Author: Pensoft Editorial Team

Serendipity leads University of Kansas scientists to the discovery and description of Rhipidocyrtus muiri – a 107 year old, lost in collections specimen, which turned out to represent a new genus and species. The long and tortuous history of the enigmatic ripidiine wedge beetle from Borneo is discussed in a recent paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The holotype male, and only known specimen of Rhipidocyrtus muiri, was collected 107 years ago in Borneo but subsequent to this it was transferred among several researchers in the early 1900s. The specimen was dissected and many portions slide mounted, but these were disassociated from the pinned body for more than a generation to be finally put together by chance in 2011 and described as a new genus and species 3 years after.

Taxa within the ripiphorid tribe Ripidiini are both evolutionarily fascinating and woefully under-described. All members whose biology is known are internal parasitoids of roaches as larvae, a lifestyle likely established at least 90 million years ago resulting in highly derived yet incredibly stable morphologies.

“While the tribe has been widely discussed recently, only a handful of extant species have been named in the last half century, leaving the true evolutionary breadth and depth of the clade poorly understood.” comments the lead author Zachary H. Falin, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute.

“The historical aspect of the type specimen itself and how it came to be described is indeed rather remarkable and deserves mention, if only to highlight the role of serendipity (and proper specimen curation) in systematics,” he adds about the unusual circumstances of the discovery.

The crux of the story takes place in the Casey Room of the Smithsonian in January, 2011, though it begins with Frederick Muir’s travels in Borneo in the summer of 1907.

“Muir, a quintessential field entomologist, traveled extensively in the Pacific region in the first quarter of the 20th Century. Reading accounts of his travels invokes an intense sense of wonder, adventure and nostalgia in all but the most jaded naturalists.” explains Falin.

One of his epic adventures was a 38-month expedition (July, 1906 – Sept., 1909) in search of sugarcane borer biological control agents. This outing led him back and forth from China to Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore and the current nations of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, the expedition finally ending in Australia to recover from typhoid fever.

Indeed, it was in the midst of his 1906–1909 expedition, during a six week visit to the island of Borneo (July to September 1907), that Muir collected the specimen that is now recognized as Rhipidocyrtus muiri. Muir apparently deduced the creature’s parasitic nature and had it sent to William D. Pierce (1881–1967) at the USDA office in Washington, DC.

A terse handwritten note associated with the specimen provides the barest of insights as to its early history while simultaneously revealing Muir’s great interest in it: “This was left with Pierce and after his [Pierce’s] leaving [~1918] Muir visited USNM [~1918] and got [E.A.] Schwarz to find it. Then in 1928 Muir again visited us and called attention of H.S.B. [Herbert S. Barber] [to the specimen] but [Muir] declined to take it back.”

At some point the pinned specimen and its associated slides, vital for its taxonomic recognition, became separated. The pinned specimen travelled from Washington, DC to Kansas via Illinois while the slides remained “hidden” in a different section of the Smithsonian’s vast collection.

It was only a happenstance encounter that led to the rediscovery and reassociation of the body and slide-mounted abdomen and other sclerites in 2011, and to its eventual description. It has taken yet another three years to come to fruition, but Muir’s taxon, so deserving of a name, will finally receive one here, three institutions, at least five systematists, and approximately 107 years after its collection in the mountains of Borneo.

Original Source:

Falin ZH, Engel MS (2014) Serendipity at the Smithsonian: The 107-year journey of Rhipidocyrtus muiri Falin & Engel, new genus and species (Ripidiinae, Ripidiini), from jungle beast to valid taxon. ZooKeys 424: 101–116. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.424.7853

The yellow crazy ant Anoplolepis gracilipes is ranked amongst the top 100 worst global invasive species and is responsible for catastrophic ecological impacts on islands. A new study published in the open access journal NeoBiota examines and assesses the effects and dangers of the introduction of the yellow crazy ant to the unique,endemic ecosystem of the mature palm forest of the Vallée de Mai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on the Seychelles.

The palm forest of Vallée de Mai is a unique ecosystem containing many endemic species, including the iconic coco de mer palm Lodoicea maldivica.

Impacts of invasive ants can include direct effects such as displaced local species, and indirect effects on key ecological functions such as frugivory, pollination and seed dispersal.

“Although the impacts and ecology of A. gracilipes have been well documented in degraded habitats in the Seychelles, little is known about this ant’s invasion potential in endemic palm forest ecosystems. Praslin, the second largest granitic island of the archipelago, is home to Seychelles’ native mature palm forest. This habitat represents one of the last island palm forest ecosystems in the world and hosts many species that are endemic to Praslin or the Seychelles,” explains Dr. Christopher Kaiser-Bunbury, TU Darmstadt, Germany.

According to the new study in the palm forest Anoplolepis gracilipes was confined to the north-east of the Vallée de Mai and remained almost stationary between April 2010 and December 2012, with isolated outbreaks into the forest. Infested areas typically had significantly higher temperature and humidity and lower canopy cover.

Despite the limited distribution the study confirms some worrying trends. Abundance and species richness of the endemic arboreal fauna were lower in the A. gracilipes invaded area and Molluscs were absent from the invaded area. The current restricted distribution of A. gracilipes in this ecosystem, combined with lower abundance of endemic fauna in the invaded area, highlight the need for further research.

“Once an invasive species is established it is often difficult to eliminate or prevent further spread. In the case of A. gracilipes in the Vallée de Mai, further research into control or exclusion options, impacts and potential biotic resistance to ant invasion are required in addition to continued monitoring of distribution and abundance,” explains Dr. Kaiser-Bunbury.

Chemical control poses a considerable risk to non-target species, such as endemic ants. The study therefore advises promoting and researching resistance of the palm forest by creating and maintaining conditions which restrict A. gracilipes populations, such as the removal of introduced broadleaf trees which host high numbers of introduced hemipterans, and targeted control of ant nests in the most disturbed habitats.

Future research should experimentally assess and quantify parameters that ensure the resistance of the unique Vallée de Mai palm forest and its co-evolved plant and animal species.

Original Source:

Kaiser-Bunbury CN, Cuthbert H, Fox R, Darryl Birch, Bunbury N (2014) Invasion of yellow crazy ant Anoplolepis gracilipes in a Seychelles UNESCO palm forest. NeoBiota 22: 43–57. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.22.6634

A small, drab and highly inconspicuous moth has been flitting nameless about its special niche among the middle elevations of one of the world’s oldest mountain ranges, the southern Appalachian Mountains in North America. A team of American scientists has now identified this new to science species as Cherokeea attakullakulla and described it in a special issue of the open access journal ZooKeys.

In all probability, it has been frequenting these haunts for tens of millions of years before the first humans set foot on this continent, all the while not caring in the least that it had no name or particular significance.

Among the first humans to occupy those misty ridges now called the Great Smoky Mountains in what is today western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee were not Europeans, but native Americans, and they called themselves the Cherokee. It seems unlikely they had a name for this particular small creature, or distinguished it from tens of thousands of other insect species which constitute only a portion of the fauna and flora of this richly endowed region, but they shared their new home with it, and lived in harmony with all the creatures of the Appalachian forest.

In 1958 a professor from Cornell University, Dr. John G. Franclemont, was studying some of the insects he collected at the Highlands Biological Station in Macon County, North Carolina and recognized one or two specimens as something different. None were seen again for four decades until Dr. J. Bolling Sullivan III, now a retired biologist formerly working with the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, North Carolina, encountered numbers of this same insect while conducting biological inventories in the mountainous regions of the western part of the state.

Recently he teamed up with Eric Quinter, a retired entomologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who for several decades has been studying the group of moths to which this species belongs. Eric’s intensive work in the southeastern United States focused on a unique habitat there, called canebrakes. He has revealed the presence of at least two dozen species of moths and butterflies, many unknown to science, whose caterpillars either exclusively feed upon or are associated with the native bamboo species constituting these canebrakes.

The result: in 2014 this little moth finally has an epithet even larger than itself – Cherokeea attakullakulla – named to honor the Cherokee Nation, whose members were exemplary stewards of the habitats and resources of the region, and also to honor one of their most revered leaders, Chief Attakullakulla, who in 1730 travelled to London and throughout the Carolinas to represent his peoples in the negotiation of various treaties.

“Fortunately, today much of this wondrous place and its extraordinarily diverse biota remains preserved as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the memory of those who first settled there remains immortalized in a tiny creature oblivious to it all.” comments Dr. Eric Quinter.

Original Source:

Quinter EL, Sullivan JB (2014) A new apameine genus and species from the southern Appalachian Mountains, USA (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae, Noctuinae). In: Schmidt BC, Lafontaine JD (Eds) Contributions to the systematics of New World macro-moths V. ZooKeys 421: 181. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.421.7727

Avibase gives an answer for shifting meanings of biological names

Standardized scientific names for biological species have been in use for nearly 300 years, but – as global biodiversity databases grow deficiencies such as duplication and various name meanings become obvious. A new study published in the open-access journal ZooKeys explains how Avibase, an extensive online global database of birds, is able to successfully address issues related to this multiplicity of meanings, and to organize both scientific names and their definitions on an unprecedented scale.

For nearly three centuries, biologists have relied on standardized scientific names to describe the natural world and to communicate with colleagues from around the world. A scientific species name such as Gallinula chloropus is understood universally to refer to the animal English-speakers refer to as the Common Moorhen. However, if you generate a map of all Gallinula chloropus (Common Moorhen) distribution records available globally before 2011 and after 2011, you may conclude that the species recently all but disappeared across a large part of its range in a few years, particularly in North and South America. If you were familiar with bird taxonomy, you might know that this was not the result of some catastrophic population crash, but rather due to a taxonomic revision by which birds in the Americas are now considered a distinct species called Gallinula galeata.

This simple example illustrates that there are cases when a scientific name is not enough, and some additional knowledge is required to make a correct interpretation. And the problem is widespread: Even in a well-studied group like birds, species names change spelling and meaning surprisingly often. Between 1970 and 2013, the Clements’ Checklist of the Birds of the World changed about 34% of its names, and 931 species (about 9% of all bird species) have changed meanings without any change in name.

One solution to this problem of just relying on names is to use so-called taxonomic concepts, which solve the issue of imprecision by pairing each use of a scientific name with a citation to a particular source that defines a particular meaning for it. However, it remains challenging to determine how taxonomic concepts are related to each other and what they mean in real life. How can someone know whether two usages of the name Gallinula chloropus actually refer to the same population or not?

A new study published in the open-access journal ZooKeys explains how Avibase, an online global database on birds, has developed unique solutions to some of these problems, and explains how these solutions could be applied to other taxonomic groups. Avibase organizes species information by explicitly considering taxonomic concepts, which pair scientific names with the citation defining the particular meaning of that name. Avibase’s key accomplishment has been to create a comprehensive database that maps the relationships among 125 different taxonomic sources created and used by biologists, representing over 1.7 million species and subspecies taxonomic concepts, and to do so using a relatively simple design. Avibase is the first example of a database that successfully relies on taxonomic concepts to organize scientific names for an entire taxonomic group. One of the advantages of the approach used by Avibase is that it does not require any significant changes from the current practices of users of taxonomic names, except to name the taxonomic authority that they follow.

Dr. Denis Lepage, Senior Scientist at Bird Studies Canada, created Avibase and has been its curator for the last two decades. According to Dr. Lepage:

“The need to rely on taxonomic concepts in Avibase grew naturally from the need to organize names used by different sources that fundamentally referred to distinct populations. Even though Avibase wasn’t initially created to address this particular problem, I quickly realized that relying on names alone presented significant problems, and that I needed to find reliable solutions to address them in order to achieve what I had set out to do. Avibase provides a demonstration that taxonomic concepts can be used on a large scale to address the problems of scientific names, for birds or for any other taxonomic group.”

While there is still much to do to make a complete transition from scientific names to taxonomic concepts, even for birds, it is also important that all users start to appreciate the limitations of scientific names as they were originally designed, and start making the transition towards using taxonomic concepts. While the issues of scientific names appear manageable on a local scale, they become increasingly challenging as the volume of data and names in global database continue to grow. With greater awareness of these limitations, and better tools such as Avibase to understand relationships among concepts, these problems can be overcome.

Original source:

Lepage D, Vaidya G, Guralnick R (2014) Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts. ZooKeys 420: 117. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.420.7089

 

Image:

The Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula), formerly known as the Northern Oriole, is one of thousands of species for which the scientific name offers a less than perfect solution for referring precisely to biological organisms. (Credit: John Kees)

Contacts:

Dr Denis Lepage, Bird Studies Canada dlepage@birdscanada.org

Dr Robert Guralnick, University of Colorado Boulder Robert.Guralnick@colorado.edu

Gaurav Vaidya, University of Colorado Boulder http://ggvaidya.com/

Scientists discover and describe a new species of spider from Mexico. The new species belongs to the enigmatic family Paratropididae that is distinguished by representatives who possess unique camouflaging abilities. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Like all species form the family the new species Paratropis tuxtlensis has its entire body encrusted with soil particles. The encrusted soil on the exoskeleton could provide protection from predators or serve as camouflage to deceive their prey. The encrusted soil particles are because this species has glandular pores in the cuticle and their secretion help to stick the soil particles. These spiders are very cryptic, which coupled with lack of movement when exposed makes them quite difficult to find and collect.

The specific name of the new species Paratropis tuxtlensis refers to the type locality: Estación de Biología Tropical “Los Tuxtlas”, Veracruz, Mexico. The species is known only from the region around the type locality in the Volcán San Martin Biosphere Reserve.

These species typically don’t make burrows but rely on their camouflage to hide under rocks and in the soil. “The specimens were collected in tropical rain-forest, under boulders on the ground. They remained motionless when they were exposed by removing the rock that provided shelter, possibly as a defense mechanism because the soil particles encrusted on the body cuticle serves as camouflage with the moist ground.” explains the authors of the study, Dr. Alejandro Valdez-Mondragón, M. Sc. Jorge I. Mendoza and Dr. Oscar F. Francke from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City.

Original Source:

Valdez-Mondragón A, Mendoza JI, Francke OF (2014) First record of the mygalomorph spider family Paratropididae (Arachnida, Araneae) in North America with the description of a new species of Paratropis Simon from Mexico, and with new ultramorphological data for the family. ZooKeys 416: 1. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.416.7253

The species diversity in soil fauna has been studied in temperate regions for more than 50 years, but with scarcely any mention of thrips. This lack of reference to thrips raises the question whether or not litter-dwelling thrips are distributed only in tropical and sub-tropical regions.

To answer this question a total 150 leaf litter samples were collected from 6 natural reserves located in three climatic regions, temperate, subtropical and tropical, along a 4100 km latitudinal gradient in East China. The survey was done over a four-year period by Dr. Jun Wang, who is a thrips specialist and an assistant professor at the College of Plant Science, Jilin University, China. His results have been published in the open access journal ZooKeys

‘Thrips constitute over 3.0% of total litter–dwelling macroinvertebrate individuals in 4 natural reserves from subtropical and tropical zone.’, said Dr Wang. ‘In contrast, it constitute only 0.3% in the warm temperate natural reserves, and no thrips is collected in a mid temperate reserve. ‘

Dr. Wang said that the order on the average species numbers per plot of litter thrips was tropic followed by subtropics followed by temperate. Mean density of litter thrips per plots in the tropics and subtropics was significantly higher than that in the temperate region.

Dr. Laurence Mound, CSIRO Entomology, Australia commented that this manuscript is the the first serious attempt to look at the diversity of thrips in leaf-litter, based on a good sampling strategy, and investigating the variation with latitude.

Original source:

Wang J, Tong X, Wu D (2014) The effect of latitudinal gradient on the species diversity of Chinese litter-dwelling thrips. ZooKeys 417: 9. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.417.7895

The Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica has joined forces with Pensoft Publishers to bring the Society’s journal Nota Lepidopterologica on the way to open access and innovation. The first issue of the journal published in Pensoft Publishers advanced open access format is now a fact.

The scope of Nota has not changed and it continues to publish contributions to the study of mainly but not exclusively Palaearctic Lepidoptera, including taxonomy, morphology and anatomy, phylogenetics, biogeography, ecology, behaviour, conservation, as well as other aspects of lepidopterology.

The new semantically enriched online format of the journal does, however, bring a great number of benefits and new features. One of the many improvements is that the waiting time from acceptance of a paper to publication will now be much shorter. Each paper will be published online within weeks of acceptance on the new Nota website

Nota Lepidopterologica is now an open access journal, which means that all published papers will be accessible to anyone in the world with an internet connection as soon as the paper is published. Pensoft’s modern publishing tools include semantic markup of all manuscripts, registration of new taxa and nomenclatural acts in ZooBank, and linking of scientific names in papers to various biodiversity resources (e.g., GBIF, Encyclopedia of Life, etc.).

“Pensoft is well known as one of World’s most innovative publishers focusing on all topics related to biodiversity. For years they have been revolutionizing publishing by integrating modern tools with traditional topics into high-quality products. We hope you will enjoy the new editorial system and outlook of Nota Lepidopterologica and we welcome you to the first issue of Nota published by Pensoft.”comments the Editor-in-Chief of Nota Lepidopterologica Dr Jadranka Rota from the University of Turku, Finland.

In the new semantically enriched issue you can read about an unexpected discovery of Pyrgus malvoides in the Czech Republic, the revision of Naarda (Erebidae), a detailed examination of the Alpine populations of the butterfly Erebia euryale, an interesting new species of larentiine geometrids from the Kopet-Dagh Mountains, reduced mouth parts in coleophorids, the taxonomic status of two species of Ochromolopis (Epermeniidae), the description of the previously unknown female of Ethmia cribravia (Elachistidae), a remarkable new species of gelechiids from Turkmenistan, difficulties of identifying species of Melitaea based on their wing morphology, and about choreutids of Madeira.

Rota J (2014) Nota Lepidopterologica combines tradition and innovation through open access and advanced publishing model. Nota Lepidopterologica 37(1): 1-2. doi: 10.3897/nl.37.8008

 

Additional Information:

Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica is the European society for the study of moths and butterflies and for the conservation of these insects and their natural habitats. The society was founded in 1976 with the aims of promoting collaboration among the lepidopterists of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, and of promoting conservation of Lepidoptera and their habitats. The society now has in excess of 600 members.

Pensoft Publishers specialize in academic and professional book and journal publishing, mostly in the field of biodiversity science and natural history. In 2008, Pensoft launched its first open-access journals named ZooKeys and BioRisk, and since then it has taken a leadership in introducing innovations in the field of open access. On 16th of September 2013, Pensoft launched the Biodiversity Data Journal and the associated Pensoft Writing Tool, as the first workflow ever to put together article authoring, community peer-review, publishing and dissemination within a single online collaborative platform.

 

Contact:

Jadranka Rota
Editor-in-chief
Laboratory of Genetics/Zoological Museum,
University of Turku,
Finland
Email: jadranka.rota@utu.fi

The new Advanced Books platform of Pensoft opens new horizons for semantic book publishing

Easy access to legacy data collected over hundreds-of-years of exploration of nature from the convenience of people’s own computers for anyone all over the world? It may sound futuristic but a brand new pilot showcases how this is possible here and now.

The new workflow demonstrates a re-publication of a volume of Flora Malesiana in a semantically enriched HTML edition available on the newly launched, Advanced Books publishing platform. The platform was demonstrated today at the EU funded pro-iBiosphere project which supported, in part, the re-publication of Flora Malesiana.

When Linnaeus was laying the foundations of taxonomy as a science in his Species Plantarum and Systema Naturae books he probably did not imagine that his methods of publication of natural history data would remain almost unchanged for more than 270 years! The bulk of the information on the living World is still closed in paper-based legacy literature, especially in fundamental regional treatises such as Flora, Fauna and Mycota series, hardly accessible for readers, despite the dramatic changes in the publishing technologies that have taken place over the last decade.

The new pilot, developed by Pensoft Publishers in a cooperation with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Plazi, and Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem (BGBM), demonstrates how a fundamental book in natural history can start a new life with Advanced Books. Re-publication of the Flora of Northumberland & Durham, published in 1838, will be the next to appear as a result of a collaboration between the Botanical Garden Meise National Botanic Garden of Belgium and Pensoft.

Flora Malesiana is a systematic account of the flora of Malesia, the plant-geographical unit spanning six countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea. The plant treatments are not published in a systematic order but as they come about by the scientific efforts of some 100 collaborators all over the world.

With the new platform, such scientifically important historical monographs, enriched with additional information from up-to-date external sources related to organisms’ names, species treatments, information on their ecology, distribution and conservation value, morphological characters, etc., become freely usable for anyone at any place in the world.

The re-publication in advanced open access comes with the many other benefits of the digitization and markup efforts such as data extraction and collation, distribution and re-use of content, archiving of different data elements in relevant repositories and so on.

“Advanced Books will bring many outstanding scientific monographs to a new life, however the platform is not only restricted to e-publish our legacy literature.” commented Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Managing Director of Pensoft. “New books are mostly welcome on the platform, joining their historical predecessors in an open, common, human- and machine-readable, data space for the benefit of future researchers and the society in general.” concluded Prof. Penev.

Original Source:

de Wilde W (2014) Flora Malesiana. Series I – Seed Plants, Volume 14. Myristicaceae. Advanced Books: e1141. doi: 10.3897/ab.e1141

China, from 2015 the world’s biggest economy, is its worst polluter already now. It has not yet, but will be most probably climbing the top position also with regards the aggregate contribution to climate change (historical emission residues included), called the climate debt. At the same time, it is the largest victim of environmental change, and the leading country in cleaning-up the environmental mess – the government has taken bold steps towards improvement. Could the largest polluter become the world’s last best hope for establishing a global ecological civilisation?

Dr. Joachim H. Spangenberg from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) seeks the answer to this question, analysing the ranking of China and other main agents regarding fossil fuel production, trade and consumption, climate and environmental policies, and the resulting climate debt of countries. In a recent paper published in the open access journal BioRisk he finally suggests 3 fields for action which would permit China to start reducing not only its climate footprint bit even the accumulated climate debt within the next decade.

The anthropocene is the age where human influences are determining the development of the planet’s ecosystems and thus the bio-physical basis of future human civilisations. As the world’s largest economy China is the world’s largest consumer of all kinds of resources and is also the worst polluter, with per capita greenhouse gas emissions surpassing those of EU citizens.

However, the country is not only a culprit in this bleak situation. China is also the world’s largest victim of environmental change, including air and soil pollution, water and land scarcity, biodiversity loss and climate change.

“Not only slowing down the increase but reducing emissions should be a top priority for China, and it is: the government has taken some bold steps.” comments Dr. Spangenberg.

China is currently the world’s largest investor in renewable energies, has the largest afforestation program, and leads the world in energy efficiency improvements. As the largest polluter it has extraordinary opportunities to improve the global state of the environment and is perhaps the world’s best hope for establishing a global ecological civilisation.

However, despite the magnitude of efforts they are not yet sufficient. “We suggest three additional steps which could help China to begin reducing its climate debt within a couple of decades, define a long term perspective for policy planning and adjust its growth model to the challenges of the anthropocene.” explains Dr. Spangenberg.

The author suggests a revised Methane strategy as a short term measure towards reducing China’s climate debt. Another measure outlined is capping the consumption of fossil fuels to limit greenhouse gas emission. And last but not the least the study suggests a new growth model for the Chinese economy where de-growth will happen by design in a socially and environmentally benign way, rather than by environmentally triggered disaster.

“Any country aspiring a leadership role in 21st century should be aware that the majority of humankind will be negatively affected by climate change. A country that is causing havoc on their lands and people will lose the legitimacy of any claim for leadership, regardless of its economic or military strength. Thus for social, economic, environmental and geopolitical reasons, a rapid transition towards a sustainable economy, making use of all available means, is an urgent necessity, for Europe, the USA and not least for China.” summarizes Dr. Spangenberg about the urgency of effective measures.

Original Source:

Spangenberg JH (2014) China in the anthropocene: Culprit, victim or last best hope for a global ecological civilisation? BioRisk 9: 10.3897/biorisk.9.6105

An international team of researchers comprised of Thomas Wesener, Museum Koenig, Bonn, Daniel Le, Field Museum, Chicago and Stephanie Loria, American Museum of Natural History, New York, discovered seven new species of chirping giant pill-millipedes on Madagascar. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The species discovered all belong to the genus Sphaeromimus, which is Latin for ‘small ball animal’. However, the designation ‘small’ is not always true for the members of the genus as one of the newly discovered species surprises with a size larger than a ping-pong ball. Another special characteristic of the genus is that its species have the largest chirping organs of any millipede, which are most probably used during mating.

Despite sometimes sharing a habitat with Madagascar’s ‘large’ pill-millipedes, which can reach the size of a baseball, the new species are more closely related to millipedes found in India than their Malagasy neighbours. This relationship dates back more than 80 million years to at least as early as the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs walked the Earth and India and Madagascar were connected.

One of the new species Sphaeromimus andrahomana offers clues to Madagascar’s ecosystems thousands of years ago. Although the species was found in a cave in Madagascar’s southern dry spiny forest region, genetically, it is a rainforest taxon. The lemur skeletons found inside the same cave are also evidence that a rainforest existed in the now desert-like area until 3000-5000 years ago. The species, sheltered by the humid cave, is probably a living witness to this ancient rainforest.

The discovery is particularly exciting as some of species are microendemics, meaning they are only found in one tiny forest fragment, a few hundred meters long and wide.

S. lavasoa, for example, is restricted to the Lavasoa Mountain, which is covered by an isolated, slightly larger than 100 hectare, rainforest remnant, which is famous for the recent discovery of a large scorpion as well as a dwarf lemur species. This discovery further highlights the importance of the area as a Center of Endemism.

Another new species (S. saintelucei) is probably the most endangered millipede on Madagascar. It was found in a fragment of the Sainte Luce littoral rainforest characterized by its laterite soil that is now so small that no lemur or other large vertebrate species can survive in it.

The nearby Sainte Luce forest fragment with sandy ground harbours a different species (S. splendidus) also believed to be a microendemic. “Despite their close proximity, both species are not even closely related. Both the fragments where they were found are currently threatened by a huge, billion-dollar titanium ore strip mining project. Although there are intentions to designate and manage conservation zones, the plan is to protect only one large fragment may result in the extinction of some of the species if additional conservation measures aren’t undertaken.” explains the lead author Dr. Thomas Wesener from the Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn, Germany.

Original source:

Wesener T, Le DM-T, Loria SF (2014) Integrative revision of the giant pill-millipede genus Sphaeromimus from Madagascar, with the description of seven new species (Diplopoda, Sphaerotheriida, Arthrosphaeridae). ZooKeys 414: 67. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.414.7730

 

Contact:

Dr. Thomas Wesener, Research Museum A. Koenig, Bonn, Germany, t.wesener@zfmk.de, 0049 (0)228 9122 425

Stephanie Loria, American Museum of Natural History, New York, stephaniefrancesloria@gmail.com

Daniel Minh-Tu Le, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, dle@fieldmuseum.org