• Animal cells and systems
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.359-363
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• 1999

Urochordates, the most primitive group in phylum Chordata, are mostly sessile as adults although some are free living. Presently, the ancestral stock of urochordates as weir as chordates has been the focus of interest and two conflicting hypotheses have been presented. A free swimming ancestor is one and a sessile, filter feeding ancestor is the other. To clarify the phylogenetic relationships within the urochordates, 22 urochordates and five others as outgroups were used. And we applied neighbor joining, maximum likelihood, and maximum parsimony methods to partial 18S rDNA sequences. The inferred phylogeny in all analyses indicates that order Aplousobranchia of class Ascidiacea appears to be the most ancestral group among urochordates. But it is not clear for the low bootstrap value. The remaining two orders of ascidians, Phlebobranchia and Stolidobranchia, form monophyletic groups respectively, which are well supported by high bootstrap values. These two orders are closer to classes of Thaliacea and Appendicularia than to the Aplousobranchia. While class Appendicularia is strongly supported by the monophyletic group, the phylogenetic position of class Thaliacea is unclear in this study.

• Korean Journal of Ichthyology
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.178-183
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• 2006

Diel changes in the feeding habits of Rudarius ercodes were investigated in an eelgrass bed of Jindong Bay, Korea. The main food components for R. ercodes (1.6~ 4.3 cm SL) were gammarid amphipods, eelgrass, polychaetes and urochordates. Most dietary items were inhabitants of an eelgrass bed. Diel variations in diet and feeding activity occurred. The diet of R. ercodes underwent changes from eelgrass and gammarid amphipods (omnivore) at day to mainly gammarid amphipods, polychaetes, and urochordates (carnivore) at night. Rudarius ercodes probably took detached eelgrass leaves and grazed live eelgrass during day, whereas feeding on gammarid amphipods, polychaetes, urochordates, and bivalves were facilitated by nocturnal movement and activity of these prey during night. The feeding activity of R. ercodes was also correlated with periods of high tides.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.46-50
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• 2004

Feeding habits of Rudarius ercodes collected from a Zostera marina bed in Jindong Bay, Korea were studied. R. ercodes was a omnivore which consumed mainly gammarid amphipods, polychaetes and eelgrass (z. marina). Its diets also included a small amount of copepods, urochordates and caprellid amphipods. R. ercodes showed ontogenetic changes in feeding habits. Small individuals less than 2cm SL fed mainly on copepods, however, gammarid amphipods and polychaetes were heavily selected with increasing fish size. The consumption of eelgrass by R. ercodes was $10-20\%$ all size classes. The dietary breadth of R. ercodes were varied with fish size

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.273-282
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• 2007

For an efficient management and utilization of marine biodiversity information, we made an attempt to develop the Korea Marine Biodiversity Information System (KoMBIS), building a species name inventory of Korea marine organisms. The inventory includes 17 organism groups: phytoplankton, zooplankton, algae and halophyte, sponges, cnidarians, rotifers, nematodes, bryozoans, brachiopods, molluscs, echiurans, annelids, arthropods, echinoderms, urochordates and fish. The species names were collected from 37 different references and reviewed for validity by taxonomists, which resulted in 9,798 valid names in addition to 1,845 synonyms. The Korea marine species inventory is the first one of this kind, for previous Korean species name inventories were mostly composed of terrestrial and freshwater organisms. KoMBIS, the information system developed, contains not only the species name but also information on morphological and ecological characteristics such as distribution, DNA barcode, and references. This system is convenient for the inputting of new data and servicing users through the internet, so that management and utilization of the biodiversity information is more efficient. Linking the DNA barcode data with species information provides an objective measure for identification of a species, which accommodates the recommendation of Consortium for the Barcode of Life, and makes the Korea marine biodiversity information compatible with international databases. Considering the frequent exchange of marine organisms internationally via ballast water and such issues as climate change, this information system will be useful in many areas of marine biodiversity.