Author: Pensoft Editorial Team

A team of Chinese and Italian scientists has joined efforts to provide a key to the understudied phaleratus group of blister beetles. During their research the scientists have also discovered a new species from the genus Hycleus, which they named after Marco Polo, as a tribute to their collaboration during the Ph.D. studies. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The phaleratus group to which the new species Hycleus marcipoli belongs, is part of the Meloidae family commonly known as the blister beetle family. The representatives of this group get their unpleasant name from their defensive mechanism which includes secretion of a blistering agent.

The name of the new species was inspired by the Chinese – Italian collaboration during this research. Marco Polo (1254-1324), was a Venetian explorer who, during a long period of permanence F in China in the late XIII century (1271-1284), established the first well documented relationships between the Chinese and European worlds and opened western culture to the wide and rich Chinese heritage.

“We were extremely happy to discover a new species during our studies of the Chinese species of the genus Hycleus. We were wondering for a while how to name it until we came up with the idea to name it after Marco Polo a historical figure which represents the beginning of collaboration between China and the West. ” comments Dr Marco A. Bologna from the Università degli studi Roma Tre, Italy.

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Original Source:

Pan Z, Monica C, Bologna MA (2014) A new Eastern Asian Hycleus and key to the Chinese species of the phaleratus group (Coleoptera, Meloidae, Mylabrini). ZooKeys 463: 11-19. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.463.8261

In 1912, three species in the parasitic wasp genus Ophion were described by two different entomologists, increasing the number of known species in North America to eleven. It has long been known that the actual diversity is much higher; however, it took 102 years for any additional species to be described.

“The main reason for this is that everyone has assumed that Ophion are just too difficult to tell apart. Museum collections are full of unidentified Ophion, but nobody has wanted to face the challenge of sorting them out” said Marla Schwarzfeld, an entomologist who recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, Canada.

In fact, the author of one of the species described in 1912, Claude Morley, stated: “Without abundant material it were ridiculous to attempt a wide revision of these insects; and … a mass of this material causes one’s courage to sink at the sight of so uniform and apparently characterless a group.”

However, with the advent of new taxonomic tools, it is no longer necessary to rely solely on the challenging morphology of the group. Schwarzfeld and her Ph.D. supervisor, Felix Sperling, used a combination of molecular and morphometric analyses to define a new species group within Ophion, and to delimit and describe six new species within this group. The molecular work involved the analysis of three different genetic markers, while the morphometric analyses included both an analysis of wing venation and a more traditional approach of measuring various body parts. The study, including the new descriptions, has recently been published in the open-access journal, ZooKeys.
“The exciting part about this work is that these techniques all gave remarkably congruent results, which gives us a lot of confidence in these new species. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of describing species, and will be a really valuable toolkit for studying additional species of Ophion, as well as species in other morphogically-challenging groups” declared Schwarzfeld.

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Original Source:

Schwarzfeld MD, Sperling FAH (2014) Species delimitation using morphology, morphometrics, and molecules: definition of the Ophion scutellaris Thomson species group, with descriptions of six new species (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae). ZooKeys 462: 59-114. doi:10.3897/zookeys.462.8229

A group of researchers from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Faculty of Fisheries in Turkey discovered a new trout species. The newly described species Salmo kottelati, belongs to the Salmonidae family, which includes salmons, trouts, chars, graylings and freshwater whitefishes.

Salmonids include over 200 species, which have a high economic value because of their taste and famed sporting qualities.

The genus Salmo is widely distributed in rivers and streams of basins of the Marmara, Black, Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The genus is represented by 12 species in Turkey.

The new species is distinguished from the other members of genera by having fewer parr marks along lateral line, and a larger mouth gape and maxilla, which is a part of the fish jaw.

Although salmonids commonly live in mountain lakes, headwater and upper reaches of streams and rivers, some species spend long parts of their lives in the sea but return to the rivers and streams for reproduce. This migratory lifestyle is known as anadromous. Salmonids are predatory fishes feeding on small crustaceans, aquatic insects and also small fish.

In order to understand the rich genus diversity in Turkey, samples were collected from more than 200 localities throughout the country between 2004 and 2014. The paper, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, focuses only on the Salmo species distributed in the Alakır Stream drainage, from where the new species was described.

The new species Salmo kottelati is named for Maurice Kottelat, who contributed to the knowledge of the fish fauna of Europe and Asia.

The new species inhabits cold and clear water, with moderate current, and gravel and pebble substrate. Its maximum known body length is 21 cm, while the largest representative of the family can reach up to 2 m in length.

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Original source:

 

Turan D, Doğan E, Kaya C, Kanyılmaz M (2014) Salmo kottelati, a new species of trout from Alakır Stream, draining to the Mediterranean in southern Anatolia, Turkey (Teleostei, Salmonidae). ZooKeys 462: 135-151. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.462.8177

In the depths of the Arctic Ocean, buried deep in the sediment, an ancient creature waited for over a million years to be discovered. Paul Valentich-Scott, from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (California), and three scientists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS, Menlo Park, California), Charles L. Powell, Brian D. Edwards, and Thomas D. Lorenson were up to the challenge. Each with different expertise, they were able to collect, analyze, and identify a new genus and new species of bivalve mollusk.

The path to discovery is seldom simple or easy. This discovery is no exception. Brian Edwards was the chief scientist on a joint US-Canadian ice breaker expedition aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy in the summer of 2010. The primary purpose of the expedition was to map the Arctic seafloor and the sediments beneath. Dr. Edwards took deep sediment core samples to further understand the geology of the region including the unusual seafloor mound where these samples were collected. In several of these cores he uncovered bivalve seashells buried nearly 15 feet (4.5 m) below the seafloor surface.

Upon returning to his USGS laboratory in Menlo Park, California, Brian worked with Tom Lorenson on sampling the cores and extracting the shells. The recovered shells were then taken to USGS paleontologist Chuck Powell, for identification. While Chuck was able to ascertain the higher level classification of the clam shells (Family Thyasiridae), he was unable to determine the genus or species. Chuck contacted Paul Valentich-Scott, a clam specialist from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California.

When examining these ancient shell specimens, Paul was fairly certain that they were new to science. The hunt to validate the potential new species was on. Paul contacted a number of thyasirid bivalve specialists around the world and all gave it a thumbs up as a new species. Further, several scientists felt it also might be a new genus (the level above species).

‘It is always exciting when you are the first person to be looking at a new creature’ declared Valentich-Scott. ‘While I have been fortunate to discover and describe many new species in my career, it is always exhilarating at the outset.’

Then the painstaking work began. Paul contacted museums around the globe and requested to borrow specimens that were potentially related to the new species. While he found many species that shared some characteristics, none matched the new Arctic specimens.

The four scientists have been writing up their findings for the past two years and now the work has been published in the international science journal ZooKeys.

The new genus and species is named after two individuals. The genus is named in honor of Dr. Thomas R. Waller a prominent paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution. The suffix “concha” meaning shell, is combined to create the name Wallerconcha. The new species is named after Sara Powell the daughter of co-author Chuck Powell. Chuck was quick to mention “I want to name new species after all of my children.”

While many of the specimens collected were definitely fossils, the scientists can’t discount the new animal might still be alive today. One of the team members, Tom Lorenson, summarized it this way ‘The likely collection of living specimens of this species awaits expeditions to come.’ Who knows what other new creatures might be found in those expeditions?

 

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Original Source:

Valentich-Scott P, Powell II CL, Lorenson TD, Edwards BR (2014) A new genus and species of Thyasiridae (Mollusca, Bivalvia) from deep-water, Beaufort Sea, northern Alaska. ZooKeys 462: 11-26. doi:10.3897/zookeys.462.6790

Scientists from the Institute of Zoology with the Chinese Academy of Sciences have devoted years of their careers to study the astounding diversity hidden in the depths of the Xishuangbanna tropical rain forests. In a recent paper published in the open access journalZooKeys Prof. Shuqiang Li and his team reveal 30 new spider species, which constitutes a minor share of what is yet to be found in this biodiversity hotspot.

Xishuangbanna is situated in the southern part of Yunnan with the Lancang (Mekong) River flowing through it. The region is well-known for its rich biodiversity and is one of the few places in China that still maintains large tracts of tropical rain forest, which won its reputation as the “Kingdom of Tropical Fauna and Flora”.

Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) is a comprehensive botanical research institution that belongs to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It is famous for holding over 10 thousand species of tropical and subtropical plants.

But what animal species are hidden in this remarkable place? Studying the rich fauna of rainforests can be a great challenge due to the extreme diversity of species and the hardships posed by the specific terrain.

When it comes to spiders Prof. Li and his team have attempted to unveil this mystery. Using multiple collecting methods they have been collecting samples in an area called Huludao since 2006. Covering only about 200 hectare of Xishuangbanna, this area has yielded a collection of approximately 700 spider species.

Out of this impressive species diversity until now the team has published about 250 new spider species from Xishuangbanna alone, with the 30 currently described in ZooKeys being a part of their ongoing work. However, Prof. Li said there are still around 100 new spider species to be published soon.

“The amazing biological diversity we have witnessed during our work on spiders in Huladao is perhaps only a part of what Xishuangbanna tropical rain forests hold. Studying the flora and fauna in biodiversity hotspots like these attests for the importance of their preservation, and gives a sad insight of what was lost with the destruction of forests elsewhere”, comments Prof. Li.

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Original Source:

Zhao Q, Li S (2014) New species of linyphiid spiders from Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China (Araneae, Linyphiidae). ZooKeys 460: 1-181. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.460.7799

The evolution of freshwater shrimps species living in both sides of Central America, isolated by the closure of Isthmus of Panama (3 million years ago) were studied by molecular tools. Despite the small likelihood of species crossing the Isthmus from one side to the other through the channel exist, the genetic isolation of them were maintained over the time and the separation of Pacific and Atlantic sister species still unchanged. Sister species refer to pairs of species that are genetically and morphologically closely related, but reproductively isolated.

The collection of the species were done over a five-year period in rivers and estuaries in Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, and Costa Rica by the authors, whose are shrimp specialists and researchers in the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters at Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP), University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and in the Museum of Zoology, School of Biology, University of Costa Rica (MZUCR). Their results have been published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

“We expected some taxa of inbreeding between transisthmian species, once some species can be found in both sides of the Isthmus, but somehow they keep genetically isolated”, said Dr Pileggi”. “In another cases the genetic separation between sister species happened before the closure of the Isthmus what evidences that these species can be reproductively isolated even living in the same environments (micro-allopatry). These species can occupy distinct niches and became reproductively isolated, which over the time could have contributed with the separation of the species”.

Thus, the evolutionary life history of 12 transisthmian shrimps sister species could be recapitulated by the use of molecular tools. In the late Pliocene (3 million years ago), the closure of the Isthmus of Panama contribute with the separation of previously continuous populations created two groups of extant species, which live now in the Atlantic and Pacific drainage systems. The results of the present study revealed that all sister species were valid taxonomic entities. Likewise they confirmed the role of the Isthmus of Panama as an effective barrier contributing in the separation of sister species by the mechanism of allopatric speciation (speciation after the emergence of a barrier). However, in other cases the separation happened before the closure of the Isthmus probably by the mechanism of sympatric speciation.

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Original Source:

 

Pileggi LG, Rossi N, Wehrtmann IS, Mantelatto FL (2014) Molecular perspective on the American transisthmian species of Macrobrachium (Caridea, Palaemonidae). In: Wehrtmann IS, Bauer RT (Eds) Proceedings of the Summer Meeting of the Crustacean Society and the Latin American Association of Carcinology, Costa Rica, July 2013. ZooKeys 457: 79-108. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.457.6818

 

Additional Information:

Funding support: Brazil: Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP); Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq); Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Costa Rica: Consejo Nacional para Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICIT)

A study reveals how little we know about the Amazonian diversity. Aiming to resolve a scientific debate about the validity of two species of freshwater shrimp described in the first half of the last century, researchers have found that not only this species is valid, but also discovered the existence of a third unknown species. The researchers concluded that these species evolved about 10 million years ago. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The great biodiversity in Amazonia is an issue widely studied. However, the real number of species in this environmental hotspot is far away from being fully known.

Since the 1970s the validity of a species of freshwater shrimp has been discussed among specialists in crustaceans. Some suggested that one species described in 1950 using shrimps from Bolivia, which the scientific name is Palaemon ivonicus, could actually be the same species firstly discovered in 1935 in Guyana, named as Palaemon carteri. On the other hand, both species has been considered as different by several studies conducted with these animals.

All previous studies have used only morphological data in order to address whether or not these species are really distinct, but no conclusive results have been found. The researchers Fabrício Carvalho and Fernando Mantelatto from the Laboratory of Bioecology and Crustacean Systematics at University of São Paulo and Célio Magalhães from Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia therefore used a combined molecular and morphological approach aiming to resolve this issue.

The results obtained from molecular data clearly indicated that they are genetically distinct species. Moreover, they may have diverged from a common ancestor about 10 million years ago, when the Amazon River basin had a quite different conformation compared with the current one.

More surprisingly was the discovery of a third and unknown species very similar to Palaemon ivonicus. The new species was named as Palaemon yuna, alluding to the environment where the new species was first found: in the black waters of the Negro River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River; in “Tupi”, a general language of the Brazilian indigenous people, “y” means water or river, and “úna” means black.

“Even with a wide genetic difference, these species are very similar morphologically” says Fabrício Carvalho. “It is not uncommon to find shrimps that require the use of molecular tools to identify correctly its species or recognize the existence of a new species”.

These finds show how little we know about the diversity of crustaceans in Amazonia. According with the study, the use of genetic data has facilitated the discovery of many new species of crustaceans in other environments, and it could not be different in a complex system such as the Amazonia.

“This study is part of a long term project aiming to investigate the American species of marine and freshwater shrimps” says Fernando Mantelatto. “The variability in many species is quite expressive and new species will certainly be discovered in the next years”.

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Original source:

Carvalho FL, Magalhães C, Mantelatto FL (2014) Molecular and morphological differentiation between two Miocene-divergent lineages of Amazonian shrimps, with the description of a new species (Decapoda, Palaemonidae,Palaemon). In: Wehrtmann IS, Bauer RT (Eds) Proceedings of the Summer Meeting of the Crustacean Society and the Latin American Association of Carcinology, Costa Rica, July 2013. ZooKeys 457: 79-108.doi: 10.3897/zookeys.457.6771

Are Italian natural history museums (NHMs) on the verge of collapse? A new analysis published in the open access journal ZooKeys points out that these institutions are facing a critical situation due to progressive loss of scientific relevance, decreasing economic investments and scarcity of personnel.

The study proposes that existing museums associate and collaborate to form a diffused structure, able to better manage their scientific collections and share resources and personnel.

“Italy is universally known for its history, culture, food and art. The list of Italian cultural assets could go on for pages, but in our study we want to focus the attention on another invaluable and often forgotten asset: natural history museums (NHMs) and the scientific specimens they preserve to document national (and planetary) biodiversity.”, explains the lead author Dr. Franco Andreone, a zoologist from the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali in Turin, Italy.

The team of 30 Italian authors outlines a number of problems faced by NHMs in the country to reveal an alarming situation, especially for ensuring the long-term preservation of the precious collections hosted.

Unlike in other countries (e.g., England, France, Spain, and USA) where there is a national museum acting as the main repository for large part of historical and contemporary natural history collections, Italy has never developed a centralized structure for the preservation of its collections.

The lack of a centralized national institution results in collections scattered among several museums, most of which with objective difficulties in managing their materials and recognise their scientific value. This situation raises concern about the impending demise of important collections.

For example, the number of unique animal and plant specimens housed in Italian museums is considerable, with at least 150 mammal taxa having their original types preserved there, while the types of insects are almost countless. The conservation of these specimens, however, requires serious scientific effort. Most of these exemplars are also still uncatalogued, and this task cannot be done without ensuring persistence and regular turnover of the curatorial personnel.

Another problem posed by personnel scarcity is caused by the fact that basic technical tasks for daily management and educational activities have necessarily become priorities in many museums, forcing curators to redirect their activities, and to reduce or cease their research work and assistance to scientists.

Moreover, a commitment in fieldwork to increase scientific collections and concurrent taxonomic research are rarely considered priorities by institutions in the country, while most of the activities are addressed to public events with evident political payoffs, such as exhibits, didactic meetings, expositions and talks.

To face these problems authors propose most of the NHMs in Italy to join forces and form the so called sort of a “meta-museum”. This innovative concept requires the existing museums to establish a reciprocal interaction network, with shared budgetary and technical resources that will assure better coordination of common long-term goals.

“How this can be achieved is mostly a political matter, but cannot be postponed any longer and must urgently be integrated into the political agenda of the Italian government. For now, we hope that both, the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research and the Italian Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Tourism, will soon pay the overdue attention to our NHMs and consequently adopt suitable policies to safeguard their collections.”, argue Dr. Andreone and colleagues from the major NHMs and universities in Italy.

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Original Source:

Andreone F, Bartolozzi L, Boano G, Boero F, Bologna M, Bon M, Bressi N, Capula M, Casale A, Casiraghi M, Chiozzi G, Delfino M, Doria G, Durante A, Ferrari M, Gippoliti S, Lanzinger M, Latella L, Maio N, Marangoni C, Mazzotti S, Minelli A, Muscio G, Nicolosi P, Pievani T, Razzetti E, Sabella G, Valle M, Vomero V, Zilli A (2014) Italian natural history museums on the verge of collapse? ZooKeys 456: 139-146. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.456.8862

WCS scientists in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have discovered a new species of plant living in a remote rift valley escarpment that’s supposed to be inside of a protected area. But an administrative mapping error puts the reserve’s borders some 50 kilometers west of the actual location. Now the new species, along with 900 other plant varieties and 1,400 chimpanzees, are in limbo with no protection and threatened by cattle ranches and forest destruction. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

This astounding announcement was made at the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia – a once-in-a-decade global forum on protected areas.

The newly discovered flowering plant species Dorstenia luamensis is supposed to be named for its home – the Luama Katanga Reserve, a protected area established in 1947 near Lake Tanganyika. But during DRC’s civil wars, administrators in the government and the World Conservation Monitoring Center have confused the reserve’s location, placing it on maps far from its true location.

“The moral of this story is that keeping track of parks – and especially getting maps and boundaries correct – matters hugely for biodiversity. The call to action here is to fix the records and re-protect the reserve before this unique plant and all the biodiversity it contains, including 1,400 chimpanzees, are destroyed,” said James Deutsch, WCS Vice President of Conservation Strategy.

WCS scientists discovering the new plant species say it is restricted to just a few cliff faces found inside of the former protected area.

The true location of the reserve was adjacent to a globally important biodiversity hotspot called Kabobo, which is proposed as a new protected area (NGAMIKKA). This makes it even more important that the proper, old reserve be reinstated in order to safeguard the conservation landscape and the corridors between the two.

Said Andrew Plumptre, WCS Director of the Albertine Rift Program: “There is a real need to re-gazette the correct reserve as it is biologically important, and also because people are starting to move into it and cultivate it and graze cattle there. The reserve this plant was named after no longer exists because of an error from both WCMC and the government not checking their maps correctly.”

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Original Source:

Leal M (2014) Dorstenia luamensis (Moraceae), a new species from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. PhytoKeys 42: 49-55.doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.42.7604

A team of scientists specializing in cave biodiversity from the South China Agricultural University (Guangzhou) unearthed a treasure trove of rare blind cave beetles. The description of seven new species of underground Trechinae beetles, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, attests for the Du’an karst as the most diverse area for these cave dwellers in China.

“China is becoming more and more fascinating for those who study cave biodiversity, because it holds some of the most morphologically adapted cavernicolous animals in the world. This is specifically true for fishes and the threchine beetles, the second of which is also the group featured in this study,” explains the senior author of the study Prof. Mingyi Tian.

Like most cavernicolous species, Trechinae cave beetles shows a number of specific adaptations, such as lack of eyes and colour, which are traits common among cave dwellers.

The new Trechinae beetles belong to the genus Dongodytes whose members are easily recognizable by their extraordinary slender and very elongated body. Members of this genus are usually very rare in caves, with only five species reported from China before now.

During the recent study of the cave systems in Du’an karst however this numbers drastically changed, Out of the 48 visited caves 12 held populations of trechine beetles. A total of 103 samples were collected, out of which the team of scientists determined ten different species, seven of which are new to science.

“This new discovery casts a new light on the importance of the Du’an Karst as a biological hotspot for cavernicolous Trechinae in China,” adds Prof. Mingyi Tian.

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Original source:

Tian M, Yin H, Huang S (2014) Du’an Karst of Guangxi: a kingdom of the cavernicolous genus Dongodytes Deuve (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Trechinae). ZooKeys 454: 69-107. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.454.7269