Category: Uncategorized

RAINBIO: a mega database improves knowledge on distribution of vascular plants in tropical Africa

Last November, PhytoKeys published an exciting paper on the launch of the first-of-its kind RAINBIO mega database of tropical African vascular plant distributions.

The publication is part of the RAINBIO project (African RAIN forest community dynamics: implications for tropical BIOdiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, http://rainbio.cesab.org) funded by CESAB (CEntre de Synthèse et d’Analyse sur la Biodiversité) of the FRB (Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité, France). Making use of the innovative data paper format, offered by most Pensoft journals, the project announced is key product – a state-of-the-art high quality mega database of vascular plant species distribution across tropical Africa.

The RAINBIO mega database is a response to the limited knowledge of plant species distribution patterns when it comes to the tropical vegetation of Africa. Africa’s vegetation is characterised by high levels of species diversity. However, it is now undergoing important shifts in response to the challenges of ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressures. To better foster conservation and preservation of ecosystems, basic knowledge about plant species distribution is an important prerequisite.

To compile a comprehensive collection of data, RAINBIO merged large publicly available datasets, in combination with smaller private databases, resulting in a mega database containing 609,776 unique georeferenced records allowing the exploration and extraction of distributional data for 22,577 plant species across continental tropical Africa.

After announcing the database with us at the end of last year, the project published a companion research article providing a state-of-the-art synthesis about our understanding of vascular plant distribution across tropical Africa. The paper, published in BMC Biology concludes that botanical exploration of tropical Africa is far from complete, stressing the importance of continued field inventories and herbarium digitization of past collections.

Analysing this unique dataset provides some important insights into African biodiversity. For example, the observed number of tree species for African forests was smaller than those estimated from global tree data, suggesting that a significant number of species are yet to be discovered. The article also contains a comprehensive list of the total number of plant species for 31 countries across tropical Africa.

The data compiled in the RAINBIO database provides a solid basis for a more sustainable management and improved conservation of tropical Africa’s unique flora, and is important for achieving Objective 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation 2011–2020.

Original Sources:

Dauby G, et al. (2016) RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions. PhytoKeys 74: 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.74.9723

Sosef M S M, et al. (2016) Exploring the floristic diversity of tropical Africa. BMC Biology 15:15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-017-0356-8

New open access journal Rethinking Ecology publishes novel ideas under Pensoft’s imprint

Needless to say, it is through sharing new ideas and hypotheses that critical issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss can be addressed. However, few scientists are currently in a position to do so, because publishing bold ideas in peer-reviewed journals is very difficult, especially for those who are not world-renowned scientists in their field. At the same time, scientists sharing novel ideas that have not been published yet, carry the risk of being ‘scooped’. This is probably a scientist’s worst nightmare: seeing someone else publish the idea they have been working on. In this context, many innovative ideas are kept secret and it can take years before they are made available to the scientific community.

This is the niche that the novel open access peer-reviewed journal Rethinking Ecology aims to fill by providing a platform for forward thinking and publication of novel ideas in all aspects of ecology, evolution and environmental science.

Adding to its innovative nature, Rethinking Ecology joins the modern technologically advanced Pensoft journals published on next-generation platform ARPHA (abbreviation standing for Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving). Not only is the platform to provide fast-track and convenient publishing for the authors, reviewers and editors in Rethinking Ecology, as it takes care of a manuscript through all stages from authoring and reviewing to dissemination and archiving, but it is user-friendly to the readers as well, who enjoy publications in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML) and full of semantic enhancements.

The innovative journal aims to encourage all scientists, regardless of their seniority, publication track record, gender, or country of origin, to publish perspective papers, so that they are put in the open for peers to discuss and build on, while credit is given where credit is due. Publishing these ideas early also draws attention from the scientific community, potential collaborators and potential funders. To further avoid potential bias, Rethinking Ecology implements double-blind peer review, with the journal supporting the notion that it is the content of a manuscript that matters. Moreover, reviewers will not be asked for a formal recommendation. Instead, they will comment and evaluate the work against a set of specific questions. Thus, each paper ends up with a score on Novelty, Feasibility, Scholarship and Literacy, so that only perspective papers with an emphasis on novel hypotheses and bold ideas are accepted for publication.

Another innovative feature applied in the new journal is an Author Contribution Index (ACI), meaning that each publication will include a pie chart pointing to the contribution of each of the authors, estimated in percentage. This is the editors’ answer to the so-called ‘guest authorship’ (i.e. inclusion of authors who did not significantly contribute to the work).

It is no coincidence that Rethinking Ecology has a spiral-shaped unfurling fern leaf as a logo. Called Koru in the language of the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand – Māori, it symbolises novelty, new life and new beginning, as well as perpetual movement.

“Each publication in Rethinking Ecology can be seen as the beginning of life for a new idea and its metaphorical unfurling as it reaches out to the scientific community,” explain the journal editors in their very first Editorial at Rethinking Ecology.

“We see Rethinking Ecology as an incubator for novel ideas, and a catalyst for new thinking,” says the journal’s Editor-in-Chief Dr Stephane Boyer, Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand.

“In a world where scientific publications are increasingly open source and immediately available, it makes no sense to keep our most innovative ideas hidden from the world for years while we secretly test them,” he elaborates. “Bold ideas and new hypotheses need to be shared, they may or may not turn into world-changing paradigm shifts, but they all have the potential to contribute to new thinking.”

“I am pleased to welcome a groundbreaking journal such as Rethinking Ecology to the Pensoft family, which has already built a nice and extensive portfolio of innovations in scholarly publishing,” says Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “Seeing genuine ideas and hypotheses yet to be tested, and possibly, yet to revolutionise the ecological science is certainly a thing worthy of eager anticipation.”

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About ARPHA:

ARPHA is the first end-to-end journal publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring through submission, peer review, publication and dissemination. With ARPHA, journals and publishers enjoy a complete set of services, which enable tailored, technologically advanced publishing solutions. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

The Caucasus as an ‘island’ in the ‘sea’ of steppes: New insights in mosquito evolution

From a geographical point of view, the Caucasus is far from an island or even a peninsula, being a relatively big mountainous region appearing as a fence at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. However, a study into the chromosome structure of mosquito larvae of the species Glyptotendipes salinus, living by a saltwater lake in the foothills of the Caucasus, suggests that the region could be imagined as an “island” in the “sea” of steppes.

Scientists Dr Mukhamed Karmokov, Tembotov Institute of Ecology of Mountain territories, Russian Academy of Science, and Dr Azamat Akkizov, Institute of Biomedical Problems, RAS, and Center of Medico-Ecological Researches, have their paper, where they describe the Caucasian population of the species, published in the open access journal Comparative Cytogenetics.

Earlier, it has been known that in the Tambukan Lake, located at the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, lives at least one of the representatives of the genus Glyptotendipes, more precisely, the species G. salinus. Actually, the process of studying the fauna of the genus in the Caucasus region has just began and many questions have remained unclear.

During their research, the authors collected a sufficient amount of larvae of G. salinus that made it possible to study the chromosome structure, rearrangements and peculiarities of the Caucasian population of the species. In addition, the authors tried to understand how the population relates to the previously studied ones, living in the Altai region of Russia and Kazakhstan.

Researchers found interesting, some of them even striking, peculiarities in the chromosome structure and morphology of the larvae from Caucasus. Namely, they found four new chromosome rearrangements, likely unique for the Caucasus. Also, some of the chromosome characters were most similar to the mosquitoes from Altai, while others — to the population in Kazakhstan. The most curious difference of the Caucasian larvae in comparison to data from earlier studies was that they were twice as short.

In conclusion, the authors note that from the obtained data it could be deduced that that the Caucasian population had undergone a significant divergence, or even that it represents a subspecies.

Also, it turns out that the Caucasus itself is a relatively isolated and complex region in terms of microevolution. “The Caucasus, in some sense, can be imagined as a relatively isolated territory, a special place, where evolution has made some unexpected twists,” they say.

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Original source:

Karmokov MKh, Akkizov AY (2016) Karyotype characteristics, larval morphology and chromosomal polymorphism peculiarities of Glyptotendipes salinus Michailova, 1983 (Diptera, Chironomidae) from Tambukan Lake, Central Caucasus. Comparative Cytogenetics 10(4): 571-585. https://doi.org/10.3897/compcytogen.v10i4.9400

Business: Theory and Practice journal moves to the ARPHA white label publishing platform

Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Pensoft launch a new joint pilot project for the open access peer-reviewed journal BTP

In a new joint pilot project, the open access peer-reviewed journal Business: Theory and Practice (BTP), issued by VGTU Press since 2000, runs on the new journal publishing platform ARPHA, developed by Pensoft. ARPHA provides end-to-end technological solution for all peer-review stages starting from submission to fully functional dedicated new website. Publications are also available in semantically enriched HTML and XML formats, as well as the traditional PDF. The journal’s authors and editors enjoy easily manageable peer-review workflow in ARPHA.

Business: Theory and Practice publishes original research articles and reviews that integrate economic development and globalization, interpretations and consequences of entrepreneurship, strategic management and organizational behavior, theoretical questions and empirical questions of industrial organizations. It covers a variety of fields, including business environment, economic development and globalization, entrepreneurial finance, interpretations and consequences of entrepreneurship, strategic management, organizational behavior, theoretical questions and empirical questions of industrial organization, and case studies.

BTP has opted for the ARPHA-DOC publishing workflow, which provides an individually designed website under the imprint and logo of VGTU Press, a document-based article submission, as well as peer review, publication, hosting and dissemination. The manuscripts submitted to BTP will be subject to double-blind peer review.

“It is a great pleasure to work with the Pensoft team on establishing an innovative publishing platform for Business: Theory and Practice. I am sure the new platform will exceed the expectations of all – the authors, the editors and the readers,” says VGTU Press Director Eleonora Dagiene.

“Academic publishing is in a process of disruptive transition. As a result, small journal publishers and society journals are strongly affected and threatened with decline and even extinction. This is because access to high-level publishing technologies is not easy and, in most cases, not affordable. So, we developed ARPHA specially for them! ARPHA is not only an end-to-end journal publishing platform, covering the whole process from website design, authoring, editorial management and peer-review to publishing and dissemination – it also delivers a wide range of easily customizable end-to-end services, on the choice of the journal. I am glad to see Business: Theory and Practice published by VGTU Press as the first Lithuanian journal coming to the ARPHA platform and becoming a member of ARPHA’s growing family of international partners,” says Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev.

The articles accepted for the current issue of 2016 in BTP, published via ARPHA, are already available on the journal’s new website.

ARPHA is open to journals looking for a technologically advanced publishing platform plus all associated services, which can be customized to the journal’s preferences.

People can simultaneously give a hand to endangered apes and stay at safe distance

Primates claim the highest proportion of endangered species among all mammals, according to the IUCN Red List. Yet, the substantial conservation interference from humans, which is already in place, could itself lead to even greater losses.

Plenty of studies have proven that while researchers and ecotourists raise vital for ape conservation knowledge and funds, it is actually human presence that compromises primates’ well-being due to extremely similar genetics and, thereby, easily transmittable diseases, ranging from common cold to human tuberculosis and Ebola fever.

In a paper published in the open access journal BioRisk, Rhiannon Schultz, Miami University, seeks the golden mean between giving ape species a hand and keeping safe distance. To showcase the impact human have on primates, the scientist makes example of the Mountain gorilla, an endangered species living in the montane forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.

Simply being in close proximity to primates, humans can easily transmit a wide range of diseases to the animals, including intestinal parasites, hepatitis, tuberculosis, Typhoid fever, Cholera, and Ebola fever. The transmission can occur as easily as having the two species breathing the same air, or the people leaving a banana peel behind.

Furthermore, threats to the gorilla species are also posed by the humans destroying the primates’ habitats. The result is overlapping populations, where a disease is much easier to transmit among the small gorilla populations. For example, normally an ill individual would be put under a ‘natural quarantine’, which is impossible when the habitat has already been reduced.

In the meantime, banning people, both tourists and scientists, from gorilla habitat is not an option, since knowledge about the populations’ dynamics is essential for the conservation of all primate species. On the other hand, ecotourism is what raises a great part of the resources need for conservation work. Income from gorilla trekking is enough to support the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, while also contributing a significant part to the country’s national budget.

The key, Rhiannon Schultz concludes, is to, firstly, promote understanding of the risk for interspecies disease transmission as a conservation threat, and then, improve on current protocols and regulations.

“It may be difficult to ask tourists to wear masks while visiting animals in the wild, and it may be expensive to maintain a veterinary program for wild populations and to improve healthcare systems for local people, but making these improvements could be the key to preventing disease transmission to not only Mountain gorillas but also to other apes,” sums up the scientist.

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Original source:

Schultz R (2016) Killer Conservation: the implications of disease on gorilla conservation.BioRisk 11: 1-11. doi: 10.3897/biorisk.11.9941

Next-Generation Journal Publishing Platform ARPHA at Frankfurt Book Fair 2016

Following the launch of our self-developed journal publishing platform ARPHA (standing for Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving, all happening at one place), we were so happy with the outcome, that we couldn’t help sharing it with the world. Therefore, it’s on offer not only to our own journals and authors, but it’s also at hand to journals looking for their new home. Just let us know you’re interested!

On these lines, what could be a better place to have a chat about the transition in scholarly publishing, open science, research reproducibility and, of course, the advantages of having a journal published on ARPHA, than Frankfurt Book Fair 2016? Between 18th and 23rd October, this immense event will be all about unveiling and celebrating the evolution in the publishing industry, with exhibitors, trade and private visitors from across the globe, gathering together, led by their common expertise and passion.

Meet us at HotSpot Professional and Scientific Information Stage, Hall 4.2, Stand M90, during the Fair, and make sure you don’t miss the “ARPHA: Next-Generation Journal Publishing” presentation at 11:30 AM (local time) on Friday, 21st October, where Pensoft’s Founder and Managing Director Prof Lyubomir Penev will shed more light on the first end-to-end publishing solution, providing everything a journal needs in a technologically advanced, highly efficient and user-friendly manner.

ARPHA in a few notes:

The platform

With ARPHA you can choose between two journal publishing workflows: ARPHA-DOC and ARPHA-XML. The former provides document-based submission for the articles in a journal, as well as peer review and publication. The latter makes use of the ARPHA Writing Tool, which takes all processes, including authoring, peer review and post-publication updates, to an online environment, created with collaboration and openness in mind.

Our services

ARPHA takes care of all the steps that go along with academic publishing and its efficient dissemination, so that it provides a long list of perks to make it easier for the scientific community to bring research to light. Website design, online editorial management system, linguistic editing, semantic markup, promotion and (sub-)article usage metrics are only a part of the services the platform has to offer.

The publishing models

ARPHA basically lets users mix-and-match services and features to create the publishing model that’s the best fit for their journals. How do you envision your imprint / web-design look / manuscript input / peer review process / publication output / revenue model? ARPHA understands your journal’s individual needs and works around them.

Find out more about ARPHA at our talk, or come and meet us at our stand in HotSpot Professional and Scientific Information (Hall 4.2, M90).

Mayflies of Turkey: Two new records for the country species and an annotated catalogue

Mayflies (the insect order Ephemeroptera) are a fascinating group, which represents the oldest winged insects, estimated to have been existing on the Earth since the lower Carboniferous, or, approximately for 350 million years. They are characterized by exclusively aquatic larvae, a unique fully winged subimaginal stage (the stage right before the young mayfly transforms into a sexually mature adult) and, typically, rather short life as an adult.

While identification has generally been considered difficult, and good research collections are to be found in relatively few specialised institutions, three biologists from Turkey and Austria have recently concluded a review of the Turkish mayfly fauna, in which they also add two species newly recorded from the country.

They also list 157 mayfly taxa representing 33 genera and 14 families, including 24 species considered endemic to Anatolia. With their annotated overview of the present state of knowledge concerning mayflies in Turkey, the authors aim to facilitate future research.

Synthesis of all previous records of mayflies from Turkey together with new records, a map of provinces and pertinent literature, are all included in the latest paper published by scientists Dr Ali Salur, Hitit University, Çorum, Turkey, Dr Mustafa Cemal Darilmaz, Aksaray University, Aksaray, Turkey, and Dr Ernst Bauernfeind, Natural History Museum Vienna, Austria, in the open access ZooKeys.

The data in the review are based on a detailed study of literature on Ephemeroptera in Turkey as well as on hitherto unpublished material housed in the Natural History Museum Vienna. Unpublished theses have not been considered. By 2015, there have been well over 70 scientific papers and books published on Ephemeroptera in Turkey from both Turkish and foreign researchers.

Distribution of species-group taxa in Turkey have been listed and referenced according to publication dates. National distribution records (without specific data at least on province level) have been listed under ‘Turkey’. Type locality of species were only provided if the taxon had originally been based on material from Turkey. Remarks on different taxonomic opinions and nomenclature have been added under ‘Comment’ whenever appropriate.

Websites http://www.faunaturkey.com and http://www.faunaturkey.org (launched in 2013) are meant to contribute more information on research about the fauna of Turkey. The data provided in the present study will also be added to the websites following publication.

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Original source:

Salur A, Darilmaz MC, Bauernfeind E (2016) An annotated catalogue of the mayfly fauna of Turkey (Insecta, Ephemeroptera). ZooKeys 620: 67-118. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.620.9405

As Good as Gold: Publishing platform ARPHA is proud supporter of Peer Review Week 2016 and Gold star sponsor of Publons’ Sentinels of Science

In the heat of this year’s Peer Review Week, themed “Recognition for Review”, we would like to express how and why we are so proud to be part of it and Publons’ initiative Sentinels of Science, meant to recognize the true guardians of quality science, or in other words, the peer reviewers.

Being a high-tech and modern publishing solution, developed by Pensoft with the mindset that to adapt to the future, means to innovate, ARPHA itself was set to take the quite stagnant current peer review practice forward from day one.

This is why and how we provide a range of peer review options for every author submitting their work to any journal, published on the ARPHA platform. For example, here are the four-stages of the open peer review process operating in our flagship Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) Journal:

Author-organised, pre-submission review, available to all journals that make use of our ARPHA Writing Tool, which is our way to take the common get-a-friend-to-proofread-your-work practice to a whole new, transparent and technologically facilitated level. The review happens in real time with the author and the reviewers being able to work together in the ARPHA online environment. It is not mandatory, but we encourage it strongly. All pre-submission reviews provided on authors’ request in RIO can be published along with the article, bearing DOI and citation details.
Pre-submission technical and editorial check is another benefit, provided by the journal’s editorial office to those who are using the ARPHA Writing Tool. If necessary, it can take up several rounds, until the manuscript is improved to the level appropriate for direct submission to the journal.
The community-sourced, post-publication, open peer review is the next review stage provided to all articles published in RIO and all other ARPHA journals.
In addition, RIO also provides journal-organised, post-publication open peer review upon author’s request. In all other ARPHA journals this review stage happens mandatory before publication.

To facilitate peer review in any journal published on the platform, ARPHA consolidates every review automatically into a single online file, which makes it possible for reviewers to comment in real time, even during the authoring process. Once posted, the whole peer review history is archived along with the associated files.

To recognize peer review even further, ARPHA registers automatically each of our peer reviewers, along with their work, on Publons, thanks to the integration of all Pensoft journals with the platform, created to credit reviewers and their contributions.

With this vision of peer review, we simply could not stay clear of the aspiring Sentinels of Science initiative, started by Publons. It only made sense for us to step in, which logically led to the ARPHA logo appearing in the Gold star sponsors list.

On Friday, 23rd September, Publons will announce the recipients of the inaugural Sentinels of Science Award – the top reviewers and editors for the past year. So, tune in this Friday at 4:00 P.M. (BST) and do not forget to join the Twitter conversation via hashtags #PeerRevWk16 and #RecognizeReview.

Greek heroic deity Prometheus now has a namesake in a new tiny rain frog from Ecuador

Prometheus, the mythological Greek heroic deity, has been given a namesake in a new species of tiny rain frog, discovered in southwestern Ecuador. The name was chosen by the international team of scientists, led by Dr Paul Szekely, Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania, in acknowledgement of the Prometeo program, funded by the Ecuadorian government.

The description of this new species (Pristimantis prometeii) is the result of the cooperation between three Romanian Prometeo investigators affiliated with the Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja and Universidad Nacional de Loja, and two Ecuadorian specialists from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador. The full study is available from the open access ZooKeys.

During the day, frogs of the new species were found hiding in flowering plants, while at night — perching on leaves at low heights in well preserved cloud forests. They grow to 2-3 cm with the females being larger than the males.

The newly described species is part of a group of frogs called Terrarana (meaning ‘Land or terrestrial frogs’). This is a lineage of frogs that has evolved directly developing eggs, which are deposited in terrestrial habitats. Unlike other frogs, these ones do not have an aquatic tadpole stage and the embryos develop directly into froglets on land.

The newly described species is only known from Reserva Biologica Buenaventura, southwestern Ecuador, at elevations between 878 and 1082 m. This reserve is privately owned by the Jocotoco Conservation Foundation. The reserve has at least another four endemic species of amphibians, reptiles, and birds.

With more than 470 species, the directly developing rain frogs of the genus Pristimantiscontinue to surprise everyone.

“While new species are described every year, there are over a hundred discovered over the last decade only,” remind the authors.

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Original source:

Szekely P, Cogalniceanu D, Szekely D, Paez N, Ron SR (2016) A new species of Pristimantis from southern Ecuador (Anura, Craugastoridae). ZooKeys 606: 77-97. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.606.9121

A new framework for inferring community assembly processes in ecology

One of the most fundamental goals in ecology – determining the community assembly processes that have structured local communities – has been increasingly studied through the analysis of functional and phylogenetic diversity. Addressing growing evidence that inferences from these measures are often ambiguous to interpret, a new study published in the open access journal One Ecosystem, presents a conceptual framework integrating three approaches which reduces the likelihood of drawing incorrect conclusions.

A long-standing goal in ecology has been to document patterns in natural community structure and connect these patterns to underlying processes such as environmental filtering, disturbance, competition, and predation, collectively known as community assembly processes.

When studying these complex interactions, ecologists have been increasingly leaning towards inferring community assembly processes by calculating communities’ functional and phylogenetic diversity. Unlike diversity measures based solely on species’ identities, functional and phylogenetic diversity can describe important differences between species, ranging across ways in which they use resources, respond to, and influence the local environment.

“Functional and phylogenetic diversity can indeed be useful when trying to infer whether a particular community assembly process, such as interspecific competition or environmental filtering, has been most important for structuring a community or set of communities,” explain the authors of the study.

“However, it is also becoming increasingly obvious that care must be taken when using those methods, since inappropriate choice of traits, diversity metrics, or null models can produce ambiguous results and even lead to incorrect conclusions about the processes underlying community assembly.”

To answer this knowledge gaps, a team of ecologists present a conceptual framework which integrates three approaches to reduce the likelihood of drawing incorrect conclusions from analyses of functional and phylogenetic diversity:

testing hypotheses for how diversity measures and ecological processes vary along an environmental gradient;
analysis of both functional and phylogenetic diversity in concert; and
careful selection of traits related to processes of interest for inclusion in functional diversity analyses.

The new study describes the utility of each of these approaches and shows how combining them can strengthen one’s ability to correctly infer community assembly. The framework is presented in the context of identifying the signatures of interspecific competition and environmental filtering, important processes that operate in many systems across different taxa and are most often referred to in the functional and phylogenetic literature.

“In our paper, we provide examples showing how our framework can be used to test general hypotheses such as the Stress-Dominance Hypothesis,” comment the authors. “Our approach can also be applied to other processes besides competition and environmental filtering. This framework has the potential to enhance comparability between studies and allow for testing of alternative hypotheses regarding changes in community assembly processes along gradients.”

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Original Source:

Lopez B, Burgio K, Carlucci M, Palmquist K, Parada A, Weinberger V, Hulbert A (2016) A new framework for inferring community assembly processes using phylogenetic information, relevant traits and environmental gradients. One Ecosystem 1: e9501. doi: 10.3897/oneeco.1.e9501