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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+ .

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