctica is a continental island and the waters of its shelf and upper slope are an insular evolutionary site. The shelf waters resemble a closed basin in the Southern Ocean, separated from other continents by distance, current patterns and subzero temperatures. The benthic fish fauna of the shelf and upper slope of the Antarctic Region includes 213 species with higher taxonomic diversity confined to 18 families. Ninety-six notothenioids, 67 liparids and 23 zoarcids comprise 45%, 32% and 11% of the fauna, a combined total of 88%. In high latitude (71–78°S) shelf areas notothenioids dominate abundance and biomass at levels of 90–95%. Notothenioids are also morphologically and ecologically diverse. Although they lack a swim bladder, the hallmark of the notothenioid radiation has been repeated diversification into water column habitats. There are pelagic, semipelagic, cryopelagic and epibenthic species. Notothenioids exhibit the disproportionate speciosity and high endemism characteristic of fish species flock. Antifreeze glycopeptides originating from a transformed trypsinogen gene are a key innovation. It is not known when the modern Antarctic shelf fauna assumed its current taxonomic composition. A late Eocene fossil fauna was taxonomically diverse and cosmopolitan. There was a subsequent faunal replacement with little carryover of families into the modern fauna. Basal notothenioid clades probably diverged in Gondwanan shelf locations during the early Tertiary. Dates inferred from molecular sequences suggest that phyletically derived Antarctic clades arose 15–5 m.y.a.

Following deglaciation of the Cook Inlet region of Alaska approximately 16 000 years ago, anadromous threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) rapidly colonized emerging lakes and rivers forming resident, freshwater populations. Although the precise body shape of the ancestral marine population is unknown, marine sticklebacks sampled from both Pacific and Atlantic sites present remarkably little body shape variation among populations, which suggests that the morphology of any of the marine populations could be used to represent the ancestral phenotype. To infer the net evolutionary trajectories of body shape change in the Cook Inlet radiation, derived body shapes of lacustrine samples were compared to the presumptive, primitive body shape, represented by the mean shape of two anadromous samples from Cook Inlet. In general, some derived body shape traits are shared by all freshwater populations but many traits evolved in opposite directions. The principal axes of shape variation among freshwater sample means were computed using Principal Components Analysis. The strong correlation between the direction of the principal component axes and lake habitat variables suggest that populations evolved toward selection peaks that are biased along the component axes due to biotic and abiotic features of the lakes.

The need for a better understanding of the role of biodiversity in the functioning of aquatic ecosystems has been raised recently by several authors. If the question is not entirely new, its formulation is. It is therefore the opportunity to re-examine the pool of data already available in order to discuss some results that may be relevant for that purpose, while some major ecological questions have been identified. The top-down view argues that the effects of fish predation cascade down the trophic chain and are responsible for controlling the state of the entire ecosystem. The influence of fish predation on prey assemblages (prey selection, ontogenic shift) has been fairly well documented by various studies of African fish. They are also challenging subjects for studies of resource partitioning, a well documented example being given by zooplanktivores in Lake Turkana. The principle of cascading trophic interactions has been documented in Lake Victoria, after the introduction of a top predator, Lates niloticus. Another striking example is thatof Lake Nakuru where the introduction of a tilapiine resulted in a substantial increase of bird diversity, by the extension of the food chain to fish-eating birds. This introduced tilapiine may be considered as a keystone species, but this concept is questioned. A possible origin of fish biodiversity is adaptive radiation, that is to say the differentiation of species in morphology and resource use through competition. The cichlid flocks of the African Great Lakes where hundreds of rather similar species coexist, provide one of the best known examples of adaptive radiation. The question of niche overlap and functional redundancy has been raised and various studies have been conducted in the East African Lakes. The role of rare species has also been questioned. They may provide an insurance of ecosystem stability, which means that the more stable ecosystems in terms of key functions are those richest in species. In fact, in many large Nilo-Sudan river basins, there are apparently several groups of species which are able to replace the current assemblage when it experiences new ecological situations. Finally, the question has been raised as to what extent patterns of biodiversity are important for ecosystem productivity. The cornparison of data for four African lakes shows no relationship between fish diversity and fishery production, and speciesrichness does not appear to be a major determinant of basic production trends. At present we have only anecdotal, sometimes controversial, evidence of the role of fish diversity on the functioning of African freshwater ecosystems. We need to improve this knowledge on the importance of biodiversity in order to convince decision-makers that fish biodiversity needs protection.