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Our ability to assess biological diversity, ecosystem health, ecological interactions, and a wide range of other important processes is largely dependent on accurately recognizing species. However, identifying and describing species is not always a straightforward task. In some cases, a single species may show a high level of morphological variation, while in other cases, multiple morphologically similar species may be hidden under a single species name. Cryptic species, two or more distinct species that are erroneously classified under a single species name, are found in all major groups of living things.

As an alternative to traditional morphology-based species delimitation, an international research group, including scientists from Germany, Iran, Spain, and the USA, describe five new species of lichen-forming fungi from what was traditionally considered a single species using differences in DNA sequence data. The authors state that “the effective use of genetic data appears to be essential to appropriately and practically identify natural groups in some phenotypically cryptic lichen-forming fungal lineages”. The study was published in the open access journal Mycokeys.

They also provide a reference DNA sequence database for specimen identification using DNA barcoding, making specimen identification more accessible and more reliable at the same time. The application of DNA-based identification can potentially be used as a way for both specialists and nonspecialists alike to recognize species that are otherwise difficult to identify.

Lichens are commonly used to monitor ecosystem health and the impact of atmospheric pollution. In addition, some lichens are potentially valuable sources of pharmaceutical products, including antibiotics, antioxidants, etc. In spite of their occurrence in all terrestrial ecosystems and overall ecological importance, lichens are commonly overlooked. DNA barcode identification can be performed in a variety of ecological, pharmaceutical, and biomonitoring studies in order to quickly sort specimens into the correct species.

The authors argue that the use of molecular sequence data in identifying species will likely become increasingly important and routinely applied. Other disciplines such as ecology, conservation, and physiology will benefit from a more objectively based species circumscription, enabling us to interpret distribution and ecological patterns more precisely, while more accurately monitoring environmental disturbance and climate change. The authors predict that this approach will prove to be an important tool in making critical conservation-related decisions.

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Additional Information

This study was supported by funds from Brigham Young University graduate mentoring and graduate research fellowship awards, the USDA National Forest Service, the Negaunee Foundation, the National Science Foundation (DEB-0949147), the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain (CGL2010-21646/BOS, RYC02007-01576), and the JAE-Doc program (Departamento de Biología Ambiental, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales) for financial support.

Original source

Leavitt SD, FernaÅLndez-Mendoza F, PeÅLrez-Ortega S, Sohrabi M, Divakar PK, Lumbsch TH, St. Clair LLS (2013) DNA barcode identification of lichen-forming fungal species in the Rhizoplaca melanophthalma species-complex (Lecanorales, Lecanoraceae), including five new species. MycoKeys 7: 1, doi: 10.3897/mycokeys.7.4508

The data repository invites community input on the future of data archiving at upcoming membership meeting

Dryad, a repository for data underlying the international scientific and medical literature, works with a variety of journals, societies and publishers to archive research data at the time of publication. The project began in 2009 and has published more than 3,000 data packages. In 2012, Dryad incorporated as a nonprofit organization with the mission to make scientific and medical research data permanently available to all researchers and educators free-of-charge without barriers to reuse.

For the past four years, Dryad has worked with its stakeholders to develop a sustainability plan to realize this vision. Central to the sustainability plan is a one-time submission fee that will offset the actual costs of preserving data indefinitely. A variety of pricing plans are available for journals and other organizations such societies, funders and libraries to purchase discounted submission fees on behalf of their researchers. For data not covered by a pricing plan, the researcher will be asked to pay upon submission, with waivers provided to researchers from World Bank low and lower-middle income economies. Submission fees will apply to all new submissions starting September 2013. Dryad will also be supported in part by its membership, by grants for research and innovation, and by donors. Membership in Dryad is open to any organization that supports research and education. Dryad is pleased to include Pensoft Publishers among its Charter Members.

The Dryad Membership meeting, to be held in Oxford, UK on Friday, May 24 is open to members, prospective members, researchers and other interested parties. Attendees will hear about recent and upcoming developments in the repository and the nonprofit organization. In addition, there will be an Emerging Issues Forum with presentations from the community about future directions for Dryad, its members, and partner journals, including models for the technical and peer review of data, ideas for promoting the adoption of data citations, measuring data reuse, funder perspectives on the use of research grants for data management costs and the relevance of larger data networks.

Dryad’s Membership Meeting is part of a series of free public events in Oxford spotlighting trends in scholarly communication with an emphasis on research data, including a Symposium on the Now and Future of Data Publication on Wednesday, May 22nd and an ORCID Outreach Meeting with a special joint Dryad-ORCID Symposium on Research Attribution on Thursday, May 23rd. Registration for these events closes on May 13th. Remote attendance will be available for those unable to attend in person.

For more information about submitting data, becoming a member or the sustainability plan, please visit http://datadryad.org. The website also offers an Ideas Forum where people can make their voice heard by suggesting and voting for new features and offering comments.

CONTACT:

Laura Wendell, Executive Director

Email: lwendell@datadrayd.org

Tel: +1-919-668-4005 or +1-919-423-3889

Subterranean Biology now fully joins the peer reviewed open access family of journals published by Pensoft Publishers, who also publish ZooKeys, PhytoKeys and others.

"The outputs of the former editors-in-chief and the former editorial boards were without compromises on quality," comments the new editor-in-chief, Dr Oana Moldovan. "We certainly want to ensure continuity in this regard, but high-quality content is best appreciated if it is processed, published, presented and preserved in a way that leverages the potential of electronic publication to the fullest extent possible with current technology."

At Pensoft, fully electronic and largely automated workflows are the norm. Content is published simultaneously in several formats (PDF, HTML and XML) that are complemented by options for print on demand of reprints or whole issues. From now on, the content in the journal will be fully linked and exported to taxonomic databases such as the Encyclopedia of Life, Species-ID and PubMed Central. The articles will also benefit from professional archiving in the world’s leading scholarly archives.

The online publication allows an increase of the number of articles, whose revision is speeded up through the Pensoft Journals System, PJS. Faster online publication of the individual articles is also ensured, each article will be published when ready, and issues will be completed upon publishing of the last article. The new journal format is also beneficial to the content that can now include colour figures and multimedia free of charge. Lastly, Subterranean Biology will step into the future with Pensoft’s efforts towards active and professional promotion and PR, with the widest possible dissemination of the published content.

The journal Subterranean Biology is calling on society members and the wider community to make active use of its modernized publication workflows by submitting their best works to it. All types of contributions are welcome, including from both young and established scientists, who are encouraged to submit their works in the journal. Established researchers are invited to submit reviews and ideas for future research. "We expect that, at least, once every year, each member of the Society will provide a good contribution to the journal. We are also inviting all the people that work in subterranean biology or related fields to contribute to the Society journal and hopefully become new members", Moldovan adds.

The new Subterranean Biology is committed to making the world of subterranean creatures more attractive and accessible to the large public. "Subterranean biology is not only about those creepy creatures that live underground, the underground world is deeply connected with the surface, and the outside green turns into downwards black only in our eyes but not for a number of other living beings", the editor-in-chief explains.

 

 

Original Source:

Moldovan OT (2013) One step forward for subterranean biology. Subterranean Biology 11: 1-2. doi: 10.3897/subtbiol.11.5280

Pensoft Publishers’ flagship taxonomic open access journal ZooKeys marks more than 60 % growth in the first quarter of 2013. For this period, the total number of published pages almost doubled to the impressive 5,060 in 2013, in comparison with 3,266 in 2012. The number of published issues also significantly increased  from 27 to 41 for the same time frame.

The journal authors also benefited from intensified PR services committed to providing a wider outreach for quality research. Almost every article published in Zookeys gets a social network posting in our growing communities on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. On the average, one research paper per issue benefits from a professionally written press release disseminated to world’s leading science news distributors and mass media, including outlets like BBC, the Daily Mail, Scientific American, New York Times and others.

Another zoological open access journal published by Pensoft, the Journal of Hymenoptera Research also reported 60 % growth, with 398 published pages in 3 issues in the first quarter of 2013 in comparison with 242 pages in 2 issues in 2012.

Do frogs live underground? The answer is yes, some amphibians, such as salamanders and frogs have been often reported to dwell in subterranean habitats, some of them completely adjusted to the life in darkness, and others just spending a phase of their lifecycle in an underground shelter. Up until 2010, however, no one suspected that the Mediterranean anuran frog Rana iberica – commonly known as Iberian brown frog and usually found in streams – also participates in underground adventures. A new study published in the open access journal Subterranean Biology confirms the first report of Rana iberica reproduction in a cave-like habitat, with all life stages observed in the galleries.

Serra da Estrela Natural Park is located in north-central Portugal and is the largest protected area and one of the most biodiverse regions in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. Several drainage galleries were created for water capture in the 1950s, even before the establishment of the boundaries of the Natural Park. It is namely in these artificial subterranean habitats that the Iberian brown frog was discovered dwelling underground by biologists.

"The unusual sighting of R. iberica motivated a series of subsequent visits that started in 2011 up until December 2012 to understand the use of this artificial subterranean habitat by this species.", explains the lead author of the study Dr. Gonçalo M. Rosa. "All life stages were observed in the gallery during the study period, particularly adults, which were observed every month of the year."

The Iberian brown frog does not only seek refuge in the drainage galleries as a sporadic visitor. During long observations, adults from the species have been noted in the galleries,often standing on the ground or in crevices, swimming underwater or even climbing up the walls. There is evidence of mating activity, and batches of eggs have been found stuck to submerged rocks in the subterranean stream. Recently hatched tadpoles were also observed, initially remaining stationary above the egg mass for about two weeks, then swimming in the streams and feeding on the dead egg mass. The galleries are used by other amphibians as well, and larvae of the fire salamander Salamandra salamandra gallaica have been recorded twice while preying on brown frog tadpoles.

The choice of the artificial drainage gallery for a habitat of the Iberian brown frog may appear odd initially. However, it seems that the animals find a refuge in the cool and humid tunnels, often containing a small stream. These artificial subterranean habitats are in fact often used as a refuge for many species. They are, for example, particularly important for the salamander Chioglossa lusitanica, an Iberian endemic of conservation concern. Scientists express their fear that such preferences for underground habitats might in fact be a sign for the ecological dangers of the dramatic climate changes experienced by the Iberian region. Monitoring the subterranean activity of various species might provide important cues for future conservation efforts.

 

 

Original Source:

Rosa GM, Penado A (2013) Rana iberica (Boulenger, 1879) goes underground: subterranean habitat usage and new insights on natural history. Subterranean Biology 11: 15–29, doi: 10.3897/subtbiol.11.5170

 

Some ant species use clay ‘door-pebbles’ for the protection of their nest

Stenamma is a cryptic "leaf-litter" ant genus that occurs in moderately humid to wet forest habitats throughout the Holarctic region, Central America, and part of northwestern South America (Colombia and Ecuador). The genus was thought to be restricted primarily to the temperate zone, but recent collecting efforts have uncovered a large variety of Neotropical forms, which rival the Holarctic species in terms of morphological and behavioral diversity. The Middle American clade of Stenamma is revised in a paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys to recognize 40 species, an astonishing 33 of which are described as new.

"The paper documents a large radiation of previously overlooked Neotropical ants. When I began the study, only six species were known from the region, now there are 40. The fact that this radiation has been missed for so long is surprising, since ants are an insect group that attracts much interest and study," remarks Dr. Michael G. Branstetter, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. "This revision provides a rare look into the biology and life history of this intriguing genus."

An exceptional characteristic of Stenamma is that many species seem to be well adapted to cool, wet environments at mid to high elevations between 800 m. In fact, it has been found that Stenamma can be the most common ant genus in leaf-litter samples collected from very wet and cool cloud forest localities. These ecological traits are in contrast to the pattern seen in ants generally, in which diversity and abundance decrease with elevation. Furthermore, it is slowly becoming apparent that the life history strategies of Stenamma species are quite diverse, and in some cases unique among ants.

Most collections of the group are made by sifting leaf-litter from the forest floor, which is why Stenamma has its stereotype as a "leaf-litter ant genus." Although nests of many species do occur in the leaf litter, and foragers are common there, recent collecting has revealed that Stenamma species nest in a variety of microhabitats, not just leaf litter. Nests have been found in large logs, in small rotting branches, in and under bark, in steep clay or mud banks, in and under epiphytes, under rocks, in the ground, and under leaves in leaf litter. In addition, several species are now known to nest and forage in the forest canopy. The reason these nests are rarely encountered is because most species are cryptic, forming small colonies composed of slow-moving worker ants.

One of the most intriguing recent discoveries has been the observation that some Stenamma species nest in clay banks and exhibit novel behaviors. In the first documented example of clay bank nesting within Stenamma, it was found that the two species involved construct multiple nests per colony, but only occupy one with a queen and brood, and they maintain a small clay "door-pebble," which is used to block the nest entrance upon encounter with aggressive ants, such as army ants.

The work of Branstetter reveals that not only two, but many Stenamma species nest in the clay bank environment, suggesting that this habitat may be important in the evolution and ecology of the group. Most intriguingly, one of the newly observed species has been found to have convergently evolved a similar nest architecture to the door-pebble ants. The reason for this convergence is not known and is in need of further investigation. "I hypothesize that like cloud forests, the clay bank habitat is less hospitable to the average ant, and thus provides Stenamma species with a more protected and less competitive environment in which to nest and forage." explains Dr. Branstetter.

 

Collection and specimen data for all material examined in this study, along with all color images, have been uploaded to AntWeb, a site hosted by the California Academy of Sciences. AntWeb subsequently provides all specimen-level data, images, and natural history content to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Encyclopedia of Life of Life (EOL).

Original Source:

Branstetter MG (2013) Revision of the Middle American clade of the ant genus Stenamma Westwood (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Myrmicinae). ZooKeys 295: 1, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.295.4905

Mymaridae, commonly known as fairyflies, are one of about 18 families of chalcid wasps. They include the world’s smallest known winged insect – Kikiki huna, the body length of which is only 155 μm, and the smallest known adult insect – the wingless male of Dicopomorpha echmepterygis which is only 130 μm.. Although fairyflies are among the most common chalcid wasps, they are seldomly noticed by humans because of their minute size. Their apparent invisibility, gracile bodies and delicate wings with long fringes resembling the mythical fairies have earned them their common name.

All but two known fairyfly species are parasitoids of eggs of other insects. These eggs are commonly laid in concealed locations, such as in plant tissues or in leaf litter or soil and are difficult to find, so for the most part the host insects of fairyflies are unknown. Specimens of the new species Tinkerbella nana were collected at the La Selva Biological Station, a lowland rainforest research and education facility owned and managed by the Organization for Tropical Studies, located in the province of Heredia, Costa Rica. They were collected by sweeping in fairly young (no more than 20 years old) secondary forest mixed with a primary forest.  All the specimens collected were below 250 μm in length. The reduced wing surface and relatively long setae of fairyflies and many other minute flying insects likely have an aerodynamic function, perhaps to reduce turbulence and hence drag on a wing flapping at several hundred beats per second. The study of the new species was published in the open access journal Journal of Hymenoptera Research.

Almost 2000 years ago, Pliny the Elder (ca. 23 A.D.) stated "Rerum natura nusquam magis quam in minimis tota est" loosely translated as "Nature is nowhere as great as in its smallest." Lacking any means of magnification, he could not possibly have seen the intricate structure and beauty of fairyflies or other minute organisms. But his statement certainly holds true.

"If something is physically possible in living things, some individuals of at least one species, extinct or extant, will likely have achieved it. So the lower size limit, by whatever measure of size is chosen, was almost certainly already evolved—somewhere, sometime. If we have not already found them, we must surely be close to discovering the smallest insects and other arthropods", says the lead author, John Huber from Natural Resources Canada.

 

Original Source

Huber JH, Noyes JS (2013) A new genus and species of fairyfly, Tinkerbella nana (Hymenoptera, Mymaridae), with comments on its sister genus Kikiki, and discussion on small size limits in arthropods. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 32: 17. doi: 10.3897/JHR.32.4663

A new study greatly expands knowledge of the wasp genus Oxyscelio. A total of 90 species are recognized from the Indo-Malayan and Palearctic realms of Asia, 71 of which are described here as new species. A total of 438 photographs are included to aid in specimen identification, all exported to and available for the public from EOL. Newly discovered species are described from a range of countries including Brunei, China, Christmas Island, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, The Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, while previous knowledge of the genus was confined only to The Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Australia. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys.

Oxyscelio was first recognized as a distinct taxon in 1907, from a specimen collected in Java, Indonesia. The genus belongs to a wasp family that is represented mainly by parasitoid species. These are organisms that exhibit in essence parasitic behaviour, but unlike normal parasites they go further in sterilizing or killing the host, and sometimes even consuming it. The wasps from the Oxyscelio group presumably parasitise on the eggs of another insect. Previous researchers Jean Jacqués Kieffer and Alan P. Dodd continued to describe new species until 1931. Oxyscelio received almost no attention from that time until 1976, when Lubomír Masner, one of the authors of this study, published revisionary notes for genera of the then-recognized family Scelionidae. This resulted in a total of 19 species known from Asia.

Extensive specimen collecting in the following decades revealed that the actual number of species of Oxyscelio was much greater than previously recognized. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated Planetary Biodiversity Inventories (PBIs) to facilitate description of species that were known to a handful of scientific specialists but not yet officially published. Part of that initiative enabled the current study, which resulted from examination of thousands of preserved Oxyscelio specimens that had been housed in natural history collections around the world. This resulted in a more than fourfold increase in the number of species of Oxyscelio that are officially described from Asia.

Previously described species were examined to ensure that newly described species were distinct from them. This required the rediscovery of several species that had not been seen in a century or more, including the first described species of Oxyscelio, which had not been seen since its discovery in 1907. New technology enabled better examination of the morphology of these species, which had not even been photographed until the publication of this study.

 

Original source:

Systematics of the parasitic wasp genus Oxyscelio Kieffer (Hymenoptera, Platygastridae s.l.), Part I: Indo-Malayan and Palearctic fauna. ZooKeys 292: 1-263. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.292.3867

Tree iguanas (Liolaemus) are one of the most diverse genus of lizards in the world with 230 described species. Within these, Liolaemus nigromaculatus – the second described species of the genus Liolaemus – is usually mentioned in field guides, project baselines, scientific articles, reviews and even is the nominal species of the lizard group nigromaculatus… but always the same question is repeated: Which is this species and which is its type locality?

After a long and comprehensive investigation, two Chilean biologists, Jaime Troncoso-Palacios, Universidad de Chile and Carlos F. Garin, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, clear the mysteries around the species, demonstrating that the tree iguana L. nigromaculatus was in fact described with a juvenile male of the species, currently known as L. bisignatus. This specimen was collected in Chile by the doctor and naturalist Franz Julius Ferdinand Meyen on his journey around the world during 1830-1832. Although he describes in detail his journey in one of his books, peculiarly this information was never used in an attempt to clarify the provenance of the species. In fact, there is currently broad consensus that the type locality is Huasco (northern Chile), a locality never visited by Meyen!

"For first time, we have been able to identify the area in which Meyen collected L. nigromaculatus. We have established through Meyen’s own writings and the study of the species of Liolaemus that inhabit in the localities that he visited that the tree iguana L. nigromaculatus was collected in the transect or surroundings between Puerto Viejo and Copiapó, in Atacama (Chile)", explains Jaime Troncoso-Palacios.

For the characterization of the holotype of L. nigromaculatus, the authors used high resolution digital photographs provided by Mr. Frank Tillack (Museum für Naturkunde). Use of digital pictures of type specimens has proved to be a powerful and useful tool for clarifying confusing taxonomic issues. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

 

Original source

Troncoso-Palacios J, Garin CF (2013) On the identity of Liolaemus nigromaculatus. Wiegmann, 1834 (Iguania, Liolaemidae) and correction of its type locality. ZooKeys 294: 37, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.294.4399

Lichens are symbiotic organisms consisting of a fungal partner and one or several algal partners. The association is so close that scientists until 1867 were not aware that lichens actually consist of two different partners. After the Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener discovered the dual nature of lichens, lichenologists were focusing on the fungal partner when studying lichens, since it was often believed that only few algae are involved in the symbiosis.

Molecular studies have shown that it was a mistake to neglect the algal partner for a long time. The diversity of algal partners have been shown to be much higher than expected. In addition the study by Dr. Christian Printzen, Senckenberg Research Institute (Frankfurt), and his colleagues in Frankfurt and Madrid has shown that, by choosing different algal partners, lichen fungi are able to colonize different ecosystems.

The study focuses on the Spiny Heath Lichen (Cetraria aculeata), which has a peculiar distribution range. It belongs to the so-called bipolar species that occur in polar and alpine regions of the northern and southern Hemisphere. However, this species also occurs in the climatically different Mediterranean region with dry steppe-like vegetation. Dr. Printzen’s studies now show that this distribution can be explained by the presence of different algal species in the polar vs. Mediterranean populations.

The paper, published in the open access journal Mycokeys, discusses the genetic differences of these algae and their evolutionary and ecological implications. "It is an example how molecular techniques in tandem with ecophysiological studies can enhance our knowledge of the biology of this fascinating type of symbiosis.", comments Dr. Christian Printzen the lead author of the study.

 

Original source

Printzen C, Domaschke S, Fernández-Mendoza F, Pérez-Ortega S (2012) Biogeography and ecology of Cetraria aculeata, a widely distributed lichen with a bipolar distribution. In: Kansri Boonpragob, Peter Crittenden, H.Thorsten Lumbsch (Eds) Lichens: from genome to ecosystems in a changing world.MycoKeys 6: 33, doi: 10.3897/mycokeys.6.3185