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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

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