Francesco Frati

TL;DR: Molecular processes are reviewed, the correction of genetic distances and the weighting of DNA data are discussed, and an assessment of the phylogenetic usefulness of specific mitochondrial genes is provided.

TL;DR: DNA data has been widely used in animal phylogenetic studies over the past 15 years to create more realistic models of evolution, evaluate the information content of data, test phylogenetic hypotheses, attach time to phylogenies, and understand the relative usefulness of mitochondrial and nuclear genes.

TL;DR: It is shown that Collembola, a wingless group traditionally considered as basal to all insects, appears instead to constitute a separate evolutionary lineage that branched much earlier than the separation of many crustaceans and insects and independently adapted to life on land.

TL;DR: The soil ecosystems of Victoria Land (VL) Antarctica should play a major role in exploring the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and in monitoring the effects of environmental change on soil processes in real time and space.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors synthesized current knowledge on environmental variability across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine Antarctic biomes and related this to the observed biotic patterns, showing that the most important physical driver of Antarctic terrestrial communities is the availability of liquid water, itself driven by solar irradiance intensity.