Taxonomy, Systematics and Evolution of Giant Deer Megaloceros Giganteus (Blumenbach, 1799) (Cervidae, Mammalia) from the Pleistocene of Eurasia

The article presents a preliminary morphological description of the holotype of Megaloceros giganteus (Blumenbach, 1799) that serves for the description of the species. The article proposes a taxonomical and morphological revision of the nominotypical subspecies M. giganteus giganteus and morphological comparison with other subspecies of M. giganteus. The cluster analysis of diagnostic craniodental and antler characters revealed the systematic position and phylogenetic relationships of M. giganteus with other cervid groups. The genus Praedama is regarded as a closely related phylogenetic branch that linked to the direct cursorial forerunner of Megaloceros that evolved in the middle latitudes of Western Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. The genus Dama has a distant relationship with Megaloceros and represents an earlier phylogenetic branch that evolved in the Ponto-Mediterranean area. The article discusses the secondary adaptations of M. giganteus forms to forest and woodland habitats in Europe and general paleobiogeographic features of the Megaloceros lineage.

Naval Events and Aquacades

Roman water spectacle took several forms. The literary sources favour bloody spectacles featuring condemned criminals and prisoners of war. In theatres or amphitheatres, the orchestra or arena might be flooded and convicts forced to play the parts of well-known mythic heroes facing mortal danger in some Greek tale with a ‘watery’ theme. Larger naval battle shows, called naumachiae, took place rarely, and almost exclusively at Rome, in specially designed basins. These pitted two teams in mortal naval combat, complete with custom-built ships and real weapons. Less commonly described, but frequently staged, was the hydromime—water pageantry taking numerous forms, such as synchronized swimming, mimed sketches of popular myths, and other kinds of light entertainment. There is little evidence that any form of Roman water spectacle had precursors in the Greek world, but the naumachia may bear a distant relationship to Athenian ephebic boating competitions first attested in the fourth century bce.

Analysis of the Effect of Feature Reduction on Accuracy and Computational Time in Mushroom Dataset Classification

Classification is a technique to mapping the class of a certain data from its attribute or feature values. One of things that affects the classification result is the correlation of its features to the class classification results. Research conducted to determine the effect of the reduction in features that are least correlated or have a distant relationship with the classification result class (dependent variable). Because features that do not have much correlation, have no effect on the classification results. From the research, the accuracy of the reduction of each feature per test scenario has a range between 83% -88% higher than the initial accuracy without feature selection at 82% accuracy. Meanwhile, the computation time obtained does not have a significant difference in changing compared to without feature reduction, in the range of 2.3-2.7. For the data used is the Mushroom dataset obtained from the UCI Machine Learning Repository

What Happens When Managers Are Informed? Effects of Critical Audit Matter Awareness and Auditor Relationship on Managers' Accounting Estimates

We examine how managers' accounting estimates are affected by whether they are informed about an impending critical audit matter (CAM) disclosure from a close or distant auditor. A close (distant) auditor is one who has a smaller (greater) social distance from the client in terms of their working relationship. We predict and find that being informed about an impending CAM by a close (distant) auditor leads to more (less) aggressive estimates than if managers are not informed. With a close auditor-client relationship, managers perceive a CAM disclosure as forewarning investors about estimate subjectivity, thus providing a moral license to report more aggressively. With a distant relationship, a CAM disclosure does not provide a moral license but signals greater auditor scrutiny, which leads to less aggressive reporting. Our results inform regulators and standard setters about the effects of CAM on managers' reporting decisions in the presence of a close auditor-client relationship.

Maize (Zea mays L.): A New Host for Ligustrum witches’ Broom Phytoplasma

In the 2019–2020 growing season, two corn fields located in İmamoğlu town (Adana Province, Turkey) were surveyed following the appearance of phytoplasma-like symptoms on maize plants. A total of 40 samples were collected and tested in first-round and nested PCR using universal primer pairs P1/P7 and R16F2n/R16R2, respectively. All maize-diseased plants reacted positively, whilst no PCR amplifications were obtained from asymptomatic plants. Blast sequence analysis of R16F2n/R16R2-primed amplicons from different maize isolates showed 99.2% to 100% of identity with the 16S rRNA gene of Ligustrum witches’ broom phytoplasma (LiWBP). To gain additional molecular information on the 16S ribosomal RNA and 23S rRNA intergenic spacer region of LiWBP, not identified previously, the P1/P7-primed amplicons were also sequenced and analyzed. The results show that maize isolates from Turkey share 99.6% to 100% of identity among them, whereas the highest identity found (91%) was with members of groups 16SrII and 16SrXXV (peanut and tea witches’ broom groups, respectively). This distant relationship between LiWBP and members of 16SrII and XXV was also confirmed by RFLP and phylogenetic analyses. This is the first finding of LiWBP on maize in nature, where it was found responsible for phyllody disease of corn plants in Turkey. The additional molecular information acquired in this study on the 16S–23S rRNA intergenic spacer region of LiWBP further corroborates its distant relationship to any other phytoplasma groups.

Statistical evidence for the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis

Based on a new reconstruction of Proto-Basque, and regular sound correspondences between this Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European as standardly reconstructed, Blevins (2018) argues that Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European have a common ancestor that pre-dates the two proto-languages. Part of this argument is based on proposed Proto-Indo-European/Proto-Basque cognate sets that include basic vocabulary items. In this study we offer statistical support for Blevins’ conclusions by using a Monte Carlo simulation that allows us to estimate the probability that the proposed lexical correspondences could have arisen by chance. The method makes use of phonotactic language models to generate possible words in a pair of languages, and then attempts to discover consistent correspondences between the words, producing a list of possible “cognates”. The method differs from some previous approaches by considering matches between all segments in the word pairs. By running such a simulation a large number of times, we can estimate the probability that two languages with the given phonotactics could have produced the number of cognate pairs observed in the actual data. The method is independently assessed by comparing wordlists from 100 pairs of languages, related and unrelated, where relations are known. Our conclusion is that the proposed correspondences are unlikely to have arisen by chance, supporting a distant relationship between Proto-Basque as reconstructed by Blevins (2018) and Proto-Indo-European.

A new species of reed snake, genus Calamaria (Colubridae: Calamariinae), from Mindoro Island, Philippines

We describe a new species of reed snake of the genus Calamaria Boie 1827, from Mindoro Island, Philippines. The new species differs from all other species of Calamaria by having the following combination of characters: a high number of subcaudal scale pairs (> 40 in males, > 30 females) and ventrals + subcaudals (> 205 in males, > 210 in females); mental scale not contacting chin shields; dorsal surface of head, body, and tail uniformly dark brown; and ventral surface of body (extending to include part or all of first longitudinal row of dorsals) uniformly pale (yellow or white in life). The new species is likely most closely related to Calamaria schlegeli Duméril, Bibron, and Duméril 1854, which also has a high number of subcaudal scales compared to other Calamaria species. The new species is the second Calamaria species known from Mindoro Island and the eighth known from the Philippines, and its presumed distant relationship from other Philippine Calamaria suggests an additional colonization of the Philippines by this genus from continental Asia. KEYWORDS: biodiversity, biogeography, Calamaria alcalai new species, Serpentes, Squamata, systematics