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The sweet-gum family Altingiaceae is a small group of wind-pollinated trees that produce hard, woody fruits that contain numerous seeds. This widespread tree family has been puzzling botanists for a while, due to its complicated taxonomic structure, and the morphological similarities between the different genera which makes their separation and description a challenge. Best known for their biogeographic intercontinental disjunction between E Asia and E North America, recent molecular analysis have shown that Altingia and Semiliquidambar are nested within Liquidambar.

A new taxonomic synopsis, published in the open access journal PhytoKeys, formally transfers all Altingia and Semiliquidambar taxa to Liquidambar, which has nomenclatural priority and provides a new analysis including nine new combinations.

Traditionally classified into members with a predominantly temperate distribution (Liquidambar), those with a largely tropical to subtropical distribution (Altingia) are also presented in the new study, including the taxonomic enumeration and distribution of 15 recognized species based on studies of 1,500 specimens from 24 herbaria throughout the distributional range of the taxa.

Despite the difficulties in their taxonomy, sweet gum trees are in fact widely distributed and well known, due to their varied uses by people. They are valued for their high quality timber and they produce fragrant resin (styrax). Some species are also cultivated as ornamentals, while others are locally highly prized for the roots and bark used in traditional Chinese medicine. Some species are local endemics and Liquidambar chingii is listed as near-threatened by the IUCN.

Original Source:

Ickert-Bond SM, Wen J (2013) A taxonomic synopsis of Altingiaceae with nine new combinations. PhytoKeys 31: 21. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.31.6251

A new study provides seventeen records of the cuckoo wasp genus Cleptes from China, nine of which are beautifully coloured new to science species. The study, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, is the first revision of the genus from China, providing morphological data and illustrations.

The revised genus belongs to the engaging cuckoo wasp family Chrysididae. As their common name suggests, these wasps have some peculiar parasitoid nesting habits. Often highly sculptured, with brilliantly colored metallic-like bodies they are also called jewel wasps, gold wasps, or emerald wasps.

Just like the cuckoo the wasps sneak in and lay their eggs in host nests. When hatched the larvae consume the host egg or larva, while they are still young, and after eliminating competition they move onto consuming the provisions. The members of the genus revised are parasitoids of the prepupae of sawflies.

Another interesting survival mechanism of the cuckoo wasps is their ability to curl into a protective ball when in danger, a process known as conglobation. In nature this mechanism is also seen in pill bugs and armadillos.

“Relatively thoroughly studied in Europe and North America, there are only a few and non-systematic studies for Asia. In China, the fauna of Cleptes is still very poorly known. This study is the first revision of the genus there, recognising seventeen species, nine of which are new to science, and marking the road for future studies.” comments Zai-fu Xu, South China Agricultural University.

Original Source:

Wei N-s, Rosa P, XuZ-f (2013) Revision of the Chinese Cleptes (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae) with description of new species. ZooKeys 362: 55–96. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.362.6175

Wasps, bees, ants and relatives comprise the megadiverse insect order Hymenoptera, the third most speciose animal group on Earth, far surpassing the number of known vertebrate species. All the four most diverse orders of animals (beetles, butterflies, wasps, and true flies) belong to the group of insects with complete metamorphosis, i.e. having a dormant pupa, jointly known as Holometabola. Other holometabolans are lacewings, alderflies, dobsonflies, snakeflies, scorpionflies, fleas, and caddisflies. Hymenopterans are currently regarded as a very old lineage, which had been the first to separate from the holometabolan stem, the view supported by molecular evidence.

Eighty years ago the Russian entomologist Andrey Martynov—well known for naming the two major divisions of winged insects Palaeoptera and Neoptera, stressing the importance of the wing folding pattern for insect evolution—suggested that wasps had arisen from snakefly-like ancestors.

New fossils, which are 260–270 million years old, support his view, firmly attaching the wasp lineage to the lacewing (neuropteroid) branch of the holometabolan family tree and dating its origin no earlier than Late Permian. These fossils are the oldest known Megaloptera: alderfly-like Parasialidae, and a newly discovered closely related family Nanosialidae.

Dr. Dmitry Shcherbakov, a fossil insect specialist at the Arthropoda Lab, founded by Martynov at the Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow argues that parasialids gave rise to both wasps and nanonosialids, and the latter became the ancestors of snakeflies. Living alderflies, dobsonflies, and snakeflies represent remnants of the past diversity of archaic neuropteroids, which presumably had diverse lifestyles. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Parasialids were small to medium-sized; nanosialids were minute creatures 3–5 mm long and probably fed on jumping plant lice, common in the same fossil fauna. The earliest wasps, known from the mid-Triassic (about 240 million years ago), were rather small, too. “It appears that, early in their history,” the author says, “the lineages of Megaloptera, Raphidioptera and Hymenoptera experienced miniaturization, which profoundly and irreversibly affected their body structure.”

Original source:

Shcherbakov DE (2013) Permian ancestors of Hymenoptera and Raphidioptera. ZooKeys 358: 45–67. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.358.6289

 

Additional Information:

The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project 13-04-01839).

Bucknell professor Chris Martine never expected to be working with his mentor on identifying a new wild eggplant in Australia, especially since Martine’s former colleague passed away years ago

Bucknell University biology professor Chris Martine has discovered and described a new species of wild eggplant, found in Australia’s Lost City. Martine, who named the plant Solanum cowiei, recently detailed his findings in the journal PhytoKeys.

Martine described the plant as “gender bending,” and explained that the females actually pretend to be male by producing pollen.

“What they’re really doing is duping bees into visiting their flowers.” Martine said. “One of the things we’re going to do next is study what that means. Do the bees actually get anything from this fake pollen? And, if they don’t, that means the plants are actually tricking the bees into doing their bidding, which would be a really neat thing for a plant to do.”

Listed as a co-discoverer is David Symon, who mentored Martine while he was pursuing his doctorate in the early 2000s. Martine’s graduate research focused on varieties of wild eggplants in Australia — Symon’s area of expertise. The two began a long-distance correspondence, with Martine sending Symon emails and Symon, who at the time was nearly 90, returning handwritten replies by mail. In 2004, they teamed up on a field expedition to search for new plant species in the Outback.

After the research trip, the two parted ways. Martine traveled with another group of researchers to Western Australia, and Symon stayed behind to examine specimens in Australia’s Northern Territory Herbarium. It was the last time they would ever see each other.

Martine continued his work in Australia in 2009, which is when he first came across what is now known as Solanum cowiei. While DNA tests confirmed that the plant was an unknown species, Martine lacked the flowers he needed to assign it a scientific name.

Martine returned to Australia for a third time last May, hoping to find the elusive eggplants in bloom. He traveled to Litchfield National Park, where Martine had previously spotted the species. A wildfire had recently scorched the area, making it easier to pick out green sprouts amidst the gray and brown landscape. Combing through the brush, Martine found the wild eggplant with budding flowers.

“If I was capable of doing backflips, I would have done them,” Martine said. “The only issue was that this was supposed to be our last day in the field and not a single bud had opened. We extended our time in the bush and camped out for two more nights, but they never opened.”

Martine made his way back to the Northern Territory Herbarium, the same place he had last worked with Symon a decade earlier. He was elated to discover specimens of the plant with flowers on them. The find meant he could return to Bucknell to complete his description of the new species.

A day before heading home to America, Martine decided to dig deeper into the herbarium’s archives, hoping others had come across the mystery plant and recorded their own observations. He was shocked by what he found: some dried specimens, and a page of handwritten notes that Martine easily recognized from his correspondence so many years ago. Unbeknownst to Martine, his mentor Symon had started describing Solanum cowiei after their trip together in 2004; it is the first known attempt to describe the eggplant Martine is now credited with naming.

“I knew right away that the notes were David’s — and I can say without exaggeration that finding them gave me the chills.” Martine said. “Of course, then all I could do for a good ten minutes was sit there with a big smile on my face, shaking my head; he had beaten me to it.”

But Symon was never able to describe the species.

“He likely stopped short of publishing the new species for the same reason I have until now.” Martine explained. “Under the heading ‘female flowers’ he wrote – not seen. ”

Notes:

The name Solanum cowiei is in honor of botanist Ian Cowie of the Northern Territory Herbarium, who first showed Martine dried specimens of the formerly undescribed species. Also listed as an author on the recent publication is Bucknell University professor Elizabeth Capaldi Evans, who traveled to Australia with Martine in May, 2013.

 

Original Source:

Martine CT, Symon DE, Evans EC (2013) A new cryptically dioecious species of bush tomato (Solanum) from the Northern Territory, Australia. PhytoKeys 30: 23. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.30.6003

Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution describe the Spectacular Guyane False-form beetle, or Guyanemorpha spectabilis, from Guyane (French Guiana). As its name suggests, the newly discovered species stands out among its dull relatives in the Western Hemisphere, with its great size and beautiful coloration. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

“This surprising large and colorful pseudomorphine came as a shock to me, as all other species of the Tribe in the Western Hemisphere are quite dull brown, dark reddish, or blackish with no, or little, color contrast on the upper surface.” explains the author Dr. Terry L. Erwin. “In the world of entomology this new species can be only compared in its rare characteristics to the Olinguito, a new carnivore species which charmed the world and just recently described by Kris Helgen in ZooKeys. ” he added.

The new species belongs to the Pseudomorphini Tribe, famous for the co-existence of its representatives with various ant species. Members of G. spectabilis occur at lowland rainforest sites in French Guiana and are accordingly most likely to live with ants, although at present nothing is known about their way of life.

“The pseudomorphines are a very interesting evolutionary off-shoot of the normal carabid morphotype in both form and function and are only just now beginning to be understood in North America. The fact that species of related genera in South America are living with arboreal ants will make learning about them far more difficult. Insecticidal fogging gets adults of these species, but only tearing apart arboreal Azteca ant nests while suspended in a tree will produce their larvae, and that is not for carabidologists faint of heart.” explains the author Dr. Erwin, and his Intern, Lauren Amundson.

Original Source:

Erwin TL (2013) Beetles that live with ants (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Pseudomorphini): A remarkable new genus and species from Guyane (French Guiana), Guyanemorpha spectabilis gen. n, sp. n.. ZooKeys 358: 11. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.358.6298

The lowland tropics were once though filled with widespread species, while moderate and higher elevations were thought to contain species with more restricted distributions. That idea is turning out to be partially incorrect. Widespread species now appear to be the exception, instead of the rule. A new study describes four species once considered to be the collared treerunner, a lizard known to the scientific community as Plica plica. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The collared treerunner was originally described in 1758 and has been the subject of many biological, ecological, and behavioral studies in recent years. A new ZooKeys paper by John C. Murphy, Field Museum (Chicago) and Michael J. Jowers, Estación Biológica de Doñana (Sevilla, Spain) describe four new species formerly thought to be one.

“The collard treerunner was considered a single species ranging from Trinidad and Tobago and northern Venezuela southward into the Amazon Basin, south of the Amazon River.” Murphy said. ” The Treerunners ancestor diverged about 25-30 million years ago, and throughout this time the South American continent has undergone dramatic remodeling, including the rise of the Andes, rising and falling sea levels, and changing climates that isolated populations for long periods of time, allowing them to become new species. Treerunners live on vertical surfaces, such as tree trunks, rock walls, and even buildings and they eat a variety of insects.”

The new paper focuses on populations of this lizard in northern South America, but in an overall survey the authors examined specimens from across the Amazon basin and suspect there may be at least another five to seven undescribed species in what is currently considered the collared treerunner. The treerunners from Trinidad and northern Venezuela were 4.5% genetically different from those in southern Venezuela, and more than 5% different from those in Brazil. For comparison purposes humans and chimpanzees are less than 2% genetically different.

While some species may form by genetic divergence without showing any morphological differences from their ancestor, other often show subtle or obvious morphological differences that may be quite easy to detect. The latter is the case with the collard treerunners.

Some had as few as 92 scales around the body while others had 202 scales around the body. Some adult males have yellow heads while other have red heads, some have distinctive patterns of spots while others have transverse bands.

Unraveling cryptic species is important for a more complete understanding of biodiversity, evolution, and for long term conservation efforts.

The take home message here is that there are many more species of squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) in the world than previously thought, and it is likely many species have and will disappeared before science is even aware of them. Cutting forests and draining swamps undoubtedly causes extinctions of the species depending upon those habitats. While none of the treerunners described in this paper are likely to be threatened with extinction this discovery and many other similar recent discoveries suggest our knowledge of biodiversity is lacking.

Original Source:

Murphy JC, Jowers MJ (2013) Treerunners, cryptic lizards of the Plica plica group (Squamata, Sauria, Tropiduridae) of northern South America. ZooKeys 355: 49. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.355.5868