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Background: This study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL)-6D into Malay (Malay-AQoL-6D), and assesses the instrument's acceptability, reliability, and validity among Malaysians living with chronic heart failure (HF)., Methods: The translation and cross-cultural adaptation process adhered to international guidelines. The Malay-AQoL-6D underwent content and face validity assessments via expert review, and pretesting among healthy individuals and patients with chronic conditions. Subsequent psychometric validation utilised clinico-sociodemographic data and paired AQoL-6D and EQ-5D-5L data from a health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) survey involving Malay-speaking patients with HF, which encompassed assessments of Malay-AQoL-6D acceptability, internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as its construct, concurrent, convergent and divergent, and known-group validity., Results: The Malay-AQoL-6D was deemed acceptable among clinicians and local patients, achieving a 90.8% completion rate among 314 patients surveyed. The instrument demonstrated strong content validity (item-level content validity index [CVI]: 0.83-1.00, average CVI: 0.98), internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha: 0.72-0.89; MacDonald's omega: 0.82-0.90, excluding the Senses dimension), and test-retest reliability (average intraclass correlation coefficients: 0.79-0.95). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the instrument's two-level, six-factor structure (Satorra-Bentler [SB]-scaled χ2(df: 164): 283.67, p-value < 0.001; root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA]: 0.051; comparative fix index [CFI]: 0.945, Tucker-Lewis index [TLI]: 0.937; standardised root mean-squared error [SRMR]: 0.058). The Malay-AQoL-6D's concurrent validity was evident through its good agreement with EQ-5D-5L. Multiple hypothesis tests further affirmed its construct and known-group validity. The Malay-AQoL-6D's psychometric properties remained consistent across different missing data techniques., Conclusion: The findings suggest that Malay-AQoL-6D could be a culturally acceptable, reliable, and valid HRQoL measure for quantifying HRQoL among the local HF population. Future studies are necessary to further validate the instrument against other measures and confirm the instrument's test-retest reliability and responsiveness, which are possible with the availability of the Malay-AQoL-6D., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Vicariance and dispersal events, combined with intricate global climatic history, have left an imprint on the spatiotemporal distribution and diversity of many organisms. Anelosimus cobweb spiders (Theridiidae), are organisms ranging in behavior from solitary to highly social, with a cosmopolitan distribution in temperate to tropical areas. Their evolutionary history and the discontinuous distribution of species richness suggest that 1) long-distance overwater dispersal and 2) climate change during the Neogene (23-2.6 Ma), may be major factors in explaining their distribution and diversification. Here, we test these hypotheses, and explicitly test if global Miocene/Pliocene climatic cooling in the last 8 Ma affected Anelosimus radiation in parallel in South America and Madagascar. To do so, we investigate the phylogeny and spatiotemporal biogeography of Anelosimus through a culmination of a 20-year comprehensive global sampling at the species level (69 species, including 84% of the known 75 species worldwide, represented by 268 individuals) using nucleotide data from seven loci (5.5 kb). Our results strongly support the monophyly of Anelosimus with an Oligocene ($\sim $30 Ma) South American origin. Major clades on other continents originate via multiple, long-distance dispersal events, of solitary or subsocial-but not social-lineages, from the Americas. These intercontinental dispersals were to Africa, Madagascar (twice), and SE Asia/Australasia. The early diversification of Anelosimus spiders coincides with a sudden thermal increase in the late Oligocene ($\sim $27-25 Ma), though no causal connection can be made. Our results, however, strongly support the hypothesis that global Neogene climatic cooling in the last 8 Ma drove Anelosimus radiation in parallel in South America and Madagascar, offering a rare empirical evidence for diversification of a socially diverse group driven by an interplay between long-distance dispersal and global Neogene climatic changes. [Cobweb spiders; diversification; global biogeography; long-distance dispersal; molecular phylogenetics; neogene climate changes; sociality; vicariance.]., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Society of Systematic Biologists. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Despite the alarming rates of deforestation and forest fragmentation, Madagascar still harbors extraordinary biodiversity. However, in many arthropod groups, such as spiders, this biodiversity remains mostly unexplored and undescribed. The first subsocial Madagascan species of the theridiid spider genus Anelosimus were described in 2005 when six new species were found to coexist in the Périnet forest fragment within Andasibe-Mantadia NP. However, this discovery was based only on a few specimens and the extent of this Madagascan radiation has remained unknown. We here report on a thorough survey of >350 colonies from Périnet, and three pilot surveys into additional Madagascar forests (Ambohitantely, Ranamofana, and Montagne d'Ambre). The morphological, molecular and natural history data from these surveys facilitated a revised taxonomy and phylogenetic hypothesis of Madagascan Anelosimus. This subsocial clade currently comprises six previously known (Anelosimusandasibe Agnarsson & Kuntner, 2005, Anelosimusmay Agnarsson, 2005, Anelosimusnazariani Agnarsson & Kuntner, 2005, Anelosimussallee Agnarsson & Kuntner, 2005, Anelosimussalut Agnarsson & Kuntner, 2005, Anelosimusvondrona Agnarsson & Kuntner, 2005) and 10 new species: Anelosimusata sp. n., Anelosimusbuffoni sp. n., Anelosimusdarwini sp. n., Anelosimushookeri sp. n., Anelosimushuxleyi sp. n., Anelosimuslamarcki sp. n., Anelosimusmoramora sp. n., Anelosimustita sp. n., Anelosimustorfi sp. n., Anelosimuswallacei sp. n.. With the exception of Anelosimusmay and Anelosimusvondrona, all other species appear to be single forest endemics. While additional sampling is necessary, these data imply a much higher local richness and endemism in Madagascan forests than in any other comparable area globally. The phylogenetic results establish a sister clade relationship between the subsocial Anelosimus in Madagascar and the American 'eximius group', and between the solitary Anelosimusdecaryi on Madagascar and a solitary American clade. These findings imply duplicate colonizations from America, an otherwise rare biogeographical pattern, calling for more detailed investigation of Anelosimus biogeography.