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he New England Banksia is largely restricted to the eastern edge of the New England Tableland, and is common in places along Waterfall Way. Ms Stimpson’s research has raised this flowering plant, until now classified as a variety of the Hairpin Banksia (B. spinulosa), to the taxonomic level of a distinct species. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

"I love the Proteaceae – the family of flowering plants that includes the Banksia and Grevillea genera in Australia and Protea in South Africa," Ms Stimpson said. "Surprisingly, molecular evidence in recent years has shown the family’s closest relatives are the Sacred Lotus and the plane trees. Species of Banksia survive in poor soil and still manage to produce marvellous flowers."

Margaret Stimpson wrote the paper in collaboration with Ian Telford, the Curator of the N.C.W. Beadle Herbarium at the University of New England, Professor Jeremy Bruhl, the Director of the herbarium, and Dr Peter Weston, Senior Principal Research Scientist at the National Herbarium of NSW, an international specialist in Proteaceae systematics.

Margaret’s first project as an undergraduate student of botany at UNE was on the Proteaceae, and she’s been collecting specimens ever since. Now working towards enrolling in a doctoral degree program, she said: "There are still species of Banksia out there that merit description, and I hope to test these in a PhD project."

Margaret established the species rank of the New England Banksia by detailed studies of its leaves, flowers, stem and fruit, and considerations of its ecology and distribution. She explained that it has two growth forms, the more common being a multi-stemmed small shrub with many flowers but few seeds. This form occurs where there has been regular burning, and the seeds need exposure to fire to open. The less common form, found where burning has not occurred, is a single-stemmed tree with many flowers and many seeds that open spontaneously without exposure to fire.

Original source:
Stimpson ML, Weston PH, Telford IRH, Bruhl JJ (2012) First instalment in resolution of the Banksia spinulosa complex (Proteaceae): B. neoanglica, a new species supported by phenetic analysis, ecology and geography. PhytoKeys 14: 57-80. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.14.3415

Invasive species – plants, animals, and microbes introduced to regions beyond their native range – carry a global price tag of $1.4 trillion dollars. They are responsible for the loss of natural resources and biodiversity, damages to infrastructure, and an uptick in infectious diseases.

Not all non-native species pose a threat. Scientists around the world have spent the last several decades teasing apart the conditions that set the stage for debilitating invaders, like giant hogweed, zebra mussels, or gray squirrels. A number of hypotheses have emerged to help predict how natural areas will respond to introduced plants, animals, and microbes.

An analysis of 371 invasion studies using six dominant invasion hypotheses has revealed their predictive power is weakening. The paper’s authors – Jonathan Jeschke, Lorena Gómez Aparicio, Sylvia Haider, Tina Heger, Christopher Lortie, Petr Pyšek, and David Strayer – found empirical support for all six hypotheses declining, with recent studies showing the lowest levels of support. Hypotheses that were too broad or omitted ecosystem interactions fared among the worst, plants proved easier to predict than animals, and, contrary to popular belief, diverse ecosystems were not inherently resistant against invaders. The study was published in the open-access journal NeoBiota.

The paper’s authors comment: "The observed decline effect means our confidence in making sound policy and management decisions based on the six analyzed hypotheses is lower today than it was in the past. Scientists were overly optimistic about the predictive power of these hypotheses. Given that invasive species are an expensive and ever growing problem, this is a situation that needs to be addressed."

Similar "decline effects" have been noted in other disciplines, among them pharmacological research, psychology, and animal behavior. The effect has been attributed to publication bias, inadequate sample sizes, and a tendency of early tests of hypotheses to pick study organisms or systems where positive results are expected.

Lead author Jonathan Jeschke, of Technische Universität München, concludes: "The decline effect is both worrying and fascinating. It’s a phenomenon that should be investigated across disciplines, as medical and psychological researchers have shown its effects can be strong, and it can distort the predictive power of hypotheses."

The paper’s authors offer four solutions to improve current hypotheses in invasion biology: (1) Existing gaps in empirical tests of hypotheses should be filled. The study revealed crucial gaps in empirical studies, showing that most studies have focused on terrestrial plants but have ignored other organisms and aquatic habitats. (2) Existing hypotheses should be specified for groups of organisms and habitats. (3) Interactions of invasive species with their new ecosystems should be regularly considered. The study shows that hypotheses considering such interactions are better supported by empirical evidence than other hypotheses. (4) Revised hypotheses should be rejected if they do not work. Those hypotheses that still lack empirical support after specification for groups of organisms and habitats (solution 2), consideration of invader-ecosystem interactions (solution 3), or another form of revision should be discarded. Scientists should not waste time and resources to continue working with these hypotheses. Instead, fresh ideas and novel hypotheses are needed to further our understanding of biological invasions – something that is essential to effective management in today’s rapidly changing world.

Original source:
Jeschke JM, Gómez Aparicio L, Haider S, Heger T, Lortie CL, Pyšek P, Strayer DL (2012) Support for major hypotheses in invasion biology is uneven and declining. NeoBiota 14: 1-20. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.14.3435

Additional Information:
Kettunen M, Genovesi P, Gollasch S, Pagad S, Starfinger U, ten Brink P, Shine C (2009) Technical support to EU strategy on invasive alien species (IAS) – Assessment of the impacts of IAS in Europe and the EU. Institute for European Environmental Policy (Brussels, Belgium): 1-44 + Annexes.
Lehrer J (2010) The truth wears off. New Yorker Dec 13: 52-57.
Schooler J (2011) Unpublished results hide the decline effect. Nature 470: 437.

Nowadays, an increasing number of rivers and lakes are being invaded by exotic snails, which come from remote regions, and even other continents. Such species represent a threat to native species, as they compete for food or space with them.

This is the case of the mudsnail Potamopyrgus antipodarum. This small aquatic snail is native to New Zealand, and has spread throughout rivers, lakes or streams in Europe, Australia, America and Asia. The invasion success of this mudsnail may be partly due to the ability of females to reproduce without participation of males (i.e. parthenogenesis). This means that only one female is able to start a new population. Besides, the reproductive potential is huge, up to 230 juveniles per female in a year.

But how can these snails disperse from catchment to catchment? If the species were able to tolerate desiccation, it could be transported attached to birds, fishing tools or terrestrial animals. This possibility has been investigated by the Spanish ecologists Álvaro Alonso and Pilar Castro-Díez from the University of Alcalá, whose research was published in the open-access journal NeoBiota.

They performed a laboratory experiment, exposing the snails to different dehydration periods and counting the number of surviving snails. In this way they demonstrated that the mudsnail can survive up to 48 hours out of water. From this finding, two (low-cost) and relatively easy control mechanisms for avoiding the spread of mudsnails emerge: 1) exposing to air of any fishing tools and/or boats for more than 53 hours and 2) avoiding the access of wild and domestic animals to infected rivers or lakes via physical barriers or scarecrows. Such simple measures can actually help to preserve water bodies free of invaders.

Original source:
Alonso A, Castro-Díez P (2012) Tolerance to air exposure of the New Zealand mudsnail Potamopyrgus antipodarum (Hydrobiidae, Mollusca) as a prerequisite to survival in overland translocations. NeoBiota 14: 67-74. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.14.3140

Rare forget-me-nots discovered in the mountains of New Zealand

Two rare species of forget-me-nots have been added to Flora of New Zealand. These new species were discovered in the mountains of the South Island during an expedition led by Dr. Carlos A. Lehnebach. These new species have been described and illustrated in an article published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

The expedition was part of a major endeavour by a group of botanists at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in partnership with Landcare Research aiming to describe and list all forget-me-nots (Myosotis) found in New Zealand. Dr. Lehnebach, who is a curator at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand, describes the mountains of the South Island of New Zealand as a hotspot for forget-me-nots diversity as over 30 species are found there.

"The diversity of forms, flower color and leaf shape of New Zealand forget-me-nots is really amazing" said Dr. Lehnebach. "New Zealand forget-me-nots are far different from their blue flower relatives commonly found in people’s gardens, and some native species have yellow, pink, or tube-like brown-bronze flowers. New Zealand is also home for the smallest forget-me-not in the world!" he added.

These two new species are extremely uncommon. One is currently known from a single spot where only six plants were found. The other species is habitat-specific and it is only found at the base of limestone bluffs. "Because of the low number of plants and populations currently known for these forget-me-nots, they have been rated as Nationally Critical", said Dr. Lehnebach. This is not unusual for New Zealand forget-me-nots, and many of them are currently threatened.

Original source:
Lehnebach CA (2012) Two new species of forget-me-nots (Myosotis, Boraginaceae) from New Zealand. PhytoKeys 16: 53. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.16.3602

The ZooKeys article on a newly discovered spider family from the caves of California and Oregon, has turned into the most visited ZooKeys paper ever, with more than 15,000 visits of the ORIGINAL article within just a day (20,000 in three days!).

The number of visits from all over the media are counted in the hundreds of thousands already, within just two weekend days! Even though the article was monolingual, there are Wikipedia entries in seven languages so far.

The paper was also featured by CNN, The New York Times, Scientific American and on BBC Today, among MANY other media.

The forests of the coastal regions from California to British Columbia are renowned for their unique and ancient animals and plants, such as coast redwoods, tailed frogs, mountain beavers and the legendary Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch). Whereas Bigfoot is probably just fiction, a huge, newly discovered spider is very real. Trogloraptor (or "cave robber") is named for its cave home and spectacular, elongate claws. It is a spider so evolutionarily special that it represents not only a new genus and species, but also a new family (Trogloraptoridae). Even for the species-rich insects and arachnids, to discover a new, previously unknown family is an historic moment. A study of the new family and its evolutionary and conservation significance was published in the open access journal Zookeys.

A team of citizen scientists from the Western Cave Conservancy and arachnologists from the California Academy of Sciences found these spiders living in caves in southwest Oregon. Colleagues from San Diego State University found more in old-growth redwood forests. Charles Griswold, Curator of Arachnology, Joel Ledford, postdoctoral researcher, and Tracy Audisio, graduate student, all at the California Academy of Sciences, collected, analyzed, and described the new family. Audisio’s participation was supported by the Harriet Exline Frizzell Memorial Fund and by the Summer Systematics Institute at the Academy, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Trogloraptor hangs beneath rudimentary webs on cave ceilings. It is about four centimeters wide when its legs are extended—larger than the size of a half-dollar coin. Their extraordinary, raptorial claws suggest that they are fierce, specialized predators, but their prey and attack behavior remain unknown.

The anatomy of Trogloraptor forces arachnologists to revise their understanding of spider evolution. Strong evidence suggests that Trogloraptor is a close relative of goblin spiders, but Trogloraptor possesses a mosaic of ancient, widespread features and evolutionary novelties.

The true distribution of Trogloraptor remains unknown: that such a relatively large, peculiar animal could elude discovery until 2012 suggests that more may be lurking in the forests and caves of western North America.

Original source
Griswold CE, Audisio T, Ledford JM (2012) An extraordinary new family of spiders from caves in the Pacific Northwest (Araneae, Trogloraptoridae, new family). ZooKeys 215: 77-102. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.215.3547

Green lacewings are delicate green insects with large, lace-like wings that live in a wide variety of habitats, especially tropical forests. Adults mostly feed on flowers, but the larvae are ferocious predators of other insects, frequently carrying the dead carcasses of their prey on their backs after killing them using their enormous, sucking tube-like jaws.

In this study, a beautiful new species of green lacewing in the genus Semachrysa is described from the Malaysian rainforest. The wing pattern is its most distinctive feature. Yet, this discovery could have been missed by scientists, as the only documented evidence that the new species existed was an exquisite series of images posted online in Flickr® after the insect was released.

Only after scientists came across the images online by chance, efforts were made to capture more specimens so that this species could be formally described as new to science. Without an actual specimen to place in a museum as a reference, a formal description is not possible. One year later another, individual was collected at the same locality and the scientists and professional photographer joined forces to collaborate on the description of this new species, which was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Original source:
Winterton SL, Guek HP, Brooks SJ (2012) A charismatic new species of green lacewing discovered in Malaysia (Neuroptera, Chrysopidae): the confluence of citizen scientist, online image database and cybertaxonomy. ZooKeys 214: 1-11 doi: 10.3897/zookeys.214.3220

Photo by Guek Hock Ping, also known as Kurt (orionmystery); http://orionmystery.blogspot.com

Session 1: Discovery: It’s all about the metadata? Or is it?

Vishwas Chavan, GBIF

Towards next generation (data inclusive) publishing

The Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe, or OpenAIRE, has conducted an interview with the Managing Director and Founder of Pensoft Publishers, Prof. Lyubomir Penev. The interview soncerns the new type of scholarly paper, designed in collaboration between Pensoft Publishers and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and rapidly gaining popularity: the Data Paper.

Read the full text of the interview here.

In a special issue of ZooKeys, initiated by the Natural History Museum London, Vince Smith and Vladimir Blagoderov bring together 18 papers by 81 authors to look at progress and prospects for mass digitising entire natural history collections.

Centuries of exploration and discovery have documented the diversity of life on Earth. Records of this biodiversity are, for the most part, distributed across varied and distinct natural history collections worldwide. That has made the task of assessing the information in these collections an immense challenge, the largest of which is how to capture specimen data fast enough to achieve digitisation of entire collections while maintaining sufficient data quality.

Now, an effort is underway to digitise major collections to unlock their research potential and provide unlimited access to the public. This series of eighteen articles in the open-access journal ZooKeys examines recent advances in imaging systems and data gathering techniques, combined with more collaborative approaches to digitisation. These provide a snapshot of progress toward the creation of a global virtual natural history museum.

“As a sample of the natural world, these collections underpin our understanding of ecosystems, biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources” says Vince Smith, Cybertaxonomist at the Natural History Museum London. “Technical innovations in digitising hardware, software and data interactions are now making it possible to conceive of wholly digital collections, creating a new frontier for natural history research”.

Examples of research covered by these articles include a description to efforts digitise 30 million plant, insect and vertebrate specimens at NCB Naturalis in the Netherlands; new scanning and telemicroscopy solutions to digitise the millions of pinned insect specimens held in the Australian National Insect Collection and its European and North American counterparts; citizen science projects being used to crowdsource the transcription of thousands of specimen labels and field notebooks; and new data portals providing central access to millions of biological specimens across Europe.

Original source:
Blagoderov V, Smith VS (2012) Bringing collections out of the dark. In: Blagoderov V, Smith VS (Ed) No specimen left behind: mass digitization of natural history collections. ZooKeys 209: 1-6. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.209.3699

Additional Information:
InvertNet http://invertnet.dyndns.org/
Notes from Nature http://www.notesfromnature.org/
Heteroptera Species Pages http://research.amnh.org/pbi/heteropteraspeciespage/
Field Notes of Junius Henderson http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Field_Notes_of_Junius_Henderson
OpenUp!  http://open-up.eu/
Morphbank-ALA http://morphbank.ala.org.au/
DScan in action http://youtu.be/zyT7l-CZego
North Carolina State University Insect Museum http://insectmuseum.org/
NCSUIM collection: http://www.gigapan.com/users/ncsuinsectmuseum/gigapans