Author: Pensoft Editorial Team

Today’s herbaria, as well as all other collections-based environments, are now transitioning their collections data onto the web to remain viable in the smartphone-in-my-pocket age. A team of researchers have examined the importance of these online plant-based resources through the use of Google Analytics (GA) in a study that was published in the open access Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ).

The amount of plant biodiversity resources freely accessible has exploded in the last decade, but validating an impact factor for these web-based works has remained difficult. A new paper examines usage trends across 15 different GA accounts, which are spread (via consortia) across 451 institutions or botanical projects, comprising over five percent of the world’s herbaria. As it turns out, the data are more glamorous than just the deceased plants on a shelf.

The 15 plant data websites examined showed widespread usage, each one visited by users in over 100 countries, and some in over 200 countries, totaling 4.5 million sessions in the past year. Usage is not restricted to desktop computers either; access on mobile and tablet devices has been growing steadily on all sites examined, indicating that these sites are not only useful to people when they’re in their offices.

According to Jones, the most interesting discoveries in this study was determining “what not to do.” Among the most common GA mistakes were, “not knowing who owns the GA account, copying one GA code across different institutions and/or continents resulting in a global miasma of information, relying on one institutional GA code from front-door to back-door; meaning it tracked book-your-wedding information as well as specimen data, only deploying GA on the main page of a site, and ignoring the growth of mobile traffic”.

Online plant databases can facilitate the democratization of botanical information through their availability, via open information that exceeds the speed of retrieval from a cabinet or bookshelf. Plus type specimens, no longer need to be shipped back and forth across the globe; thereby limiting wear and tear to important biodiversity objects. And importantly, all researchers can now share equal access globally, without travel, to a well established model at kingdom level.

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Original source:

Jones T, Baxter D, Hagedorn G, Legler B, Gilbert E, Thiele K, Vargas-Rodriguez Y, Urbatsch L (2014) Trends in access of plant biodiversity data revealed by Google Analytics.Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e1558. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e1558

Scientists from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles describe a new distinctive fly species of the highly diverse genus Megaselia. The study published in the Biodiversity Data Journal proposes an innovative method for streamlining Megaselia species descriptions to save hours of literature reviews and comparisons.

The new species, M. shadeae, is easily distinguished by a large, central, pigmented and bubble-like wing spot. The description is part of the the Zurquí All Diptera Biodiversity Inventory (ZADBI) project, and represents the first of an incredible number of new phorid fly species to be described from this one Costa Rican cloud forest site.

The genus Megaselia is extremely rich in species and has been characterized as an “open-ended taxon” due to its diversity and the complexity in describing new species. This single genus contains about half of the species of the Phoridae family, a majority of which are hitherto undescribed.

“In our work on the ZADBI Project and beyond, we have spent countless hours sorting through tens of thousands of worldwide Megaselia specimens.”explains Emily A. Hartop about the difficulties describing Megaselia species. “Recognized morphotypes are keyed and compared to published Megaselia descriptions in the world literature. The process can be extremely time consuming and often involves reading dozens of descriptions for each specimen you are attempting to key.”

Scanning descriptions day in and day out, dealing with so many specimens and species of Megaselia, the authors came to rely upon certain characters (and essentially disregard others) for their identifications. If a specimen matched (or came close to) the key characters of a description, actual specimens were consulted for a definitive diagnosis.

It was realized that a streamlined and standardized character set for this group that easily pared down potential matches and heavily utilized visual aides for diagnosis (rather than highly variable verbose descriptions) would facilitate not only identification of known species, but description of new ones as well. The method is described in more detail in the study titled “The tip of the iceberg: a distinctive new spotted-wing Megaselia species (Diptera: Phoridae) from a tropical cloud forest survey and a new, streamlined method forMegaselia descriptions”.
“It is our hope that the streamlined presentation of species data presented here will help stimulate rapid and abundant descriptions of unknown fauna as well as facilitating the identification of unknowns.”summarizes Hartop.

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Original Source:

Hartop E, Brown B (2014) The tip of the iceberg: a distinctive new spotted-wing Megaselia species (Diptera: Phoridae) from a tropical cloud forest survey and a new, streamlined method for Megaselia descriptions. Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e4093. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e4093

Additional Information:

Zurquí All Diptera Biodiversity Inventory (ZADBI) is an ambitious, multi-faceted study focused on generating a thorough inventory of the dipteran fauna of a specific cloud forest site using varied and complementary collection methods. The project is revealing a goldmine of new species, not least within this gargantuan genus of phorid flies. The distinctiveness and ease of identification of the species herein described, but lack of previous recognition, hints at the tremendous amount of taxonomic work needed for this group.

Data sharing tools developed by an EU project are helping scientists worldwide understand more about the planet’s millions of species. A new article published on CORDIS and DAE looks into the benefits of the FP7 funded project VIBRANT.

Hidden away in the tropical darkness of nocturnal Madagascar, scientists have discovered a new species of gecko which has been described in the open access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

A master of disguise, the new species Paroedura hordiesi has camouflage pattern to blend with its natural habitat, while climbing on rocks and the ruins of an old fort, where it was spotted by scientists.

Home of the new gecko, the karstic limestone massifs in the region of northern Madagascar are believed to still harbour further undescribed reptile species, some of which might be microendemic and threatened by substantial habitat destruction.

The new species P. hordiesi is also proposed to be classified as “Critically Endangered” on the IUCN Red List on the basis that it is known from a single location, and there is continuing decline in the extent and quality of its habitat.

The far north of Madagascar comprises a mosaic of heterogeneous landscapes ranging from rainforests on volcanic basement to deciduous dry forests in karstic massifs and littoral habitats on sandy ground. The geological and climatic diversity of this area is reflected by a high species diversity and a high degree of microendemism.

Several taxa including dwarf frogs (Stumpffia), dwarf chameleons (Brookesia), burrowing skinks (Paracontias), leaf-tail geckos (Uroplatus), and the nocturnal geckos of the genus Paroedura have undergone remarkable diversification in northern Madagascar due to the great diversity of habitats, which are separated from each other and thus in part constitute “habitat islands”.

“The new Paroedura species from Montagne des Français described in our paper is just one new contribution to the taxonomic inventory of this massif, which is believed to hold yet undiscovered diversity. This discovery also highlights the threats affecting this microendemic species and other biota in the region.” explains the lead author of the study Dr. Frank Glaw from the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (ZSM).

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Original Source:

Glaw F, Rösler H, Ineich I, Gehring P, Köhler J, Vences M (2014) A new species of nocturnal gecko (Paroedura) from karstic limestone in northern Madagascar.Zoosystematics and Evolution 90(2): 249-259. doi: 10.3897/zse.90.8705

Karyotype is usually a stable feature of each species since chromosomal changes, if they occur, may contribute to the formation of barriers between populations causing the establishment of reproductive isolation and speciation as possible consequences. Indeed, mating between individuals with different karyotypes frequently produces hybrids with a reduced fertility (or sterile) due to mis-segregation of chromosomes during meiosis.

Despite the occurrence of this general rule, it seems that some animal species failed their examination in genetics and adopt different rules. Recent data published in the international journal Comparative Cytogenetics by Mauro Mandrioli, Federica Zanasi and Gian Carlo Manicardi of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) clearly showed that populations of the green peach aphid Myzus persicae (one of the most dangerous pest crop insects in the world) may have unusual karyotypes due to chromosomal fragmentations and/or rearrangements also within the same individual.

Interestingly, the observed chromosomal rearrangements involve more frequently the same chromosomes thus suggesting that the chromosomal architecture can make some rearrangements less random than others and some chromosomes more prone to change their structure than other ones.

As the authors also observed in previous works, some aphids showed different chromosome numbers also comparing cells belonging to a same individual “forgetting” that chromosome instability within individuals should be typical of malignant cells and not of healthy insects showing a high reproductive rate. This aphid species seems to be therefore the sum of populations possessing different karyotypes that in turn can give diverse genetic/ecological/evolutionary responses in relation to imposed selective environmental forces.

The evolutionary history of M. persicae is marked with speciation events and the tobacco specialist subspecies M. persicae nicotianae, known as the tobacco aphid, is an example. It is therefore intriguing that this species preserved its morphological identity through time and across a wide geographical scale despite the presence of several populations with unusual karyotypes.

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Original Source:

Mandrioli M, Zanasi F, Manicardi G (2014) Karyotype rearrangements and telomere analysis in Myzus persicae (Hemiptera, Aphididae) strains collected on Lavandula sp. plants. Comparative Cytogenetics 8(4): 259-274. doi: 10.3897/CompCytogen.v8i4.8568

A team of speleobiologists from the South China Agriculture University and theRussian Academy of Sciences have described four new species of dragon millipedes from southern China, two of which seem to be cave dwellers. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The millipede genus Desmoxytes is well-known because the dragon-like appearance of the species in it. The four new species all can be recognized by their spiky body, the distinctive characteristic which gave the representatives of the genus their unique common name.

Unlike other groups of cave millipedes, which are usually very common, the representatives of Desmoxytes are comparatively rare in caves, and always with low in numbers populations. In addition, they are often distributed in a narrow geographical area, or even only present in a single cave, or cave system. Because of such rarity and endemism, dragon millipedes are ideal material for evolutionary studies.

China holds the greatest diversity of Desmoxytes species. Up to now, China has 14 millipedes of the genus, including 9 cavernicolous species. It is believed, however, that the country holds a greater diversity of these bizarre creatures, which are yet to be discovered in future.

Original source:

Liu WX, Golovatch SI, Tian MY (2014) A review of the dragon millipede genusDesmoxytes Chamberlin, 1923 in China, with descriptions of four new species (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxosomatidae). ZooKeys 448: 9–26. doi:10.3897/zookeys.448.8081

Additional Information:

In: Golovatch SI, Li YB, Liu WX, Geoffroy J-J (2012) Three new cavernicolous species of dragon millipedes, genus Desmoxytes Chamberlin, 1923, from southern China, with notes on a formal congener from the Philippines (Diplpoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxoaomatidae). Zookeys 185: 1-17. doi: 10.3897/zookeys. 185.3082.

An innovative workflow reveals new research potential of the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD). A recently published article in the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) used specimen records downloaded from BOLD in tabular format and imported these into a human-readable text developed in manuscript within the Pensoft Writting Tool (PWT). Data were used to study the species distributions of ten Nearctic species of braconid wasps from the Microgastrinae subfamily.

BOLD is originally designed to support the generation and application of DNA barcode data. However, the repository also holds unexplored treasures of additional data that provide unique potential for many other research uses.

Currently almost 4 million sequences (over 3.4 million of them DNA barcodes) are stored in BOLD, including coverage for more than 143K animal species, 53K plant species, and 16K fungi and other species, and this impressive storage of information is continuing to grow every day.

A team of researchers, led by Dr Jose Fernandez-Triana from the University of Guelph, Canada, have now explored how the unique amount of data stored on the BOLD platform can be utilised for new research purposes. Choosing tiny parasitic wasps for their case study they selected a sample of 630 specimens and 10 North American species. Data stored on BOLD were then used to uncover a significant number of new records of locality, provinces, territories and states.

The research was then secured a fast publication via BDJ, a community peer-reviewed, open-access, comprehensive online platform, designed to accelerate publishing, dissemination and sharing of biodiversity-related data of any kind.

“Import of structured data into human-readable text is important but it does not represent the whole story. More importantly, the data can be downloaded straight from the article text by anyone for further re-use, or be automatically exported to data aggregators, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). In this way, data platforms could get more peer-reviewed content from scholarly publications and scientists will be properly credited for their efforts” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder of Pensoft Publishers.

Original Source:

Fernandez-Triana J, Penev L, Ratnasingham S, Smith M, Sones J, Telfer A, deWaard J, Hebert P (2014) Streamlining the use of BOLD specimen data to record species distributions: a case study with ten Nearctic species of Microgastrinae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e4153. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e4153

Additional information:

The workflow is part of the Data Publishing Toolkit elaborated within the EU FP7 funded project EU BON (Grant agreement No 308454).

A newly described tarantula species from Western Brazilian Amazonia was named Bumba lennoni in honor of John Lennon, a founder member of the legendary band the Beatles. The new species is part of the tarantula family Theraphosidae which comprises the largest spider species in the world. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The name of the new species came across when the authors of the study Fernando Pérez-Miles, from the University of the Republic, Uruguay, and Alexandre Bonaldo and Laura Miglio, both from the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Brazil, found out that they are all great fans of the Beatles music.

The genus, Bumba, which is proposed as replacement of the old one Maraca, already taken and used for Orthoptera, also has a story behind the choice of name. The new name is taken from Brazilian theatrical folk tradition of the popular festival called Boi-bumbá (hit my bull), which takes place annually in North and Northeastern Brazil.

The new species, as other tarantulas, has defensive urticating hairs on the abdomen which produce irritation upon contact with the skin or sensible tissues.

The specimens used in the study were captured manually or in traps during the night in Caxiuaná, Pará, Brasil, which suggest they could be mainly nocturnal animals.

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Original Source:

Perez-Miles F, Bragio Bonaldo A, Miglio L (2014) Bumba, a replacement name for Maraca Pérez-Miles, 2005 and Bumba lennoni, a new tarantula species from western Amazonia (Araneae, Theraphosidae, Theraphosinae). ZooKeys 448: 1-8. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.448.7920

Scientists from the Department of Life Science, National Taiwan Normal University and the Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica described a new endemic land snail species. The new species Aegista diversifamilia was long confused for the widely distributed A. subchinensis. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Aegista subchinensis was first described in 1884 and was thought to be widely distributed in Taiwan. In 2003, one of the co-authors Dr. Yen-Chang Lee noticed that there was morphological divergence between the western and eastern populations of A. subchinensis separated by the Central Mountain Range, a major biogeographic barrier in Taiwan. Dr. Lee suggested that there might be cryptic species within the one identified as A. subchinensis at the time.

To prove Dr. Lee’s suggestion, Ph.D. candidate of Department of Life Science, National Taiwan Normal University, Chih-Wei Huang and his collaborators applied three molecular markers combined with morphological analysis to estimate the divergence and relationship among the closely related snails.

“When we examined the phylogeny from each gene,” Huang says, “it suggested that the eastern A. subchinensis was more closely related to A. vermis, a similar land snail species inhabited in Ishigaki Island, than the western A. subchinensis.”

They confirmed that what was thought to be A. subchinensis from eastern Taiwan was in fact a new species, which they named as A. diversifamilia. The name means the diverse forms of human families.

“When we were preparing the manuscript,” Dr. Lee explains, “it was a period when Taiwan and many other countries and states were struggling for the recognition of same-sex marriage rights. It reminded us that Pulmonata land snails are hermaphrodite animals, which means they have both male and female reproductive organs in single individual. They represent the diversity of sex orientation in the animal kingdom. We decided that maybe this is a good occasion to name the snail to remember the struggle for the recognition of same-sex marriage rights.”

The new species is larger in shell size and flatter in shell shape than A. subchinensis. The two species are also geographically separated by the Lanyang River, which makes this the first report suggesting that the Lanyang River is a biogeographic barrier for lowland terrestrial animals.

Original source:

Huang C-W, Lee Y-C, Lin S-M, Wu W-L (2014) Taxonomic revision of Aegista subchinensis (Möllendorff, 1884) (Stylommatophora, Bradybaenidae) and a description of a new species of Aegista from eastern Taiwan based on multilocus phylogeny and comparative morphology. ZooKeys 445: 31–55. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.445.7778

Additional Information:

Funding: Center for Information Technology Innovation and Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica.

A new study led by a Canadian marine zoologist reviews the world list of specialist driftwood talitrids, which so far comprises a total of 7 representatives, including two newly described species. These tiny animals with peculiar habits all live in and feed on decomposing marine driftwood. Dispersed across distant oceanic islands they use floating driftwood to hitch a ride to their destination. The study was published in the open access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

Tourists are familiar with talitrids as sandhoppers, found in burrows on sand beaches, or shorehoppers, which are non-burrowers associated with wrack thrown up by the high tide. But they probably do not suspect the existence of an additional ecological group of marine talitrids, which are obligately associated, both for food and shelter, with driftwood.

These tiny animals just like tourists have travelled a long way to reach their destination. They travel on floating driftwood logs, which serve them both as a means of transportation and as a food source.

“Specialist driftwood talitrids are rare and difficult to study group because of their small size and cryptozoic habitat. Only seven species are presently known in the world list, but this is almost certainly because of inadequate searching in the right places.”comments the author of the study Dr. Dave Wildish, “Fisheries and Oceans Canada”.

Driftwood is common at higher latitudes in the driftline of both northern and southern hemispheres, although all seven species recorded so far are from the northern hemisphere.

A characteristic feature of specialist driftwood talitrids is their small size (less than 15mm body length, technically termed “dwarfism”). One species which as an adult is less 8mm in body length is one of the smallest talitrids known.

Dwarfism in specialist driftwood talitrids is achieved by a form of “neoteny”. This means that adults retain juvenile features but become sexually mature at an early stage in development. Neotenous development in driftwood talitrids involves: fewer moults per life cycle, sexualisation beginning at an earlier moult number, and the size increment at each moult remaining the same.

This adaptation is key to specialist driftwood talitrids because it allows the hitchhiker to live within the floating driftwood and thereby the possibility of a much longer ride to a new home. Passive dispersal on other media, such as wrack, can be short-lived due to break up of the floating wrack. Passive dispersal to distant places is made possible by the driftwood talitrid hitching a ride on the floating driftwood log; a process which could take these little travellers a considerable amount of time.

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 Original Source:

Wildish D (2014) New genus and two new species of driftwood hoppers (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Talitridae) from northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean coastal regions. Zoosystematics and Evolution 90(2): 133-146. doi: 10.3897/zse.90.8410

Additional Information:

Wildish, D.J. 1972.Post embryonic growth and age in some littoral Orchestia (Amphipoda, Talitridae). Crustaceana Supplement 3: 267-274.

Wildish, D. J. 2012. Long distance dispersal and evolution of talitrids (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Talitridae) in the northeast Atlantic islands. Journal of Natural History 46: 2329-2348.

Wildish, D. J., Pavesi, L and Ketmaier, V. 2012. Talitrid amphipods (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Talitridae) and the driftwood ecological niche: a morphological and molecular study. Journal of Natural History 46: 2677-2700.

Pavesi, L, Wildish, D.J, Gasson,P, Lowe, M and Ketmaier, V. 2014. Further morphological and molecular studies of driftwood hoppers (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Talitridae) from Mediterranean/Northeast Atlantic coastlines. Journal of Natural History. In press.