Category: Zookeys

Ottawa confirmed as the biodiversity hotspot for a subfamily of wasps in North America

What usually comes to mind when speaking about biodiversity hotspots are tropical regions, pristine areas and magnificent forests. Meanwhile, it is quite rare that a city in a temperate zone is considered significant in terms of biodiversity, much less mentioned as a hotspot. Yet, the city of Ottawa together with its surroundings, despite having population surpassing 1 million people, is now confirmed to be the locality in North America with the most recorded species of braconid wasps in the subfamily Microgastrinae, a group of parasitic insects that attack caterpillars and play an important role in the natural biocontrol of agriculture and forestry pests.

A study published in ZooKeys reports 158 species within 21 different genera of Microgastrinae for Ottawa. “To put this into perspective,” says Dr. Jose Fernandez-Triana, affiliated with the Canadian National Collection of Insects and lead author of the paper, “if Ottawa (a relatively small area of less than 7,800 km2) would be considered as a country itself, its species total would rank 17th among all countries in the world.”

There are close to 200 species of microgastrine wasps known from Canada and around 350 – from North America. Thus, the fauna in Ottawa equals to three quarters of the total recorded for the entire country, and almost half of all species in the Nearctic region. In fact, the diversity in the Canadian capital represents by far the highest number of species ever recorded for a locality in North America, a consequence of the city being a transition from an eastern deciduous forest biome to a boreal biome, with small areas of unusual habitats like dunes, alvars, floodplains and bogs.

Based on the analysis of almost 2,000 specimens, collected between 1894 and 2010, and housed in the Canadian National Collection of Insects, the paper also reports two new species for North America and two additional species records for Canada and Ontario, as well as dozens of new additions to the regional fauna. Seasonal distribution showed several peaks of activity, in spring, summer, and early fall.

The study highlights the incredible diversity of parasitoid wasps and how much remains to be discovered, even in temperate areas and/or city environments. “It is possible that southern localities in North America are eventually found to be more diverse than Ottawa,” notes Dr. Fernandez-Triana. “But for that to happen one would need to find an area that has a variety of habitats and has also been thoroughly sampled over the years, with thousands of specimens available for study.”

“In the meantime,” jokes the scientist, “the citizens of the Canadian capital will have the bragging rights in North America, at least for microgastrine wasp diversity.”

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Original source:

Fernandez-Triana J, Boudreault C, Buffam J, Mclean R (2016) A biodiversity hotspot for Microgastrinae (Hymenoptera, Braconidae) in North America: annotated species checklist for Ottawa, Canada. ZooKeys 633: 1-93. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.633.10480

Disentangling the myth of the singing bushmaster viper with the help of tree frogs

Reaching over 3.5 m in length, the bushmaster (belonging in the Lachesis genus) is the largest viper in the western hemisphere. Legend spread among both colonists and natives from the Amazon region and Central America has it that it sings. Finding these numerous unrelated reports quite puzzling, since it is well known that snakes cannot sing, scientists took to finally disentangle the myth.

When the researchers recently conducted fieldwork in Amazonian Ecuador and Peru, they revealed it was not the snake singing. The ‘song’ was indeed the call of large tree frogs that live in hollow trunks in the forest.

While local guides in both countries attributed the songs to the bushmaster, the amphibians were almost completely unknown. To their surprise, instead of finding a snake, the field teams found two species of frogs of the genus Tepuihyla. The results are published in the open access journal ZooKeys in a collaborative effort by scientists from Catholic University of Ecuador, the Peruvian Institute of Research of the Amazon, Ecuadorian Museum of Natural Sciences, and Colorado State University, USA.

One of the tree frogs is a new species, Tepuihyla shushupe. The word shushupe is used by native people to refer to the bushmaster. The calls are highly unusual for frogs because they are a loud chuckle resembling the song of a bird. It is still unknown why locals associate the calls of the two species with the bushmaster.

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Original source:

Ron SR, Venegas PJ, Ortega-Andrade HM, Gagliardi-Urrutia G, Salerno P (2016) Systematics of Ecnomiohyla tuberculosa with the description of a new species and comments on the taxonomy of Trachycephalus typhonius (Anura, Hylidae). ZooKeys 630: 115-154. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.630.9298

Two new lizards with ‘heroic past’ discovered in the Chilean Andes

Two new species of lizards have been discovered in the Andean highlands of Southern Chile. Collected from areas of heroic past, both small reptiles were named after courageous tribal chiefs who have once fought against colonial Spaniards in the Arauco war. The study, conducted by a team of Chilean scientists, is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Jaime Troncoso-Palacios from Universidad de Chile and his team found both new species near a lake in a pre-Andean zone among deciduous vegetation. Following the examination of the collected specimens and further analysis of their mitochondrial DNA, performed by Dr. Alvaro A. Elorza from Universidad Andres Bello, Chile, the scientists concluded that they belong to species unknown to science.

One of the species, called Liolaemus janequeoae, or, Janequeo`s Lizard, is distinct for being smaller than its relatives, measuring a maximum of roughly 7 centimeters at length, as well as having no pattern on its back. Both features are quite striking for the group of lizards it belongs to. The only contrasting coloration for the species are several white scales appearing on the upper side in males. Otherwise, the species are predominantly light brown with pearly whitish down side of the body.

In the local Lonko tribe’s history, Janequeo was a prominent chief, who lost her partner during the Arauco war, after he was caught and tortured to death by the colonial Spaniards. She is said to have had a leading role in the Battle of Fort Puchunqui. Coincidentally, the new species was discovered where the war once took place, in the Araucanía Region.

The second new species, called Liolaemus leftrarui, or Leftraru`s Lizard, was collected from the same locality, hence it also received a heroic name honoured in the Arauco war. It is called after the most prominent Mapuche tribal chief. According to the stories, he was taken by the Kingdom of Chile’s Governor at the age of 11 to become his servant. There, however, he learned the military strategy of the Spanish, managed to escape and joined his people in the war. Later, not only did he kill his former master, but also won the most remarkable victories over the Spaniards.

The Leftraru`s Lizard is a large species of about 8 centimeters in length, characterised with absent precloacal pores, a common feature for its lizard group, save few. On the upper side of its body there are also unusual light blue dots. Overall, its colour is brown splashed with dark brown spots. Apart from the blue scattered scales on the back, there is also a bit of green on its head, limbs and tail. At the rear it becomes yellowish.

In conclusion, the authors note that the lizard fauna of Chile has been mistakenly assumed to be quite scarce up until recently. Yet, their latest discovery, along with several other new species, described in recent years, could be a clear sign that, “some populations under study could be described as new species in the future”.

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Original source:

Troncoso-Palacios J, Diaz HA, Puas GI, Riveros-Riffo E, Elorza AA (2016) Two new Liolaemus lizards from the Andean highlands of Southern Chile (Squamata, Iguania, Liolaemidae). ZooKeys 632: 121-146. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.632.9528

35 years of work: More than 1000 leaf-mining pygmy moths classified & catalogued

The leaf-mining pygmy moths (family Nepticulidae) and the white eyecap moths (family Opostegidae) are among the smallest moths in the world with a wingspan of just a few millimetres. Their caterpillars make characteristic patterns in leaves: leaf mines. For the first time, the evolutionary relationships of the more than 1000 species have been analysed on the basis of DNA, resulting in a new classification.

Today, a team of scientists, led by Dr Erik J. van Nieukerken and Dr. Camiel Doorenweerd, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, published three inter-linked scientific publications in the journal Systematic Entomology and the open access journal ZooKeys, together with two online databases, providing a catalogue with the names of all species involved.

The evolutionary study, forming part of the PhD thesis of Doorenweerd, used DNA methods to show that the group is ancient and was already diverse in the early Cretaceous, ca. 100 million years ago, partly based on the occurrence of leaf mines in fossil leaves. The moths are all specialised on some species of flowering plants, also called angiosperms, and could therefore diversify when the angiosperms diversified and largely replaced ecologically other groups of plants in the Cretaceous. The study lead to the discovery of three new genera occurring in South and Central America, which are described in one of the two ZooKeys papers, stressing the peculiar character and vastly undescribed diversity of the Neotropic fauna.

Changing a classification requires a change in many species names, which prompted the authors to simultaneously publish a full catalogue of all 1072 valid species names that are known worldwide and the many synonymic names from the literature from the past 150 years.

Creating such a large and comprehensive overview became possible from the moths and leaf-mine collections of the world’s natural history museums, and culminates the past 35 years of research that van Nieukerken has spent on this group. However, a small, but not trivial, note in one of the publications indicates that we can expect at least another 1000 species of pygmy leafminer moths that are yet undiscovered.

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Original sources:

Doorenweerd C, Nieukerken EJ van, Hoare RJB (2016) Phylogeny, classification and divergence times of pygmy leafmining moths (Lepidoptera: Nepticulidae): the earliest lepidopteran radiation on Angiosperms? Systematic Entomology, Early View. doi: 10.1111/syen.1221.

Nieukerken EJ van, Doorenweerd C, Nishida K, Snyers C (2016) New taxa, including three new genera show uniqueness of Neotropical Nepticulidae (Lepidoptera). ZooKeys 628: 1-63. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.628.9805.

Nieukerken EJ van, Doorenweerd C, Hoare RJB, Davis DR (2016) Revised classification and catalogue of global Nepticulidae and Opostegidae (Lepidoptera: Nepticuloidea). ZooKeys 628: 65-246. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.628.9799.

Nieukerken EJ van (ed) (2016) Nepticulidae and Opostegidae of the world, version 2.0. Scratchpads, biodiversity online.

Nieukerken EJ van (ed) (2016). Nepticuloidea: Nepticulidae and Opostegidae of the World (Oct 2016 version). In: Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life, 31st October 2016 (Roskov Y., Abucay L., Orrell T., Nicolson D., Flann C., Bailly N., Kirk P., Bourgoin T., DeWalt R.E., Decock W., De Wever A., eds). Digital resource at http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col. Species 2000: Naturalis, Leiden, the Netherlands. ISSN 2405-8858. http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/details/database/id/172

Family of scaffold web spiders increased with ~20% following discovery of 43 new species

Recent study into spider specimens collected from across China, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Madagascar over the past 15 years, revealed the striking number of 43 scaffold web spiders that have stayed hidden from science until now. By describing the new species in a paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys, scientists from Sichuan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences increase the number of a scaffold web spider family (Nesticidae), known from around the world, with about twenty percents.

The studied family of scaffold web spiders is a relatively small group of arachnids, which can be found at almost any locality, apart from Siberia, Central Asia, Northern and Southern Africa and places at high latitude. Prior to the study of Drs Yucheng Lin, Francesco Ballarin and Shuqiang Li, the species counted 245 in total, 12 of which are extinct and known from fossils only. A curious peculiarity in these spiders is their comb of serrated bristles, located on their rear legs, used to pull silk bands for their webs.

Although large-scale taxonomic surveys of scaffold web spiders have long remained scarce, recently the interest towards spider research in China and Southeast Asia has seen a significant rise. Thus, over the last 15 years, Chinese, American and European arachnologists have carried out several surveys, ending up with precious samples. As a result, Dr Yucheng Lin and his team followed with deeper morphological and molecular studies to discover remarkable diversity.

In their work, the researchers have also established a new genus (Speleoticus) for five previously known, but misplaced species, which spend a lot of their time taking shelter in caves.

The majority of scaffold web spiders occur in temperate areas of the Holarctic realm, where the species tend to be medium-sized, long-legged, and prefer cave-like environments. The species found in the tropical and subtropical areas are, on the other hand, usually smaller, with shorter legs, and can be quite often spotted outside, where they crawl in forest litter, on grass, and under stones.

Original source:

Lin Y, Ballarin F, Li S (2016) A survey of the spider family Nesticidae (Arachnida, Araneae) in Asia and Madagascar, with the description of forty-three new species. ZooKeys 627: 1-168. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.627.8629

New species of pea-size crab parasitizing a date mussel has a name of a Roman god

Tiny crabs, the size of a pea, dwell inside the mantles of various bivalves, living off the food filtered by their hosts. A new species of these curious crustaceans has recently been reported from the Solomon Islands, where an individual was found to parasitise a large date mussel.

Because of the new pea crab’s characteristic large additional plate, covering its upper carapace, giving it the illusion of having two faces, it has been named after Janus, the Roman two-faced god. Discoverers Dr Peter Ng, National University of Singapore, and Dr Christopher Meyer, U.S. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, have their findings published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Being only the second species in the genus (the first was from Malaysia), the new pea crab Serenotheres janus can be distinguished by its broader carapace and other features. It is cream-yellow in colour.

Both representatives of the genus are unique in having an additional large plate covering the upper side of the carapace. However, its purpose is still unknown. The two pea crabs are also the only known parasites of the rock-boring bivalves of the mytilid subfamily Lithophaginae.

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Original source:

Ng PKL, Meyer C (2016) A new species of pea crab of the genus Serenotheres Ahyong & Ng, 2005 (Crustacea, Brachyura, Pinnotheridae) from the date mussel Leiosolenus Carpenter, 1857 (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Mytilidae, Lithophaginae) from the Solomon Islands. ZooKeys 623: 31-41. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.623.10272

New species of extremely leggy millipede discovered in a cave in California

Along with many spiders, pseudoscorpions, and flies discovered and catalogued by the cave explorers, a tiny threadlike millipede was found in the unexplored dark marble caves in Sequoia National Park.

The enigmatic millipede was sent to diplopodologists (scientists who specialize in the study of millipedes) Bill Shear and Paul Marek, who immediately recognized its significance as evolutionary cousin of the leggiest animal on the planet, Illacme plenipes. The new species may possess “only” 414 legs, compared to its relative’s 750, yet, it has a similar complement of bizarre anatomical features, including a body armed with 200 poison glands, silk-secreting hairs, and 4 penises. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

This new millipede, named Illacme tobini after cave biologist Ben Tobin of the National Park Service, is described by its discoverer Jean Krejca, at Zara Environmental LLC, and millipede taxonomists Paul Marek at Virginia Tech and Bill Shear, Hampden-Sydney College.

“I never would have expected that a second species of the leggiest animal on the planet would be discovered in a cave 150 miles away,” says Paul Marek, Assistant Professor in the Entomology Department at Virginia Tech. It’s closest relative lives under giant sandstone boulders outside of San Juan Bautista, California.

In addition to the new millipede’s legginess, it also has bizarre-looking mouthparts of a mysterious function, four legs that are modified into penises, a body covered in long silk-secreting hairs, and paired nozzles on each of its over 100 segments that squirt a defense chemical of an unknown nature.

In conclusion, the authors note that by exploring our world and documenting the biodiversity of this planet we can prevent anonymous extinction, a process in which a species goes extinct before we know of its role in the ecosystem, potential benefit to humanity, or its beauty.

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Original source:

Marek PE, Krejca JK, Shear WA (2016) A new species of Illacme Cook & Loomis, 1928 from Sequoia National Park, California, with a world catalog of the Siphonorhinidae (Diplopoda, Siphonophorida). ZooKeys 626: 1-43. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.626.9681

New termite species condemned to 100 years of solitude with a second chance

While the last species of the termite genus Proneotermes genus has been discovered more than a hundred years ago, now scientists have discovered a new and a third one. Part of the fauna living in the dry forests in Colombia, its name was inspired by the magic realism of the fictional town of “Macondo” from the novel ‘One hundred years of solitude’ by Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Marquez.

Termitologists Robin Casalla, Freiburg University, Germany, and Universidad del Norte, Colombia, Dr Rudolf H. Scheffrahn, University of Florida, USA, and Prof Dr Judith Korb, Freiburg University, discovered a termite species and described it as new based on its unique shapes and colors, as well as its genes. The new termite is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Furthermore, there is a story behind the name of this new species, called Proneotermes macondianus. “Macondianus” refers to the fictional town of “Macondo” in the novel ‘One hundred year of solitude’ written by Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Marquez. Macondo stands for a forgotten microcosm in the history of Colombia with unimaginable events. According to the story, the magical realm was eventually wiped off the map by gigantic storms of the Caribbean as a form of divine punishment to the violation of the biblical laws of genetics, incest.

“P. macondianus may have been one of those characters playing in the novel during the destruction of Macondo, remaining unrecognized until today,” comments lead author Robin Casalla.

In Colombia many species still await their discovery, either in the wild, or frozen in time in museum cabinets and lacking a name. The only way to refer to them, is by pointing to them with your finger. But now, P. macondianus has been described in ZooKeys.

The soldiers of this species have a characteristic elongated, rectangular heads, about 5 – 7 mm long, ranging in color from black (at the tip) to ferruginous orange (at the back). P. macondianus has a voracious appetite for drywood, especially thin branches of less than 2 cm in diameter, and lives in small colonies of about 20 individuals. Although few drywood termites are considered pests in some urban areas, P. macondianus lives only in the wild and prefers tropical dry forests.

The termite P. macondianus ‘sentenced’ to over a hundred years of ‘solitude’, has now been given a second chance to not be forgotten again, being recognized as part of the Colombian natural ecosystem.

Original source:

Casalla R, Scheffrahn RH, Korb J (2016) Proneotermes macondianus, a new drywood termite from Colombia and expanded distribution of Proneotermes in the Neotropics (Isoptera, Kalotermitidae). ZooKeys 623: 43-60. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.623.9677

Scientists identify northeast Mindanao as major ‘bull’s-eye’ of biodiversity

Butuan City, Agusan del Norte. In a scientific report appearing Monday October 17th in the open access journal Zookeys, a team of researchers led by herpetologist Dr. Marites Sanguila of Father Saturnino Urios University announced that they have identified a new “epicenter” of southern Philippine biodiversity in amphibians and reptiles.

The international team of herpetologists (scientists who study frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, and crocodiles) collaborating on the study is composed of scientists from Father Saturnino Urios University, the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, the National Museum of the Philippines, Silliman University, and the Philippine Department of the Environment and Natural Resources. After an intensive five-year study, the team came to the ground-breaking conclusion that the Caraga Region of northeast Mindanao has the single highest herpetological species count of any similarly sized region in the country known to date.

Following a series of expeditions to four mountains in northern Mindanao, plus analyses of the distributions of species documented in museums around the world, the multi-institution effort culminated today with the announcement that the Caraga region is home total of 126 species of amphibians and reptiles.

According to Dr. Sanguila, this strikingly high diversity includes 40 species of frogs, one kind of caecilian (a secretive eel-like amphibian), 49 types of lizards, 35 varieties of snakes, plus one native freshwater turtle and, of course, one species of crocodile. According to the new study, the key to understanding the Caraga Region’s high biodiversity newly documented distributions of those 126 species, which overlap in northeast Mindanao. At a boundary between mainland Mindanao Island and the eastern Visayas (Samar, Leyte, Bohol, Dinagat, Siargao islands), “the Caraga region is an area where many species’ distributions come together and overlap, making this spot a kind of central hub of biodiversity,” said Dr. Sanguila. The new study brings more good news from the Philippines, a country internationally recognized as global biodiversity conservation hotspot of biodiversity.

“International collaborative biodiversity inventories are a great way to promote student training and faculty research development,” said Dr. Marites Sanguila, “In this research, we followed the example of the life-long collaboration between Dr. Angel Alcala, from the Silliman University, and Dr. Walter Brown, from California Academy of Sciences, and invited our U.S. counterparts to join in the effort to synthesize information on Caraga amphibian and reptile biodiversity. The results have unfolded in ways we could not have predicted, and generated opportunities for students on both sides of the Pacific.”

“Dr. Sanguila’s research tells us in a very special way something we have known intuitively for years, but have been unable to articulate: there is something very special about the unique biodiversity of the Caraga region! At the ‘center of the center’ of southern Philippine biodiversity, our small corner of Mindanao is undoubtedly unique, in need of conservation, and worthy of intensive scientific study,” said Rev. Fr. John Christian Young, president of Father Saturnino Urios University.

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Original Source:

Sanguila MB, Cobb KA, Siler CD, Diesmos AC, Alcala AC, Brown RM (2016) The amphibians and reptiles of Mindanao Island, southern Philippines, II: the herpetofauna of northeast Mindanao and adjacent islands. ZooKeys 624: 1-132. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.624.9814

Iranian coastal waters: New home to a rarely seen venomous sea snake

Günther’s sea snake (Microcephalophis cantoris), a rarely seen venomous sea snake with distribution thought to stretch from the Malay Peninsula to Pakistan, has now been recorded from Iranian coastal waters off the western Gulf of Oman, more than 400 kilometers away from the westernmost boundary of its previously known range.

In 1864, German-born British zoologist, Albert Günther (1830-1914), discovered a new species of highly venomous viviparous (giving live birth) sea snakes, thereafter named Günther’s sea snake. The species is famous because it has a very small head, compared to its body and is, therefore, sometimes called Günther’s narrow/small-headed sea snake. It is a rare species, and, since its discovery, it has only been recorded from the coastal waters of a few countries in the western Malay Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent.

Scientists Mohsen Rezaie-Atagholipour, Qeshm Environmental Management Office, Qeshm Island, Iran, Parviz Ghezellou, Medicinal Plants and Drugs Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University, Iran, Dr. Nicolas Vidal, Département Systématique & Evolution, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, France, and three Iranian fellows, are collaborating on a project on the biodiversity of sea snakes in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

During their survey, an adult Günther’s sea snake was caught by a fishing trawler (a fishing vessel pulling a baglike net) in Iranian coastal waters off the western Gulf of Oman. This was the first record of this rarely seen venomous viviparous sea snake in the area. The specimen is deposited and available in the Zoological Museum at the Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran.

As a result, the researchers have now published a checklist of the sea snake species in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, including this new record, in the open access journal ZooKeys.

There are about 60 living species of highly venomous viviparous sea snakes in the world, distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical coastal waters of the Indo-Pacific region. Out of them, nine have been previously recorded from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Following the discovery of the Günther’s sea snake, the total number of sea snakes in the area is ten.

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Original source:

Rezaie-Atagholipour M, Ghezellou P, Hesni MA, Dakhteh SMH, Ahmadian H, Vidal N (2016) Sea snakes (Elapidae, Hydrophiinae) in their westernmost extent: an updated and illustrated checklist and key to the species in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. ZooKeys 622: 129-164. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.622.9939