Author: Pensoft Editorial Team

Much as human siblings can have vastly different personalities despite their similar resemblance and genetics, two closely related species of electric fish from the Amazon produce very different electric signals. These species, new to science, are described in the open access journal ZooKeys by Drs. John Sullivan of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Jansen Zuanon of the National Amazonian Research Institute in Manaus, Brazil and Cristina Cox Fernandes of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The two new species are bluntnose knifefish, genus Brachyhypopomus, that live under rafts of unrooted grasses and water hyacinth along the margins of the Amazon River called “floating meadows.” These are weakly electric relatives of South America’s famous electric “eel” (not a true eel) that can produce strong electric discharges of hundreds of volts. By contrast, these weakly fishes produce pulses of only a few hundred millivolts from an organ under the body that extends out onto a filamentous tail. Nearby objects in the water create distortions to the electric field that are sensed by receptor cells on the fishes’ skin. In this way, they are able to “electrolocate” through their complex aquatic environment at night. Their short electric pulses, too weak to be sensed by touch, are also used to communicate the sender’s species identity and gender to other electric fishes.

“The most striking differences between these two similar species have to do with their electric organs and their electric organ discharges, or EODs.”, says lead author John Sullivan, Curatorial Affiliate at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates. “If it weren’t for these traits, we undoubtedly would have thought they were a single species. The one we are calling Brachyhypopomus bennetti has a huge electric organ, a short, fat tail, and produces a monophasic EOD; the other one that we’re calling Brachyhypopomus walteri has a more typical electric organ, a long thin tail, and a more typical biphasic EOD.”

It turns out the monophasic EOD of the new species Brachyhypopomus bennetti is highly unusual. Most species of this kind of knifefish produce EOD waveforms with both a positive and negative phase to them, as viewed on an oscilloscope: essentially alternating current. In this way, there is no net positive or negative current generated by the signal. “All of this fish’s relatives, including its newly described sister species, have biphasic EODs.”, says Sullivan, “For that reason we know that this trait evolved in this species’ lineage. The interesting question is why.”

One widely accepted idea is that the biphasic EOD with its reduced amount of direct current (DC) is an adaptation to hide from predatory fish, like catfishes and electric eels, that are equipped with a type of electroreceptor that are sensitive to DC. So why would one species seemingly court danger by evolving a monophasic EOD?

The only other electric fish in the Amazon with a similar monophasic EOD is the fearsome electric eel. This fish has both a weak EOD used for electrolocation and communication as well as a much more powerful EOD used to stun prey and for defense. A theory proposed by Dr. Philip Stoddard of Florida International University contends that, in much the same way that the Viceroy butterfly—a species tasty to birds—evolved wing color patterns to mimic the distasteful Monarch butterfly, the harmless B. bennetti ‘s EOD waveform evolved to mimic that of the electric eel, a species electroreceptive predatory fishes may have learned to avoid.

In this paper, the authors suggest an additional possible benefit of of B. bennetti’s monophasic EOD. Unlike biphasic species, B. bennetti’s EOD waveform is largely unaffected after their tails are partially bitten off by predators, a common type of injury in this species. They suggest that this species’ preference for floating meadow habitat near river channels may put them at particularly high risk of predation and ”tail grazing” by other fishes.

The authors show that the EOD waveforms of Brachyhypopomus species with biphasic EODs are severely altered after such injuries, whereas those of B. bennetti are not. “Any change to the EOD waveform likely impairs electroreception and communication and the monophasic EOD waveform may have been favored by natural selection in a species that suffers a lot of tail injuries.”, says Sullivan, “Selection for both EOD stability and mimicry of electric eels could be going on simultaneously…both hypotheses make predictions that should be tested.”

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The research that led to the discovery of the two new Brachyhypopomus species was funded by the National Science Foundation of the United States and CNPq of Brazil.

Original Source:

Sullivan JP, Zuanon J, Cox Fernandes C (2013) Two new species and a new subgenus of toothed Brachyhypopomus electric knifefishes (Gymnotiformes, Hypopomidae) from the central Amazon and considerations pertaining to the evolution of a monophasic electric organ discharge. ZooKeys 327: 1–34. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.327.5427

African mountain bamboos are something of a mystery, as nearly all bamboos are found in Asia or South America. Hidden away up mountains in the tropics where they provide food for gorillas, just as China’s bamboos provide food for the Giant Panda, there are apparently only 2 species, and they had not been examined in very great detail, except by the gorillas.

It had been thought that they were very closely related to the hundreds of similar bamboos in Asia, but their respective ranges are separated by thousands of miles. As flowering in bamboos is such a rare event, spreading by seed takes a very long time, and the suspicion arose that they might be old enough to represent new genera, and possibly could even be remnants of the earliest temperate bamboos, which spread to Asia on drifting tectonic plates. A new study published in the open access journal PhytoKeys, studies the diversity and evolution of African bamboo.

Having studied bamboos in the Himalayas extensively, and edited the descriptions of all the bamboos of China for the Flora of China Project of Academia Sinica and Missouri Botanical Gardens, Dr. Chris Stapleton turned his attention to the bamboos of Africa. He found that the features of the mountain bamboos were significantly different to those of Asia, and together with the large geographic separation, the differences were sufficient for the recognition of 2 new African genera, now named Bergbambos and Oldeania, after their local names in the Afrikaans and Maasai languages. The species are now Bergbambos tessellata Fig. 2, and Oldeania alpina Fig. 3.

DNA had been extracted from these bamboos and examined on several occasions, but the results of analyses were variable and could not prove a close relationship to any of the bamboos of Asia. What is clear when looking at all the DNA results together is that the African bamboos represent two separate lineages, and neither can be included in any known Asian genus.

Earlier work on the global distribution of bamboos has shown that bamboos evolved in the southern hemisphere on a landmass called Gondwanaland, parts of which spread apart to form South America, Africa and Asia when it broke up as a result of continental drift, the slow movement of tectonic plates on the earth’s surface. The incredible variety of temperate bamboos in China is thought to be a result of the early bamboos spreading out from either Africa or India when the plates collided and allowed the hitch-hiking bamboos to jump across into new territory.

The features and DNA of the African bamboos are certainly different to those of East Asia, but it is still not clear whether they are really different enough to represent ancestors of all the Asian bamboos. It will be necessary to hunt out and study mountain bamboos of Sri Lanka and Madagascar and to include them in a broader analysis to be sure. From this review, however, it looks as though African bamboos evolved about the same time as the bamboos of E Asia. The miriad temperate bamboos of China are more likely to have been a gift from India, rather than another ”Out of Africa” story, but further work is needed to be sure. What is clear is that Africa has two more endemic genera, and the bamboos are seen to be as unique as the animals that depend upon them.

Original source:

Stapleton CMA (2013) Bergbambos and Oldeania, new genera of African bamboos (Poaceae, Bambusoideae). PhytoKeys 25: 87. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.25.6026

Additional Information:

Stapleton CMA, Ní Chonghaile G, Hodkinson TR (2004) Sarocalamus, a New Sino-Himalayan Bamboo Genus (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) Novon 14 (3): 345-349. http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/novon/novo-14-03-345.pdf

Stapleton CMA, Hodkinson TR, Ní Chonghaile G (2009) Molecular phylogeny of Asian woody bamboos: Review for the Flora of China. Bamboo Science and Culture, J. of the American Bamboo Society 22(1): 5.http://www.bamboo-identification.co.uk/MPAWB_open.pdf Hodkinson TR, Ní Chonghaile G, Sungkaew S, Chase MW, Salamin N, Stapleton CMA (2010) Phylogenetic analyses of plastid and nuclear DNA sequences indicate a rapid late Miocene radiation of the temperate bamboo tribe Arundinarieae (Poaceae, Bambusoideae). Plant Ecology & Diversity 3(2): 109.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17550874.2010.521524

Flora of China Bamboo Account:
http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=20753

Bamboo Identification website:
http://www.bamboo-identification.co.uk

Acknowledgements:

The American Bamboo Society kindly provided the open access publication fees for the PhytoKeys paper.

A collaborative biological survey that focused on the insects of French Polynesia has resulted in the discovery of over 100 tiny predatory beetle species in Tahiti, 28 of these species newly described in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

The predatory beetles range in size from 3-8 mm long, and have evolutionarily lost their flight wings, making them homebodies living in small patches of mountain forest. The author, James Liebherr of Cornell University, states: “It is exhilarating working with such a fauna, because every new locality or ecological situation has the high probability of supporting a species nobody has seen before.”

This adaptive radiation has evolved on an oceanic island less than 1.5 million years old, within an area of just over 1000 square kilometers. These beetles have diversified by speciating as fast as any animals worldwide, with each species estimated to last only 300,000 years before splitting into daughter species.

Tahiti’s geological history has much to do with this evolutionary rate, as these beetles prefer to live in rain forests on high mountains that have become isolated through extensive erosion that has produced the broad, low-elevation river valleys so characteristic of the island. Yet some closely related species live on the same mountain ridge, just at different elevations or in different types of habitat.

This level of specialization is what characterizes an adaptive radiation, where species exist within narrow ecological or geographic boundaries that mainland species would simply ignore or fly over. Yet this exuberant evolution may face a dark future, as invasive species from the mainland threaten the highly specialized island species. Predatory ants, such as the little fire ant, have invaded Tahiti, and have been recorded from some localities where native beetle species were collected by French entomologists in the 1970’s.

“Now that the 101 species of small predatory beetles currently known from Tahiti can be identified, field sampling can be used to evaluate their conservation status relative to alien threats.”, says Liebherr. Moreover he says: “Everybody who makes landfall on Tahiti, either by air or sea, should endeavor to disembark pest free so as to protect the many denizens of the mountain forests who make the native ecosystems work.”

Original Source:

The Mecyclothorax beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Moriomorphini) of Tahiti, Society Islands. ZooKeys 322: 1-170. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.322.5492

The 8th issue of the open access Biorisk journal is devoted to the topic of development and standardization of monitoring of genetically modified plants (GMP). The new issue, compiled by professionals under the umbrella of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), provides up-to-date research on the issue of developing VDI guidelines for GMP monitoring; now also capturing new faunal species groups as indicators.

Each application for approval of GM plants must contain a tailored monitoring plan. However, in Germany current experience with the cultivation of insect-resistant maize (MON810) and starch-modified potatoes (Amflora) shows that – from a conservation point of view – past monitoring plans are not suitable to detect relevant environmental effects.

Professional experts have now suggested a wide range of guidelines for GMP monitoring, among others collecting faunal species data for GMP impact monitoring, also broadly applicable for general biodiversity assessments in agricultural landscapes. The current issue contains articles from professionals in the field suggesting the introduction and implementation of VDI guidelines of faunal species, like butterflies, amphibians, soil organisms and wild bees.

The creation and adoption of VDI guidelines follows a strict procedure and the professionals involved in their production are strictly volunteers. In the European guidelines for GMP monitoring the use of such standardized methods is strongly recommended in order to ensure high quality, durability, reproducibility and comparability of data across Europe. Addressee for the VDI guidelines are all actors and institutions involved in the assessment of environmental effects of genetically modified plants. The guidelines are bilingual in German and English.

The creation of the VDI guidelines was funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment as part of a research and development project.

Butterflies and moths were the first biological indicators considered for the purpose of GMO monitoring within the VDI guidelines series. The European community stipulates a monitoring plan in order to trace and identify any harmful effects on human health or the environment of GMO after they have been placed on the market. Butterflies and moths are widely accepted as relevant protection goals and have often been suggested and applied as suitable indicators for the monitoring of environmental quality and changes as one of the major indicators to monitor and assess biodiversity change in Europe.

Adverse effects of genetically modified (GM) plants on Lepidoptera have already been reported, which strongly supports their quality and significance for an appropriate GMO monitoring. The VDI guidelines provide the state-of-the-art of a GMO monitoring of Lepidoptera as required by the European Community. They describe the best possible treatment of the demands of a Lepidopteran GMO monitoring.

The paper recently published in the open access journal BioRisk, reports known and potential effects of GM plants on Lepidoptera. The study aims at an increase in the detection success of such effects, thus meeting the required criteria for a GMO monitoring formulated by the EC. Information is provided on the sampling and monitoring of day-active Lepidoptera, of night-active moths and of the recording of Lepidopteran larvae, as well as to sample design and strategy. Though specifically designed for GM crops, the VDI guidelines may also serve as a template to monitor the effects of a wider range of adverse factors on Lepidoptera in agriculture

The guidelines describe and ensure a suitable approach for a powerful and cost-efficient monitoring, which is not equivalent to being cheap, but means generating data of high (or sufficient) quality with an acceptable and justified effort. An iterative quality control of the monitoring results is paramount, regularly checking the relation between invested efforts and value of generated data, and continuously adapting the monitoring programme to scientific progress and new knowledge.

Original Source:

Lang A, Theißen B, Dolek M (2013) Standardised methods for the GMO monitoring of butterflies and moths: the whys and hows. BioRisk 8: 15–38. doi: 10.3897/biorisk.8.32

For biologists it is an easy matter: spiders have eight legs and insects have six. This fact is important when beholding and recognizing the tiny new species of Spider Water Beetles from the Philippine Island of Mindoro discovered by researchers of the Ateneo de Manila University. Zookeys, an open access international scientific journal launched to accelerate biodiversity research, has published the paper about the curious creatures in its latest issue [Zookeys 321: 35–64 (2013)].

Primarily, the study was intended to find and describe the larvae of known species of the genus Ancyronyx, under which all Spider Water Beetles of the world are compiled. But when the researchers checked the pristine creeks and rivers of the ethnic Buhid’s ancestral lands in the Municipality of Roxas, Oriental Mindoro, they found the first new species, now named as Ancyronyx buhid.

The second new species was detected among older collections of undetermined museum specimens. It was confirmed to occur in the waters of the famous Tamaraw Falls, a popular tourist destination in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro. It was named Ancyronyx tamaraw after it’s “type locality”*.

The newly discovered Buhid Spider Water Beetle has high potential to be used as a bioindicator species for healthy ecosystem conditions, since it fulfills the necessary criteria: (1) it is surprisingly common in clean, pristine running waters all over Mindoro, but (2) it is absent in more or less polluted and altered streams and (3) it can easily be identified in larval and adult stages, by eye-catching color patterns.

The assignment of the immature larvae with the adult beetles was done by DNA tests since the genetic constitution is very similar in individuals of the same species irrespective of the developmental stage, but more varying between different species. The genetic data were deposited at gene bank, and the occurrence data of the Ancyronyx species of Mindoro were submitted to GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Both are curated free access databases.

20 species of Spider Water Beetles are known on earth by now. 11 of them are endemic to the Philippines and cannot be found anywhere else, indicating that the country is the diversity centre of this genus. It emphasizes the importance of the country as a biodiversity hotspot at global scale. More efforts are required to protect the ecosystems and their unique diversity of life forms.

* zoological “type specimens” are important vouchers of a taxon (e.g. a new species). They are deposited in scientific collections for safe custody as required by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. The original place of collection of the primary type specimen is the “type locality”.

Original source:

Authors (2013) Ancyronyx Erichson, 1847 (Coleoptera, Elmidae) from Mindoro, Philippines, with description of the larvae and two new species using DNA sequences for the assignment of the developmental stages. ZooKeys 321: 35–64. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.321.5395

Additional Information:

The study was partly funded by the Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) as part of the PHERnet program and by the Ateneo de Manila University. A fund for free access publication was provided by Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Open Access Support Project (EOASP). Ateneo researchers are also very thankful to the people and administration of San Vicente, Roxas, who most supported the study as well as for the international cooperation with other institutions, especially the Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria and the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden, Germany from where additional specimens were made accessible for this study.

In terms of biodiversity richness, Iran is considered as an extremely complex area with wide ranges in the extremes of altitude, climate and temperature. The high biodiversity of the Iranian fauna is also the result of its location and the influences of four ecozones from North, South and South East. The rather high number of recorded endemic species of Fulgoromorpha in Iran indicates a high potential for speciation in some areas.

More than 200 species of Fulgoromorpha have been recorded from Iran since 1902. Representatives from 13 families among those have never been recorded from other parts of the world and appear to be restricted to the borders of Iran. The high endemism (nearly 50%) in the recorded fauna of Iran shows a high potential of speciation inside Iran. The study, published in the open access journal Zookeys, reveals distribution patterns and endemic areas for the endemic species of Fulgoromorpha in Iran.

The records of the endemic planthoppers of Iran have been accumulated during the recent 110 years. The nature of Iran, like any other land, has been exposed to various changes during this long period by events, such as agriculture, war, fire in woods and forests, overgrazing, urbanization etc. Therefore the presence of endemic species with a limited distribution and the possible extinction of some of them should be subjected to further investigations.

Original Source:

Fariba Mozaffarian (2013) A preliminary study on the distribution patterns of endemic species of Fulgoromorpha (Hemiptera, Auchenorrhyncha) in Iran. ZooKeys 319: 321, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.319.4159

A new study provides detailed information on karyotype and reproductive system of the species, the distribution, including rare video of their dexterous and vicious hunting practices

The giant water bug Lethocerus patruelis is the largest European true bug and the largest European water insect. The adult bugs reach an impressive 8 cm in length, and the largest representatives of the same family are even bigger – up to almost 12 cm. A new article published in the open access journal Zookeys provides detailed information on karyotype and the chromosome behavior, the male reproductive system of the species, as well as interesting insights into the life habits and the distribution of the species on the Balkans.

Lethocerus patruelis is a member of the family Belostomatidae also known as electric light bugs or toe biters. These bugs are fierce predators which stalk, capture and feed on aquatic crustaceans, fish and amphibians. When they strike, they inject strong digestive saliva, sucking out the liquefied remains to feed. This powerful hunting tool gave the family its common name, referring to the extremely painful bite from the Belostomatidae members. Their bite is considered one of the most painful that can be ever inflicted by any insect but it is of no medical significance.

During their study of the giant water bug N. Simov and M. Langourov from the study team had the unique chance to witness and record on video the vicious predatory practices of the species. In the recorded material, a larva uses the stems of a water plant to stalk and ambush its unsuspicious pray. The giant water bug larva can be seen storming from its cover and catching and injecting saliva into a small fish.

During the last ten years, many new findings of L. patruelis were made by the team in Southern Bulgaria, providing evidence that the giant water bug is expanding its territory northwards. Such a wide and abundant distribution of the species in these regions would be a further sign of the recent changes of European bug fauna caused by climate change and an important clue for the effects of global warming.

Original Source:

Grozeva S, Kuznetsova VG, Simov N, Langourov M, Dalakchieva S (2013) Sex chromosome pre-reduction in male meiosis of Lethocerus patruelis (Stål, 1854) (Heteroptera, Belostomatidae) with some notes on the distribution of the species. In: Popov A, Grozeva S, Simov N, Tasheva E (Eds) Advances in Hemipterology. ZooKeys 319: 119, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.319.4384

Modern digital macro photographic equipment allows everybody to shoot marvellous pictures of very small-sized living organisms, including insects. Easy access to the internet facilitates allows the daily upload of thousands of high quality insect pictures to photo sharing websites. This new phenomenon can be considered a democratic revolution in the study of biodiversity. Insect macro-photographs may be useful to illustrate online visual guides and identification keys , such as the BugGuide and Canadian Journal of Arthropod identification, or complement specialized biodiversity web resources, such as the Encyclopaedia of Life.

Photographs labelled with at least date and shooting site are scientifically more valuable, and may therefore contribute to insect biology and taxonomy, biodiversity catalogues, or species conservation. Images uploaded in the Spanish internet photosharing website “Biodiversidad Virtual” , for example, provided the first Iberian record of an American native assassin bug species (Zelus renardii). Similarly, confirmation of an endangered Iberian endemic plant-bug (Parahypsitylus nevadensis) came through such images fifty years after its description. Photo sharing websites also were the source of specimens for the description of a plant-lice species new to science (Schizaphis piricola).

Well-structured photosharing websites allow users to exploit the benefits of the photographs’ linked metadata. In “Biodiversidad Virtual“, authors must provide at least date and shooting site. Meta data and species name, as verified by specialists, contribute to the website database, from which information may be retrieved through a user-friendly interface.

In the Iberian Peninsula, for example, the conservation of the endangered assassin bug (Vibertiola cinerea) benefits from the photographic documentation of new localities, which have enlarged the species’ protected range 150 km to the south. Through photo sharing the periods of activity and overwintering stages of a frequently portrayed shieldbug (Nezara viridula) can now be alternatively obtained by summarizing shooting dates from about half a thousand uploaded pictures.

One disadvantage of photosharing databases is that they are normally restricted to big-sized, frequent and colourful species, and limited by uneven photosampling along space and time. Species identification is also not always possible from the image alone. Nevertheless, photosharing websites provide inexpensive, friendly, efficient, and powerful tools to Public Participation in Scientific Research. At the same time scientists can benefit from the help of thousands of volunteer macro-photographers who generously share their high-quality pictures!

Original source:

Goula M, Sesma J-M, Vivas L (2012) Photosharing websites may improve Hemiptera biodiversity knowledge and conservation. In: Popov A, Grozeva S, Simov N, Tasheva E (Eds) Advances in Hemipterology. ZooKeys 319: 93, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.319.4342