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An international team of scientists have discovered a new species of typhlogammarid amphipod in the limestone karstic caves of Chjalta mountain range – the southern foothills of the Greater Caucasus Range. The study was published in the open access journal Subterranean Biology.

The new amphipod, which belongs to the genus Zenkevitchia, is the second species known from this group. This new addition to the genus is named Zenkevitchia yakovi after the famous Russian biospeleologist Prof Yakov Birstein.

Typhlogammarid amphipods are a group blind and unpigmented endemic Balkan-Transcaucasian cavernicole crustaceans, which inhabit subterranean rivers and lakes. Their modern distribution is believed to be the result of marine transgressions of the bygone eras.

Taking into consideration that the first member of Zenkevitchia was described 75 years ago this is still an understudied group of cave animals. Despite their unique morphology featuring “filtration mouth parts”, today we still know nothing about the biology of this relict group of animals.

While most species can be easily differentiated on the basis of morphological analysis, Z. yakovi has no reliable morphological differences with Z. admirabilis and was discovered through sequencing of the barcode region of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) — highlighting the cryptic nature of the new species.

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Original source:

Sidorov DA, Gontcharov AA, Palatov DM, Taylor SJ, Semenchenko AA (2015) Shedding light on a cryptic cavernicole: A second species of Zenkevitchia Birstein (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Typhlogammaridae) discovered via molecular techniques. Subterranean Biology 15: 37-55. doi: 10.3897/subtbiol.15.4872

The spigot for plant discoveries in Madagascar continues to flow steadily, with no signs of slowing down in the near future.

“The number of new plant species from Madagascar continues to be amazingly high”, said Dr. Neil Snow, botanist and Director of the T.M. Sperry Herbarium atPittsburg State University in Kansas.

Working with coauthors Martin Callmander and Pete Phillipson, Snow recently described seventeen new species of Eugeniain the Myrtle family in the journal PhytoKeys(10.3897/phytokeys.49.9003). Callmander and Phillipson, of the Missouri Botanical Garden, teamed up with Snow to provide greater depth to the study, particularly regarding historical collections in Europe, where both are based.

“It’s been great to collaborate with Neil”, commented Callmander and Phillipson.

“Although as many as 100 new species are often described from Madagascar per year across all plant families, Neil’s contribution to our knowledge of the Myrtaceae is really important, especially since most of them have highly restricted ranges and many are threatened.”

With over 1000 species, Eugenia is one of the largest woody plant genera in the world. The seventeen new species join with fifteen others described since 2000 by Snow and colleagues, for a total of 32 out of the 68 currently species of Eugenia in Madagascar.

“In other words, about half of the known Eugenia species in Madagascar have described by botanists only in the past fifteen years”, Snow added. “Describing 17 new species in one plant genus from one country rarely happens these days.”

Even so, 10 or more species of Eugenia remain to be described from Madagascar, judging from dried herbarium specimens that do not match known species.

Among the new species were Eugenia ravelonarivoi and Eugenia razakamalalae, which recognize Désiré Ravelonarivo and Richard Razakamalala. These two Malagasy botanists are prolific plant collectors who gathered many of the specimens cited in the paper. Other species in the paper were named to honor colleagues in the United States and Australia.

Snow was quick to emphasize that other parts of the world also are yielding a steady stream of new plant species in the Myrtle family.

“Colleagues and their collaborators are doing fabulous work in Australia, India, Africa and South America. Many new myrtle species are discovered yearly, particularly in Western Australia and Brazil, the latter of which frequently includes new Eugenia species.”

Snow concluded by commenting that “It is enjoyable research, which is good, because Myrtle specialists have many years of field and lab ahead before we can more fully understand the remarkable richness of this family.”

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Original Source:

Snow N, Callmander MW, Phillipson PB (2015) Studies of Malagasy Eugenia – IV: Seventeen new endemic species, a new combination, and three lectotypifications; with comments on distribution, ecological and evolutionary patterns. PhytoKeys 49: 59-121. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.49.9003

Fieldwork in Indonesia and Malaysia by researcher Sancia van der Meij from Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands lead to the discovery of a new coral-dwelling gall crab. The new gall crab, named Lithoscaptus semperi, was discovered inhabiting free-living corals of the speciesTrachyphyllia geoffroyi on sandy bottoms near coral reefs. The study was published in the 500th issue of the open access journal ZooKeys.

Gall crabs are very small – less than 1 cm in size – and live in a ‘dwelling’ in stony corals. Gall crab larvae settle on a coral as a larvae and the coral then grows around the crab, creating a ‘dwelling’. These dwellings are named galls, which explains the common name of the crabs.

Female gall crabs are about two times larger than males. Because of their larger size and the large number of eggs they can carry, they cannot leave their galls and become ‘imprisoned’. Males (presumably) can leave their dwellings and move around freely.

‘When I started working on gall crabs, I had a hard time finding them because of their small size’, says Sancia van der Meij, the author of the study. ‘But once I knew how to recognise their dwellings, I realised they are actually very common on coral reefs.’

Host specificity is observed in gall crabs, which means that a gall crab species inhabits one or several closely related coral species. The new gall crab species discovered in this study is so far only known to inhabit Trachyphyllia corals.

The holotype (the name-bearing specimen of this new species) was collected during fieldwork off Kudat in Malaysian Borneo, funded by WWF-Malaysia. ‘This study highlights the need to protect our coral reefs’, says Robecca Jumin, Head of Marine, WWF-Malaysia. ‘New species are still being discovered as the proposed Tun Mustapha Park (TMP) is still largely unexplored’. Once gazetted, the TMP will be the largest marine protected area in Malaysia, encompassing almost a million hectares of mangrove, seagrass and coral reefs.

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Original Source:

van der Meij SET (2015) A new gall crab species (Brachyura, Cryptochiridae) associated with the free-living coral Trachyphyllia geoffroyi (Scleractinia, Merulinidae). ZooKeys 500: 61-72. doi:10.3897/zookeys.500.9244

A team of Chilean scientists discover two new species of iguanid lizards from the Laja Lagoon, Chile. The two new species are believed to have been long confused with other representatives of the elongatus-kriegi lizard complex, until recent morphological analysis diagnosed them as separate. The study was published in the 500th issue of the open access journal ZooKeys.

The new lizards belong to the genus Liolaemus which contains a total 245 species to date, all of which are endemic to South America.

This study looks at species of the elongatus-kriegi complex from two locations of the Laja Lagoon in Chile. Detailed morphological diagnosis helped the authors to describe two new species: L. scorialis and L. zabalai.

L. scorialis has its name inspired by its specific type locality composed mainly of scoria volcanic rock after which the species was named. This species is endemic to Chile where it occurs only in two localities.

The second new species L. zabalai was named after Patricio Zabala, collection manager of the “Colección de Flora y Fauna Patricio Sánchez Reyes, Pontificia Universidad Católicade Chile” (SSUC) due to his support of herpetological research in Chile, and occurs in southern Chile and Argentina.

“In summary, our work describes adds two new species to the species rich elongatus-kriegi complex of lizards from the vicinity of the Laja Lagoon. Nonetheless, there is certainly still much to discover about the diversity of this group of Patagonian lizards,” explains the lead author of the study Dr. Jaime Troncoso-Palacios, Universidad de Chile.

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Original Source:

Troncoso-Palacios J, Díaz HA, Esquerré D, Urra FA (2015) Two new species of the Liolaemus elongatus-kriegi Complex (Iguania, Liolaemidae) from Andean highlands of Southern Chile.ZooKeys 500: 83-109. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.500.8725

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+ .