The recent Desert Locust upsurge had a major impact on Pakistanâs agriculture, with swarms causing immense damage to all types of crops. A joint French-Pakistani team provides an overview of the dynamics of this upsurge, assesses its impact and control measures, and clarifies the role of different stakeholders in the management of this pest, suggesting various improvements for the future. The study was published in the open access Journal of Orthoptera Research.
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Events of jaguars predating on and attacking dogs are poorly documented throughout the Americas. Researchers from Mexico and Germany report in detail jaguar attacks on 20 dogs at a tourist site in the Mexican Caribbean. In addition, they describe an initiative proposed by locals as well as national and international NGOs to prevent human-jaguar conflicts due to pet predation. The study was published in the open-access journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation.
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Two new species of venomous snakes were just added to Asiaâs fauna â the Nujiang pit viper (Gloydius lipipengi) from Zayu, Tibet, and the Glacier pit viper (G. swild) found west of the Nujiang River and Heishui, Sichuan, east of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Our team of researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Bangor University published the discovery in the open-access journal ZooKeys. In this study, we performed a new molecular phylogenetic analysis of the Asian pit vipers.
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âTrends in Arthropods of Alpine Aquatic Ecosystemsâ is the first topical collection for the journal of the Swiss Entomological Society
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The new Horizon 2020-funded project BiCIKL (Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) is a partnership of 14 European institutions, representing the continentâs and global key players in biodiversity research and data. They have committed to link their infrastructures and technologies, in order to provide flawless access to data across all stages of the research process. Three years in, BiCIKL will have created the first-of-its-kind Biodiversity Knowledge Hub.
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The deep ocean is the last frontier on our planet. It is home to creatures beyond our imagination and filled to the brim with life. Coastal communities have known the value of a healthy ocean for centuries, yet much of its life remains unknown, sitting beyond the reach of most research programs due to the hostility of its depth and vastness. With current research and monitoring activities in the region mostly focussing on shallow reefs, our Field Identification Guide, published in the peer-reviewed, open-access Biodiversity Data Journal, aims to showcase the benthic organisms that inhabit the Seychellesâ deeper reefscapes. The research cruise that gathered the imagery data used to create the guide, Nektonâs âFirst Descent: Seychelles Expeditionâ, was the first of its kind to systematically survey deeper reefs in Seychelles waters, bringing to light previously little-known ecosystems and their inhabitants.
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The scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft and its self-developed publishing platform ARPHA welcome Biosystematics and Ecology – a journal by the Austrian Academy of Sciences – to its growing open-access scholarly portfolio. By moving to ARPHA, Biosystematics and Ecology now enjoys a long list of high-tech perks, which dramatically enhance the entire publishing process, from submission to publication, distribution and archiving.
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Trees of the genus Otoba have small, foul-smelling flowers coloured in yellow or greenish yellow, and round, aromatic fruits. Toucans, monkeys, or small terrestrial animals sometimes feed on their fruits, while herbivorous insects have developed a taste for their leaves. Part of the nutmeg family, Otoba trees are widely distributed from Nicaragua to Brazil, with […]
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Sometimes research emerges from the strangest turns of events. In this case, an online video created by an amateur videographer on life under the sea ice in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, resulted in a unique taxonomic study on Antarctic jellyfish and an image-based training set for machine learning. This study was published in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal.
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In times of exacerbating biodiversity loss, reliable data on species occurrence are essential. Environmental DNA (eDNA) – DNA released from organisms into the water – is increasingly used to detect fishes in biodiversity monitoring campaigns. However, eDNA turns out to be capable of providing much more than fish occurrence data, including information on other vertebrates. A study, published in the open-access journal Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, demonstrates how comprehensively vertebrate diversity can be assessed at no additional costs.
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