Integrative taxonomy at work: DNA barcoding of taeniids harboured by wild and domestic cats.

In modern taxonomy, DNA barcoding is particularly useful where biometric parameters are difficult to determine or useless owing to the poor quality of samples. These situations are frequent in parasitology. Here, we present an integrated study, based on both DNA barcoding and morphological analysis, on cestodes belonging to the genus Taenia, for which biodiversity is still largely underestimated. In particular, we characterized cestodes from Italian wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris), free-ranging domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) and hybrids populations. Adult taeniids were collected by post-mortem examinations of the hosts and morphologically identified as Taenia taeniaeformis. We produced cox1 barcode sequences for all the analysed specimens, and we compared them with reference sequences of individuals belonging to the genus Taenia retrieved from GenBank. In order to evaluate the performance of a DNA barcoding approach to discriminate these parasites, the strength of correlation between species identification based on classical morphology and the molecular divergence of cox1 sequences was measured. Our study provides clear evidence that DNA barcoding is highly efficient to reveal the presence of cryptic lineages within already-described taeniid species. Indeed, we detected three well-defined molecular lineages within the whole panel of specimens morphologically identified as T. taeniaeformis. Two of these molecular groups were already identified by other authors and should be ranked at species level. The third molecular group encompasses only samples collected in Italy during this study, and it represents a third candidate species, still morphologically undescribed.

[From old to new hospital: physical change and development]. / Dal vecchio al nuovo ospedale: cambiamento materiale e sviluppo.

This paper examines a case of organizational change: the moving of a hospital to a new location. The change is considered in the light of two dimensions: the physical change from the old to the new structure ("logistic/physical change") and the change in the mode of working ("change in work-life"). The problem is to understand if, and how, these two change dimensions appear in the employees' (nurses and doctors) representation of the event. A theoretical framework was delineated based on three main constructs, i.e. an idea of organization as: a) the declination in time of the coordinated and interdependent employees' actions (course of decisions and actions); b) an ordering function of the course of decisions and actions rooted in the employee's cognitive schema ("context", "structure"); c) a set of meanings, at different levels, that constitute a common background and shared, in part, by the ordering function ("institutional frame"). A qualitative investigation was carried out, based on narrative in-depth interviews addressed to the top management of the different departments (SOC). A total of 34 medical and nurse managers were interviewed. Analysis of the interviews show that the discontinuous approach may be described according to five different "pure" types (as per Weber's theory). The five types are discussed within the above theoretical framework and in relation to their implications for organizational development.