Search

The Tachinidae is one of the most speciose families in Diptera, and the exclusively parasitoid species play an important role in regulating populations of many herbivorous insects in ecosystems, including many agricultural pests. To better comprehend the characteristics and evolution of the mitochondrial genome for the Tachinidae, we are adding a massive amount of new molecular data by assembling the mitogenomes for 71 genera and 135 species from all four tachinid subfamilies through next-generation sequencing, and we are presenting the most comprehensive mitogenomic phylogenetic analysis of this family so far. Extensive rearrangements observed in the mitogenome of Admontia podomyia (Exoristinae) are unique for the entire suborder Cyclorrhapha. The rearrangement pattern suggests that the process involved a tandem duplication of the complete mitogenome, followed by both random and nonrandom loss of one copy of each gene. Additionally, five minor mitogenome rearrangements are discovered and described in three subfamilies. We present the largest species-level phylogenetic hypothesis for Tachinidae to date, based on mitogenomes of 152 species of Tachinidae, representing all four subfamilies and with five non-tachinid outgroups. Our analyses support the monophyly of the Tachinidae and most tribes and genera were recovered with good support, but the higher-level phylogenetic relationships within Tachinidae were poorly resolved, indicating that mitogenome data alone are not enough to unambiguously resolve the deeper phylogenetic relationships within Tachinidae., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have no conflicts of interests to declare., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Objective: Schizophrenics are usually unable to perform well on cognitive tasks due to disturbances in cortical information processing that are observable as abnormalities in electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. However, whether such cortical disturbances can be assessed by quantitative EEG analysis remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to characterize EEG disturbances, using the Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC), in the subjects with schizophrenia at rest or while performing mental arithmetic tasks. The results were compared to those from the subjects with depression and with healthy controls., Methods: The subjects included 62 schizophrenia patients, 48 depression patients and 26 age-matched healthy controls. EEG was recorded under two conditions: (i) resting with eyes closed, and (ii) a mentally active condition wherein the subjects were asked to subtract 7 from 100 iteratively with their eyes closed. EEG signals were analyzed by LZC and conventional spectral methods., Results: In all the groups, LZC of EEG decreased during the mental arithmetic compared with those under the resting conditions. Both the schizophrenia and the depression groups had a higher LZC (p<0.05) than the controls. Also, the schizophrenia group had a lower LZC (p<0.05) than the depression group during the mental arithmetic task as well as during the resting state. Significant differences in LZC, at some symmetrically located loci (FP1/FP2, F7/F8), between the two hemispheres were found in all the patient groups only during the arithmetic task., Conclusions: Compared with conventional spectral analysis, LZC was more sensitive to both the power spectrum and the temporal amplitude distribution. LZC was associated with the ability to attend to the task and adapt the information processing system to the cognitive challenge. Thus, it would be useful in studying the disturbances in the cortical information processing patients with depression or schizophrenia., Significance: LZC of EEG is associated with mental activity. Thus, LZC analysis can be an important tool in understanding the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and depression in future studies.