Ricerc@Sapienza

Coastal lagoons are resilient and productive ecosystems that support high biological and habitat diversity, but are increasingly affected by several threats due to human exploitation. Many resident species of these environments show a restricted geographical range and a strict association with specific habitats, thus they could represent ecological indicators of these ecosystems.

Mullets are very common fishes included in the family Mugilidae, (Mugiliformes), which
are characterized by both a remarkably uniform external morphology and internal
anatomy. Recently, within this family, different species complexes were molecularly
identified within Mugil, a genus which is characterized by lineages that sometimes
show very different karyotypes. Here we report the results of cytogenetic and molecular
analyses conducted on Mugil hospes, commonly known as the hospe mullet, from

Many continental species distributed in the Eurasian steppe occur as relict populations in the mountains of Western Europe. Their biogeographical responses to Quaternary climate changes have been poorly studied; however, they could have responded as cold-adapted species. We investigated the biogeographic history of a steppe beetle, Hycleus polymorphus, using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences (COI, CAD, ITS2), and species distribution modelling (SDM) under present and past bioclimatic envelopes. We first performed a phylogenetic assessment to define species boundaries within the H.