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Today the spotlight is on our Top 10 authors by number of published articles in ZooKeys. Thank you for choosing us!

We take our Top 10 in a new direction – this time the focus will be on you our authors, reviewers & editors. Thank you for all the support – we couldn’t make it that great without you!

The first chart shows the Top 10 ZooKeys authors by number of newly described taxa.

Next week expect Top 10 authors by number of published articles, Top 10 editors and Top 10 reviewers!

For the second day of our Top 10 initiative we have selected the top 10 taxa who hold most publications in ZooKeys.

The beautiful artworks representing the taxa are courtesy of Slavena Peneva from her collection All-in-Forms.

All submitting authors who submit during the ZooKeys500 week (27 April – 1 May 2015) get the chance to choose as a present between a cool ZooKeys T-shirt or a high quality print of one of Ms. Peneva’s gorgeous artworks for a taxon of their choice.

ZooKeys 500 will be published on 27 April 2015, but until then we have a lot of exciting surprises in store.

One of them is that before the publication of ZooKeys 500 we will publish Top 10 charts for our most famous species, most published taxa and most prolific authors, editors and reviewers. Keep an eye on this page to see if your name or species will pop among the top 10! We also have exciting prizes in store for the winners as a thank you for their support and loyalty over the years.

First of the series come ZooKeys Top 10 most popular species. We chose these among many others and we feel we could have added many more in here, so feel free to share other species you feel deserved to be here through our social networks:  Twitter, Facebook and Google+ .

Identification of a large group of parasitoid wasps occurring in the African and Madagascan region is now easy to achieve with freely available online resources

A newly published open-access article “Afrotropical Cynipoidea (Hymenoptera)” by Dr. Simon van Noort, from the Natural History Department, Iziko South African Museum, Dr. Matthew L. Buffington from the Systematic Entomology Lab, USDA, and Dr Mattias Forshage from the Swedish Museum of Natural History provides cutting edge resources to enable the identification of parasitoid wasps in Africa and Madagascar.

The paper also provides an overview of biological associations. The development of this resource is aimed to facilitate future research on this ecologically and agriculturally important superfamily of wasps. This wasp group is represented by 306 described species and 54 genera in the region, but there are hundreds of further species to be described. Seven of these genera are only known from undescribed species in the region.

The rationale behind this initiative is to produce user-friendly, accessible keys to these wasps based on current taxonomic knowledge, a contemporary state-of-the-art resource that will be available to facilitate future work on the taxonomy of these wasps. With continued exploration of the region new species discoveries are being made all the time and an identification resource such as this will facilitate the process of discovery and documentation of the region’s biodiversity. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

This initial contribution to the book on the wasps, bees and ants of Africa and Madagascar marks a turning point in the larger understanding and appreciation of this incredibly diverse and important order of insects. There are 20 000 described species and 2 000 genera of wasps, bees and ants in the region, but there are hundreds of thousands of species still waiting to be discovered and described.

The final book will provide an essential resource for identification of African and Madagascan wasps, bees and ants by a diverse array of end-users, from specialists, ecologists, and conservationists, to the applied forestry and agricultural sectors, enabling effective long-term conservation of an economically important and ecologically significant component of African and Madagascan ecosystems.

Elucidating wasp systematics is a fundamental requirement for the future preservation of ecosystems that play an essential life support function for continued human survival. The spectacular diversity of African and Madagascan wasps can be viewed at http://www.waspweb.org

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Original source:

van Noort, S, Buffington ML & Forshage, M. 2015. Afrotropical Cynipoidea (Hymenoptera).ZooKeys 493: 1-176. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.493.6353

A group of plant invasion ecologists from University of Delhi, India have highlighted the need to disentangle the composition of the highly variable Lantana species complex in order to facilitate management efforts towards this highly invasive species. The study was published in the latest issue of the open access journal NeoBiota.

The native range of L. camara is Central and South America; however it has become naturalized in around 60 tropical and sub-tropical countries worldwide. The plants from this species complex are highly invasive and often colonize previously disturbed areas such as logged forests and wastelands. Importantly, the extent of L. camara distribution is still increasing.

To try and tackle these worrying trends Neha Goyal & Gyan P. Sharma from the University of Delhi have looked into the reasons why management of Lantana has proved ineffective so far. Based on their research opinion, the scientists propose unresolved composition of Lantanaspecies complex as one of the prime reasons behind ineffective management of this invader.

The species complex, Lantana camara L. (sensu lato) [Lantana camara in the broad sense] consists of varied complex constituents; however the exact composition of the complex remains unclear. The complex constituents show huge diversification at the phenotypic (morphology of leaves, flowers, stem and thorniness etc.) as well as at genotypic level (chromosome number and ploidy level).

Endless episodes of horticultural improvement within the genus and on-going hybridization events in the wild tend to further increase the complexity. The striking diversity in the complex makes it extremely difficult for the workers in the field to appropriately identify the species of interest, predict and understand its invasiveness. Thus, delimiting understanding ofLantana camara L. to all possible weedy and/or invasive genets within the complex is misleading with the current understanding of the complex composition.

Huge diversity in the complex and rapid adaptive evolution might potentially be held responsible for complex constituents’ wider distribution. The study further cautions that the complex beholds immense invasion potential in future scenarios of climate change.

Realizing the remarkable spread and better performance of the invader in heterogeneous environmental conditions, circumscribing composition of the species complex is important to check invader’s future spread risks. The focus of the research article has aimed for a consistent taxonomic delineation based on morphology, cytology, and genetic attributes with genome size as a potential taxonomic tool for disentangling the formidable Lantana species complex.

“As a future development after this initial synthesis we look forward to possible strengthening of the collaborative research efforts of invasion ecologists, cytogeneticists and conservationists to disentangle Lantana species complex,” explains Dr. Gyan Prakash Sharma and Neha Goyal.

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Original source:

Goyal N, Sharma GP (2015) Lantana camara L. (sensu lato): an enigmatic complex. NeoBiota 25: 15-26. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.25.8205

Scientists have discovered three new species of dragon-esque woodlizards in the Andes of Peru and Ecuador. The new species differ from their closest relatives in scale features, coloration and DNA. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Field and laboratory work by Omar Torres-Carvajal (Museo de Zoología QCAZ, Ecuador), Pablo J. Venegas (CORBIDI, Peru), and Kevin de Queiroz (Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, U.S.A) has resulted in the discovery of three new species of dragon-esque woodlizards from Andean cloudforests in Ecuador and Peru.

The unusual discoveries took place in areas within the 1,542,644 km2 Tropical Andes hotspot, western South America.

Finding three new species of woodlizards is a striking fact given that they are among the largest and most colorful lizards in South American forests.

Woodlizards (Enyalioides) are diurnal and live in lowland tropical rainforests, such as the Chocó and western Amazon basin, as well as cloudforests on both sides of the Andes. The new species described by Torres-Carvajal et al. increases the number of species of woodlizards to 15.

Recent expeditions to several localities along the Andes of Ecuador and Peru led to the collection of several specimens of woodlizards, which the authors suspected were something new. After comparing the new specimens with those deposited in several natural history museums from many countries, the author’s suspicions became stronger.

When the authors looked at DNA evidence, there were no doubts that the specimens collected recently belonged to three undescribed species of woodlizards.

‘I started working with woodlizards in 2006 as part of my postdoc at the Smithsonian Institution under the direction of Kevin de Queiroz. At that time only seven species of woodlizards had been described, and they were recognized in the literature as one of the less diverse groups of South American lizards. During the last few years we doubled the number of known species of woodlizards, showing that the diversity of these conspicuous reptiles had been underestimated. That more than half of the diversity of a group of large, dragon-looking reptiles from South America has been discovered in recent years should be heard by people in charge of conservation and funding agencies’ said Dr. Torres-Carvajal.

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Original source:

Torres-Carvajal O, Venegas PJ, de Queiroz K (2015) Three new species of woodlizards (Hoplocercinae, Enyalioides) from northwestern South America. ZooKeys 494: 107-132. doi:10.3897/zookeys.494.8903

Research endeavours undertaken in the recent past by the Division of Arachnology of Sacred Heart College, Kochi in India, under the leadership of Dr. P.A. Sebastian, have lead to the discovery of many new spiders from “Western Ghats” in southern India, one of the biodiversity hotspots of the world. Their new finding is a little jumping spider belonging to the family Salticidae and genus Stenaelurillus.

The new species has been named asStenaelurillus albus, owing to the presence of a unique whitish area on the tegulum of the pedipalp – the copulatory organ of the male spider. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The new spider, along with Stenaelurillus lesserti, another species that has been re-described in this paper are remarkable for the presence of mating plugs or copulatory plugs, which are supposed function as the paternity protection devices. ‘Mating plugs are not very unusual in the animal kingdom and their presence has been described in a number of spider families including Salticidae’, said Dr. Sebastian. ‘However, it is interesting to note that they have been reported in only 17 species of the approximately 5800 jumping spiders described so far’, he observed.

Mating plug was observed in the female copulatory opening of both the species described in this paper. The left copulatory opening of both S. albus and S. lesserti were found to be sealed with amorphous secretions. Compared to S. lesserti, the mating plug of S. albus was more prominent and covering nearly the whole area of the left copulatory opening and the surrounding female reproductive region.

With the discovery of the new species, the genus Stenaelurillus is now represented by 28 species, majority (21) from Africa and the rest from Asia including India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Iran, China, Nepal and Tibet. All are medium sized spiders, with their anterior region (prosoma) bearing two white transverse stripes on the dorsal side. ‘Another notable feature of these spiders is the presence of strong bristles around the eye region in both males and females’ opined Dr. Sebastian.

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Original source:

Sebastian PA, Sankaran PM, Malamel JJ, Joseph MM (2015) Description of new species ofStenaelurillus Simon, 1886 from the Western Ghats of India with the redescription ofStenaelurillus lesserti Reimoser, 1934 and notes on mating plug in the genus (Arachnida, Araneae, Salticidae). ZooKeys 491: 63-78. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.491.8218

A tiny new millipede has been found which is only known to occur within the city of Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.

The 1 cm-long species was discovered in a city park by two local naturalists, Wade and Lisa Clarkson. Working with millipede specialist Dr Bob Mesibov of Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, the Clarksons carefully mapped the range of the new species over several years.

To their surprise, the millipede was easy to find in eucalypt woodland in city parks and reserves, but apparently absent from eucalypt woodland just outside the city, or further afield. The known range of the new species is less than 12 square kilometres.

The species has been named Tasmaniosoma anubis and described by Dr Mesibov in a paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The name ‘anubis’ was suggested by Lisa Clarkson. Anubis was a jackal-headed god of ancient Egypt, and the top of the genitalia of male T. anubis have branches which resemble the snout and ears of a jackal.

T. anubis is one of eight similar native species within the genus Tasmaniosoma. The genus is endemic to Tasmania and now has 22 described species, with several more known but not yet named and described.

The closest relations of T. anubis live in northeast Tasmania. One of these was named T. clarksonorum in 2010, in recognition of the diligent work of the Clarksons in mapping its range several years earlier.

Despite the small range of T. anubis, it does not seem to be a threatened species. It is abundant in Launceston’s largest urban reserve, the 440 hectare Trevallyn Nature Recreation Area, which adjoins the city’s well-known Cataract Gorge reserve. Within the reserves it co-exists with introduced millipedes and other invertebrates, and can be found next to sealed roads and in parkland visited by thousands of recreational users every year.

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Original Source:

Mesibov R (2015) Three new species of Tasmaniosoma Verhoeff, 1936 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Dalodesmidae) from northeast Tasmania, Australia. ZooKeys 488: 31-46. doi:10.3897/zookeys.488.9460