Author: Pensoft Editorial Team

Beetles, biodiversity and ‘Battlestar Galactica’

Michigan State entomologists have discovered dozens of new beetle species — and named some after iconic sci-fi heroines

The original Star Trek television series took place in a future when space is the final frontier, but humanity hasn’t reached that point quite yet. As researchers like Michigan State University entomologists Sarah Smith and Anthony Cognato are reminding us, there’s still plenty to discover right here on Earth.

Working in Central and South America, the duo discovered more than three dozen species of ambrosia beetles — beetles that eat ambrosia fungus — previously unknown to science. Smith and Cognato described these new species on June 16  in the journal ZooKeys.

The Spartans also selected an unusual naming theme named in deference to the female beetles who have helped their species survive and thrive by boldly going where they hadn’t before.

Many of the new species are named for iconic female science fiction characters, including Nyota Uhura of “Star Trek”; Kara “Starbuck” Thrace from the 2000s “Battlestar Galactica” TV series; and Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games” books and movies.

The wing coverings of the C. katniss come to an arrowhead-like point, which reminded the researchers of Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games,” shown below. “The Hunger Games” image courtesy of Lions Gate Entertainment Inc.

“One of our colleagues from London asked if it’s good to name a species after popular characters, if the popularity would backfire and make people think this is frivolous,” said Cognato, director of the Albert. J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection. He’s also an entomology professor with appointments in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the College of Natural Science.

“But overall, our colleagues think it’s a good thing,” Cognato said. “It gives us a chance to talk about taxonomy — the science of classifying organisms — and about diversity.”

Understanding the world’s biodiversity is one of the major drivers of this and related research. Scientists estimate that there are 10 million nonbacterial species in the world and that humans have classified only about 20% of those.

“And some are lost before they’re ever discovered,” said Smith, who is the curator of the A. J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection. When people disrupt native ecosystems with farming and mining, for example, undiscovered species can face extinction before researchers know about them.

For this project, the team did some of its field work in Peru, where illegal gold miners can be particularly devastating to forests. “They’re turning the forest into a wasteland” Smith said. “It may never recover.”

Working in such threatened areas, Smith and Cognato are helping identify beetle species before it’s too late, as well as characterizing a rich variety of physical traits and behaviors.

To be clear, they did this field work long before the pandemic struck, starting around 2008. But it takes time to perform the thorough investigations required to ensure that a species is indeed distinct from its closely related cousins.

“With South America, it can be really hard to know whether a species is new or not, just because the fauna is so poorly studied,” Smith said.

With the stay-at-home orders in effect, she and Cognato had time to focus on projects that had been simmering on the backburner, such as this one that details ambrosia beetles they had collected belonging to the genus Coptoborus.

These tiny beetles make their homes by boring into trees. Once inside, they sustain their nests by cultivating fungus that serves as food. There, a mother produces many female offspring and one or two dwarfed males. The main job of those males is to mate with their sisters, creating a new generation of females prepared to disperse and produce a new brood. This all leads to another reason for studying these beetles: they can become pests.

These females arrive at trees ready to bore inside, start a fungus farm and reproduce. Though most prefer to nest in dead or dying parts of trees, some can attack fully healthy trees that are ecologically and economically important. For example, there are species within the genus known to attack balsa trees in Ecuador, the world’s leading exporter of balsa wood.

And if tree-dwelling beetles find their way into nonnative habitats, they can pose large threats to trees that have no natural defenses against the insects. Michiganders are all too familiar with the emerald ash borer, which has claimed millions of ash trees in the state. Another nonnative species of fungus-farming beetle devastated redbay laurels and avocado trees in the Southern U.S.

By identifying species abroad, in their native habitats, researchers including Smith and Cognato are helping the U.S. better prepare for if and when a new pest shows up here. And, historically speaking, Coptoborus beetles are hardy travelers.

The researchers thought the C. starbuck‘s appearance gave it a tough persona, leading them to name it for Kara “Starbuck” Thrace from “Battlestar Galactica,” shown on the right. “Battlestar Galactica” image courtesy of NBC Universal.

Their ancestors originated about 20 million years ago, likely in Southeast Asia, before emigrating and making homes across much of the tropics.

“That’s one of the reasons we chose to name them after female sci-fi characters. Not to anthropomorphize too much, but you have these adventurous females that were blown off their log or had their wood-encased home thrown into the ocean by a mudslide,” Cognato said. If these mated females made it to a new land, they could start a new population, allowing the species to proliferate.

“Along the way, there were so many ways to die, but they ended up colonizing an entire continent.”

Fast forward to now and there are thousands of ambrosia beetle species, including more than 70 of the Coptoborus genus — and counting. In christening the new beetles, Smith and Cognato got some inspiration by finding similarities between the beetle and its namesake.

For instance, the C. uhura was given its name because its reddish color, reminiscent of the uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols’s Uhura character in the original “Star Trek” TV series.

The C. uhura’s reddish hue reminded the researchers of the uniform worn by Lt. Uhura in the original “Star Trek” television series, shown below. “Star Trek” image courtesy of CBS Studios Inc.

And Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley character in the “Alien” film franchise had a shaved head in the movie “Alien 3.” One of the beetles, now named C. ripley, was also glabrous, or without hair.

The C. ripley is glabrous, which means hairless, reminding the researchers of Ellen Ripley and her shaved head in “Alien 3,” shown on the right. “Alien 3” image courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.

Other names were selected because the duo just liked the characters and found them inspiring. For example, the C. scully beetle was named after Dana Scully, Gillian Anderson’s character on “The X-Files.”

The character is also behind what’s known as the “Scully Effect.” By showing a successful female scientist on TV, the show helped raise awareness of science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or STEM — professions among young women.

In their paper, Smith and Cognato wrote, “We believe in the ‘Scully Effect’ and hope future female scientists, real and fictional, continue to inspire children and young adults to pursue STEM careers.”

Smith and Cognato also took the opportunity to name some beetles in honor of real-life people who have made an impact on their work and their lives.

For example, the C. erwini, is named after a renowned entomologist and friend Terry Erwin, who passed away in 2020. Erwin helped popularize a technique called canopy fogging to collect beetle specimens living in treetops.

Coptoborus erwini

“Without his dedication to canopy fogging, this species and most of those described in this publication may never have been discovered,” Smith and Cognato wrote in their study, which is part of a special issue in memory of Erwin, who was also editor-in-chief of ZooKeys.

Also, the C. bettysmithae is named after Smith’s grandmother, Catherine “Betty” Smith. Sarah remembers Betty’s incredible strength in battling cancer and her help fostering her granddaughter’s scientific interest.

Some of the beetles were named for real-life inspirations, like the C. bettysmithae, named for Sarah Smith’s grandmother, Catherine “Betty” Smith.

“My grandmother supported me a lot with entomology,” Smith said. “I used to spend many weekends with her, and she’d take me out to catch dragonflies.”

Now, she and Cognato are out catching and characterizing insects that are new to science. In doing so, they’re helping protect native ecosystems, painting a more complete picture of the planet’s bountiful biodiversity and even drawing some attention to the power of naming and classifying things.

“Taxonomy was probably one of the first sciences of humans. You can find evidence of it throughout history and across cultures,” Cognato said.

This naming likely started so humans could easily share information about which plants were safe to eat and which animals were dangerous. This is still valuable information today, but naming has evolved to help us appreciate even more dimensions of life on Earth.

Think about being a kid in a park or backyard, Cognato said, and the innate desire to know and name the animals there, say, robins or squirrels. Classification builds connection.

“It helps us communicate and it helps us live better,” Cognato said. “It helps us understand the world and biodiversity.”

Original source:

Smith SM, Cognato AI (2021) A revision of the Neotropical genus Coptoborus Hopkins (Coleoptera, Curculionidae, Scolytinae, Xyleborini). In: Spence J, Casale A, Assmann T, Liebherr JК, Penev L (Eds) Systematic Zoology and Biodiversity Science: A tribute to Terry Erwin (1940-2020). ZooKeys 1044: 609-720. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.144.62246

Are zoos inadvertently complicit in wildlife trade? The case of a rare Borneo lizard

Should zoos display legally protected species that have been smuggled out of their range countries? A new study suggests that a pause and rethink may be needed, as it reports that accredited zoos have acquired a rare and legally protected reptile, the earless monitor lizard endemic to Borneo, without any evidence that the animals were legally exported.

The earless monitor lizard occurs only on the island of Borneo and has been described as a “miniature Godzilla” and “the Holy Grail of Herpetology.” Discovered by western scientists almost 150 years ago, for most of this period the species was known largely from pickled specimens in natural history collections, and wasn’t recorded from the wild for decades. In the 1970s, the three countries that make up Borneo – Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei – added it to their protected species lists. This means that the species can neither be legally traded within these countries, nor legally exported out of them.

Earless monitor lizard. Photo by Chien C. Lee, Wild Borneo.

Despite legal protection and lack of export permissions, reptile enthusiasts and unscrupulous traders have long been smuggling small numbers of earless monitor lizards out of Indonesia and Malaysia, eventually bringing them to Europe. This greatly accelerated in 2012, when the species’ rediscovery was announced in a scientific journal. In 2016, all 183 countries that are signatory to the Convention on international trade in endangered species agreed to regulate global trade in earless monitor lizards in order to limit the negative effects of smuggling on wild populations. Agreed export numbers were set at zero.

Enforcing the laws has proven to be challenging, however, and to date only two smuggling attempts have been thwarted. In both cases, German smugglers were apprehended at Indonesian airports while attempting to move respectively eight and seventeen earless monitor lizards out of the country.

The first zoo that proudly announced it had obtained earless monitor lizards was Japan’s iZoo in 2013. This zoo is not accredited, and the ways in which the animals were obtained remain questionable. In Europe, the first zoos to openly display earless monitor lizards were located in Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. The animals were obtained from what zoos referred to as “private individuals” or “dedicated hobby breeders”, and, in one instance, from iZoo. Just like in Japan, how these animals ended up in Europe is questionable, but perhaps not illegal – and it is evident that no export permits were ever issued.

In recent years, more and more zoos in Europe, and since the beginning of this year also in the United States, have started displaying earless monitor lizards. Some cases were part of zoo exchanges, others were obtained from private individuals, and a handful were placed in zoos by authorities after they were seized, but it is clear that many were at one point illegally exported out of Indonesia, Malaysia or Brunei, or were illegally imported into non-range countries.

The acquisition of these protected lizards by zoos is neither in line with the intentions of national laws of their countries of origin, nor with international wildlife trade regulations. Moreover, it is diametrically opposed to the commitments the international zoo community has made to address illegal wildlife trade.

“To me, the current situation concerning the purchasing and proudly displaying of earless monitor lizards by accredited zoos can be compared with a road safety organisation posting online videos of its CEO doing wheelies on a motorbike and then adding that it was done on a private road where neither wearing a helmet nor having a driver’s licence is required,” said Vincent Nijman of the Oxford Wildlife Trade Research Group, author of the study that was published in the open-access journal Nature Conservation. “Both may be legal in a technical sense, but the optics are not good.”

“Modern, scientifically managed zoos are increasingly organising themselves with set ethical values and binding standards which go beyond national legislation on conservation and sustainability, but, unfortunately, this still only counts for a small proportion of zoos worldwide,” said Dr Chris R. Shepherd, Executive Director of Monitor Research Conservation Society. “Zoos that continue to obtain animals that have been illegally acquired, directly or indirectly, are often fuelling the illegal wildlife trade, supporting organised crime networks and possibly contributing to the decline in some species.”

Seven years ago, the price for a single earless monitor lizard was in the order of EUR 8,000 to 10,000 , so any zoo or hobbyist wanting to have one or more pairs had to make a serious financial commitment. These high prices put a restriction on the number of people that wanted to acquire them and could afford them. It probably also gave potential buyers a tacit reminder that the trade was illicit. In recent years, however, prices have come down, to less than EUR 1,000. Now that earless monitor lizards are more affordable, and with accredited zoos giving a sense of legitimacy, Nijman is concerned that it might become more and more acceptable to keep these rare animals as pets.

“When I grew up in the 1970s, it was still perfectly acceptable for what we now see as accredited zoos to regularly buy rare and globally threatened birds, mammals and reptiles from commercial animal traders. Few questions were asked about the legitimacy of this animal trade. This has dramatically changed for the better, and now many of the animals we see in zoos today have been bred in captivity, either in the zoo itself, or in partner zoos”, Nijman said. He added that in many ways zoos are a force for good in the global challenge to preserve species and conserve habitats. “It is imperative that these efforts are genuinely adopted by all in the zoo community, and, when there is doubt about the legitimacy of animals in trade, that a cautionary approach is adopted.”

Original source:

Nijman V (2021) Zoos consenting to the illegal wildlife trade – the earless monitor lizard as a case study. Nature Conservation 44: 69-79. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.44.65124

Pensoft welcomes SNSB’s paleontology and geobiology journal Zitteliana to its portfolio

The first papers of the journal of the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeontology and Geology in Munich since the move to Pensoft’s publishing platform are now online

The scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft welcomes the latest addition to its diverse portfolio of scientific outlets – the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Zitteliana, which publishes research in the fields of paleontology and geobiology.

Zitteliana is a journal of the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeontology and Geology Munich, which is part of the State Natural History Collection of Bavaria (SNSB), a research institution for natural history comprising five state collections.

Published both online and in print, the journal contains original articles, short contributions and reviews on all aspects of palaeontology and geobiology, welcoming research on all regions of the Earth and all periods of geologic time. The journal invites both modern and traditional research outputs, including palaeobiology, geobiology, palaeogenomics, biodiversity, stratigraphy, sedimentology, regional geology, systematics, phylogeny, and cross-disciplinary studies of these areas.

Since its launch in 1961, the journal has changed its name several times (i.e. Mitteilungen der Bayerischen Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und historische Geologie, Zitteliana A (Abhandlungen) and Zitteliana B (Mitteilungen)), and has extended both scope and thematic range to  cover global research from all areas of palaeontology and geobiology.

“This year, Zittelliana is celebrating its 60th anniversary in brand new gear. The move to the innovative scholarly publisher Pensoft shows how tradition can work hand in hand with innovation and modernity. We are very excited about this relaunch and very much look forward to transforming  Zitteliana into an internationally leading journal in Paleontology and Geobiology together with Pensoft,” the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Gert Wörheide adds.

After moving to Pensoft’s scholarly publishing platform ARPHA, and with a brand-new, user-friendly website, Zitteliana now takes full advantage of ARPHA’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system, which significantly improves user experience for authors, reviewers and editors alike. The collaboration-focused platform supports manuscripts in all steps of the publishing process – submission, peer review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving, all within its online environment. To the benefit of readers, published articles are then made available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML, which makes them much easier to discover, access, cite and reuse.

In addition, ARPHA Platform offers a long list of high-tech features and human-provided services such as advanced data publishing, linked data tables, semantic markup and enhancements, automated export of sub-article elements and data to aggregators, sub-article-level usage metrics, and web-service integrations with more than 40 world-class indexing and archiving databases.

The journal’s first papers published with Pensoft are already publicly available. One of the studies, authored by Norbert Wannenmacher, Volker Dietze, Matthias Franz of the state office for geology, resources and mining at Freiburg’s regional council, and Günter Schweigert of the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History, describes three new fossil species from south-western Germany.

Zitteliana is the latest in a series of biodiversity-themed journals to join the Pensoft family – earlier this year the ichthyology journal Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria signed with the scholarly publisher and moved on to ARPHA Platform.

Follow Zitteliana on Facebook and Twitter.

Additional information:

About Pensoft:

Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well-known worldwide for its innovations in the field of semantic publishing, as well as for its cutting-edge publishing tools and workflows. In 2013, Pensoft launched the first ever end to end XML-based authoring, reviewing and publishing workflow, as demonstrated by the Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT) and the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ), now upgraded to the ARPHA Publishing Platform. Flagship titles include: Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), One Ecosystem, ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys and many more.

About ARPHA:

ARPHA is the first end-to-end, narrative- and data-integrated publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring to reviewing, publishing and dissemination. ARPHA provides accomplished and streamlined production workflows that can be customized according to the journal’s needs. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

Contacts:

Prof. Dr. Gert Wörheide, Editor-in-Chief of Zitteliana
woerheide@snsb.de

Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at Pensoft and ARPHA
l.penev@pensoft.net

New methods needed to boost success of Classical Biological Control to fight insect pests

The success of Classical Biological Control in the Western Paleartic ecozone is rarely dependent on the released biological control agent, but more often on other factors, such as the target pest, its host plant, or the circumstances of the releases

A CABI-led study has revealed that the success of Classical Biological Control (CBC) in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East is only rarely dependent on the released biological control agent, but more often on other factors, such as the target pest, its host plant, or the circumstances of the releases.

The research – published in the journal NeoBiota – suggests that the overall success of biological control introductions of insect predators and parasitoids against herbivorous insects in the Western Paleartic ecozone is comparable to the success of CBC worldwide. However, over 100 years of CBC in this region, has resulted in no overall rise in success in the fight against insect pests – including those of crops such as citrus, olive, potato, mulberry and various other fruits.

An illustration of a case of biological control of the Comstock mealybug Pseudococcus comstocki with the parasitoid wasp Allotropa burrelli. Image by Lukas Seehausen

Lead author Dr Lukas Seehausen, together with colleagues from CABI Switzerland, the University of Lisbon and the University of Bordeaux, argue that a focus on life-history traits of the biological control agent to increase the chances of successful CBC is not fully justified and should be complemented with the consideration of traits regarding the pest and its host plant, as well as other aspects of CBC, such as climate and management – including ways in which CBC agents are released.

For example, if a CBC agent is released repeatedly against the same pest in different years and countries, the chances of successful establishment and control of the target increase. This is an indication for the importance of release strategies for the success of CBC programmes.

Dr Seehausen said, “What makes our study different from others is that we studied factors that may impact the outcome of CBC not independently of each other but using a holistic analysis, which reveals their relative importance within the complexity of CBC programmes.

“The results from this study should be understood as a first step to give the incentive for a holistic, rather than an independent consideration of factors affecting the success of CBC.”

By filtering data from the BIOCAT catalogue, the scientists found that 780 introductions of insects for biological control were undertaken in the Greater Western Palearctic ecozone between 1890 and 2010. This constituted 416 agent-target combinations.

The results showed that eight countries were responsible for more than two thirds (70.5%) of all introductions: Israel (16.3%), Italy (14.0%), Former USSR (10.1%), France (7.3%), Greece (7.1%), Spain (6.0%), Egypt (5.3%), and Cyprus (4.4%). Within these countries, the percentage of complete target control was very variable.

Overall, the study showed that while the success of agent establishment was 32%, the successful impact of single agents on their target was 18% and the success of complete control was 11%.

However, the success rates of agent establishment and target control were higher in CBC projects targeting pests of woody plants than pests of other types of plants.

A reason for this, the scientists say, might be that being perennial, trees provide a more stable and predictable environment when compared to herbaceous plants such as annual plants or crops.

In carrying out the research, Dr Seehausen and the team added 15 new explanatory variables including consideration of the biological control agent feeding strategy, host range and life-stage killed by the biological control agent.

Dr Seehausen explains, “We found that only a few CBC agent-related factors significantly influenced the success of CBC – suggesting that the reoccurring focus on agent-related traits is not justified.

“Our attention should be redirected to include lower trophic levels and other aspects of CBC – such as abiotic factors including climate and management.”

The scientists conclude by stressing that analysis of the entire BIOCAT catalogue, or an updated version including more factors, should lead to further insights and help to develop decision support tools to increase the success of CBC at all levels.

Original source:

Seehausen ML, Afonso C, Jactel H, Kenis M (2021) Classical biological control against insect pests in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East: What influences its success? NeoBiota 65: 169-191. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.65.66276

Call for research outcomes addressing four UN Sustainable Development Goals in RIO Journal

Eligible submissions enjoy a 50% discount off APCs in 2021

Since its launch in 2015, RIO Journal has been mapping its articles to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. The articles published so far span the entire research cycle, a broad range of research fields and all SDGs, which can also be used as a search filter. However, the distribution of RIO articles across SDGs is uneven, as detailed in a recent editorial: for instance, more than 100 articles addressed SDG9 (Industry, innovation & infrastructure), while only one publication has been mapped to SDG1 (No poverty) so far.

Even though there might be logical explanations for this phenomenon, including funding biases or specific scholarly communication tendencies in some research fields, RIO’s team remains dedicated to its role as a harbinger of innovative open science practices and socially engaged research, and is eager to support the open publication of research on all SDGs.

So, RIO Journal is now inviting research outcomes – early, interim or final – addressing the four least represented SDGs in RIO’s content to date (with the current number indicated in parentheses):

  • SDG1: No poverty (1)
  • SDG7: Affordable & clean energy (2)
  • SDG5: Gender equality (4)
  • SDG2: Zero hunger (4)
All publications in RIO Journal are mapped to one or more SDGs.

The call will remain open until the end of 2021, where all accepted papers will enjoy a 50% discount on their publication charges (APCs), regardless of how many contributions RIO receives in the meantime. Eligible submissions encompass all article types generally accepted in RIO, as long as the journal’s editorial team confirms that they belong to the assigned SDG category.

As also highlighted in the editorial, RIO is currently experimenting with a more fine-grained mapping of its publications to the individual targets under each SDG. This was piloted with SDG 14 (Life below water). For instance, Target 14.a (Marine Biodiversity contributes to Economic Development of small/developing nations) is currently covered by 17 RIO articles. If you would like to get involved with mapping RIO articles to the Targets under other SDGs, please get in touch.

You can find more about RIO’s rationale behind introducing the SDGs mapping in the latest editorial or in this earlier blog post.

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Follow RIO Journal on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

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Further reading:

RIO will emphasise the social impact of research

Safe distance: How to make sure our outdoor activities don’t harm wildlife

Spending time outdoors is good for a person’s body and soul, but how good is it for the wildlife around us?

Outdoor recreation has become a popular activity, especially in the midst of a pandemic, where access to indoor activities might be limited. Long known to have negative behavioural and physiological effects on wildlife, outdoor recreation is one of the biggest threats to protected areas. Human disturbance to animal habitats can lower their survival and reproduction rates, and ultimately shrink populations or eradicate them from areas where they would otherwise thrive. Still, park planners and natural resource managers often can’t find clear recommendations on how to limit these impacts.

Human recreation and wildlife often overlap. Here an American black bear and hikers use the same trail hours apart in Sonoma County, California, USA. Image by the Wildlife Conservation Society

A new scholarly article in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Nature Conservation from researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society looked at nearly 40 years of research on recreation impacts on wildlife to try to find the point where recreation starts to impact the wildlife around us. Knowing when and to what extent a species is being disturbed can ultimately allow for more informed and effective management decisions and increase the chances of its successful conservation.

The researchers found that the impact or uncomfortable distance to humans, vehicles or trails for shorebirds and songbirds was as short as 100 meters or even less, whereas for hawks and eagles it was greater than 400 meters. For mammals, it varied even more widely, with an impact threshold of 50 meters for medium-sized rodents. Large ungulates – like elk – would rather have to stay 500 to 1,000 meters away from people.

While human disturbance thresholds can vary widely, large buffer zones around human activities and controlled visitation limits should always be considered during planning and maintenance of parks and protected areas. Based on their findings, the authors recommend that human activities should be considered to be impacting wildlife at least 250 metres away. Further, they call for future research to explicitly identify points where recreation begins or ends to impact wildlife.

Original source:

Dertien JS, Larson CL, Reed SE (2021) Recreation effects on wildlife: a review of potential quantitative thresholds. Nature Conservation 44: 51-68. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.44.63270

Guest blog post: New tardigrade species honours Eurovision Song Contest winner

guest blog post by Matteo Vecchi

One of the main threats to biodiversity conservation is not recognizing the uniqueness of species – without a formal name, a species cannot be protected properly. Tardigrades – microorganisms also known as water bears or moss piglets – are no exception. When we were faced with two new species, we took the chance to describe them and add a small piece of information to the biodiversity of those tiny animals.

Thanks to the generosity of my research group principal investigator (Sara Calhim) and the second author’s (Daniel Stec) academic supervisor (Lukasz Michalczyk), who made available to us their spaces and instrumentations, we were able to give a formal name and description to two marvelous tardigrade species.

Macrobiotus annewintersae (top) and the eggs of M. Annewintersae (left) and M. Rybaki (right) Photos by Matteo Vecchi, Daniel Stec

When describing species, researchers have almost complete freedom to express their creativity or gratitude in bestowing them with names. We decided to honour two people: Dr. Anne Winters, who collected the sample where one of the new species – Macrobiotus annewintersae, was found, and the singer Alexander Rybak  with Macrobiotus rybaki.

While routinely examining samples for tardigrades, we stumbled upon tardigrade eggs that didn’t look like any described species. Macrobiotus annewintersae eggs have many conic projections on their surface (called processes) that are topped by about 6 small and stubby tentacles, whereas the processes of Macrobiotus rybaki look like spikes topped with a very tiny dish.

The choice to dedicate the new species to Alexander Rybak is the fruit of our (mine and Daniel’s) passion for the Eurovision Song Contest. We are both fans of this very popular, diverse and cheerful song contest, and we wanted to honour it with a reference to one of its most iconic winners. Rybak’s song Fairytale, which won the 2009 edition, is immediately recognized by any Eurovision Song Contest enthusiast. Our research article, where we describe the two newly found tardigrades,was published in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution on 19 May, right in the middle of the semi-finals for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

This is not the first instance that a tardigrade species is named after a singer. One species, Barbaria madonnae, was named in 2006 after the singer and performer Madonna.

We hope that naming tardigrade species after popular singers and artists will help popularize them and bring the broad public attention to their conservation.

Original source:

Vecchi M, Stec D (2021) Integrative descriptions of two new Macrobiotus species (Tardigrada, Eutardigrada, Macrobiotidae) from Mississippi (USA) and Crete (Greece). Zoosystematics and Evolution 97(1): 281-306. https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.97.65280

Editor’s note: The image of Alexander Rybak posted here is credited to NRK P3 under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.

Development anomalies recorded for the first time in a rare tiger moth

The Menetries’ tiger moth (Arctia menetriesii) is one of the rarest and most poorly studied Palaearctic moth species. Even though its adult individuals are large and brightly coloured, they are difficult to spot, because they aren’t attracted to light, they’re not active at night, and they fly reluctantly. Currently, the species only inhabits two countries – Finland and the Russian Federation, and is included in the Red Lists of both, as Data Deficient in the former and Vulnerable in the latter.

Live male adult of Arctia menetriesii. Photo by Evgeny Koshkin

For 13 years, researcher Evgeny Koshkin of the Institute of Water and Ecology Problems of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences kept searching for the elusive Menetries’ tiger moth in its habitat in the Bureinsky Nature Reserve, 400 km north of Khabarovsk, Russia, but he only ever found it in 2018, in what was the first record of this species in 34 years in this region. That’s how rare it is.

Eggs of Arctia Menetrisii. Photo by Evgeny Koshkin

After collecting eggs from a female moth, Koshkin documented the species’ biology under laboratory conditions and described its immature stages in the open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal Nota Lepidopterologica. For the first time, detailed photographs of all developmental stages of this species have been published. 

In laboratory conditions, the development cycle of the Menetries’ tiger moth from egg laying to an adult individual lasts between 72 and 83 days. Out of the 105 eggs that the female moth laid in captivity, however, only 13 transformed into adults, and out of those, only four were able to spread their wings. In the last larval instar, about 75% of the larvae died immediately before pupation, and a number of metamorphosis anomalies were observed in the ones that survived.

Metamorphosis anomalies in Arctia menetriesii (L-R): lethal larva-pupa intermediate; female emerged from larva-pupa intermediate – head and thorax left covered with the larval cuticle; female emerged from larva-pupa intermediate – larval cuticle removed; pupa with insignificant anomalies; pupa with severe anomalies. Photos by Evgeny Koshkin

This is the first time that such anomalies and morphological defects of pupae are documented in the Menetries’ tiger moth, and it is possible that they occur in a similar way in nature. Some metamorphosis anomalies manifested as larva-pupa intermediates due to disrupted molting, and pupae with severe anomalies produced adults that were unable to inflate their wings.

Seventh instar larva of Arctia Menetresii. Photo by Evgeny Koshkin

It is possible that the diet of the laboratory-reared larvae might have had something to do with the high mortality rate before pupation and the metamorphosis anomalies during it. Some of the larvae were fed on Aconitum leaves and larch needles during certain periods of their lives, and it is possible that toxic compounds found in these plants might have impacted their health and development. More research on larval diet would be needed, however, to confirm or reject this hypothesis.

Original source:

Koshkin ES (2021) Life history of the rare boreal tiger moth Arctia menetriesii (Eversmann, 1846) (Lepidoptera, Erebidae, Arctiinae) in the Russian Far East. Nota Lepidopterologica 44: 141-151. https://doi.org/10.3897/nl.44.62801

To combat global change, scientists must prioritize community partnerships

Guest blog post by Kennedy “Ned” Rubert-Nason, Caitlin Mandeville and Kirsten Schwarz

Global change is an immediate, accelerating threat to humanity, and its impacts are perpetuated by human activities. Changes such as climate warming, landscape alteration, pollution, resource extraction and depletion, extreme events, biodiversity loss, and spreading of invasive species including diseases, threaten the natural environment and human society. The consequences of these changes are often disproportionately borne by people who have the least political representation. Despite tremendous investment in research aimed at understanding and developing technological solutions to global change threats, implementing effective science-based solutions remains a major challenge.

Undergraduate students at the University of Maine at Fort Kent learn to study how environmental change affects the growth and physiology of Populus. Photo by Kennedy “Ned” Rubert-Nason

An article just published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Rethinking Ecology explores how translational science, or the process of putting basic research and technological development into use, can bring about the changes in human behavior that are critical to guiding humanity toward a sustainable future. The engine that drives translational science is a theory of change, or strategic plan, which identifies a global change threat, ties it to a goal (usually eliminating or adapting to the threat), and lays out specific actions needed to achieve that goal along with indicators of success. A theory of change that aims to bring about social and structural changes, as required to address global change threats, must embrace relationship-building, collaboration, engagement, commitment, communication, trust, inclusion, equity, transparency, process, and decision framing.

Researchers at Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim, Norway, regularly involve the local community in research and stewardship related to urban biodiversity.” Photo by Ringve Botanical Garden, Norwegian University of Science and Technology University Museum

To overcome global change threats, ecologists and other scientists need to prioritize building partnerships with communities that help bring science into practice. These partnerships are critically needed to combat misinformation, build public trust in science, bring about equitable and evidence-informed policies that are accountable to communities’ priorities, and empower people to respond effectively to challenges posed by climate change, pollution, landscape change, extreme events and pandemics.

New Hampshire Sea Grant scientists lead a community outing to survey potential erosion impacts associated with coastal storms. Photo by Caitlin Mandeville

The authors of the paper identified four priority areas for ecologists to engage in translational science:

  • forging partnerships,
  • garnering public support,
  • building strong communities,
  • and protecting natural resources.

While fundamental research remains vital, there needs to be greater emphasis on the communication, policy, education, leadership and role modeling dimensions that help bring the findings from that research into practice. Interdisciplinary scientists like ecologists are particularly well-suited to this line of work, although they can face barriers such as inadequate training, time, funding and institutional support. Lowering these barriers, and creating a culture that values science-based solutions, must be key priorities in future measures aimed at combating global change threats. Many organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Ecological Society of America, provide training and support for ecologists to engage more deeply in translational science.

Community science is a powerful tool researchers can use to partner with communities. Here, volunteers work with the New Hampshire Sea Grant Beach Profile Monitoring program to collect regular data on beach dynamics and erosion that can be used for managing the shoreline. Photo by Caitlin Mandeville

Original source:                                                                                                             

Rubert-Nason K, Casper AMA, Jurjonas M, Mandeville C, Potter R, Schwarz K (2021) Ecologist engagement in translational science is imperative for building resilience to global change threats. Rethinking Ecology 6: 65-92. https://doi.org/10.3897/rethinkingecology.6.64103

RIO Journal 5 years on: over 300 published outcomes from all around the research cycle

Five years on, the Open Science-driven journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) published an editorial that looks back on the 300 research ideas and research outcomes it has published so far.

Since its early days, RIO has enjoyed quite positive reactions from the open-minded academic community for its innovative approach to Open Science in practice: it provides a niche that had long been missing, namely the publication of early, intermediate and generally unconventional research outcomes from all around the research cycle (e.g. grant proposals, data management plans, project deliverables, reports, policy briefs, conference materials) in a cross-disciplinary scientific journal. In fact, several months after its launch, in 2016, the journal was acknowledged with the SPARC Innovator Award.

‘Alternative’ research publications

In times when posting a preprint was seen as a novel and rather bold practice across many fields, RIO facilitated much deeper dives into the research process, in order to unveil scientific knowledge and the process by which it is gathered, well before any final conclusions have been drawn. Long story short, to date, RIO has published 33 Research Ideas, 78 Grant Proposals, 16 Data Management Plans, 33 Workshop Reports and 5 PhD Project Plans, in addition to plenty of other early, interim and final non-traditional research outcomes, as well as conventional articles. Over time, RIO has kept adding additional article types to its list of publication types, with a few more expected in the near future.

What’s more, over the years, we’ve already observed how papers published in RIO successfully followed up on the continuity of the research process. For example, the Grant Proposal for the “Exploring the opportunities and challenges of implementing open research strategies within development institutions” project, funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), was followed by the project’s Data Management Plan a year later.

Five years later, the figures reflecting the usage and engagement with the content published in RIO are evidently supportive of the value of having non-final and unconventional academic publications. For instance, the Grant Proposal for the COST Action DNAqua-Net, a still ongoing project dedicated to the development of novel genetic tools for bioassessment and monitoring of aquatic ecosystems, is the article with the most total views in RIO’s publication record to date. In the category of sub-article elements, whose usage is also tracked at the journal, the most viewed figure belongs to a Project Report and illustrates a sample code meant to be used in future neuroimaging studies. Similarly, the most viewed table ever published in RIO is part of a Workshop Report that summarises ASAPbio‘s third workshop, dedicated to the technical aspects of services related to the promotion of preprints in the biomedical and other life science communities.

Response to societal challenges

A unique and defining staple for RIO since the very beginning has also been the pronounced engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as formulated by the United Nations right around the time of RIO’s launch. In order to highlight the societal impact of published research, RIO lets authors map their articles to the SDGs relevant to their paper. Once published, the article displays the associated badge(s) next to its title. Readers of the journal can even search RIO’s content by SDG, in the same way they would filter articles by subject, publication types, date or funding agency. Next on the list for RIO is to add another level of granularity to the SDGs mapping. The practice has already been piloted by mapping relevant RIO articles to the ten targets under SDG14 (Life below water).

Taking transparency, responsibility and collaboration in academia and scholarly publishing up another notch, RIO requires for reviews to be publicly available. In addition, the journal supports post-publication reviews, where peers are free to post their review anytime. In turn, RIO registers each review with its own DOI via CrossRef, in order to recognise the valuable input and let the reviewers easily refer to their contributions. A fine example is a Review Article exploring the biodiversity-related issues and challenges across Southeast Asia, which currently has a total of three public peer reviews, one of which is provided two years after the publication of the paper.

Public, transparent and perpetual peer review, pre- and/or post-publication

What’s more striking about peer review at RIO, however, is that it is not always mandatory. Given that the journal publishes many article types that have already been scrutinised by a legitimate authority – for instance, Grant Proposals that have previously been evaluated by a funder or defended PhD Theses – it only makes sense to avoid withholding these publications and duplicating associated evaluation efforts. On such occasions, all an author needs to do is provide a statement about the review status of their paper, which will be made public alongside the article.

On the other hand, where the article type of a manuscript requires pre-publication review, to avoid potential delays caused by the review process and editorial decisions, RIO encourages the authors to post their pre-review manuscript as a preprint on the recently launched ARPHA Preprints platform, subject to a quick editorial screening, which would only take a few days.

Further, RIO has now abandoned the practice of burdening the journal’s editors with the time-consuming task of finding reviewers, and instead requiring the submitting author to invite suitable reviewers upon submission, who are then immediately and automatically invited by the system. While significantly expediting the editorial work on a manuscript, this practice doesn’t compromise the quality of peer review in the slightest, since the reviews go public, while the final decision about the acceptance of the paper lies with the editor, who is also overlooking the process and able to intervene and invite additional reviewers anytime, if necessary.

Project-driven knowledge hub

The most significant novelty at RIO, however, is perhaps the newly assumed role of the journal as “a project-driven knowledge hub“, targeting specifically the needs of research projects, conference organisers and institutions. For them, RIO provides a one-stop source for the outputs of their scientists, in order to comply with the requirements of their funders or management, or simply to facilitate the discoverability, reusability and citability of their academic outputs and to highlight their interconnectedness.

Unlike typical permanent article collections, already widely used in scholarly publishing, with RIO, collection owners can take advantage of the unique opportunity to add a wide range of research outputs, including such published elsewhere, in order to provide even greater context to the assembled research outputs in their project- or institution-branded article collection (see the Horizon 2020 Project Path2Integrity‘s project collection as an example).

A permanent topical collection in RIO Journal may include a diverse range of both traditional and unconventional research outputs, as well as links to publications from outside the journal (see What can I publish on the journal’s website). 

For example, a project coordinator could open a collection under the brand of the project, and start by publishing the Grant Proposal, followed shortly by Data and Software Management Plans and Workshop Reports. Thus, even at this early point in the project’s development, the funder – and with them everyone else – would already have strong evidence of the project’s dedication to transparency and active science communication. Later on, the project’s participants would all be able to easily add to the project’s collection by either submitting their diverse research outputs straight to RIO and having it accepted by the collection lead editor, or providing metadata and link to their publication from elsewhere, even preprints. If the document is published outside of RIO, its metadata, i.e. author names and affiliations, article title and publication date, show up in the collection, while a click on the item will lead to the original publication. As the project progresses, the team behind it could add more and more outputs (e.g. Project Reports, Guidelines and Policy Briefs), continuously updating the public and the relevant stakeholders about the development of their work. Eventually, the collection will be able to provide a comprehensive and fully transparent report of the project from start to finish.

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