Blog

Long considered to be one of the most species-rich ant genera, latest research has stripped the ant genus Paratrechina down to a single species- Paratrechina longicornis. This particular ant is one of the most widely distributed, found in nearly every tropical and subtropical location on the planet due to accidental human transport, and is considered one of the world’s worst invasive ant species. A recent review of the genus in the open access Journal of Hymenoptera Research announces the discovery of a second species P. zanjensis, which presents a step forward into determining the native range of P. longicornis.

Native to Africa, and so far found only in miombo woodlands, the new species P. zanjensis is potentially specialized to this habitat. Miombo is the Swahili word for the Brachystegia genus of trees which are an important tree species within miombo woodlands. The specific name of this new species – zanjensis – is derived from the ancient Arabic name for the stretch of East African coast that encompasses parts of modern day Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania, where the species is found.

“Given the economic and ecological impacts of Paratrechina longicornis, discovering a close relative may provide us with insights into the biology of one of the world’s worst invasive ant species. For instance, now that we know another species exist within the genus, comparative studies can begin to perhaps understand the attributes that make P. longicornis such a good biological invader.” says Dr. John S. LaPolla of Towson University, USA.

Unlike its new relative, the long known P. longicornis, exhibits remarkable adaptability and is spread virtually worldwide through human activity and movement. The species is found almost in every urban center in the tropics as well as in greenhouses and other manmade structures in cool temperature climates. The remarkable ability of this ant to survive even in extremely human changed environment also makes it a well-known pest in tropical climates, commonly called crazy ant due to its erratic movements.

Due to this wide distribution and easy adaptation of P. longicornis the determination of its native range has proved a challenge to biologists. The current revision suggests that the species originates in Asia, as previously considered, however further investigation is needed to confirm this thesis.

“Given the available distribution information on P. longicornis, we conclude that P. longicornis remains most likely native to southeastern Asia, and that the discovery of a new species native to Africa makes Paratrechina yet another example of an ant genus that possesses an Afro-Asian distribution.”, explains Dr. John S. LaPolla.

Original Source:

LaPolla JS, Hawkes PG, Fisher JN (2013) Taxonomic review of the ant genus Paratrechina, with a description of a new species from Africa. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 35: 71. doi: 10.3897/JHR.35.5628

Open Access Week 2013 is here, and Pensoft would like to continue to take the opportunity to highlight different aspects of the central role that Open Access plays in our activities.

A great deal has  been written and said for and against open access, but one of the biggest arguments in support of open access publishing is contained in the so called 4R – reuse, revise, remix, redistribution of scientific results, data, images and text. Pensoft, as an open access publisher, shares its positive experience of image reuse on Wikimedia to promote the movement during Open Access Week 2013.

When words become diluted in a long and extensive argument, statistics still speak out clearly. About 4000 media items derived from Pensoft publications have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Together, these media files have been used more than 33 000 times across various wiki supported pages, in more than 50 languages.  Wikimedia pages using these items get more than 3 000 000 views monthly from across the globe.

The most reused image is the one of the brown lacewing Micromus variegatus used more than 6 500 times across several languages. The leader is closely followed by the beetle Pterostichus punctatissimus, with around 1400 uses and a moth from the Anoba sp. Trigonoides species complex, with just 200 less.

Multimedia from articles that grasped the imagination of the public, such as the famous carnivore – the Olinguito, are used on over 40 Wikipedias. Similarly the spider version of Bigfoot – Trogloraptor marchingtoni, has been used over 14 languages. In both cases the multimedia files have been featured on the main pages, across several languages.

Science is publicly funded and as such it is only logical to reach back to the public. Open access guarantees easy access and reuse of scientific publications for the benefit of the scientific community, citizen scientists and the general public.

In 2008, Pensoft launched its first open-access journals named ZooKeys and BioRisk. In 2010, PhytoKeys, an open access journal in plant systematics, phylogeny and biogeography was also launched and shortly after, in December 2010, five society journals moved to Pensoft’s open access journal publishing platform.  The latest addition to the Pensoft family is the Biodiversity Data Journal, offering several flagship innovations to taxonomic and data publishing, and exclusively offering a Platinum mode of open access.

There are two main modes of open access publishing – Green Open Access, where the author has the right to provide free access to the article outside the publisher’s web site in a repository or on his/her own website, and Gold Open Access, where articles are available for free download directly from the publisher on the day of publication.

Opening of content and data, however does not necessarily mean “easy to discover and re-use”. The Biodiversity Data Journal proposed the term “Advanced Open Access” to describe an integrated, narrative (text) and data publishing model where the main goal is to make content “re-usable” and “interoperable” for both humans and computers.

To publish effectively in open access, it is not sufficient simply to provide PDF or HTML files online. It is crucial to put these under a reuse-friendly license and to implement technologies that allow machine-readable content and data to be harvested and collated into a big data pool.

 

The Advanced Open Access means:

• Free to read
• Free to re-use, revise, remix, redistribute
• Easy to discover and harvest
• Content automatically summarised by aggregators
• Data and narrative integrated to the widest extent possible
• Human- and computer-readable formats
• Community-based, pre- and post-publication peer-review
• Community ownership of data
• Free to publish or at low cost affordable by all

 

BDJ shortens the distance between “narrative” (text) and “data” publishing. Many data types, such as species occurrences, checklists, measurements and others, are converted into text from spreadsheets for better readability by humans. Conversely, text from an article can be downloaded as structured data or harvested by computers for further analysis.

“Open access is definitely one of the greatest steps in scientific communication comparable to the invention of the printing technology or the peer-review system. Great but not sufficient!” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder of Pensoft Publishers and the Biodiversity Data Journal. “We need to switch the focus already from making content ‘available for free download’ to being discoverable and extractable. Such re-usability multiplies society’s investment in science.”

Additional information:

The Biodiversity Data Journal is designed by Pensoft Publishers and was funded in part by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7) project ViBRANT.
Source:

Smith V, Georgiev T, Stoev P, Biserkov J, Miller J, Livermore L, Baker E, Mietchen D, Couvreur T, Mueller G, Dikow T, Helgen K, Frank J, Agosti D, Roberts D, Penev L (2013) Beyond dead trees: integrating the scientific process in the Biodiversity Data Journal. Biodiversity Data Journal 1: e995. DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.1.e995

 

Open Access Week 2013 is here, and Pensoft takes the opportunity to highlight different aspects of the central role that Open Access plays in our activities. Five years passed since the birth of our first open access journal ZooKeys and we would like to share our experience and visions for the future.

What are the modes of open access and does opening of content and data necessarily mean “easy to discover and re-use”. The latest addition to the Pensoft family of open access journals the Biodiversity Data Journal and advanced open access to shorten the distance between “narrative (text)” and “data” publishing and make content readable both by humans and machines.

Open access and the 4R – reuse, revise, remix, redistribute or does open access facilitate and encourage the re-use of scientific research data. A look at reuse statistics of Pensoft multimedia on Wikimedia projects speaks for itself, with over 2800 files used across more than 50 languages on tens of thousands of pages.

Publicly funded research should be available to the public. Open access is a solution to the paradox of the lack of access to publicly funded research. Pensoft will present some positive examples of collaboration between EU-funded projects and open access publishing activities of our journals.

Advanced Open Access as a solution for society and institutional journals – the positive experience of journals such as Subterranean Biology and Journal of Hymenoptera research that have chosen the advanced open access model of publication offered by Pensoft.  Societal and institutional publishers are struggling with the implications of the transition to the digital age. Adoption of the open access publishing model provides an opportunity to improve the way research is communicated and to broaden the impact it can have on society.

Finally, we would like to have a look at our visions for the future of open access. We look forward to the discussions and exchange of ideas during the following week.

We love Open Access!

Open Access Week 2013 is here, and Pensoft takes the opportunity to highlight different aspects of the central role that Open Access plays in our activities. Five years passed since the birth of our first open access journal ZooKeys and we would like to share our experience and visions for the future.

What are the modes of open access and does opening of content and data necessarily mean “easy to discover and re-use”. The latest addition to the Pensoft family of open access journals the Biodiversity Data Journal and advanced open access to shorten the distance between “narrative (text)” and “data” publishing and make content readable both by humans and machines.

Open access and the 4R – reuse, revise, remix, redistribute or does open access facilitate and encourage the re-use of scientific research data. A look at reuse statistics of Pensoft multimedia on Wikimedia projects speaks for itself, with over 2800 files used across more than 50 languages on tens of thousands of pages.

Publicly funded research should be available to the public. Open access is a solution to the paradox of the lack of access to publicly funded research. Pensoft will present some positive examples of collaboration between EU-funded projects and open access publishing activities of our journals.

Advanced Open Access as a solution for society and institutional journals – the positive experience of journals such as Subterranean Biology and Journal of Hymenoptera research that have chosen the advanced open access model of publication offered by Pensoft.  Societal and institutional publishers are struggling with the implications of the transition to the digital age. Adoption of the open access publishing model provides an opportunity to improve the way research is communicated and to broaden the impact it can have on society.

Finally, we would like to have a look at our visions for the future of open access. We look forward to the discussions and exchange of ideas during the following week.

We love Open Access!

Famous as the sacred beetles of ancient Egypt the scarab beetle group in fact represents much greater diversity around the globe. Some of the most vulnerable representatives are contained in the flightless genus Gyronotus, which currently includes six known species. A recent study published in the open access journal Zookeys describes two new species with unusual distribution from southern Africa.

The two new species G. perissinottoi and G. schuelei both dwell in grasslands/savannas, while most of the other known species in the genus exhibit a preference for forest habitats. G. perissinottoi occurs in a small but biodiversity unique area in southern KwaZulu-Natal, in the beautiful Umthamvuna Nature Reserve. The second species, G. schuelei originates from western Swaziland and is currently known only from two specimens.

The representatives of the genus Gyronotus as well as several other genera of the tribe Canthonini, are regarded among the most endangered of the African Scarabaeinae because of their sensitivity to disturbance. Apart from G. glabrosus and the two newly described beetles, Gyronotus species are linked to coastal and low-lying forest habitats, which have undergone massive transformation during the past 50 years, through clearance, degradation and fragmentation.

“The genus Gyronotus is part of the tribe Canthonini, which has long been recognised as a relict of the ancient supercontinent Gondwanaland. Members of the genus are also wingless and particularly vulnerable to environmental disturbance. Thus, they are undoubtedly of substantial biodiversity and conservation value, with status ranging from vulnerable to critically endangered.”comment the authors of the study Dr. Moretto and Dr. Perissinotto.

Original Source:

Moretto P, Perissinotto R (2013) Description and ecology of two new species of Gyronotus van Lansberge, 1874 (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) from southern Africa. ZooKeys 344: 73. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.344.6101

 

The newly discovered dragon tree species Dracaena kaweesakii from Thailand is characterized by its extensive branching. The new species reaches an impressive 12 m in both height and crown diameter, and has beautiful soft sword-shaped leaves with white edges and cream flowers with bright orange filaments, all highly distinctive features. The study describing this exciting new species was published in the open access journal Phytokeys by an international team of scientists.

Dracaena kaweesakii is a relative of the beautiful Canary Island dragon tree Dracaena draco. It is an ecologically important species found only on limestone hills and mountains that are often associated with Buddhist temples in Thailand.

Dracaena kaweesakii is extracted from the wild for use in horticulture in Thailand and is one of the more popular species due to its extensive branching. Dracaena species in general are thought by Thai people to bring luck to households that have them, hence their popularity. A number of populations of D. kaweesakii are protected by proximity to temples or having been transplanted into their gardens. There is no direct evidence yet of over-extraction but sustainability studies are needed at population level to insure the protection of this beautiful species.

“Dracaena kaweesakii is thought to be endangered through having a limited distribution, destruction of limestone for concrete and extraction of trees for gardens.” comments Dr. Wilkin about the conservation status of the new dragon tree species.

Original Source:

Wilkin P, Suksathan P, Keeratikiat K , van Welzen P, Wiland-Szymanska J (2013) A new species from Thailand and Burma, Dracaena kaweesakii Wilkin & Suksathan (Asparagaceae subfamily Nolinoideae). PhytoKeys 26: 101. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.26.5335

The bottomless pit of insect biodiversity has yielded a treasure trove of new species of jewel-like clown beetles. In a paper published today in the journal ZooKeys, Michael Caterino and Alexey Tishechkin of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History describe 85 new species in the genus Baconia, renowned for their brilliant coloration and bizarrely flattened body forms. The new species bring the genus up to 116 total species.

The new species, mainly from North and South America, were discovered through studies of numerous museum collections, as well as the authors’ own fieldwork.

”Although the genus Baconia was originally named in honor of Francis Bacon the Elizabethan philosopher, Francis Bacon the experimental artist would also be a fitting namesake for these fantastic beetles.”, says the study’s lead author Caterino.

While many groups of beetles are known for spectacular color patterns, they are rare and little-appreciated in the clown beetle family, Histeridae. ”Even beetle specialists are amazed by the fantastic colors of Baconia.’‘, observes Caterino. What purposes the colors may serve, however, remains a mystery. ”In natural history terms, the species of Baconia aren’t very different from several other groups of clown beetles with similar habits, but much duller coloration.”

Their beautiful bodies conceal a vicious disposition, as the species are mostly believed to stalk and eat wood-boring beetles and their larvae. Some are even drawn to pheromones of bark beetles, using their own seductive odors against them. The flattened bodies of many of the species let them pursue their prey deep under the bark of recently killed trees.

That the little jewels remained hidden for so long may be partly attributed to their extreme rarity. Although more than 20 museums’ collections were assembled for the study, nearly half the species are still known from only one or two specimens. ”Biodiversity science is humbling.”, admits Caterino. While the study provides a wealth of new data on a neglected group of beetles, ”We know it’s still the tip of the iceberg.”

”Our greatest hope is that by calling attention to the existence of such exquisite creatures, we will inspire others to go out and seek out new populations and data.”

This study was part of a large scale study of clown beetle diversity, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

 

Original Source:

Caterino MS, Tishechkin AK (2013) A systematic revision of Baconia Lewis (Coleoptera, Histeridae, Exosternini). ZooKeys 343: 1. doi:10.3897/zookeys.343.5744

A shrimp from America has been invading Europe’s rivers and lakes for several decades, but something seems to be preventing this colonist from becoming numerous and problematic, like so many other invaders – such as the Californian grey squirrel and American crayfish. Could the resident European shrimps have something to do with this?

Jaimie Dick and his colleagues mapped the occurrence of the interloper and found it only existed where native shrimps were absent or rare. When native shrimps were common, the American shrimp simply could not establish and it disappeared. The results have been published in the open access journal NeoBiota.

”We came up with the idea that the native shrimps might be eating the exotic species to the point of local extinction, and hence its patchy occurrence.” said Prof. Dick. ”So we staged fights between two of our native shrimps, Gammarus pulex and Gammarus duebeni, and they both proved very effective at killing and eating the invader Crangonyx pseudogracilis. Remarkably, one of the native shrimps. G. pulex, which almost never allows the invader to establish, was the better of the two predators in our experiments. The other native shrimp, G. duebeni, sometimes co-exists with the invader because it is a less effective predator. Thus, our laboratory experiments helped us understand a Europe-wide pattern of failed invasion.”

Invasion ecologists use the term ”biotic resistance” to describe how native species might fight back and drive invaders extinct. But unravelling how this occurs is not an easy task. By comparing the numbers of invaders killed over a range of their densities, the research showed that the native shrimps can kill most invaders to the point their populations crash, and hence the invasion is halted.

”Understanding how native species resist exotic species could help us prevent further invasions that damage crops, biodiversity and cost £Billions each year. If we act to help native species populations, we can reduce the menace of invaders. Finally we can begin to turn the tide on unwelcome and out-of-control colonists.” explained Prof. Dick.

The authors are conducting more work in Ireland, England, Canada and South Africa to understand how native and invasive species interact and thus how to combat a very real environmental and economic problem throughout the world.

Original source:

MacNeil C, Dick JTA, Alexander ME, Dodd JA, Ricciardi A (2013) Predators vs. alien: differential biotic resistance to an invasive species by two resident predators. NeoBiota 19: 1–19. doi:10.3897/neobiota.19.4839

The kinds of traits that show genealogical relationships between species are often minute and easily overlooked.

Dr. Neil Snow, a botanist at Pittsburg State University, published a paper in 1996 that included observations of some odd-shaped hairs on three species of grass native to Africa. Their odd shape stems from distinctly swollen tips that are then pinched into a small party-hat structure at the very apex.

“A tongue-twisting technical term for that shape is ”clavicorniculate”, but ”club-shaped” is a workable simplification we often prefer.”, remarked Snow.

In 2011, Drs. Paul Peterson and Konstatin Romaschencko, working at the Smithsonian Institution, used DNA sequences to determine that the 3 African species are related to an American species that lacks the odd-shaped hairs.

“Nobody previously anticipated a close relationship between the African and American species, particularly since the American species lacks the odd hairs.”, explained Dr. Snow.

“However”, added Snow, “the DNA data supporting this relationship is quite robust.”

The 3 authors just published a monograph in PhytoKeys, which places the four species together for the first time in a genus called Disakisperma.

“Our research is a good example of how big, bright, flashy or sexy traits are not always the ones that help solve taxonomic puzzles.”, concluded Snow.

Original Source:

Snow N, Peterson PM, Romaschenko K (2013) Systematics of Disakisperma (Poaceae, Chloridoideae, Chlorideae). PhytoKeys 26: 21-70. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.26.5649