Coleus (Coleus scutellarioides)

Iler or coleus (Coleus scutellarioides) is a species of plant in the Lamiaceae, shrub, evergreen, erect, up to 100 cm tall, woody-based, flowering and widely grown for its decorative variegated leaves found in cultivated varieties.

C. scutellarioides has fibrous roots, upright stems, square with four corners, bright green in color, branching to form tridents and often dark in color, more or less four-sided.

The leaves have a very varied shape and color, slightly fleshy, 1.5-10 cm long, 1-6 cm wide, generally oval in shape and have long stalks. The tips are pointed to rounded, the margins are generally scalloped and hairs on both sides.

Inflorescences at the ends of the stems, vary widely in size and up to 4 cm long. The petals are bell-shaped, up to 5-10 mm long and bluish-purple in color. The stamens join about half the length and are covered by the upper lip of the flower. The fruit is black and 1 mm long.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Lamiales
Family: Lamiaceae
Subfamily: Nepetoideae
Tribe: Ocimeae
Subtribe: Plectranthinae
Genus: Coleus
Species: Coleus scutellarioides

Laniger bat tick (Ixodes lanigeri), new hard tick species (Ixodidae) from mouse-eared bats (Myotis) in Vietnam

NEWS - Researchers have identified Ixodes ticks from Vietnam based on morphological and molecular characteristics of females, nymphs and larvae as a new species, laniger bat tick ( Ixodes lanigeri ), which like other members of the Ixodes ariadnae complex appears to show a preference for vesper bats as a typical host. Historically, for more than a century and a half, only one species has been called the “long-legged bat tick”: Ixodes vespertilionis Koch. However, over the past decade, it has been molecularly recognized that long-legged ixodid ticks associated with bats may represent at least six species. Host associations and geographic separation may explain the evolutionary divergence of the new species from its closest living relative Murina hilgendorfi Peters in East Asia, Japan, as no Myotis or Murina spp. have overlapping distributions between Vietnam and the Japanese mainland. On the other hand, assuming that I. lanigeri may be present in other myotine bats and knowing that s...

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