The phylum Acanthocephala is an important monophyletic group of parasites, with adults parasitic in the digestive tracts of all major vertebrate groups. Acanthocephalans are of veterinary, medical, and economic importance due to their ability to cause disease in domestic animals, wildlife, and humans. However, the current genetic data for acanthocephalans are sparse, both in terms of the proportion of taxa surveyed and the number of genes sequenced. Consequently, the basic molecular phylogenetic framework for the phylum is still incomplete. In the present study, we reported the first complete mitochondrial genome from a representative of the family Pseudoacanthocephalidae Petrochenko, 1956. The mitogenome of Pseudoacanthocephalus bufonis (Shipley, 1903) is 14,056 bp in length, contains 36 genes (12 protein-coding genes (PCGs) (lacking atp8), 22 tRNA genes, and 2 rRNA genes (rrnL and rrnS)) and two non-coding regions (NCR1 and NCR2), and displayed the highest GC-skew in the order Echinorhynchida. Phylogenetic results of maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) using the amino acid sequences of 12 protein-coding genes in different models provided further evidence for the resurrection of the family Pseudoacanthocephalidae and also supported that the order Echinorhynchida is paraphyletic. A monophyletic clade comprising P. bufonis and Cavisoma magnum suggests a close affinity between Pseudoacanthocephalidae and Cavisomatidae. Our phylogenetic analyses also showed that Polymorphidae has a closer relationship with Centrorhynchidae than Plagiorhynchidae in the monophyletic order Polymorphida.

It is clear that the advantages of fibre glass-reinforced plastics surpass those of steel, but the failure analysis of composite structures is much more complex than that of isotropic materials as composite materials may fail in a variety of ways. In order to simulate the damage and fracture of bolted joints of fibre reinforced composite, the bond-based peridynamic method suitable for elastic, brittle and anisotropic characteristics of composite material is used. The peridynamic model for composite laminate is validated by the finite element method. Then a peridynamic program of composite damage is applied to calculating the damage of bolted joint structure and the damage propagation process and failure mode of the structure is obtained.

Scaphidium is a rove beetle genus (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) of remarkable and diverse colouration. Although most of Scaphidium species are easily distinguished by the colour patterns, there exist some confusing variants, which may introduce bias into rapid identification. Molecular identification using the mitochondrial genome is a reliable approach that overcomes the shortcoming of morphological recognition for those who have limited experience in species-level identification. Here we described the nearly complete mitochondrial genome of Scaphidium formosanum Pic, 1915, a species with variant colour types, and tested the reliability of identification based on mitochondrial genes by both gene-wise metrics and phylogenetic analyses. In this study, the 17,455 bp mitochondrial genome of S. formosanum is composed of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 tRNAs, and 2 rRNAs. All PCGs start with typical ATN codons, except Nad4l which began with the TTG codon. The gene order is consistent with the typical linear arrangement of the published rove beetle mitochondrial genomes. The nucleotide composition is highly A+T biased (76.42%): A - 39.99%, T - 36.44%, C - 15.08%, and G - 8.49%. Multiple metrics support that our sample has a higher similarity to S. quadrimaculatum than to other species. Maximum likelihood trees confirm the placement of our sample as the closest related entity to S. quadrimaculatum. We conclude that the mitochondrial genome has a reliable performance in molecular identification in this case.

Creophilus Leach and Platydracus Thomson are two genera whose members were formerly included in a poorly defined Staphylinus. Both include large-sized rove beetles that can be frequently found in carrion, faeces, and other such rotting materials worldwide. But there are not yet mitochondrial genomes in public databases, which deters scientists from further studies that involve species of these two genera. Here we present the first complete mitochondrial genomes of two typical Palaearctic species, Creophilus maxillosus and Platydracus impotens, which are also the first for the two genera. Additionally, we included the new mitogenomic data in a phylogenetic context using maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses. Our results confirm the results of previous studies but show that the position of Creophilus, and therefore the monophyly of Staphylinina, could be affected by dataset constitution and model selection.