The understanding of Earth's biodiversity depends critically on the accurate identification and nomenclature of species. Many species were described centuries ago, and in a surprising number of cases their nomenclature or type material remain unclear or inconsistent. A prime example is provided by Elephas maximus, one of the most iconic and well-known mammalian species, described and named by Linnaeus (1758) and today designating the Asian elephant. We used morphological, ancient DNA (aDNA), and high-throughput ancient proteomic analyses to demonstrate that a widely discussed syntype specimen of E. maximus, a complete foetus preserved in ethanol, is actually an African elephant, genus Loxodonta. We further discovered that an additional E. maximus syntype, mentioned in a description by John Ray (1693) cited by Linnaeus, has been preserved as an almost complete skeleton at the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence. Having confirmed its identity as an Asian elephant through both morphological and ancient DNA analyses, we designate this specimen as the lectotype of E. maximus.

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days, hypoxia 5 and admission,(6)(7)(8) days.We compared the data from those recent patients with data from 498 cases of hMPV infection at the hospital during 2005-2020. During that period, 9 (1.8%) cases were detected in November-December and 453 (90.9%) during February-May. Patients in the 2021 season were older than those from the previous 15-year period and had significantly higher rates of hypoxia, pneumonia, antimicrobial drug treatment; they also had longer durations of fever, hypoxia, hospital admission, and PICU admission (Table 1).In November-December 2021, during the sixth wave of COVID-19 in Spain, the country experienced an extemporaneous hMPV outbreak at the time when RSV epidemic was usually observed. This outbreak of hMPV infections affected children older than were usually affected in previous years; we also observed a more severe clinical course and higher rates of hypoxia, pneumonia, and admission to PICU than historically.We considered that there may have been competition between respiratory viruses that could justify the delay in the RSV outbreak (5), which occurred in summer (June-July) 2021 in Spain; such competition was not the case for the hMPV outbreak, which coincided with spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. One possible explanation is relaxation of social distancing measures or the extreme contagiousness of Omicron. The increased severity of illness could be partly explained by the absence of hMPV infections in the previous 2 years, resulting in a susceptible population of older children who had not had previous hMPV infections and therefore had no immunity. In previous seasons, children >1 year of age were immunized by previous infections or even through residual maternal protection; this protection did not exist in 2021, and older children were infected. In conclusion, this outbreak illustrates that clinicians should be aware of potential differences in the epidemiology of other viral respiratory infections during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Concentrations and enantiomer fractions (EFs) of organochlorine compounds (OCs) were determined in tissues of gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) and salmon (Salmo salar) originating from the Baltic Sea. The selected seal specimens ranged from starved to unstarved animals, and some of them suffered from a disease complex, while the salmon samples originated from individuals, which were known to produce offspring with and without the M74 syndrome. Significant differences in residue levels and EFs were found between seal groups but not between M74 salmon and non-M74 salmon. The relations between chemical and biological variables of seal samples were investigated with multivariate statistics. Poor health status correlated strongly with age, while bad nutrition condition was associated mainly with high pollution loads and distinctively nonracemic chiral OC compositions. High biotransformation rate (as indicated by fraction of chlordane metabolites in relation to total level of chlordanes) was also associated with large deviations from racemic values and high contaminant levels.

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