Author: Pensoft Editorial Team

The hard corals primarily responsible for the construction of coral reefs around the world have attracted the attention of taxonomists for hundreds of years. Despite the important role such corals play in building what are arguably the world’s most diverse ecosystems, coral reefs in some parts of the world still hold surprises for modern scientists.

An international team of scientists has recently described a new hard coral species, Pachyseris inattesa, from the Saudi Arabian Red Sea. The study, led by the University of Milano-Biccocain collaboration with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), highlights the opportunities for scientific discovery in a region that has historically been difficult to access.

Corals in the genus Pachyseris are reef dwellers often referred to as “elephant skin corals” or “corduroy corals” due to their wrinkled appearance. Tullia I Terraneo, the lead author of the paper, explains that the name for the new species was chosen because of the reaction she and Francesca Benzoni, the co-author who collected the species, had when examining a specimen closely. “We were looking at the SEM [scanning electron microscope] images, and realized that we had something completely unexpected.” The word ‘inattesa’ translates from Italian as ‘unforeseen’.

The coral indeed has a superficial resemblance with some common and widespread coral species of the genus Leptoseris and this led others in the past to misidentify it. “After detailed micromorphological and molecular analyses, we can confirm that this is a unique and novel lineage,” Terraneo says. The new species was recorded from different reef habitats along the coast of Saudi Arabia, between 10m-35m depth and to date its distribution seems to be limited to the Red Sea region.

The finding is the latest outcome from the “Biodiversity in the Saudi Arabian Red Sea” project organized by Michael Berumen, co-author of the study and PI of the Reef Ecology Lab at KAUST. This project was initiated in 2012 and has brought numerous scientists and taxonomic experts to the Red Sea from around world, with the overall aim to increase our understanding of the biological diversity present in Saudi Arabian coral reefs. Although the Red Sea played a pivotal role in the early history of scientific works on coral reefs, the region has been understudied in more recent times.

The discovery of Pachyseris inattesa highlights that our knowledge regarding the Red Sea is still far from complete, and that our understanding of hard coral diversity globally is likewise not perfect.

“As far as we can tell, this species is endemic to the Red Sea,” Terraneo said. “Although our current sampling has only identified it in Saudi Arabia, I suspect that further research in other Red Sea countries would reveal a broader range.”

In any case, continued discovery of new species in the Red Sea has been steadily increasing the known endemism of the region. “Findings such as those presented in this paper continue to highlight how special the Red Sea is and provide even more reasons to make sure that conservation efforts in the region preserve these natural treasures, including those that we have yet to discover,” said Berumen.

Original source:

Terraneo TI, Berumen ML, Arrigoni R, Waheed Z, Bouwmeester J, Caragnano A, Stefani F, Benzoni F (2014) Pachyseris inattesa sp. n. (Cnidaria, Anthozoa, Scleractinia): a new reef coral species from the Red Sea and its phylogenetic relationships. ZooKeys 433: 1-30. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.433.8036

 

Contact:

Dr. Tullia I Terraneo
Reef Ecology Lab
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Email: tulliaisotta.terraneo@kaust.edu.sa

A new study provides an exciting insight into the Late Cretaceous and the diversity and distribution of the toothless ‘dragon’ pterosaurs from the Azhdarchidae family. The research was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The Azhdarchidan pterosaurs derive their name from the Persian word for dragon – Aždarha. Interestingly, this derived and rather successful group of pterosaurs included some of the largest known flying animals of all times, with a wingspan reaching between 10 and 12 m.

‘Dragon’ pterosaurs had a worldwide distribution once and were the last of their kind to survive on the planet, until some 60 mya. They dominated the skies during the Late Cretaceus and unlike their predecessors, were characteristically toothless.

“This shift in dominance from toothed to toothless pterodactyloids apparently reflects some fundamental changes in Cretaceous ecosystems, which we still poorly understand,” comments the author of the study Dr Alexander Averianov, Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Generally fossil record of pterosaurs is patchy and confined mostly to sedimentary deposits known as Konservat-Lagerstätten where exceptional depositional conditions facilitated preservation of fragile pterosaur bones. Unfortunately, such Lagerstätten are very rare for the Late Cretaceous when most of the evolutionary history of Azhdarchidae took place, which makes these exciting creatures exceptionally hard to study.

“Azhdarchidae currently represent a real nightmare for paleontologists: most taxa are known from few fragmentary bones, which often do not overlap between named taxa, the few articulated skeletons are poorly preserved, and some of the best available material has remained undescribed for forty years.” explains Dr Averianov about the difficulties studying the group.

Despite these difficulties, the number of localities were azhdarchidan pterosaurs were found is impressive and undoubtedly reflect the important role they played in the Cretaceous ecosystems. These flying giants likely inhabited a large variety of environments, but seem to have been abundant near large lakes and rivers and most common in nearshore marine environments.

Original Source:

Averianov A (2014) Review of taxonomy, geographic distribution, and paleoenvironments of Azhdarchidae (Pterosauria) ZooKeys 432: 1-107. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.432.7913

 

An extensive study by Smithsonian scientists presents a synopsis of the carabid beetle tribe Lachnophorini. The research contains a new genus and the remarkable 24 new species added to the tribe. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Beetles from the family Carabidae, commonly known as ground beetles are a large, cosmopolitan group, with more than 40,000 species worldwide, Carabid beetles range in size from 0.6 mm to 90.2 mm and occur in nature in several fractal universes influencing life therein as predators, ectoparasitoids, seed eaters, and even fungal mycelia feeders in a multitude of ways.

Understanding the impact of this beetle family’s importance across a multidimensional landscape in a cascade of fractal universes is our biodiversity challenge for the 21st century for one of insects’ most diverse families.

“For a fairly large and diverse Tribe of Carabidae with markedly interesting body forms and divergent ways of life, the Lachnophorini have all but been largely ignored by carabidologists until now. This new study establishes the groundwork for more refined studies aiming for a better understanding of the diversity of the species and the evolution of the tribe in order to have a finer awareness of the next smaller fractal universe for the Carabidae family, if we are truly to understand it.” explains one of the authors Laura Zamorano, research student at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

This research is the beginning of series of steps towards the provision of taxonomic relationships of carabid beetles. For the near future the path forward to be followed will lead to an attempt, using morphological and molecular attributes to provide a firm basis for firm classification.

Original Source:

Erwin TL, Zamorano LS (2014) A synopsis of the tribe Lachnophorini, with a new genus of Neotropical distribution and a revision of the Neotropical genus Asklepia Liebke, 1938 (Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae). ZooKeys 430: 1-108. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.430.8094

Scales are small insects that feed by sucking plant juices. They can attack nearly any plant and cause serious damage to many agricultural and ornamental plants. While native scales have natural enemies that generally keep their populations in check, invasive species often do not, and for this reason many commercially important scale pests in the United States are species that were accidentally introduced.

In order to facilitate the identification of alien species at U.S. ports-of-entry, scientists of the United States Department of Agriculture and California Department of Food and Agriculture joined efforts and built an online tool for the identification of 194 potentially invasive species from all over the world.

The new website is a comprehensive resource to assist federal and state identifiers to make authoritative identifications of intercepted scale insects. This resource includes, for each species, information on diagnostic characters, distribution, hosts, and important references with line drawings, photos of slide-mounted specimens and of specimens in the field. It also has identification keys, which were built in Lucid, a powerful expert system specifically designed for making identifications of organisms. Information on each species is maintained through links to ScaleNet, a rich relational database on scales that is updated regularly. Details about this tool have been published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

A number of other online tools, including Mobile apps, have been developed by various groups of scientists in cooperation with the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Identification Technology Program (ITP), to help identify invasive species. These tools are available at no cost via the ID Tools website.

‘Protecting the borders of large countries such as the United States from invasive scales often requires a very broad knowledge of the taxonomy a group, and detailed knowledge of the literature and collections from the last 250+ years ‘, said Dr. Douglass Miller, the senior author of the paper and a retired scale insect systematist. ‘Currently only a few specialists in the world can identify scale insects based on morphology, and of these, many are retired or approaching retirement. We hope that our tool will facilitate scale insect pest identifications at the borders and will inspire taxonomists to build similar tools for their groups.’

Original source:

Miller DR, Rung A, Parikh G (2014) Scale Insects, edition 2, a tool for the identification of potential pest scales at U.S.A. ports-of-entry (Hemiptera, Sternorrhyncha, Coccoidea). ZooKeys 431: 61-78. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.431.7474

 

Additional Information:

Scale Insects, Edition 2 was made possible, in part, by a cooperative agreement from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) Identification Technology Program (ITP). An agreement through the USDA Center for Plant Health Science and Technology (CPHST) and another infusion of funds from the USDA Invasive Species Liaison and Coordinator funded an earlier version of this tool.

The 5-year EU project Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal, and Ecological Scales (SCALES) has come to an end in July 2014 resulting in a first of its kind description of challenges that arise in protecting biodiversity across different scales.

A wide range of practical methods and recommendations to improve conservation at regional, national and supranational scales are included in a book published as a synthesis of project outcomes. The book “Scaling in Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation” was published in advanced open access via Pensoft Publisher’s Advanced Books platform. This innovative format aimed at accelerating data publishing, mining, sharing and reuse, offers a range of semantic enhancements to book contents, including external sources.

Results are also presented in an easy to use interactive SCALETOOL, specifically developed for the needs of policy and decision-makers. The tool also provides access to a range of biodiversity data and driver maps compiled or created in the project.

Human actions, motivated by social and economic driving forces, generate various pressures on biodiversity, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change, land use related disturbance patterns, or species invasions that have an impact on biodiversity.

Each of these factors acts at characteristic scales, and the scales of social and economic demands, of environmental pressures, of biodiversity impacts, of scientific analysis, and of governmental responses do not necessarily match. However, management of the living world will be effective only if we understand how problems and solutions change with scale.

‘The book and the tool are the first of their kind and would be of great help to everyone concerned with the conservation of biodiversity. They provide ideas of how to handle complex issues of scaling in applied and theoretical environmental studies’ says the chief editor Prof. Klaus Henle.

The book aims to bundle the main results of SCALES in a comprehensive manner and present it in a way that is usable not only for scientists but also for people making decisions in administration, management, policy or even business and NGOs; to people who are more interested in the “practical” side of this issue.

Guidelines, practical solutions and special tools are also presented as a special web based portal, SCALETOOL, which puts together scientific outcomes widely spread over the scientific literature.

Outcomes and products of the project are a result from 5-year collaboration between 31 institutions across Europe, Taiwan, and Australia. The book “Scaling in Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation” is edited by Klaus Henle and Josef Settele, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ; Simon Potts, University of Reading; William Kunin, University of Leeds; Yiannis G. Matsinos, University of the Aegean; Jukka Simila, University of Lapland; John Pantis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; Vesna Grobelnik, Centre for Cartography of Fauna and Flora, Slovenia; Lyubomir Penev, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Pensoft Publishers.

 

Original Source:

Henle K, Potts S, Kunin W, Matsinos Y, Simila J, Pantis J, Grobelnik V, Penev L, Settele J (Eds) (2014) Scaling in Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation. Advanced Books: e1169. doi: 10.3897/ab.e1169

Most people are familiar with Hibiscus flowers – they are an iconic symbol of tropical resorts worldwide where they are commonly planted in the landscape. Some, like Hawaii’s State Flower- Hibiscus brackenridgei – are endangered species.

Only a relatively few botanists and Hawaiian conservation workers, however, are aware of an equally beautiful and intriguing related group of plants known as Hibiscadelphus – literally “brother of Hibiscus”.

Brother of Hibiscus species are in fact highly endangered. Until recently only one of the seven previously known species remained in its natural habitat, the other having gone extinct. These trees are only known, or were known, from five of the eight main Hawaiian Islands. Two are still alive in cultivation, saved in part because of their beautiful showy blossoms. Several were only known from a single wild tree.

Remarkably, in 2012 field botanists Hank Oppenheimer & Keahi Bustament with the Plant Extinction Prevention Program, and Steve Perlman of the National Tropical Botanical Garden found a population of these unique trees in a remote, steep valley on the west side of Maui, near the resorts areas of Lahaina and Ka`anapali.

Until then the trees have never been known from this area. After careful study at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu and elsewhere, comparing the new trees with all those previously known, it was concluded that these represented a species new to science. Even more astounding was the number of trees found – 99 – which is likely more than all the other species ever known combined. The study was published in the open-access journal PhytoKeys.

Co-discoverer Steve Perlman (now with the PEP Program) has done rough terrain field work on all the Hawaiian Islands as well as throughout the tropical Pacific since the 1970’s. “It was certainly a highlight of my life to be there knowing we found Hibiscadelphus” he said. “It makes me feel good to know all that hard work we do sometimes pays off.”

“What an important find” said Maggie Sporck, State Botanist for Hawaii’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife. “I loved hearing Hank tell the story about this.”

Hawaiians know these trees as hau kuahiwi- hau being a type of lowland Hibiscus common throughout the tropical Pacific, and kuahiwi referring to its upland or mountain habitat. They recognized their similarities while keenly observing their differences.

“Every new species discovered is exciting but this species, belonging to such a unique endemic island lineage, is more special than that” said Dr. Art Medeiros, biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey on Maui. “Besides being beautiful, it is a true contribution to Hawaiian natural history.”

Original Source:

Oppenheimer HL, Bustamente KM, Perlman SP (2014) A new species of Hibiscadelphus Rock (Malvaceae, Hibisceae) from Maui, Hawaiian Islands. PhytoKeys 39: 65. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.39.7371

For more information about the Plant Extinction Prevention Program and the National Tropical Botanical Garden see http://www.pepphi.org and http://www.ntbg.org

 

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists are searching through a massive collection of 20-million-year-old amber found in the Dominican Republic more than 50 years ago, and the effort is yielding fresh insights into ancient tropical insects and the world they inhabited.

When the collection is fully curated, a task that will take many years, it will be the largest unbiased Dominican amber collection in the world, the researchers report.

Perhaps the most striking discovery thus far is that of a pygmy locust, a tiny grasshopper the size of a rose thorn that lived 18- to 20-million years ago and fed on moss, algae and fungi. The specimen is remarkable because it represents an intermediate stage of evolution in the life of its subfamily of locusts (known as the Cladonotinae). The most ancient representatives of this group had wings, while modern counterparts do not. The newly discovered locust has what appear to be vestigial wings — remnant structures that had already lost their primary function.

The discovery is reported in the journal ZooKeys.

“Grasshoppers are very rare in amber and this specimen is extraordinarily well-preserved,” said Sam Heads, a paleontologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.

Heads, laboratory technician Jared Thomas and study co-author Yinan Wang found the new specimen a few months after the start of their project to screen more than 160 pounds of Dominican amber collected in the late 1950s by former INHS entomologist Milton Sanderson. Sanderson described several specimens from the collection in a paper in Science in 1960, a report that inspired a generation of scientists to seek out and study Dominican amber, Heads said.

The bulk of the Sanderson amber collection remained in storage, however, until Heads uncovered it in 2010.

Heads has named the new pygmy locust Electrotettix attenboroughi, the genus name a combination of electrum (Latin from Greek, meaning “amber”) and tettix (Greek, meaning “grasshopper”). The species is named for Sir David Attenborough, a British naturalist and filmmaker (not to be confused with Richard Attenborough, David’s actor brother who appeared in the movie “Jurassic Park”).

“Sir David has a personal interest in amber, and also he was one of my childhood heroes and still is one of my heroes and so I decided to name the species in his honor — with his permission of course,” Heads said. (Attenborough narrates and appears in a new video about the Sanderson collection and the specimen that bears his name.)

The process of screening the amber is slow and painstaking. Much of the amber is clouded with oxidation, and the researchers must carefully cut and polish “windows” in it to get a good look at what’s inside. In addition to the pygmy locust, Heads and his colleagues have found mating flies, stingless bees, gall midges, Azteca ants, wasps, bark beetles, mites, spiders, plant parts and even a mammal hair.

The pygmy locust was found in a fragment that also contained wasps, ants, midges, plant remnants and fungi. Such associations are rich in information, Heads said, offering clues about the creatures’ physiological needs and the nature of their habitat.

“Fossil insects can provide lots of insight into the evolution of specific traits and behaviors, and they also tell us about the history of the time period,” Heads said. “They’re a tremendous resource for understanding the ancient world, ancient ecosystems and the ancient climate – better even, perhaps, than dinosaur bones.”

###

The National Science Foundation supports this work. Heads and his colleagues are digitizing the best specimens, and will upload the images onto a publicly available website.

 

Editor’s notes:

To reach Sam Heads, call 217-244-9448; email swheads@illinois.edu.

The paper, “A remarkable new pygmy grasshopper (Orthoptera, Tetrigidae) in Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic,” is available online or from the U. of I. News Bureau.

The Atlantic Forest is a hotspot of biodiversity and one of the most species richness biome of anurans (frogs, tree-frogs, and toads) in the world. However, current levels of diversity might be still underestimated. In the past few years has been an increase in the description of new endemic species of this biome along with the advance of molecular techniques and availability of samples for DNA analysis.

Using a more extensive number of samples for molecular and morphological analysis, researchers from the University of Richmond and The George Washington University described a tiny new species of narrow-mouthed frog from the Microhylidae family in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Chiasmocleis quilombola occurs in the Atlantic Forest of the Espírito Santo State, southeastern Brazil. Despite its modest size, adults reach only about 14 mm, the new species bears a heroic name inspired by the quilombos communities typical of the Espírito Santo State in Brazil, where the frogs were collected.

The specific epithet “quilombola” used for the species’ name refers to the people who inhabited these communities – slaves who dared to escape during colonial times and find a refuge in the depths of the Atlantic Forest.

Quilombos were used as a refuge for escaped slaves during colonial Portuguese rule in Brazil between 1530 and 1815. Nowadays in the north of Espírito Santo State quilombola communities still remain and maintain alive their traditions, such as quilombola food and craftwork.

“We were puzzling by the morphological variation of those frogs, which is little, but after the first results of the molecular phylogenies was clear the higher genetic disparity among them.”, say João Tonini, Ph. D. student at The George Washington University. Chiasmocleis quilombola occupy coastal areas north of Espírito Santo State, a region that is under strong human pressure, therefore the species may face imminent threat of habitat loss.

Original Source:

Tonini JFR, Forlani MC, de Sá RO (2014) A new species of Chiasmocleis (Microhylidae, Gastrophryninae) from the Atlantic Forest of Espírito Santo State, Brazil. ZooKeys 428: 109132. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.428.7352

Non-biting blow fly Chrysomya megacephala is commonly found in dead bodies and is used in forensic investigations to determine the time of death, referred to as the post mortem interval. A report of synanthropic derived form of C. megacephala from Tamil Nadu is provided for the first time based on morphological features and molecular characterization through generation of DNA barcoding. This study, significant in forensic investigations was published in the open access Biodiversity Data Journal.

Chrysomya megacephala is commonly found in corpse in many parts of the world. It is a tremendously abundant species and is used as fish bait in northern and south-west India. It is known to breed in human faeces, decomposed meat and fish as well as in discarded organic materials.

This dipteran fly, therefore, serves as a potential vector of many diseases due to its close association with human dwellings. In general, C. megacephala is considered important in medical, veterinary and forensic sciences. Post mortem interval (PMI) determination is useful in cases of homicide, suicide and accidental or unattended death because of natural causes. An important aspect of calculating the PMI is the accurate and quick identification of the dipteran fly collected from a crime scene.

Behaviour and developmental times of dipteran flies are essential in determining the PMI. Currently, the most common way is to identify dipteran flies for examining the adult stage under a compound microscope. It requires that the larvae collected from a crime scene should be reared until development is complete. The dipteran fly can be identified in the larval form, but if the critical characteristics are small or vary ever so slightly, misidentification is possible.

Morphological identification is difficult within the dipteran flies. A more precise method is to identify the dipteran flies genetically by encoding the collected DNA sequence at mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase gene subunit I (mtCOI). Presently, three forms of C. megacephala are recognized, namely, the normal form (nf), the synanthropic derived form (sdf) and the recently reported feral derived form (fdf).

The normal form is confined to forests of South Pacific Islands while synanthropic derived form has spread around the world from Papua New Guinea. The recently reported feral derived form (fdf) in the forests of the Himalaya, India is morphologically intermediate between normal and synanthropic derived forms. However, the occurrence of the synanthropic derived form of C. megacephala has not been documented in the State of Tamil Nadu, India.

In this context, a report for the first time for C. megacephala (sdf) from Royapuram fishing harbour, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, South East India is significant. A colony of C. megacephala was established from numerous second and third instar larvae collected from decaying fishes. The life expectancy of this fly is 40-45 days. Freshly emerged adults from pupae were identified through morphological and molecular studies.

Original Source:

Ramaraj P, Selvakumar C, Ganesh A, Janarthanan S (2014) Report on the occurrence of synanthropic derived form of Chrysomya megacephala (Diptera: Calliphoridae) from Royapuram fishing harbour, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e1111. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e1111

During a recent survey of organisms collected from Bajo de Sico, a mesophotic coral reef ecosystem in Mona Passage off Puerto Rico, one pontarachnid mite species new to science was discovered. The new species was named after the famous Puerto Rican singer Jennifer Lopez. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

“The reason behind the unusual choice of name for the new species”, explains the lead author Vladimir Pešić, Department of Biology, University of Montenegro, “is that J.Lo’s songs and videos kept the team in a continuous good mood when writing the manuscript and watching World Cup Soccer 2014.”

Pontarachnid mites represent widely distributed but still unstudied group of marine animals. Nothing is known about the life cycle of these animals. The new mite species was collected from nearly 70 m depth, the greatest depth from which Pontarachnid mites have been found until now.

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs), like Bajo de Sico where the new species was found are light-dependent habitats dominated by macroalgae, sponges and scleractinian corals and are found on the insular and continental slopes of Caribbean islands between 30 and 100 m. Even at the lower depth range (70-100 m), there is enough light for photosynthesis to take place enhancing the growth of several scleractinian coral species and algae.

The MCEs of Puerto Rico represent a potential biodiversity hotspot for marine arthropods.

Original Source:

Pešić V, Chatterjee T, Alfaro M, Schizas NV (2014) A new species of Litarachna (Acari, Hydrachnidia, Pontarachnidae) from a Caribbean mesophotic coral ecosystem. ZooKeys 425: 89-97. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.425.8110