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Mountain marvels of French Polynesia

Do you have it in mind to go to a mountain top and study beetles that nobody else has ever seen? Well, there are two fewer such mountains available now that beetle species discovered on Mont Tohiea and Mont Mauru in the Society Islands have been named. James Liebherr, Curator of the Cornell University Insect Collection, has just described 14 species of predatory carabid beetle, also called ground beetles, as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation team that surveyed the insects and spiders of French Polynesia.

Liebherr described the species in two papers published in the on-line journal, ZooKeys, taking advantage of the recent changes to rules that now allow electronic publication of names for newly described animal species.

The new beetles are members of the genus Mecyclothorax, a group that seems to have found a home in remote Pacific Islands. The Society Islands have about 100 species, and the Hawaiian Islands support well over 200 species. Conversely, the Australian continent, where all this evolution presumably started, is home to a mere 25 species. Like the flightless Dodos of Mauritius, all the Pacific Island beetles are flightless, whereas many of the Australian species can fly.

Liebherr’s discoveries of the seven new species on Moorea’s Mont Tohiea expands the known distribution of the genus in the Society Islands from Tahiti to the island of Moorea, mirroring the distribution of related beetles in Hawaii, where members of the genus are recorded from Oahu to Hawaii Island. In Tahiti and Moorea these beetles are very rarely recorded below 1000 m elevation, so the new species have very limited geographic distributions. "When we travel to a new mountain we find only new species. It’s like moving to a different continent as far as these beetles are concerned" says Liebherr. Being able to identify these small areas of endemism is essential for justifying conservation programs that can maintain biodiversity.

The new species take their place in the Tahitian fauna next to 67 species revised by the late Dr. Georges Perrault, whose collection of Tahitian beetles is housed at the Natural History Museum in Paris. "Georges Perrault made this study possible through his valuable work describing the Tahitian beetle fauna. If he hadn’t completed his work, we would not have been able to gain the support needed to expand upon his studies of this remarkable fauna" states Liebherr. These new species are not the end of biodiversity discovery for these beetles and their relatives.

Liebherr is working in the lab to name more collected from other mountains, and many more no doubt occur on unexplored peaks. Conservation programs in French Polynesia will be busy for a long time documenting these hidden gems of the Pacific.

Original sources:
Liebherr J (2012) The first precinctive Carabidae from Moorea, Society Islands: new Mecyclothorax spp. (Coleoptera) from the summit of Mont Tohiea. ZooKeys 224: 37-80. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.224.3675
Liebherr J (2012) New Mecyclothorax spp. (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Moriomorphini) define Mont Mauru, eastern Tahiti Nui, as a distinct area of endemism. ZooKeys 227: 63-99. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.227.3797

About ZooKeys
ZooKeys is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal launched to support free exchange of ideas and information in biodiversity science, issued by Pensoft Publishers. All papers published in ZooKeys can be freely copied, downloaded, printed and distributed at no charge for the reader. ZooKeys implemented several cutting-edge innovation in publishing and dissemination of science information and is considered a technological leader in its field.

Additional Information
National Science Foundation DEB-0451971; Biotic Surveys and Inventory: Arthropods of French Polynesia (R. G. Gillespie, PI) Richard B. Gump South Pacific Field Station http://moorea.berkeley.edu/

A recently published monograph on heterodontosaurs with description of Pegomastax africana by Paul Sereno from the University of Chicago was featured in all world’s leading news media! It truly is a fantastic animal – you may want to have a look at some of the postings:

BBC: Dwarf ‘vampire dinosar was a plant eater

CNN: Scientist describes fruit-loving, housecat-sized dino

National Geographic: New fanged dwarf dinosaur found, "Would be nice pet"

New York Times: Bizarre species of miniature dinosaur identified

The Guardian: "Fanged vampire parrot" identified as a new species of dinosaur

Scientific American: Diminutive dinosaur bore beak, bristles and fangs

USA Today: Fanged dinosaur feasted on fruit

Time: A parrot-headed, big-fanged, porcupine dinosaur

Original source
Sereno P (2012) Taxonomy, morphology, masticatory function and phylogeny of heterodontosaurid dinosaurs. ZooKeys 226: 1-225. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.226.2840

 

The single specimen of the new species was originally chipped out of red rock in southern Africa in the 1960’s and discovered in a collection of fossils at Harvard University by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno, paleontologist and professor at the University of Chicago. Details of the dinosaur’s anatomy and lifestyle are part of a monograph by Sereno dedicated to these puny herbivores and published in the online journal ZooKeys and on the website of the National Geographic Society.

Named Pegomastax africanus, or "thick jaw from Africa", the new species has a short parrot-shaped beak up front, a pair of stabbing canines, and tall teeth tucked behind for slicing plants. The tall teeth in upper and lower jaws operated like self-sharpening scissors, with shearing wear facets that slid past one another when the jaws closed. The parrot-shaped skull, less than three inches long, may have been adapted to plucking fruit.

"Very rare", admits Sereno, "that a plant-eater like Pegomastax would sport sharp-edged, enlarged canines" like that of a vampire. Some scientists have argued that consuming meat or at the least insects was a good part of the diet of heterodontosaurs, which evolved near the root of the great bird-hipped radiation of dinosaurs that includes the famous plant-eaters Triceratops and Stegosaurus.

Self-defense and competitive sparring for mates is more likely their role, argues Sereno in the study, based on microscopic examination of the teeth of Pegomastax and kin. Wear facets and chipped enamel suggest that the fangs of Pegomastax and other heterodontosaurs were used like those of living fanged deer for nipping or even digging rather than slicing flesh.

A bizarre covering of bristles, something like that of a porcupine, likely covered most of the body of Pegomastax, which measured less than two-feet in length and weighed less than a housecat. These bristles first came to light in a similar-sized heterodontosaur, Tianyulong, discovered recently in China and described in the study. Buried in lake sediment and covered by volcanic ash, Tianyulong preserves hundreds of bristles spread across its body from its neck to the tip of its tail. In life, dwarf-sized heterodontosaurs like Pegomastax would have scampered around in search of suitable plants, says Sereno, looking something like a "nimble two-legged porcupine".

When Pegomastax lived some 200 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea had just begun to split into northern and southern landmasses. Heterodontosaurs appear to have divided similarly, the study argues, the northern species with simple triangular teeth like Tianyulong and the southern species with taller crowns like Pegomastax.

Sereno marvels at these punk-sized early herbivores that spread across the globe. Although virtually unknown to the public, "Pegomastax and kin were the most advanced plant-eaters of their day".

Original source:
Sereno PC (2012) Taxonomy, morphology, masticatory function and phylogeny of heterodontosaurid dinosaurs. ZooKeys 226: 1-225. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.226.2840

Multimedia:
New dinosaur dwarf Pegomastax from South Africa
With jaws only 1-inch in length, plant-eating Pegomastax (“thick jaw”) is one of the smallest dinosaurs ever discovered. Drawing by Todd Marshall.
Heterodontosaurus flesh model & skull—photo (2a; 2b)
Skin, scales and quills are added to a cast of the skull of Heterodontosaurus, the best known heterodontosaurid from South Africa.  Photo and sculpting by Tyler Keillor.
Heterodontosaurids as dinosaur dwarfs
Some heterodontosaurids, such as South African Pegomastax or Chinese Tianyulong (shown here), grew to less than 2 feet in length and rank as dwarfs in the dinosaur era. Drawing by Paul Sereno and Carol Abraczinskas.
—VIDEO—Making of Heterodontosaurus flesh model
Muscles, skin, scales and quills are added to a skull cast of Heterodontosaurus.  Video and sculpting by Tyler Keillor.

Vince Smith, Dave Roberts & Lyubomir Penev video presentation at the Linnean Society on 20th September 2012.

In respond to several inquiries and in the light of the current lively discussions on Taxacom and in some blogs, ZooKeys considered necessary to publish the following statement:

1. ZooKeys was the first – and still is – the only journal that registers authors, publications and new names in ZooBank. We have been doing this for our authors since July 2008, when the first ZooKeys issue was published. We shall continue this practice and ZooKeys’ authors will not need to bother with any kind of registration issues to make their taxa validly published.

2. ZooKeys articles are archived in two global archives: (1) PubMedCentral based in the National Library of Medicine of the U.S. All content in PubMedCentral is available in open access, the separate taxa descriptions (treatments) are highlighted with separate links, and in addition, the PDF version and each image file are archived separately; (2) CLOCKSS, which is an international, not for profit, joint venture between the world’s leading scholarly publishers and research libraries initiated by Stanford University. Again, the authors do not need to worry personally about archiving!

3. According to our policies, anyone – a private person or institution – can download, archive, print and distribute the full content of ZooKeys. This is probably the best add-on archiving policy one may think about, because downloads of individual articles are counted in several hundreds, to say the least.

4. ZooKeys will continue to print its full-color, high-resolution version, which is available in several libraries, such as Smithsonian, Harvard, Naturalis (Leiden), the Dutch Entomological Society’s library, and some more. Separate printed issues or reprints are available on purchase. 

5. ZooKeys will continue to export taxon descriptions (treatments) to Encyclopedia of Life, Plazi Treatment Repository and Species-ID.net – a Wiki based treatment repository. Naturally, treatments are available in open access for anyone to read and the original publications are linked back from there.

6. Each individual ZooKeys article is published electronically as soon as the final proof is approved by the author; the date of publishing of the electronic version should be considered the valid date of publication of the article. Paper version will be published when an issue is completed. This will greatly facilitate the efficiency and speed of publication, without having any adverse effect on archiving and/or distribution!

7. ZooKeys will continue to assist authors in data publishing and archiving through GBIF (occurrence data) and DRYAD Data Repository (any other data).

8. ZooKeys will continue to assist authors in drafting and dissemination of press releases and other materials that promote their research.

9. These policies will be followed also by the other zoological journals published by Pensoft, such as Journal of Hymenoptera Research, International Journal of Myriapodology, and Comparative Cytogenetics.  
 

Pollinating insects contribute to agricultural production in 150 (84%) European crops. These crops depend partly or entirely upon insects for their pollination and yield. The value of insect pollinators is estimated to be €22 billion a year in Europe. Declines in managed pollinators, such as honeybees, and wild pollinator such bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies, are therefore of growing concern as we need to protect food production and the maintain wildflower diversity.

Scientists involved in STEP, a large-scale project funded by the 7th Framework Program (FP7) of the European Union, have therefore taken an inclusive approach looking at the status and trends of all Europe’s pollinators.

New findings have been presented at a dedicated STEP symposium at the 5th EurBee meeting held in Halle, Germany on 3-6 September 2012. Prof Simon Potts from the University of Reading, UK and coordinator of STEP opened the discussion: "To help Europe secure sustainable food production and conserve its biodiversity we need to provide policy makers with clear evidence of who pollinates our crops and flowers and what are the best options to safeguard pollination services in a changing world".

More than 32 million European records of pollinators and plants have been analysed. "We have shown that not only has bee diversity been declining but communities are becoming more uniform in their composition", commented the lead scientist Dr Koos Beismeijer from Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis, The Netherlands.

One key threat to bees is agrochemicals; "we are now finding strong negative effects of pesticides, not only in honeybees and bumblebees, but also solitary bees– as Europe has more than 2,500 solitary bee species we expect the implications of our research to be very wide ranging" said Dr Christoph Sandrock of Swiss Bee Research Centre.

Many European countries have an array of agri-environment options aiming to support biodiversity, including bees, but it is unclear how effective these really are. "Our analysis is the first to systematically test whether agri-environment options are actually benefiting bees" said Dr David Kleijn from Alterra, Netherlands.

Several European countries have programmes aiming to improve honeybee health, but there is very little support for wild pollinators despite their critical roles in ecosystems. "One of the big achievements of the STEP project will be the first ever European Red List for bees which will provide an essential tool for politicians and land managers to direct conservation efforts targeted at wild bees" said Mr Stuart Roberts from University of Reading, UK.

"There is increasing evidence that honeybee numbers are insufficient in many parts of Europe to provide adequate pollination services, and so wild pollinators are needed to cover the shortfall" stated Dr Tom Breeze from University of Reading, UK.

The STEP project will continue to use high quality research to deliver the evidence politicians need to develop better policies to protect all of Europe’s pollinators. The project also uses its findings to develop specialist factsheets targeted at groups such as farmers and translated in 15 languages: see http://step-project.net/page.php?P=4&SP=14

Simultaneously, STEP is undertaking a broad-scale survey of the public opinion through online questionnaires available in seven European languages. The survey aims to reveal if, and to what extent, people are aware of the role of pollinators in agricultural ecosystems and the consequences for the environment from the decline of bees and other insect pollinators. Please spend 5 minutes of your time and fill it in at: http://www.step-project.net/page.php?P=26

Original source:
1. Pollinators Support Farm Productivity. STEP best practices recommendations for farmers to maintain the diversity of pollinators in 15 languages: http://step-project.net/page.php?P=4&SP=14.
2. Online questionnaire to survey the public opinion on the role of pollinators: http://www.step-project.net/page.php?P=26.

Additional information:
STEP (2010) stands for "Status and Trends of European Pollinators" and is a European research project. Financed by the 7th EU framework programme for research and development (FP7), STEP aims xxx. For more information please see: www.STEP-project.net

 Like all sources of information, DNA sequences come in various degrees of quality and reliability. To identify, proof, and discard compromised molecular data has thus become a critical component of the scientific endeavor – one that everyone generating sequence data is assumed to carry out before using the sequences for research purposes.

"Many researchers find sequence quality control difficult, though", says Dr. Henrik Nilsson of the University of Gothenburg and the lead author of a new article on sequence reliability, published in the Open Access journal MycoKeys. "There just isn’t any straightforward document to put in their hands to give them a flying start. As a result, scientists differ in the degree to which they are aware of the need to exercise sequence quality control and in what measures they take." Previous studies have highlighted several shortcomings of publicly available DNA sequences – more than ten percent of the fungal DNA sequences may be misidentified at the species level, for example.

"A second complication", adds co-author Prof. Urmas Koljalg of the University of Tartu, "is that the software available for sequence quality management tend to be very complex and resource intensive. It borders on the unfair to expect everyone to have access to, and to master, such computer environments. Fortunately, a whole lot can be done towards quality control of DNA sequences using just manual means and a web browser. The current MycoKeys paper describes these means to help those biologists who do not have a strong background in computer science."

The article – "Five simple guidelines for establishing basic authenticity and reliability of newly generated fungal ITS sequences" – compiles principles and observations to assist the reader in the quality management of sequence data. Although focusing on fungi, the guidelines are general and apply to most groups of organisms and genes. The guidelines target traditional DNA sequencing and are broadly applicable to datasets used in systematics, taxonomy, and ecology.

Co-author Dr. Martin Hartmann of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL concludes, "We hope that our guidelines will assist the readers in sharpening their datasets so that, eventually, the trend of increasing noise in the public sequence databases can be arrested. Molecular data offer so much promise that we simply cannot afford to lose accuracy to bias and artifacts."

Original source:
Nilsson RH, Tedersoo L, Abarenkov K, Ryberg M, Kristiansson E, Hartmann M, Schoch CL, Nylander JAA, Bergsten J, Porter TM, Jumpponen A, Vaishampayan P, Ovaskainen O, Hallenberg N, Bengtsson-Palme J, Eriksson KM, Larsson K-H, Larsson E, Kõljalg U (2012) Five simple guidelines for establishing basic authenticity and reliability of newly generated fungal ITS sequences. MycoKeys 4: 37-62. doi: 10.3897/mycokeys.4.3606

Electronic publishing of new animal species allowed by new rules of the International Code of Zoological  Nomenclature (ICZN)

In a highly debated decision, the rules for publication of scientific zoological names have changed to allow purely digital publications to meet the requirements of the stringent Code of Zoological Nomenclature. On 4th of September, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) has passed an amendment that considers a publication in a digital scientific journal ‘legitimate’ if meeting archiving criteria and the publication is registered at the ICZN’s official online registry, ZooBank. The Amendment was published simultaneously in the journals ZooKeys and Zootaxa.

The decision has been contentious because the rules of the ICZN are considered to be among the most rigorous in scientific publication. The task of keeping information straight on animal names is immense and critical, as almost all data on the living world is linked through organismal names. Animals comprise the vast majority of multicellular species recognised (currently around 1.8 million, growing at a rate of about 20,000/year) and for each of these taxa, there are as many as 2-10 legitimately published names due to past debate and poor information exchange. Estimates of the total of living animal biodiversity are 4-20 times this number (8-50 million species).

The change in ICZN publication rules is intended to speed the process of publishing biodiversity information, to improve access to this information, and to help reduce the ‘taxonomic impediment’ that hinders cataloguing of the living world. The move, however, is seen by some as a risky experiment in unmooring a previously well-anchored system of linking publications, names and taxonomic concepts.

The ICZN ruling is explicit that while the publication can exist in an electronic-only format, it still must be published through a journal or book that has an ISSN or ISBN (International Standard Serial Number or International Standard Book Number) and should indicate that it will be archived for long term access. Purely web options such as blog posts, forums, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Scratchpads and other potentially ephemeral, unarchived web-only sources still do not qualify as legitimate publications under the new ICZN rules.

In practical terms this means:

1) The work must be registered in ZooBank prior to publication
2) The work itself states the date of publication and includes the registration record number (LSID) at ZooBank
3) The ZooBank registration record contains the ISSN or ISBN of the piblication venue (journal or book0  and the name of an electronic archive where the work is intended to be preserved

“The change in ICZN publication rules is intended to speed the process of publishing biodiversity information, to improve access to this information, and to help reduce the ‘taxonomic impediment’ that hinders our cataloguing of the living world. The new rules will open the door to electronic publication and facilitate a truly web-based taxonomy!”, said Dr Ellinor Mitchel, Executive Secretary of ICZN.

Contact
Dr Ellinor Michel, Executive Secretary, ICZN
Tel: +44-207-942-5653 or mobile +44-750-607-1547
Email: iczn-em@nhm.ac.uk

Original source
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (2012) Amendment of Articles 8, 9, 10, 21 and 78 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature to expand and refine methods of publication. ZooKeys 219: 1–10. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.219.3944
The paper was published simultaneously also in the journal Zootaxa.

Additional Information:
The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature is an international body of experts on scientific nomenclature who act as the arbiter on scientific names of animals. The Commission’s job is to ensure names of animals are stable and universal by applying the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, or occasionally by overriding the rules of the Code to better serve stability. www.iczn.org

The Natural History Museum is a world-leading science research centre and also winner of Visit London’s 2010 Evening Standard’s Peoples Choice Best London for Free Experience Award and Best Family Fun Award. Through its collections and scientific expertise the Museum is helping to conserve the extraordinary richness and diversity of the natural world with groundbreaking projects in more than 70 countries. www.nhm.ac.uk

Ensuring that species names mean what people think they mean is critical for reliable science, and normally the first example of a species that is described is the type specimen. A core role of natural history museums is to house and preserve type specimens, anchoring our information on biodiversity. The Natural History Museum in London has the largest collection of type specimens in the world.
 

An entire group of millipedes previously unknown in Australia has been discovered by a specialist – on museum shelves. Hundreds of tiny specimens of the widespread tropical family Pyrgodesmidae have been found among bulk samples in two museums, showing that native pyrgodesmids are not only widespread in Australia’s tropical and subtropical forests, but are also abundant and diverse. The study has been published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

"Most pyrgodesmid species are so small they could be easily overlooked," explained millipede specialist Dr Robert Mesibov, of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. "What’s interesting is how thoroughly overlooked they’ve been. We now know there are dozens of native species of these millipedes in our warm, wet forests, stretching over more than 2000 km on Australia’s east coast."

Six new species and three new genera of the colorful, curiously sculptured millipedes have now been described from Australia, all from the state of Queensland.

"It’s a great example of the value of museum collections," said Dr Mesibov. "Scientists from the Queensland Museum and CSIRO Entomology collected bagfuls of leaf litter in hundreds of places over many years. They extracted bugs in bulk from the fresh litter and took out just the ones they were studying, usually beetles. The remaining bugs are in ‘residues’ stored in the Queensland Museum and the Australian National Insect Collection."

Dr Mesibov said it’s not generally appreciated that zoological specialists find most of their new species in museums. "Sure, biological expeditions to previously unexplored places turn up exciting new species. But there are plenty of surprises waiting when you go rummaging through the residues on museum shelves. In this case, it was a whole family of animals not known from Australia."

Original source:
Mesibov R (2012) The first native Pyrgodesmidae (Diplopoda, Polydesmida) from Australia. ZooKeys 217: 63. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.217.3809

Additional Information:
The millipede research was supported by a grant from the Australian Biological Resources Study.

5 new species of cuckoo bees from the Cape Verde Islands

The biota of island archipelagos is of considerable interest to biologists. These isolated areas often act as ‘evolutionary laboratories’, spawning biological diversity rapidly and permitting many mechanisms to be observed and studied over relatively short periods of time. Such islands are often the places of new discoveries, including the documentation of new species.

The Republic of Cape Verde comprises 10 inhabited islands about 570 kilometers off the coast of West Africa and have been known since at least 1456. Although the bee fauna of the islands was thought to be moderately well known, research by Dr. Jakub Straka of Charles University in Prague and Dr. Michael S. Engel of the University of Kansas have shown that this is not the case. A recent study published in the Open Access journal ZooKeys documents the cuckoo bee fauna of the islands, revealing that their entire fauna of cuckoo bee species is in fact new to science.

These bees, like the more widely known cuckoo birds, invade the nests of other host bee species. While the host is out collecting pollen for its brood, the cuckoo bee female enters the nest and deposits her eggs on the food resource. The cuckoo bee egg hatches and the immature promptly dispatches the host egg, leaving the pollen and nectar reserves for itself.

The Cape Verde cuckoos are mostly large, black-and-white species, almost zebra-like in their appearance. However, one species, Chiasmognathus batelkai, is quite small, merely 3.2 – 4.2 millimeters in length. Despite its small proportions, C. batelkai is still the largest species of its genus, a group which otherwise comprises even more diminutive species. It appears as though at slightly less than 5 mm, C. batelkai is a remarkable case of island ‘gigantism’, whereby founder effects or genetic drift lead to an increased body size in isolated populations during the initial stages of species origination and differentiation.

The researchers are now attempting to explore the diversity of the cuckoo bees’ hosts and also to understand their evolutionary diversification across the archipelago.

Original source
Straka J, Engel MS (2012) The apid cuckoo bees of the Cape Verde Islands (Hymenoptera, Apidae). ZooKeys 218: 77. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.218.3683