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Two mothers with heart valve prosthesis were treated with warfarin during pregnancy. In the first case a caesarean section was done one week after replacement of warfarin with heparin. The baby died of cerebral and pulmonary hemorrhage. The second mother had a male infant by caesarean section. The baby showed warfarin-induced embryopathy with nasal hypoplasia and stippled epiphyses (chondrodysplasia punctata). Nasal hypoplasia with or without stippled epiphyses has now been reported in 11 infants born to mothers treated with warfarin during the first trimester, and a causal association is probable. In view of the risks to both mother and fetus in women with prosthetic cardiac valves it is recommended that therapeutic abortion be advised as the first alternative.

Phylogenetic relationship is an indication of shared abilities, or at least of shared constraints, on morphology, physiology, and behavior; but is phylogenetic relationship a sufficient criterion for predicting ecological function? Ecologists have assumed that the function of invertebrates in soil systems can be predicted at a low level of taxonomic resolution, but our research indicates that critical functional parameters -- e.g., feeding behavior, developmental rate, and reproductive mode -- are rarely predictable above the generic level. Since morphology is more strongly conserved than behavior, feeding guilds or functional groups based on broad taxonomic relationship or untested assumptions about correlations between trophic morphology and feeding behavior have little meaning for nematophagous arthropods from grassland soils in Colorado.