World Congress of Malacology Antwerp ... - Unitas Malacologica

an overestimate. The Bellamya species radiation in Lake Victoria is not monophyletic. The endemic
Bellamya rubicunda from Lake Albert and B. sp. from Lake Kyoga are inferred to be part of the
clade. Lake Victoria is connected to Lake Albert through the Victoria Nile and Lake Kyoga.
Bellamya capillata from Lake Kariba is placed as a sister-group to the Lake Victoria/Albert/Kyoga
clade, indicating that it might be the ancestral riverine form, or one of several, which has radiated in
the lakes into the species present today. The position of Neothauma has not yet been completely
resolved; it might not be basally placed, but instead be sister-group to either the Bellamya species of
Lake Malawi or to the Lake Victoria/Albert/Kyoga clade.
Developing molluscan models to study the disease, ecology, and evolution of the eye
Serb, Jeanne M.
Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, 253 Bessey, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, 50011,
USA,
Email: serb@iastate.edu
Several invertebrate systems have been developed to study the eye and eye disease including
Drosophila, Planaria, Platynereis, and most recently, the cubozoan jellyfish Tripedalia; however,
molluscs, the second largest metazoan phylum, have so far been underrepresented in eye research.
This fact is surprising as mollusc systems offer many advantages and opportunities to study basic
visual processes that may be altered in the disease state, physiology of vision, development of the
visual system, behavior, and evolution. Malacologists have labored for over a century as
morphologists, systematists, physiologists, and ecologists, in order to understand the structural and
functional diversity in molluscs at all levels of biological organization. Yet, malacologists have had
little opportunity to interact with researchers whose interests are restricted to the biology and
development of eyes as model systems as they do not publish in the same journals and do not go to
the same meetings. In an effort to highlight the advantages of molluscan eyes as a model system and
encourage greater collaboration among researchers, I will provide an overview of molluscan eye
research from these two perspectives: eye researchers whose interests involve the development,
physiology and disease of the eye and malacologists who study molluscs as the complete organism in
their natural environment. I will discuss the developmental and genetic information about molluscan
eyes, and the need to place this work in ecological and evolutionary perspectives. Finally, I will
discuss how synergy between these two groups will advance eye research, broaden research of both
fields, and aid in developing new molluscan models for eye research.
Diversification of the genus Theodoxus (Neritidae) in the Black Sea Basin
Sereda, Sergej V. 1 ; Albrecht, Christian 1 ; Anistratenko, Vitaliy V. 2 ; Wilke, Thomas 1
1. Department of Animal Ecology and Systematics, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-
Ring 26-32 (IFZ), D-35392 Giessen, Germany,
Email: Serega80@gmx.de, Christian.Albrecht@allzool.bio.uni-giessen.de,
Tom.Wilke@allzool.bio.uni-giessen.de
2. Department of Invertebrate Zoology, I. I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, NAS of the Ukraine,
B. Khmelnitsky Str.,15, 01601, Kiev, Ukraine,
Email: anistrat@ln.ua
As a relic of the Paratethys, today’s Black Sea region is considered a hotspot of brackish water
gastropod endemism. One of the gastropod groups that shows a remarkable degree of diversification
is the genus Theodoxus Montfort, 1810 (Neritidae). The group is mainly distributed in Europe,
Northern Africa and the Near East. Due to high physiological (colour) plasticity, the status of some
described species remains dubious. Specimens of Theodoxus from different tributaries of the Black
Sea, mainly from large river deltas, were genetically (mitochondrial LSU rDNA and COI genes) and
morphometrically (PCA and NPMANOVA) analyzed. Both tree- and network based phylogenetic
analyses revealed three distinct Black Sea clades that correspond to T. velox, T. euxinus and T. cf.
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