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Are Italian natural history museums (NHMs) on the verge of collapse? A new analysis published in the open access journal ZooKeys points out that these institutions are facing a critical situation due to progressive loss of scientific relevance, decreasing economic investments and scarcity of personnel.

The study proposes that existing museums associate and collaborate to form a diffused structure, able to better manage their scientific collections and share resources and personnel.

“Italy is universally known for its history, culture, food and art. The list of Italian cultural assets could go on for pages, but in our study we want to focus the attention on another invaluable and often forgotten asset: natural history museums (NHMs) and the scientific specimens they preserve to document national (and planetary) biodiversity.”, explains the lead author Dr. Franco Andreone, a zoologist from the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali in Turin, Italy.

The team of 30 Italian authors outlines a number of problems faced by NHMs in the country to reveal an alarming situation, especially for ensuring the long-term preservation of the precious collections hosted.

Unlike in other countries (e.g., England, France, Spain, and USA) where there is a national museum acting as the main repository for large part of historical and contemporary natural history collections, Italy has never developed a centralized structure for the preservation of its collections.

The lack of a centralized national institution results in collections scattered among several museums, most of which with objective difficulties in managing their materials and recognise their scientific value. This situation raises concern about the impending demise of important collections.

For example, the number of unique animal and plant specimens housed in Italian museums is considerable, with at least 150 mammal taxa having their original types preserved there, while the types of insects are almost countless. The conservation of these specimens, however, requires serious scientific effort. Most of these exemplars are also still uncatalogued, and this task cannot be done without ensuring persistence and regular turnover of the curatorial personnel.

Another problem posed by personnel scarcity is caused by the fact that basic technical tasks for daily management and educational activities have necessarily become priorities in many museums, forcing curators to redirect their activities, and to reduce or cease their research work and assistance to scientists.

Moreover, a commitment in fieldwork to increase scientific collections and concurrent taxonomic research are rarely considered priorities by institutions in the country, while most of the activities are addressed to public events with evident political payoffs, such as exhibits, didactic meetings, expositions and talks.

To face these problems authors propose most of the NHMs in Italy to join forces and form the so called sort of a “meta-museum”. This innovative concept requires the existing museums to establish a reciprocal interaction network, with shared budgetary and technical resources that will assure better coordination of common long-term goals.

“How this can be achieved is mostly a political matter, but cannot be postponed any longer and must urgently be integrated into the political agenda of the Italian government. For now, we hope that both, the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research and the Italian Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Tourism, will soon pay the overdue attention to our NHMs and consequently adopt suitable policies to safeguard their collections.”, argue Dr. Andreone and colleagues from the major NHMs and universities in Italy.

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Original Source:

Andreone F, Bartolozzi L, Boano G, Boero F, Bologna M, Bon M, Bressi N, Capula M, Casale A, Casiraghi M, Chiozzi G, Delfino M, Doria G, Durante A, Ferrari M, Gippoliti S, Lanzinger M, Latella L, Maio N, Marangoni C, Mazzotti S, Minelli A, Muscio G, Nicolosi P, Pievani T, Razzetti E, Sabella G, Valle M, Vomero V, Zilli A (2014) Italian natural history museums on the verge of collapse? ZooKeys 456: 139-146. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.456.8862

WCS scientists in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have discovered a new species of plant living in a remote rift valley escarpment that’s supposed to be inside of a protected area. But an administrative mapping error puts the reserve’s borders some 50 kilometers west of the actual location. Now the new species, along with 900 other plant varieties and 1,400 chimpanzees, are in limbo with no protection and threatened by cattle ranches and forest destruction. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

This astounding announcement was made at the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia – a once-in-a-decade global forum on protected areas.

The newly discovered flowering plant species Dorstenia luamensis is supposed to be named for its home – the Luama Katanga Reserve, a protected area established in 1947 near Lake Tanganyika. But during DRC’s civil wars, administrators in the government and the World Conservation Monitoring Center have confused the reserve’s location, placing it on maps far from its true location.

“The moral of this story is that keeping track of parks – and especially getting maps and boundaries correct – matters hugely for biodiversity. The call to action here is to fix the records and re-protect the reserve before this unique plant and all the biodiversity it contains, including 1,400 chimpanzees, are destroyed,” said James Deutsch, WCS Vice President of Conservation Strategy.

WCS scientists discovering the new plant species say it is restricted to just a few cliff faces found inside of the former protected area.

The true location of the reserve was adjacent to a globally important biodiversity hotspot called Kabobo, which is proposed as a new protected area (NGAMIKKA). This makes it even more important that the proper, old reserve be reinstated in order to safeguard the conservation landscape and the corridors between the two.

Said Andrew Plumptre, WCS Director of the Albertine Rift Program: “There is a real need to re-gazette the correct reserve as it is biologically important, and also because people are starting to move into it and cultivate it and graze cattle there. The reserve this plant was named after no longer exists because of an error from both WCMC and the government not checking their maps correctly.”

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Original Source:

Leal M (2014) Dorstenia luamensis (Moraceae), a new species from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. PhytoKeys 42: 49-55.doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.42.7604

A team of scientists specializing in cave biodiversity from the South China Agricultural University (Guangzhou) unearthed a treasure trove of rare blind cave beetles. The description of seven new species of underground Trechinae beetles, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, attests for the Du’an karst as the most diverse area for these cave dwellers in China.

“China is becoming more and more fascinating for those who study cave biodiversity, because it holds some of the most morphologically adapted cavernicolous animals in the world. This is specifically true for fishes and the threchine beetles, the second of which is also the group featured in this study,” explains the senior author of the study Prof. Mingyi Tian.

Like most cavernicolous species, Trechinae cave beetles shows a number of specific adaptations, such as lack of eyes and colour, which are traits common among cave dwellers.

The new Trechinae beetles belong to the genus Dongodytes whose members are easily recognizable by their extraordinary slender and very elongated body. Members of this genus are usually very rare in caves, with only five species reported from China before now.

During the recent study of the cave systems in Du’an karst however this numbers drastically changed, Out of the 48 visited caves 12 held populations of trechine beetles. A total of 103 samples were collected, out of which the team of scientists determined ten different species, seven of which are new to science.

“This new discovery casts a new light on the importance of the Du’an Karst as a biological hotspot for cavernicolous Trechinae in China,” adds Prof. Mingyi Tian.

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Original source:

Tian M, Yin H, Huang S (2014) Du’an Karst of Guangxi: a kingdom of the cavernicolous genus Dongodytes Deuve (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Trechinae). ZooKeys 454: 69-107. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.454.7269

Today’s herbaria, as well as all other collections-based environments, are now transitioning their collections data onto the web to remain viable in the smartphone-in-my-pocket age. A team of researchers have examined the importance of these online plant-based resources through the use of Google Analytics (GA) in a study that was published in the open access Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ).

The amount of plant biodiversity resources freely accessible has exploded in the last decade, but validating an impact factor for these web-based works has remained difficult. A new paper examines usage trends across 15 different GA accounts, which are spread (via consortia) across 451 institutions or botanical projects, comprising over five percent of the world’s herbaria. As it turns out, the data are more glamorous than just the deceased plants on a shelf.

The 15 plant data websites examined showed widespread usage, each one visited by users in over 100 countries, and some in over 200 countries, totaling 4.5 million sessions in the past year. Usage is not restricted to desktop computers either; access on mobile and tablet devices has been growing steadily on all sites examined, indicating that these sites are not only useful to people when they’re in their offices.

According to Jones, the most interesting discoveries in this study was determining “what not to do.” Among the most common GA mistakes were, “not knowing who owns the GA account, copying one GA code across different institutions and/or continents resulting in a global miasma of information, relying on one institutional GA code from front-door to back-door; meaning it tracked book-your-wedding information as well as specimen data, only deploying GA on the main page of a site, and ignoring the growth of mobile traffic”.

Online plant databases can facilitate the democratization of botanical information through their availability, via open information that exceeds the speed of retrieval from a cabinet or bookshelf. Plus type specimens, no longer need to be shipped back and forth across the globe; thereby limiting wear and tear to important biodiversity objects. And importantly, all researchers can now share equal access globally, without travel, to a well established model at kingdom level.

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Original source:

Jones T, Baxter D, Hagedorn G, Legler B, Gilbert E, Thiele K, Vargas-Rodriguez Y, Urbatsch L (2014) Trends in access of plant biodiversity data revealed by Google Analytics.Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e1558. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e1558

Scientists from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles describe a new distinctive fly species of the highly diverse genus Megaselia. The study published in the Biodiversity Data Journal proposes an innovative method for streamlining Megaselia species descriptions to save hours of literature reviews and comparisons.

The new species, M. shadeae, is easily distinguished by a large, central, pigmented and bubble-like wing spot. The description is part of the the Zurquí All Diptera Biodiversity Inventory (ZADBI) project, and represents the first of an incredible number of new phorid fly species to be described from this one Costa Rican cloud forest site.

The genus Megaselia is extremely rich in species and has been characterized as an “open-ended taxon” due to its diversity and the complexity in describing new species. This single genus contains about half of the species of the Phoridae family, a majority of which are hitherto undescribed.

“In our work on the ZADBI Project and beyond, we have spent countless hours sorting through tens of thousands of worldwide Megaselia specimens.”explains Emily A. Hartop about the difficulties describing Megaselia species. “Recognized morphotypes are keyed and compared to published Megaselia descriptions in the world literature. The process can be extremely time consuming and often involves reading dozens of descriptions for each specimen you are attempting to key.”

Scanning descriptions day in and day out, dealing with so many specimens and species of Megaselia, the authors came to rely upon certain characters (and essentially disregard others) for their identifications. If a specimen matched (or came close to) the key characters of a description, actual specimens were consulted for a definitive diagnosis.

It was realized that a streamlined and standardized character set for this group that easily pared down potential matches and heavily utilized visual aides for diagnosis (rather than highly variable verbose descriptions) would facilitate not only identification of known species, but description of new ones as well. The method is described in more detail in the study titled “The tip of the iceberg: a distinctive new spotted-wing Megaselia species (Diptera: Phoridae) from a tropical cloud forest survey and a new, streamlined method forMegaselia descriptions”.
“It is our hope that the streamlined presentation of species data presented here will help stimulate rapid and abundant descriptions of unknown fauna as well as facilitating the identification of unknowns.”summarizes Hartop.

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Original Source:

Hartop E, Brown B (2014) The tip of the iceberg: a distinctive new spotted-wing Megaselia species (Diptera: Phoridae) from a tropical cloud forest survey and a new, streamlined method for Megaselia descriptions. Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e4093. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e4093

Additional Information:

Zurquí All Diptera Biodiversity Inventory (ZADBI) is an ambitious, multi-faceted study focused on generating a thorough inventory of the dipteran fauna of a specific cloud forest site using varied and complementary collection methods. The project is revealing a goldmine of new species, not least within this gargantuan genus of phorid flies. The distinctiveness and ease of identification of the species herein described, but lack of previous recognition, hints at the tremendous amount of taxonomic work needed for this group.

Data sharing tools developed by an EU project are helping scientists worldwide understand more about the planet’s millions of species. A new article published on CORDIS and DAE looks into the benefits of the FP7 funded project VIBRANT.

Hidden away in the tropical darkness of nocturnal Madagascar, scientists have discovered a new species of gecko which has been described in the open access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

A master of disguise, the new species Paroedura hordiesi has camouflage pattern to blend with its natural habitat, while climbing on rocks and the ruins of an old fort, where it was spotted by scientists.

Home of the new gecko, the karstic limestone massifs in the region of northern Madagascar are believed to still harbour further undescribed reptile species, some of which might be microendemic and threatened by substantial habitat destruction.

The new species P. hordiesi is also proposed to be classified as “Critically Endangered” on the IUCN Red List on the basis that it is known from a single location, and there is continuing decline in the extent and quality of its habitat.

The far north of Madagascar comprises a mosaic of heterogeneous landscapes ranging from rainforests on volcanic basement to deciduous dry forests in karstic massifs and littoral habitats on sandy ground. The geological and climatic diversity of this area is reflected by a high species diversity and a high degree of microendemism.

Several taxa including dwarf frogs (Stumpffia), dwarf chameleons (Brookesia), burrowing skinks (Paracontias), leaf-tail geckos (Uroplatus), and the nocturnal geckos of the genus Paroedura have undergone remarkable diversification in northern Madagascar due to the great diversity of habitats, which are separated from each other and thus in part constitute “habitat islands”.

“The new Paroedura species from Montagne des Français described in our paper is just one new contribution to the taxonomic inventory of this massif, which is believed to hold yet undiscovered diversity. This discovery also highlights the threats affecting this microendemic species and other biota in the region.” explains the lead author of the study Dr. Frank Glaw from the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (ZSM).

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Original Source:

Glaw F, Rösler H, Ineich I, Gehring P, Köhler J, Vences M (2014) A new species of nocturnal gecko (Paroedura) from karstic limestone in northern Madagascar.Zoosystematics and Evolution 90(2): 249-259. doi: 10.3897/zse.90.8705

Karyotype is usually a stable feature of each species since chromosomal changes, if they occur, may contribute to the formation of barriers between populations causing the establishment of reproductive isolation and speciation as possible consequences. Indeed, mating between individuals with different karyotypes frequently produces hybrids with a reduced fertility (or sterile) due to mis-segregation of chromosomes during meiosis.

Despite the occurrence of this general rule, it seems that some animal species failed their examination in genetics and adopt different rules. Recent data published in the international journal Comparative Cytogenetics by Mauro Mandrioli, Federica Zanasi and Gian Carlo Manicardi of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) clearly showed that populations of the green peach aphid Myzus persicae (one of the most dangerous pest crop insects in the world) may have unusual karyotypes due to chromosomal fragmentations and/or rearrangements also within the same individual.

Interestingly, the observed chromosomal rearrangements involve more frequently the same chromosomes thus suggesting that the chromosomal architecture can make some rearrangements less random than others and some chromosomes more prone to change their structure than other ones.

As the authors also observed in previous works, some aphids showed different chromosome numbers also comparing cells belonging to a same individual “forgetting” that chromosome instability within individuals should be typical of malignant cells and not of healthy insects showing a high reproductive rate. This aphid species seems to be therefore the sum of populations possessing different karyotypes that in turn can give diverse genetic/ecological/evolutionary responses in relation to imposed selective environmental forces.

The evolutionary history of M. persicae is marked with speciation events and the tobacco specialist subspecies M. persicae nicotianae, known as the tobacco aphid, is an example. It is therefore intriguing that this species preserved its morphological identity through time and across a wide geographical scale despite the presence of several populations with unusual karyotypes.

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Original Source:

Mandrioli M, Zanasi F, Manicardi G (2014) Karyotype rearrangements and telomere analysis in Myzus persicae (Hemiptera, Aphididae) strains collected on Lavandula sp. plants. Comparative Cytogenetics 8(4): 259-274. doi: 10.3897/CompCytogen.v8i4.8568

A team of speleobiologists from the South China Agriculture University and theRussian Academy of Sciences have described four new species of dragon millipedes from southern China, two of which seem to be cave dwellers. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The millipede genus Desmoxytes is well-known because the dragon-like appearance of the species in it. The four new species all can be recognized by their spiky body, the distinctive characteristic which gave the representatives of the genus their unique common name.

Unlike other groups of cave millipedes, which are usually very common, the representatives of Desmoxytes are comparatively rare in caves, and always with low in numbers populations. In addition, they are often distributed in a narrow geographical area, or even only present in a single cave, or cave system. Because of such rarity and endemism, dragon millipedes are ideal material for evolutionary studies.

China holds the greatest diversity of Desmoxytes species. Up to now, China has 14 millipedes of the genus, including 9 cavernicolous species. It is believed, however, that the country holds a greater diversity of these bizarre creatures, which are yet to be discovered in future.

Original source:

Liu WX, Golovatch SI, Tian MY (2014) A review of the dragon millipede genusDesmoxytes Chamberlin, 1923 in China, with descriptions of four new species (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxosomatidae). ZooKeys 448: 9–26. doi:10.3897/zookeys.448.8081

Additional Information:

In: Golovatch SI, Li YB, Liu WX, Geoffroy J-J (2012) Three new cavernicolous species of dragon millipedes, genus Desmoxytes Chamberlin, 1923, from southern China, with notes on a formal congener from the Philippines (Diplpoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxoaomatidae). Zookeys 185: 1-17. doi: 10.3897/zookeys. 185.3082.

An innovative workflow reveals new research potential of the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD). A recently published article in the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) used specimen records downloaded from BOLD in tabular format and imported these into a human-readable text developed in manuscript within the Pensoft Writting Tool (PWT). Data were used to study the species distributions of ten Nearctic species of braconid wasps from the Microgastrinae subfamily.

BOLD is originally designed to support the generation and application of DNA barcode data. However, the repository also holds unexplored treasures of additional data that provide unique potential for many other research uses.

Currently almost 4 million sequences (over 3.4 million of them DNA barcodes) are stored in BOLD, including coverage for more than 143K animal species, 53K plant species, and 16K fungi and other species, and this impressive storage of information is continuing to grow every day.

A team of researchers, led by Dr Jose Fernandez-Triana from the University of Guelph, Canada, have now explored how the unique amount of data stored on the BOLD platform can be utilised for new research purposes. Choosing tiny parasitic wasps for their case study they selected a sample of 630 specimens and 10 North American species. Data stored on BOLD were then used to uncover a significant number of new records of locality, provinces, territories and states.

The research was then secured a fast publication via BDJ, a community peer-reviewed, open-access, comprehensive online platform, designed to accelerate publishing, dissemination and sharing of biodiversity-related data of any kind.

“Import of structured data into human-readable text is important but it does not represent the whole story. More importantly, the data can be downloaded straight from the article text by anyone for further re-use, or be automatically exported to data aggregators, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). In this way, data platforms could get more peer-reviewed content from scholarly publications and scientists will be properly credited for their efforts” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder of Pensoft Publishers.

Original Source:

Fernandez-Triana J, Penev L, Ratnasingham S, Smith M, Sones J, Telfer A, deWaard J, Hebert P (2014) Streamlining the use of BOLD specimen data to record species distributions: a case study with ten Nearctic species of Microgastrinae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e4153. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e4153

Additional information:

The workflow is part of the Data Publishing Toolkit elaborated within the EU FP7 funded project EU BON (Grant agreement No 308454).