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Amateur botanists in the Western Cape Province of South Africa have discovered two new species of beautiful blue-flowered legumes. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

Few people take the chance to tramp the empty rolling ranges of mountains and the fragmented and jagged coastline of the Southern Cape in South Africa. Most avoid it because of how wild and tough-going it can be.

This region is part of a unique and species rich global flora called the Cape Floral Kingdom. Yet there are a band of intrepid walkers and climbers who traverse these areas every week searching for rare and endangered plants.

One such group call themselves the Outramps (Afrikaans for Senior walkers). They are part of bigger group of amateurs who belong to a Citizen science group called C.R.E.W. (Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers) which is run by the South African Biodiversity Institute(SANBI). ‘Crewites’, as they are called locally, are volunteers from the public who help with monitoring and conserving South Africa’s threatened plants.

The Outramps are the most active CREW group in South Africa and are led by their indomitable leader Dianne Turner. She and her group, in their dilapidated and famous Kombi called ‘The Buchu Bus’ have crisscrossed the region many times and have assessed the conservation status of many rare species.

Recently they discovered two beautiful blue-flowered legumes which they thought were new to science. They sent these to Abubakar Bello (a Nigerian student doing a Ph.D. on the legume tribe Psoraleeae at the University of Cape Town) and one of his supervisors Prof. Charles Stirton.

After a field trip with their colleague Prof. Muthama Muasya, to see them in the field and after comparing them with known species, they were identified as new members of the legume genus Psoralea.

As Charles Stirton told us “Without the persistence and enthusiasm of the Outrampers, we would never have picked up these species in our studies as they were in areas we would not have accessed in our planned field trips. It is not uncommon for highly localised species to be overlooked by monographers”.

To honour the Outrampers, they decided to name the new species after the group leader Dianne (Psoralea diturnerae) and the ace photographer in the group Nicky van Berkel (P. vanberkelae) who discovered the plants respectively.

Di’s Psoralea (P. diturnerae) is a mountain species and is known from only a few localities around the Camferskloof area in the Outeniqua mountains.

Nicky’s Psoralea (P. vanberkelae) is locally abundant in an area of less than 20 km2 coastal habitat along the Robberg Coastal Corridor. Fortunately, the main population is owned and protected by a keen conservationist Chris von Christierson in his private Fynbos Private Nature Reserve. This stunning species is a flagship species for this wild and relatively unknown coastal strip where the cliff edges rise sharply from the sea and their escarpments are not easy to access.

The discovery of P. vanberkelae has stimulated a drive to undertake a botanical inventory along the unique 16 km long coastal strip between Robberg and Harkerville and to get it declared a Protected Environment. The University of Cape Town botanists are keen to support this as they also noticed many other rare species in the area. Even normal plants such as Virgilias and buchus adopt strange forms here – a combination of the shearing salty sea breeze spray, the quartz substrate, their isolation, and poor local nutrition

Citizen scientists in South Africa are playing a valuable role in the discovery and protection of the unique Cape Flora. This paper is a testament to their contribution.

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Original source:

Bello A, Stirton CH, Chimphango SBM, Muasya AM (2015) Psoralea diturnerae and P. vanberkelae (Psoraleeae, Fabaceae): two new species restricted to the Core Cape Region of South Africa. PhytoKeys 44: 97-107. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.44.8999

Additional Information:

Support for the study was provided by the Nigeria Tertiary Education Trust Fund (NTETF), Management of Umaru Musa Yar’adua University Katsina, Nigeria, South African National Research Foundation, and the University of Cape Town.

A Venezuelan evolutionary biologist and a US zoologist state that they have refuted, through mitochondrial DNA sequencing, a recent claim, also based on such sequencing, that unknown type of bear must exist. in the Himalayas and that it may be, at least in part, the source of yeti legends. Their study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Last year, B. Sykes and co-authors, in the course of mitochondrial DNA sequencing identification of hair samples that had been attributed to “anomalous primates” (yetis, bigfoots, and others), claimed to have found that two samples said to have come from the Himalayas had a 100% match with DNA recovered from a fossil Polar Bear from over 40,000 years ago. On this basis, they concluded that a currently unknown type of bear must inhabit that portion of Asia.

Later, however, it was shown by C.J. Edwards and R. Barnett that the sample that matchedSykes and co-authors‘ Himalayan ones, was in fact, from a present-day Polar Bear from Alaska, not from a fossil, and they hypothesized that the genetic material in the samples attributed to an unknown type of bear might have been misleading because of degradation.

Sykes and co-authors, however, have continued to maintain that their Himalayan samples must be from an unknown type of bear — a claim that has received a good deal of attention from the media.

However, further analysis by Eliécer E. Gutiérrez, currently a postdoctoral fellow at theSmithsonian Institution, and Ronald H. Pine, affiliated with the Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, have concluded that the relevant genetic variation in Brown Bears makes it impossible to assign, with certainty, Sykes and co-authors’ samples to either that species or the Polar Bear.

In fact, because of genetic overlap, the samples could have come from either one. Because Brown Bears occur in the Himalayas, Gutiérrez and Pine state that therefore there is no reason to believe that the samples in question came from anything other than ordinary Himalayan Brown Bears.

As part of their study, Gutiérrez and Pine examined how the gene sequences analyzed might show the ways in which six present-day species of bears, including the Polar Bear and the Brown Bear; and the extinct Eurasian Cave Bear; might be related.

The results were partly in agreement with past studies but were also showing some new insights. The data set resulting from studying this part of the bears’ genomes seems to be insufficient to make any definitive decisions as to what are the existing relationships on the basis of it alone. In combination with the results of other studies, however, it may very well prove quite useful in making such decisions.

Interestingly, it was found that one sequence from an Asian Black Bear from Japan indicated that it was not closely related to the mainland members of that species. This unexpected large evolutionary distance between these two geographic groups of the Asian Black Bear probably deserves further study.

“In fact, a study looking at the genetic and morphological variability of Asian Black Bear populations throughout the geographic distribution of the species is yet to be conducted, and it would surely yield exciting results,” Gutiérrez said.

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Original source:

Gutiérrez EE, Pine RH (2015) No need to replace an “anomalous” primate (Primates) with an “anomalous” bear (Carnivora, Ursidae). ZooKeys 487: 141-154. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.487.9176

Two minute, glassy snails found in 2012 during a 17-cave sampling expedition of Northern Spain have been described. The international expedition team of scientists included Adrienne Jochum and Alexander Weigand (Germany), Rajko Slapnik and Jana Valentincic, (Slovenia), Carlos Prieto and Benjamín Gómez (Spain).

The cave-dwelling snails, known as Thorn Snails, are less than 2mm big and are amongst the smallest terrestrial snails known, some barely reaching 1 mm in shell size. Their evolution dates back to the Cenozoic Era, ca. 65 million years ago. These transparent, unpigmented snails belong to the genus Zospeum, whose species are all cave dwellers.

The two new species, Zospeum vasconicum and Zospeum zaldivarae, comprise a genus containing about 20 species known to inhabit caves from Northern Spain to the Dinaric Alps of former Yugoslavia. The team’s discovery of the first subterranean Thorn Snail colony in Northern Spain was initially published in the journal MalaCo. Now, the classification of these enigmatic snails from the moist, muddy cave walls underneath the Basque-Cantabrian Mountians has been published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Previous research dates from the latter half of the 19th and 20th Centuries and was conducted on shells alone. Live individuals are very rare. Molecular studies published by the first three authors have contributed much to the knowledge of the evolution of these tiny troglobitic snails. The new species belong to the first recorded live Zospeum populations from Spain. Two years ago, Alexander Weigand described the cave-dwelling, Thorn Snail relative of these Spanish species from a plunging 950m-deep chasm in the Velebit Mts. of Croatia.

These rare denizens of the dark can only be found alive using a magnifying glass. Knowledge of their subterranean ecology as well as a “gut feeling” of where they might be hanging out is necessary. The two new species were described using shell criteria in conjunction with molecular investigations.

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Original Source:

Jochum, A., De Winter, A.J., Weigand, A.W., Gómez, B. & Prieto, C.E. (2015). Two new species ofZospeum Bourguignat, 1856 from the Basque-Cantabrian Mountains, Northern Spain (Eupulmonata, Ellobioidea, Carychiidae). ZooKeys, 483: 8?96. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.483.9167

Additional Information

Funding:

BiK-F Biodiversity and Climate Research Center of the research- funding program, ‘LOEWE – Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlich-ökonomischer Exzellenz’ of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and the Arts for the State of Hessen.

Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology of the Slovene Republic (P1-0236 Biodiversity and Gradients)

The Basque Government through the Research group on “Systematics, Biogeography and Population Dynamics” (GIC10/76; IT575/13).

Launched in 2009, iSpot is a citizen science platform aimed at helping anyone, anywhere identify anything in nature. To date, around 42,000 people have registered as iSpot users and over 390,000 observations have been made, leading to the identification of more than 24,000 species.

New research, undertaken by the OU, looking into the success of the iSpot model has found that the structure of the platform’s social network to be a key feature. iSpot combines learning technology with crowdsourcing, enabling beginners to connect with experts, and leading to plant and wildlife species being identified accurately.

Over 94% of observations submitted to iSpot receive some sort of identification with more than half being named within an hour. Using a unique process based on an iSpot user’s ‘reputation’, the platform motivates iSpotters to verify species and rewards them for doing so. In 57% of such cases the reputation system improved the accuracy of the determination.

The research concluded that by effectively connecting users in this way they are able overcome the social as well as geographic barriers that prevent the sharing of knowledge.

Janice Ansine, Citizen Science Project Manager at The Open University and iSpot manager said: “Being able to correctly identify plant and wildlife is a key skill to furthering our understanding of biodiversity, but sadly one that tends to be neglected in formal education at all levels. This research shows that a social network such as iSpot is an incredibly effective tool in not only connecting nature lovers from across the globe, but also in capturing invaluable biodiversity data and insight.”

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Lead author Prof. Jonathan Silvertown, former Professor of Ecology and now Visiting Professor at the OU and co-author Janice Ansine will be giving talks on iSpot at the inauguralInternational Citizen Science Association Conference in San Jose, California (11-12 February 2015).

The findings of this research were published this month in the academic journal Zookeys.

Original source:

Silvertown J, Harvey M, Greenwood R, Dodd M, Rosewell J, Rebelo T, Ansine J, McConway K (2015) Crowdsourcing the identification of organisms: A case-study of iSpot. ZooKeys 480: 125-146. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.480.8803

Scientists from the Natural History Museum London are facing the challenges of mass digitization of museum specimens by inventing a creative, functional and most importantly quite cheap way to capture old and fragile specimens.

Whoever said scientists are not creative will think twice at the face of the new LEGO® pinned insect manipulator (IMp).

The idea came to life after years of using commercial manipulators which come in standard sizes and set up and are often hard to use with some groups of insects.

Available DIY on the other hand are also not convenient as they are made from materials and tools that are not readily available to everyone. Furthermore most DIY setups are specifically designed for a particular group of insects and may not be of an appropriate size for other insect groups.

So what will make for a good, easy to use and customizable pinned insect manipulator? This is where creativity kicks in for Dr. Steen Dupont and colleagues from the NHM London. To answer the challenges of mass digitization in their day-to-day digitization tasks they invented a pinned insect manipulator (IMp) made entirely of LEGO® bricks.

The new invention holds several advantages among which are universal applicability, availability, affordability and the opportunity to customization for the need of each case at all times. Most importantly they ensure minimum handling of fragile specimens to take the risks of damage to a minimum.

“We believe the LEGO® insect specimen manipulators are a valuable addition to any entomologist’s toolbox and that the use of any insect manipulator is in the interest of anyone dealing with valuable specimens as the actual handling of the specimen is reduced to a minimum during examination.”, explains Dr. Steen Dupont.

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Original Source:

Dupont S, Price B, Blagoderov V (2015) IMp: The customizable LEGO® Pinned Insect Manipulator. ZooKeys 481: 131-138. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.481.8788

A new genus and species of flowering plants from the custard apple family, Annonaceae, has been discovered in the jungles of Gabon by French and Gabonese botanists. The extraordinary genus was named Sirdavidia, after Sir David Attenborough to honour his influence on the life and careers of the scientists who discovered it. The study was published in the open access journalPhytoKeys.

But what is so special about this new discovery? The new genus was in fact erected to accommodate an unusual new species, found in Monts de Cristal National Park, Gabon during an expedition focusing on the study of Magnoliidae floral diversity in rain forests, to which the Annonaceae family belongs.

It was a great surprise for the researchers to discover an unusual Annonaceae plant not only in one of the botanically best known areas in Gabon, but also very close to a main road. Perhaps its rarity was the reason why no one had stumbled upon it before. Despite the careful study of the area the new species Sirdavidia solannona was only present in two localities, which also led to this species being preliminarily classified as Endangered.

“This new discovery underlines once again the importance of the Gabonese national parks for conserving the wonderful yet incompletely known biodiversity for the country and Africa.” indicates Raoul Niangadouma, senior botanist at the Herbier National du Gabon, Libreville.

“The last thing on my mind when starting this expedition was to discover a new species, let alone a new genus!” indicates Dr. Hervé Sauquet, senior author and Associate Professor atUniversité Paris-Sud. “We aimed for well-known regions in Gabon because we wanted to be sure to find the necessary flowers for our project”.

With its unusual flower structure characterised by red petals contrasting with its bright yellow loosely arranged stamens, the flowers of this newly discovered small tree did not quite fit any of the previously described genera.

DNA sequence analyses led by Dr. Bonaventure Sonké, Professor at the Université de Yaoundé I in Cameroon, proved the authors right – the newly discovered plant required the erection of a completely new genus to accommodate it. But what struck the scientists even more was that the closest relative of Sirdavidia was to be found some 3000 km away in an isolated forest in Tanzania.

“It is funny that the new genus is a close relative to Mwasumbia, endemic to Tanzania, a genus I also described a few years ago,” explains the lead author Dr. Thomas Couvreur, Researcher at Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France, currently based in Yaoundé, Cameroon. “When I saw the results of the DNA analysis confirming its position I thought someone was pulling my leg. Discovering two new genera on opposite sides of Africa and they turn out to be closely related!”

The authors of the study decided to commemorate this once-in-a-lifetime discovery, by naming the new genus after Sir David Attenborough. Sirdavidia is in fact the first plant genus named after him, although several plant species already bear his name.

“Sir David Attenborough has been such a wonderful and important influence in my life and the life of so many,” comments Dr. Couvreur. “I was really surprised when I realised that no one has named a genus after him before, so I found this discovery an excellent opportunity to honor him with a genus name.”

“I show David Attenborough’s The Private Life of Plants BBC series every year to my students” adds Dr. Sauquet. “This will be a nice story to tell them. David Attenborough’s legacy is exactly about that: stimulating passion and interest about the natural world around us.”

Sir David was “truly thrilled” when hearing about this new genus: “I know very well that such a decision is the greatest compliment that a biologist can pay to another and I am truly grateful,” he indicated.

But the wonders of the new discovery did not stop here for the team. Curiously the flowers ofSirdavidia solannona are probably “buzz pollinated”, a very specific type of pollination whereby bees use the vibration of their wings to extract the pollen grains onto their bellies. The flowers of Sirdavidia have a striking resemblance with those of the nightshade or Solanaceae family – champions of buzz pollination. This resemblance with Solanaceae inspired the name of the new species.

“What is really special about this is that buzz pollination is unknown in Magnoliideae and early divergent angiosperms in general, which represent around 10,000 species worldwide.” add Drs. Couvreur and Sauquet. “If confirmed by our further studies, this will prove to be another very exciting aspect of this discovery!”

A “species page information” on this new species can be found at the World Annonaceae Scratchpad.

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Original Source:

Couvreur TLP, Niangadouma R, Sonké B, Sauquet H (2015) Sirdavidia, an extraordinary new genus of Annonaceae from Gabon. PhytoKeys 46: 1-19. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.46.8937

Scientists discovered a new water frog species from the Pacific slopes of the Andes in central Peru. The discovery was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The name of the new species Telmatobius ventriflavum comes from the Latin venter, meaning belly, and flavus, meaning yellow and refers to the golden yellow and orange coloration on the body.

The Telmatobiinae, water frogs, are a subfamily of frogs endemic to the Andes of South America. The populations of several species of Telmatobius have declined dramatically over the past 30 years, and the genus is now thought to be extinct in Ecuador. These declines have been associated with the spread of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis.

The new species was discovered in the species-poor coastal valleys of central Peru, a region well studied but apparently still hiding surprises.

“The discovery of a new species in such arid and easily accessible environments shows that much remains to be done to document amphibian diversity in the Andes.” comments the lead author of the study Dr. Alessandro Catenazzi of Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The study detected the presence of the chytrid fungus, but the impact of chytridiomycosis on the new species is unknown. The authors recommend disease surveillance to prevent outbreaks that might endanger the survival of this endemic species.

The new species was found during a survey in 2012 for the Biodiversity and Monitoring Assessment Program of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation Education and Sustainability.

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Original Source:

Catenazzi A, Vargas García V, Lehr E (2015) A new species of Telmatobius(Amphibia, Anura, Telmatobiidae) from the Pacific slopes of the Andes, Peru. ZooKeys 480: 81-95. doi:10.3897/zookeys.480.8578

The five-day discussions and decisions of the Nomenclature Section of the XVII International Botanical Congress took place in Vienna, Austria in July 2005. This meeting was held in association with the International Botanical Congress, which takes place every six years and is where the world’s premier experts on the rules for naming plants, fungi and algae get together to debate and update the rule book for naming the organisms they study.

The primary product of the meeting, theInternational Code of Botanical Nomenclature, or “Vienna Code”, was published in 2006. Another other important product is the official report for the historical record, which has just been published as an open-access forum paper in PhytoKeys.

The Nomenclature meeting in Vienna was attended by 198 delegates. This particular meeting was fairly conservative in comparison with those at some earlier International Botanical Congresses. Relatively few changes to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature were accepted, but a small number of significant changes and many useful clarifications and improvements were adopted.

Perhaps the most important decision regarded the publication status of theses submitted for a higher degree from 1953 onward. These would no longer be considered as effectively published for nomenclatural purposes unless a statement to that effect or other evidence was included. Three important sets of changes applying to the naming of fossils and fungi were also accepted.

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The inclusion of a Glossary in the Code for the first time was a notable achievement. It was very closely linked to the wording of the Code, and only nomenclatural terms defined in the Code were included. The new Glossary was initiated by Paul C. Silva (1922-2014), a specialist in algae and long-serving member of the Editorial Committee of the Code.

The report was co-authored by: Christina Flann, Species 2000, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands; John McNeill, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK, and Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada; Fred R. Barrie, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO, USA; Dan H. Nicolson, US National Herbarium, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA; David L. Hawksworth, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, The Natural History Museum, London, UK and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK; Nicholas J. Turland, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Germany; and Anna M. Monro, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research, Canberra, Australia. Production of the report was supported by funds from the International Association for Plant taxonomy (IAPT; http://www.iapt-taxon.org/index_layer.php), while its publication as an open-access forum paper was sponsored by Pensoft.

Original Source:

Flann C, McNeill J, Barrie FR, Nicolson DH, Hawksworth DL, Turland NJ, Monro AM (2015) Report on botanical nomenclature – Vienna 2005 XVII International Botanical Congress, Vienna: Nomenclature Section, 12-16 July 2005. PhytoKeys 45: 1-341. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.45.9138

Research primarily conducted in Okinawa, Japan, by graduate student Yuka Irei and associate professor James Davis Reimer from the University of the Ryukyus, along with Dr. Frederic Sinniger from JAMSTEC, has found two new species of encrusting anemones, or colonial zoantharians, in unexpected locations. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The two species belong to the genus Palythoa, which is commonly found on shallow coral reefs in subtropical and tropical waters worldwide. Surprisingly, the two new species were found living in cracks and caves in the reefs, and do not have zooxanthellae, unlike almost other known Palythoa species. Zooxanthellae are symbiotic, photosynthetic, single-celled algae that can provide host species with energy from the sun.

Species of Palythoa are sometimes the dominant benthic organism on shallow coral reefs, and are also common in the pet trade. Their success may in part be due to their ability to host zooxanthellae while also being efficient planktonivores, allowing them to live in a wide variety of coral reef conditions from shallow reef flats to steep and deep reef slopes. However, specimens first found by Irei and Sinniger from shallow caves and cracks in Okinawa and New Caledonia appeared to be unique in their habitat preference. Additionally, analyses showed these specimens lacked zooxanthellae.

“One of the species is described from just in front of a landfilled reef coastline on Okinawa Island and it is encouraging to see that there is still some unknown biodiversity just in front of our door”, commented Sinniger.

“At first, we were surprised at the discovery of specimens, and thought we had one undescribed and unusual species on our hands,” said Irei, “but we were even more surprised when DNA analyses showed clearly that there were two different species.” Further research by Irei and Reimer in Okinawa revealed additional minor morphological differences between the two species. The new study formally describes these new specimens as two species.

“These two species are morphologically very similar,” stated Reimer, “with long tentacles to acquire plankton from the water column, and polyps that are curved towards the entrances of cracks or caves for better access to their food source.” While genetically distinct, each species appears to have evolved very similar features to adapt to its life in the dark. “These two species provide an excellent example of parallel evolution, as each evolved independently from each other,” added Irei. The only reliable way to tell the two species apart asides from DNA are the patterns and markings on their tentacles.

Palythoa species are usually colonial, often forming large groups with many polyps. They are known from coral reef environments worldwide, and many species have been shown to contain the palytoxin, a lethal toxin named after the genus. It is not known if the two new species contain toxin.

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Original source:

Irei Y, Sinniger F, Reimer JD (2015) Descriptions of two azooxanthellate Palythoa species (Subclass Hexacorallia, Order Zoantharia) from the Ryukyu Archipelago, southern Japan.ZooKeys 478: 1-26. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.478.8512