Russia’s NaRFU moves its Arctic Environmental Research journal to new-age ARPHA Platform

In its latest issue, the Northern (Arctic) Federal University’s open-access journal demonstrates a brand new look and a range of high-tech innovations

Formerly known as Bulletin of the Pomor University and Bulletin of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, the open-access peer-reviewed journal published by Russia’s Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU) recently changed its name to Arctic Environmental Research (AER) to accentuate its international relevance. Now, it also accommodates a whole set of novelties and innovations as a result of its move to the journal platform ARPHA.

Its first issue in collaboration with the revolutionary publishing solution, developed by scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft, is already live on the journal’s new website.

Launched in 2012, AER continues to provide a scholarly venue for publication of research findings related to the Arctic and adjacent areas, in order to draw attention to the most relevant, promising and interesting findings from the region, and facilitate exchange of scientific information on an international level.

Traditionally, the journal covers a wide range of disciplines, including geology, geodesy and cartography, geoinformatics, geoecology, engineering geology, permafrost and soil science, prospecting and exploration of solid minerals, oil and gas fields, biogeography, botany, microbiology, zoology, genetics, ecology, hydrobiology, parasitology, mycology, soil science, biological resources. Its focus is placed on original research based on field or laboratory experiments and mathematical modeling of processes taking place in high latitudes.

Thanks to its collaboration with ARPHA platform, the journal has already implemented a long list of high-tech perks in addition to its brand new sleek and modern look and feel.

To the benefit of authors, reviewers, editors and readers alike, the fast-track and convenient publishing workflow provided by ARPHA takes care for each manuscript all the way from submission and reviewing to dissemination and archiving without ever leaving the platform’s singular collaboration-friendly online environment.

Once published, all articles in AER are to be available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML), enriched with a whole set of semantic enhancements, so that the articles are easy to discover, access and harvest by both humans and machines.

Amongst the high-tech widgets at disposal to anyone who accesses an article in the revamped journal are the article-level metrics available thanks to the partnership between ARPHA and the revolutionary discovery and analytics tools Dimensions and Altmetric. By searching through millions of research articles, grant applications, clinical trials, as well as policy documents, news stories, blogs and social media posts, they allow for each article’s references and citations in both the academic and the public sphere to be monitored in real time.

“I am truly delighted to welcome Arctic Environmental Research to ARPHA’s family,” says ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “Being proven pioneers on the scholarly publishing scene in addition to our strong presence in environmental science, at ARPHA we believe that our white-label publishing solution makes a perfect match for forward-thinking institutions such as the NArFU and AER.

“We are starting our cooperation with the scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft and moving to the journal ARPHA platform,” says NArFU’s Vice rector for scientific work and AER’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Dr. Boris Filippov. “We believe that it will help us fulfil the aims of AER, i.e. draw the scientists’ attention to the most relevant, interesting, and promising areas of research in the Arctic and adjacent territories, as well as promote information exchange in the international scientific arena.”

AER is the fourth Russian journal to find its new publishing home with ARPHA Platform after Comparative Cytogenetics, Research results in Pharmacology and Russian Journal of Economics. Several new titles are expected to join them later this year.

What is a species? British bird expert develops a math formula to solve the problem

Two different kinds of Lachrymose Mountain-Tanager (Anisognathus lacrymosus) occurring in Colombia on different mountain ranges (left: Santa Marta; right: Yariguies). Their measurements and songs were as distinct as those in the group which co-occur. Therefore, they can therefore be treated as different species.

Nature is replete with examples of identifiable populations known from different continents, mountain ranges, islands or lowland regions. While, traditionally, many of these have been treated as subspecies of widely-ranging species, recent studies relying on molecular biology have shown that many former “subspecies” have in fact been isolated for millions of years, which is long enough for them to have evolved into separate species.

Being a controversial matter in taxonomy – the science of classification – the ability to tell apart different species from subspecies across faunal groups is crucial. Given limited resources for conservation, relevant authorities tend only to be concerned for threatened species, with their efforts rarely extending to subspecies.

Figuring out whether co-habiting populations belong to the same species is only as tough as testing if they can interbreed or produce fertile offspring. However, whenever distinct populations are geographically separated, it is often that taxonomists struggle to determine whether they represent different species or merely subspecies of a more widely ranging species.

British bird expert Thomas Donegan has dedicated much of his life to studying birds in South America, primarily Colombia. To address this age-long issue of “what is a species?”, he applied a variety of statistical tests, based on data derived from bird specimens and sound recordings, to measure differences across over 3000 pairwise comparisons of different variables between populations.

Having analyzed the outcomes of these tests, he developed a new universal formula for determining what can be considered as a species. His study is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

Essentially, the equation works by measuring differences for multiple variables between two non-co-occurring populations, and then juxtaposing them to the same results for two related populations which do occur together and evidently belong to different “good” species. If the non-co-occurring pair’s differences exceed those of the good species pair, then the former can be ranked as species. If not, they are subspecies of the same species instead.

The formula builds on existing good taxonomic practices and borrows from optimal aspects of previously proposed mathematical models proposed for assessing species in particular groups, but brought together into a single coherent structure and formula that can be applied to any taxonomic group. It is, however, presented as a benchmark rather than a hard test, to be used together with other data, such as analyses of molecular data.

Thomas hopes that his mathematical formula for species rank assessments will help eliminate some of the subjectivity, regional bias and lumper-splitter conflicts which currently pervade the discipline of taxonomy.

“If this new approach is used, then it should introduce more objectivity to taxonomic science and ultimately mean that limited conservation resources are addressed towards threatened populations which are truly distinct and most deserving of our concern,” he says.

The problem with ranking populations that do not co-occur together was first identified back in 1904. Since then, most approaches to addressing such issues have been subjective or arbitrary or rely heavily upon expert opinion or historical momentum, rather than any objectively defensible or consistent framework.

For example, the American Herring Gull and the European Herring Gull are lumped by some current taxonomic committees into the same species (Herring Gull), or are split into two species by other committees dealing with different regions, simply because relevant experts at those committees have taken different views on the issue.

“For tropical faunas, there are thousands of distinctive populations currently treated as subspecies and which are broadly ignored in conservation activities,” explains Thomas. “Yet, some of these may be of conservation concern. This new framework should help us better to identify and prioritize those situations.”

Two different kinds of Three-striped Warblers (Basileuterus tristriatus) occurring in South America (left: East Andes of Colombia; right: a recently discovered population from the San Lucas mountains of Colombia). Note the differences in plumage coloration. While somewhat differing in voice, plumage and some measurements, the couple did not diverge as much as other related warblers that actually co-occur did. These are about as close as subspecies occurring on different mountain ranges could be. However, they marginally failed the proposed new benchmark for species rank.

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Original source:

Donegan TM (2018) What is a species? A new universal method to measure differentiation and assess the taxonomic rank of allopatric populations, using continuous variables. ZooKeys 757: 1-67. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.757.10965

Additional information:

Donegan’s proposals were first presented orally at a joint meeting for members of the Neotropical Bird Club, British Ornithologists’ Club and Natural History Museum in London.

Scientists dive into museum collections to reveal the invasion route of a small crustacean

Biological invasions are widely recognised as one of the most significant components of global change. Far-reaching and fast-spreading, they often have harmful effects on biodiversity.

Therefore, acquiring knowledge of potentially invasive non-native species is crucial in current research. In particular, it is important that we enhance our understanding of the impact of such invasions.

To do so, Prof Sabrina Lo Brutto and Dr Davide Iaciofano, both working at the Taxonomy Laboratory of the University of Palermo, Italy, performed research on an invasive alien crustacean (Ptilohyale littoralis) known to have colonised the Atlantic European Coast. Their findings are published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The studied species belongs to a group of small-sized crustaceans known as amphipods. These creatures range from 1 to 340 mm in length and feed on available organic matter, such as dead animals and plants. Being widely distributed across aquatic environments, amphipods have already been proven as excellent indicators of ecosystem health.

While notable for their adaptability and ecological plasticity, which secure their abundance in various habitats, these features also make amphipods especially dangerous when it comes to playing the role of invaders.

Having analysed specimens stored at the Museum of Natural History of Verona and the Natural History Museum in Paris, the scientists concluded that the species has colonised European waters 24 years prior to the currently available records.

The problem was that, back in 1985, when the amphipod was first collected from European coasts, it was misidentified as a species new to science instead of an invader native to the North American Atlantic coast.

A closer look into misidentified specimens stored in museum collections revealed that the species has been successfully spreading along the European coastlines.

Male of the invasive amphipod species (Ptilohyale littoralis), sampled in October 2015, from Bay of Arcachon, France.

Moreover, it was predicted that the amphipod could soon reach the Mediterranean due to the high connectivity between the sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean through the Straits of Gibraltar – a route already used by invasive marine fauna in the past.

In the event that the invader reaches the Mediterranean, it is highly likely for the crustacean to meet and compete with a closely related “sister species” endemic to the region. To make matters worse, the two amphipods are difficult to distinguish due to their appearance and behaviour both being extremely similar.

However, in their paper, the scientists have also provided additional information on how to distinguish the two amphipods – knowledge which could be essential for the management of the invader and its further spread.

The authors believe that their study demonstrates the importance of taxonomy – the study of organism classification – and the role of natural history collections and museums.

“Studying and monitoring biodiversity can acquire great importance in European aquatic ecosystems and coastal Mediterranean areas, where biodiversity is changing due to climate change and invasions of alien species,” Prof Lo Brutto says. “In this context, specific animal groups play a crucial role in detecting such changes and they, therefore, deserve more attention as fundamental tools in biodiversity monitoring.”

“Regrettably, the steadily diminishing pool of experts capable of accurately identifying species poses a serious threat in this field.”

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Original source:

Lo Brutto S, Iaciofano D (2018) A taxonomic revision helps to clarify differences between the Atlantic invasive Ptilohyale littoralis and the Mediterranean endemic Parhyale plumicornis(Crustacea: Amphipoda). ZooKeys, 754: 47-62. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.754.22884

Canadian scientist names a new species of cuckoo bee after Sir David Attenborough

A total of fifteen new species of bees, where one honors the English broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough, are described by Thomas Onuferko, PhD candidate at York University in Toronto, Canada. His paper is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The new species, called Attenborough’s epeolus (pronounced ee-pee-oh-lus), is rare and known from only nine specimens observed at two localities, in Colorado and New Mexico.

To name the other new species, the author referred to colleagues or relatives, the species’ physical appearance, their collectors, or the flowers on which the insects have been found.

Currently, not much is known about any of the newly described species, except that they belong to a specialized group of bees called cuckoo bees. Much like cuckoo birds, these bees sneakily lay their eggs in the nests of other species. When they hatch, the younglings seek out and kill the host egg or larva and then feed on the pollen stored by the female who has built the nest.

Female of the newly described cuckoo bee species, Epeolus attenboroughi . This specimen is the holotype for the species, meaning it is the one used to describe the new bee.

All new species belong to the cuckoo bee genus Epeolus, known to invade nests of polyester bees in the genus Colletes. In his publication, Thomas speculates that the name ‘epeolus’ is probably a diminutive of Epeus/Epeius, the soldier in Greek mythology said to have come up with the Trojan Horse. The sinister nature of these cleptoparasitic bees must have been compared to the Greek’s famous war strategy.

Cuckoo bees are difficult to recognize as bees because they lack the characteristic fuzzy look, which comes from the numerous long branched hairs evolved to efficiently pick up pollen. Instead, cuckoo bees rely on other bees to collect pollen for their offspring, leading to the trait being lost.

While, as a result, these species would rather be likened to wasps, their appearance is not plain at all. Cuckoo bees, including Attenborough’s epeolus, possess very short black, white, red, and yellow hairs that form beautiful patterns.

“It only seemed appropriate to name a species with such an unusual life strategy and attractive appearance after someone who has dedicated his life to illustrating the beauty and complexity of the natural world,” explains Thomas.

Including the new species, there are now 43 known Epeolus species in North America.

“It may seem surprising to some that in well-researched places like Canada and the United States there is still the potential for the discovery of new species,” says the scientist.

Male of the newly described cuckoo bee species, Epeolus attenboroughi , with its proboscis (i.e. mouthparts) extended. These are elongated in order to reach and feed on the nectar within flowers.

Since cuckoo bees are rarer than their hosts – as predators are rarer than their prey – and relatively small (5.5–10.0 mm in body length), they are likely to go undetected, which partly explains why it’s taken so long to identify these new ones.

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Original source:

Onuferko TM (2018) A revision of the cleptoparasitic bee genus Epeolus Latreille for Nearctic species, north of Mexico (Hymenoptera, Apidae). ZooKeys 755: 1–185. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.755.23939.

Citizen scientists discover a new water beetle and name it after Leonardo DiCaprio

New animal species are sometimes named after celebrities because of their trademark looks. That’s how we got the blonde-haired Donald Trump moth and the big-armed Arnold Schwarzenegger fly, to name a few. However, some well-known people are enshrined in animal names not for their looks, but rather for what they do for the environment.

This is exactly how a newly discovered water beetle, described in the open access journal ZooKeys, was given the name of Hollywood actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio. The tribute marks the 20th anniversary of the celebrity’s Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) and its efforts towards biodiversity preservation.

The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has become one of the world’s foremost wildlife charities, having contributed to over 200 grassroots projects around the globe devoted to climate change mitigation, wildlife conservation, and habitat preservation.

“We can all have an impact,” says DiCaprio in a special LDF video, “but we have to work together to protect our only home.”

Leo DiCaprio beetleGoing by the scientific name of Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, the new water beetle was discovered at a waterfall in the remote Maliau Basin, Malaysian Borneo, during the first field trip initiated by Taxon Expeditions – an organisation which arranges scientific surveys for untrained laypeople with the aim to discover previously unknown species and bridge the gap in biodiversity knowledge.

Having identified a total of three water beetle species new to science, the expedition participants and the local staff of the Maliau Basin Studies Centre voted to name one of them after DiCaprio in honour of his efforts to protect untouched, unexplored wildernesses just like Maliau Basin itself.

“Tiny and black, this new beetle may not win any Oscars for charisma, but in biodiversity conservation, every creature counts,” said Taxon Expeditions’ founder and entomologist Dr. Iva Njunjic.

Maliau Basin Aerial - Photo by Sylvia Yorath

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Original source:

Freitag H, Pangantihon CV, Njunjic I (2018) Three new species of Grouvellinus Champion, 1923 from Maliau Basin, Sabah, Borneo, discovered by citizen scientists during the first Taxon Expedition (Insecta, Coleoptera, Elmidae). ZooKeys 754: 1-21. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.754.24276

Economics journals hosted on ARPHA to have their content indexed at RePEc

The first to take advantage of the service is the most recent addition to the journal platform’s portfolio — Russian Journal of Economics

Following the recent integration between ARPHA and the collaborative project RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), journals publishing in economics will have their articles indexed in RePEc decentralised bibliographic database upon moving to the technologically advanced platform.

Working with 50,000 registered authors from around the globe, having indexed about 2.3 million research publications from 2,800 journals, and serving over 80,000 email subscriptions on a weekly basis, RePEc’s services are set to further increase the discoverability and creditability of economics papers published in any ARPHA-hosted journal.

The collaboration was inspired by the recent move of the open access peer-reviewed Russian Journal of Economics to ARPHA. Shortly after appearing on the journal’s new website provided by the platform, RuJE’s first 2018 issue, themed ‘The Austrian School of Economics: Its Reception in European Countries,’ was also available via the RePEc’s web interfaces, including IDEAS.

“Having added yet another web-service integration to the list, ARPHA once more demonstrates its flexibility and customer-oriented approach when it comes to providing a new home for journals looking to step up and provide all those innovative and high-tech features to their users,” says ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “In times where the findability of a research publication is almost as important as its quality, I am certain that our integration with RePEc will significantly benefit our clients specialising in economics.”

Speaking in Novosibirsk, Russia, the founder of RePEc, Thomas Krichel noted, “When I set out what would become RePEc in the early 1990, my vision was of a non-proprietary system that all could contribute to, and that all could use freely. My particular concern was to level the playing field between publishers. Open access content is particularly valuable. I am pleased that ARPHA has chosen that publishing avenue.”

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Additional information:

About RePEc:

RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 96 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics and related sciences.

The heart of the project is a decentralised bibliographic database of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components, all maintained by volunteers. The collected data are then used in various services that provide the collected metadata to users or enhance it.

So far, over 1,900 archives from 96 countries have contributed about 2.3 million research pieces from 2,800 journals and 4,500 working paper series. About 50,000 authors have registered and 75,000 email subscriptions are served every week.

RePEc grew out of the NetEc project founded by Thomas Krichel in 1993.

Four Cheers for Marine Diversity: New species from Pensoft journals float their way up to the ‘TOP 10’ charts of WoRMS

The Harry Potter ‘hero’ crab, Palau president’s colonial anemone and the ‘living fossil’ octocoral published in ZooKeys along with the Bob Marley’s intertidal spider from the pages of Evolutionary Systematics made it to the top in the two lists compiled by the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). The ‘TOP 10’ charts mark the 10th anniversary of the organisation dedicated to noting down all creatures splashing around Earth’s marine habitats.

While the three species in the ‘Ten remarkable new marine species from 2017’ list have been bathing in glory mostly thanks to their prominent human namesakes, the octocoral from Japan found a place amongst the ‘Ten astounding marine species of the last decade (2007-2017)’ after being identified as a ‘living fossil’.

To compile the lists, WoRMS first invited all their editors to nominate their favourites in the two disciplines, and then asked a small committee of taxonomists and data managers to provide their votes.

Without further ado, let’s dive into a little bit of a reminder to find out exactly why and how those particular species turned up at the top.

 

  • Harry Potter ‘hero’ crab (Harryplax severus)

Harryplax severus 2

To the delight of the millions of fans of the iconic fantasy franchise Harry Potter around the world, a new species of charming crab discovered in the coral reefs of the island of Guam, the Pacific Ocean, was named after not one, but two of their favourite characters – protagonist Harry Potter and the villain-turned-hero Professor Severus Snape.

Luckily for lead author and self-confessed ‘Potterhead’ Dr. Jose Christopher E. Mendoza, the crustacean was simultaneously identified as a new species and a new genus, which made it possible to have the genus name (Harryplax) ‘reserved’ for the famous fictional wizard, while the species name (severus) remains dedicated to his secretive teacher.

Furthermore, the two scientists – Dr. Jose Christopher E. Mendoza and Dr. Peter Ng, both affiliated with the National University of Singapore – used the scientific name of their rubble-inhabiting discovery to pay tribute to its initial collector – Harry Conley. About 20 years ago, the “soft-spoken ex-Marine with a steely determination and a heart of gold” collected a curious-looking crab from the waters of Guam to unknowingly hand his successors with a piece of nature’s undescribed gems.

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Learn more about Harryplax severus on our blog or read the study published in our open access journal ZooKeys.

 

  • Bob Marley’s intertidal spider (Desis bobmarleyi)

Female Desis bobmarleyi

It’s true – underwater spiders are for real!

Keep calm, though, they tend to be tiny and harmless to humans, so you are highly unlikely to get in contact with them by pure chance.

Scientists Drs. Barbara Baehr, Robert Raven and Danilo Harms, affiliated with Queensland Museum and the University of Hamburg, themselves, had to stay alert and wait for the low tide at the coastline of Australia’s “Sunshine State” of Queensland, in order to spot and collect the several-millimetre spider now known as the Bob Marley’s intertidal spider (or Desis bobmarleyi if you stumble upon it in the academic books).

Fans of the legendary reggae musician, the biologists were quick to link the emergence of the arachnid to a favourite song – “High Tide or Low Tide” – and its underlying message about love and friendship through all struggles of life.

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Check out our blog post on Desis bobmarleyi or go read the full study appearing in the open access Evolutionary Systematics and its first issue published since the journal joined Pensoft last December.

 

  • Palau president’s colonial anemone (Antipathozoanthus remengesaui)

159664

Yes, the species in the picture is an animal living in the sea, even though Anemone is also a genus of flowering plants growing on the ground. Confused? In fact, the two have nothing to do with each other, apart from their ‘flowery’ appearance.

While researchers from the University of the Ryukyus, Kagoshima University, Japan and the Palau International Coral Reef Center were studying the sea anemones living on top of black coral colonies in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, they discovered a total of three new lovely species (allegedly, even more!), where one, Antipathozoanthus obscurus, was spectacular with its preference for hiding in the narrow reef cracks, rather than ‘perching’ proudly on corals.

Amazed by the quantity of yet to be explored biodiversity at the studied localities, including the island country of Palau, the scientists took the occasion to say Thank you to Palau’s President Tommy Remengesau for his nation’s support.

By naming one of the new species A. remengesaui, the scientists also pay tribute to the politician’s vision on nature conservation which has already placed Palau “at the forefront of marine conservation”, as noted by senior author Dr. James Reimer.

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Find more about the new anemones from our blog post or check out the full study openly accessible in ZooKeys.

 

  • The ‘living fossil’ octocoral (Nanipora kamurai)

living fossil

Dubbed ‘living fossil’ for having much more in common with extinct species than it has with its ‘living’ relatives, this octocoral discovered in Okinawa, Japan, comes to show that sometimes it’s staying calm and still on the (shallow reef) surface that takes you places.

Here, the extraordinary, in modern sense, octocoral species landed a spot among the ten most astounding marine species of the decade.

The ‘living fossil’ resembles the extraordinary blue corals, which are said to have been widely distributed around the globe during the Cretaceous period. Much like its ancestors, it sports a hard skeleton of calcium-carbonate, explain graduate student Yu Miyazaki and associate professor Dr James Davis Reimer, University of the Ryukyus.

Planning a trip to Okinawa? Keep an eye open, as this unusual species prefers depths of less than a meter, which is once again quite the contrary to the habitats picked by its contemporaries.

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Check out our blog post on the ‘living fossil’ octocoral and find the study in our open access journal ZooKeys.

Five new blanket-hermit crab species described 130 years later from the Pacific

A blanket-hermit crab grasping an anemone.
A blanket-hermit crab grasping an anemone.

Since 1888, a lone crab species living in an extraordinary symbiosis has been considered to be one of its kind

At the turn of the twentieth century, two independent marine scientists – JR Henderson in 1888, and A Alcock in 1899, described two unusual blanket-hermit crabs from the Indo-West Pacific.

Unlike other hermit crabs, these extraordinary crustaceans do not search for empty shells to settle in for protection. Instead, they have developed a symbiotic relationship with sea anemones to cover their soft bellies. To do this, the crabs use highly specialized chelipeds to pull back and forth the anemone’s tissue to cover their soft bodies and heads whenever necessary – much like hiding under a blanket.

Among the numerous specimens collected during the famous HMS Challenger Expedition in 1874, there were two hermit crab specimens obtained from the Philippines. They amazed Henderson with their unusual physical characters, including an abdomen bent on itself rather than spirally curved, and the lack of any trace of either a shell or other kind of protective structure for their body.

As a result, in 1888, JR Henderson established a brand new genus and new species for it as Paguropsis typicus. The ending of the species name was subsequently grammatically corrected to Paguropsis typica.

image 1

A decade later, unaware of the previous discovery, A Alcock stumbled upon hundreds of hermit crab specimens off southern India, which exhibited quite spectacular behaviour. Having observed their symbiotic relations with sea anemones, the researcher also formally described in 1899 a new species and a new genus for his specimens.

However, shortly thereafter and upon learning of JR Henderson’s earlier work, A Alcock concluded that his hermit crab specimens and those of JR Henderson must be one and the same species, so the two scientific names were officially synonymized in 1901 in a publication with his colleague AF McArdle, with JR Henderson’s name taking precedence as required by the principle of priority set forth in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

Now, 130 years later, an international team of scientists, led by invertebrate zoologist Dr Rafael Lemaitre of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, USA, not only found that A Alcock’s Indian specimens were indeed a separate species, leading to the resurrection of its name as Paguropsis andersoni, but that blanket-hermit crabs are not as rare as previously thought.

In their recent publication in the open access journal ZooKeys, the biologists described a total of five new species and a new genus of closely related blanket-hermit crabs. Furthermore, they expect that other species are to be discovered, since there are many vast marine shelf areas and deep-sea habitats spread across the Indo-West Pacific yet to be sampled.

To develop their exceptional symbiosis with sea anemones, the blanket-hermit crabs have obviously needed just as extraordinary evolutionary adaptations. Perhaps the most remarkable of these are their specialized chelate fourth legs that allow for the crustaceans to effectively grab and stretch the thin-walled body of the anemones to cover themselves. For five of the species, the scientists report and unusual grasping shape for this cheliped that is reminiscent of bear claws, while in the other two the shape resembles ice-block tongs.

Unfortunately, the identity of the sea anemone species involved in the symbiotic relationship with any of the studied blanket-hermit crabs is currently uncertain, and their biology remains unknown.

A blanket-hermit crab 'wearing' an anemone.
A blanket-hermit crab ‘wearing’ an anemone.

So far, the genus described by JR Henderson as Paguropsis, contains five species distributed in the subtropical and tropical Indo-West Pacific, and living at depths ranging from 30 to 1125 m. These include the two species discovered in the 19th century, and three new species, one of which, Paguropsis gigas, is the largest known blanket-hermit crab that reaches a body size of 15 cm when fully stretched (a large size by hermit crab standards).

For two of the newly discovered hermit crabs, the new genus Paguropsina is erected to reflect the numerous similarities between the two species and their Paguropsis relatives. The Latin suffix -ina refers to the comparatively smaller size of the two species. Both blanket-hermit species of Paguropsina are found in the subtropical and tropical western Pacific at depth between 52 and 849 m.

“Here there is no shell to play the part of ‘Sir Pandarus of Troy,’ but the sea-anemone settles upon the hinder part of the young hermit-crab’s tail, and the two animals grow up together, in such a way that the spreading zoophytes form a blanket which the hermit can either draw completely forwards over its head or throw half-back, as it pleases,” Alcock once eloquently described his marine discovery.

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Original source:

Lemaitre R, Rahayu DL, Komai T (2018) A revision of “blanket-hermit crabs” of the genus Paguropsis Henderson, 1888, with the description of a new genus and five new species (Crustacea, Anomura, Diogenidae). ZooKeys 752: 17-97. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.752.23712

Russian Journal of Economics finds a new publishing home on ARPHA platform

The journal’s 2018 inaugural issue, themed ‘The Austrian School of Economics: Its Reception in European Countries,’ demonstrates an all-new look-and-feel complete with various next-generation technological perks

Russian Journal of Economics (RuJE) is the latest competent and renowned journal to join the ranks of the open access titles published on the next-generation platform ARPHA, developed by scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft.

The journal’s 2018 inaugural issue and the first since the realization of the new partnership is already live on the journal’s new website.

The articles are brought together under the theme “The Austrian School of Economics: Its Reception in European Countries” and have been briefly presented at the Second World Congress of Comparative Economics “1917-2017: Revolution and Evolution in Economic Development” held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2017.

Having taken advantage of the white-label publishing solution offered by ARPHA, the open access peer-reviewed journal is to continue being recognized as one of the titles founded and published by the reputed institutions of National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, and non-profit partnership Voprosy Ekonomiki.

Although recently established, the journal is well-known among its audience comprising primarily professional economists working in academia, government and private sector.

Since its launch in 2015, RuJE has been providing a scholarly outlet for research findings in all fields of economics related to policy issues and is being published on a quarterly basis.

While the journal focuses on the Russian economy, economic policy and institutional reform with a broader international context and sound theoretical background, it also welcomes submissions in all areas of applied and theoretical economics, especially those with policy implications.

“I am pleased to see our new collaboration with Russian Journal of Economics coming to fruition, not solely because it looks great in our growing journal portfolio, but also for the amazing opportunity for ARPHA,” says ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “I am certain that we can contribute a lot, so that we can together oversee the further progress of this excellent journal.”

“The task of the project is to create a competent international information resource for academic economists, expert and business communities, devoted to macroeconomic policies in different national contexts, including the Russian one, institutional issues and comparative analysis. The high technological base of ARPHA platform gives all the necessary opportunities to realize the strategic goals of Russian Journal of Economics,” says Andrey Kotkovsky, Director at NP Voprosy Ekonomiki.

 

What does ARPHA bring to the table?arpha_logo

As a result of its transition to ARPHA, not only does the journal look a lot different on the outside, but it also provides a whole range of high-tech innovations beneath the surface.

Among these is the prominent fast-track and convenient publishing workflow provided by the platform. It allows for each manuscript to proceed all the way from submission and reviewing to dissemination and archiving without ever leaving the platform’s singular collaboration-friendly online environment.

Once published, all articles are to be available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML), enriched with semantic enhancements, so that they are easy to discover, access and harvest by both humans and machines.

To further enhance discoverability and reusability of the findings published in the journal, its content is to be indexed by major interdisciplinary services CrossRef and DOAJ in addition to the economics-specialized database RePEc.

RuJE’s articles are also to be archived in CLOCKSS and Zenodo, in accordance to ARPHA’s standard practices.

 

issue coverWhat’s on in the new issue?

In the opening article by Dr Gilles Campagnolo, Aix-Marseilles School of Economics, the reader is given a complex overview of the reception of the Austrian ideas in France, while also covering valuable information about the development of the Austrian School of Economics itself. The publication highlights the fact that these ideas increased their popularity in the country following the Russian perestroyka and the?fall of the Berlin Wall.

The topic is carried on into another two articles dealing with the history of this process in Russia (Soviet Union) and Bulgaria. The team of Prof. Vladimir Avtonomov and Prof. Natalia Makasheva, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia, and the one of Prof. Nikolay Nenovsky, University of Picardie Jules Verne, France, and Dr. Pencho Penchev, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria, both identify three principal periods – initial reception, complete oblivion during the communist regimes, and renaissance in post-communist times.

The Italian perspective on the Austrian economic ideas are given in an article authored by Prof. Antonio Magliulo, University of International Studies of Rome. He explores two periods – before World War II, as linked with Menger’s influence – and compares it with Hayek’s.

The editorial by Prof. Vladimir Avtonomov looks back on the so-called Marginal revolution in economics from the 1870s. Thus, the reader obtains a firm grasp on the origins of the three European schools of economics with a focus on the Austrian one, before tracing the economic environment on the Old Continent well into the 20th century through the pages of the journal’s special issue.

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Russian Journal of Economics is the third Russian title to find its new publishing home with ARPHA Platform after Comparative Cytogenetics and Research Results in Pharmacology. Several new titles are expected to join them later this year.

Audit finds biodiversity data aggregators ‘lose and confuse’ data

In an effort to improve the quality of biodiversity records, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) use automated data processing to check individual data items. The records are provided to the ALA and GBIF by museums, herbaria and other biodiversity data sources.

However, an independent analysis of such records reports that ALA and GBIF data processing also leads to data loss and unjustified changes in scientific names.

The study was carried out by Dr Robert Mesibov, an Australian millipede specialist who also works as a data auditor. Dr Mesibov checked around 800,000 records retrieved from the Australian Museum, Museums Victoria and the New Zealand Arthropod Collection. His results are published in the open access journal ZooKeys, and also archived in a public data repository.

“I was mainly interested in changes made by the aggregators to the genus and species names in the records,” said Dr Mesibov.

“I found that names in up to 1 in 5 records were changed, often because the aggregator couldn’t find the name in the look-up table it used.”

data_auditAnother worrying result concerned type specimens – the reference specimens upon which scientific names are based. On a number of occasions, the aggregators were found to have replaced the name of a type specimen with a name tied to an entirely different type specimen.

The biggest surprise, according to Dr Mesibov, was the major disagreement on names between aggregators.

“There was very little agreement,” he explained. “One aggregator would change a name and the other wouldn’t, or would change it in a different way.”

Furthermore, dates, names and locality information were sometimes lost from records, mainly due to programming errors in the software used by aggregators to check data items. In some data fields the loss reached 100%, with no original data items surviving the processing.

“The lesson from this audit is that biodiversity data aggregation isn’t harmless,” said Dr Mesibov. “It can lose and confuse perfectly good data.”

“Users of aggregated data should always download both original and processed data items, and should check for data loss or modification, and for replacement of names,” he concluded.

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Original source:

Mesibov R (2018) An audit of some filtering effects in aggregated occurrence records. ZooKeys 751: 129-146. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.751.24791