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Larkspurs, monkshoods, and aconites are plants, widely cultivated for their beauty and medicinal properties. They all belong to the Delphinieae, a natural group of 650-700 species ranging from Eurasia into North America, with a few species on tropical African mountains.

A broadly sampled molecular phylogeny for this group has revealed that three Mediterranean species constitute an ancient separate evolutionary line that is the sister group to all remaining Delphinieae. The British physician John Hill already recognized these species’ distinctness in 1756, and Jabbour and Renner here resurrect the genus name he had proposed for them.

Of the three species in Hill’s genus Staphisagria, one is an important medicinal plant found all around the Mediterranean basin, the other two are endemic to Corsica, Majorca, Sardinia, and the Archipelago of Hyères in the South of France. In an article in the open access journal Phytokeys, Jabbour and Renner from the Institute of Systematic Botany at the University of Munich illustrate and discuss the newly recognized genus, explaining how its three species share traits that fit neither in Delphinium nor in Aconitum, fitting with their long independent evolutionary history.

Original source:
Jabbour F, Renner SS (2011) Resurrection of the genus Staphisagria J. Hill, sister to all the other Delphinieae (Ranunculaceae). PhytoKeys 7: 21–26. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.7.2010

The open access zoological journal ZooKeys published by Pensoft reported a substantial growth in 2011, in comparison to 2010, says an analysis dedicated to journal’s jubilee 150th issue, By the end of November 2011, the journal published more than 10,000 pages and 420 articles (to compare with 4,962 pages and 180 articles in 2010). Since its launch in July 2008, ZooKeys published more than 19,000 pages and 780 articles of valuable information on new discoveries in the fascinating world of animals (from mammals and birds to insects and corals). The growth rate will reach 120% by the end of the year.

In a field like taxonomy which constantly generates data, dissemination is one of the most crucial aspects. An open access journal has the benefit of easy distribution of information, leading to increasing relevance of the data, as it is being recognized by a larger audience.

ZooKeys is the first journal in the fields of biodiversity and taxonomy to implement a detailed schema for mark-up of its content, which allows automated extraction and dissemination of information from within the text of an article. The mark-up technology, through so called “semantic enhancements”, allows the user to add enormous additional information from external Web-based sources, which is updated in real time on query, during the reading process.

“ZooKeys is an amazing and true success story” said the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr Terry Erwin from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. “The key of the ZooKeys success is simple and  can be expressed easily: open access and perpetual innovations!”

The unique editorial workflow of ZooKeys was created and implemented in a close collaboration with the non-profit Swiss organization Plazi, and the National Library of Medicine in the USA. The Journal supplies information to the world’s largest biodiversity platforms, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Encyclopedia of Life, KeyCentral, as well as to wiki-based platforms such as Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, Species-ID, and many others.

“ZooKeys is not just a journal. It is an interactive environment that transforms the process of conventional publishing and sets up new standards in scholarly communication in biodiversity sciences. We are happy that our services help to describe so many still undiscovered species on Earth and to contribute to their identification and protection!” added the journal’s managing editor Dr Lyubomir Penev from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia.

Original source:
Erwin T, Stoev P, Georgiev T, Penev L (2011) ZooKeys 150: Three and a half years of innovative publishing and growth. In: Smith V, Penev L (Eds) e-Infrastructures for data publishing in biodiversity science. ZooKeys 150: 5–14. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.150.2431

Electronic infrastructures open new horizons for collaboration and acceleration of the research on world’s biodiversity. International collaborative platforms, such as scratchpads.eu,  yield  opportunities, unknown before, to scientists to put together historical and newly collected data coming from different sources and working groups, says a special issue of the open access journal ZooKeys presenting the results of the EU-funded project ViBRANT.

ViBRANT stands for “Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy” and is a European Union e-infrastructure project running December 2010 to 2013 that will support the development of virtual research communities involved in biodiversity science. ViBRANT combines  the efforts of scientists from 17 European institutions to provide a more integrated and effective framework for those managing biodiversity data on the Web.

 
“ViBRANT is not only about e-infrastructures” commented the project coordinator Dr Vincent Smith from the Natural History Museum, London. “ViBRANT’s core mission is to mobilize the treasures of biological data accumulated over centuries of scientific discoveries and to open them for collaboration to all who are keen to describe, record and safe the life on our Planet!”

ViBRANT’s mission is clearly reflected by the collection of research and review articles published by the project partners but also by scientists from USA and Australia.  The value of this book is re-inforced by the exemplar papers that demonstrate how innovations in e-infrastructures are implemented in real time and on real data.

The book focuses on opening and publishing of biodiversity data, a process that is largely promoted and supported  by institutions, international organisations and governments because it allows the multiplication and intensification of efforts invested by the previous and contemporary generations of scientists.

The 150th jubilee issue of ZooKeys.

For more details, please contact:

Dr. Vincent S. Smith, Cybertaxonomist
The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK
Web: http://vsmith.info/, http://scratchpads.eu/, http://phthiraptera.info/
E-mail: vince@vsmith.info, Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 5127

Dr D.McL. Roberts
Dept. Zoology, The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, Great Britain
Tel: +44 (0)20 7942 5086
Email: dmr@nomencurator.org
Web page: http://scratchpads.eu
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/euk-extreme/

Open access to information about biodiversity is of crucial importance to society, directly affecting areas such as conservation and climate change research and education. “Non-Commercial” restrictions on the reuse of this information are a major barrier to addressing these problems, says a review paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Halting the loss of biodiversity demands that information on organisms, ecosystems, their properties, and their interactions, is easily found and readily available. This requires sharing. Creative Commons (CC) provides a set of licenses to facilitate this. However, Non-Commercial (NC) restrictions are commonly added to Creative Commons licences, intended to prevent commercial exploitation. The article shows that the ambiguity between “non-for-profit” and “non-commercial” prohibits many legitimate re-uses of NC licensed materials, and imposes significant risks that affect for-profit and not-for-profit organizations alike.

“The concept of ‘commercial advantage‘, the heart of the NC licenses, is very broad and ill defined” says lead author Dr Gregor Hagedorn from the Julius Kühn-Institute in Berlin, Germany. “It potentially excludes all public relation activities that increase the recognition of an organisation and may thus confer commercial advantages later on. Furthermore, the non-open NC licenses are usually incompatible with open Creative Commons licenses, severely restricting the use of NC licensed materials.”

The review arose from discussions within an EU funded infrastructure project (ViBRANT) that several authors of the article participate in, on how best to license materials produced within the project. To ensure the widest possible use of biodiversity information, the authors of the ZooKeys publication argue that publicly funded projects should use open CC licenses such as CC BY or CC BY-SA. These are used by most Open Access publishers, the Wikimedia Foundation projects, and many other open content initiatives.

Original source:
Hagedorn G, Mietchen D, Morris RA, Agosti D, Penev L, Berendsohn WG, Hobern D (2011) Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. In: Smith V, Penev L (Eds) e-Infrastructures for data publishing in biodiversity science. ZooKeys 150: 127–149. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.150.2189

Part of the work was carried out within the European Union’s Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network initiative (ViBRANT).

Organisms living on small islands are particularly threatened by extinction. However, data are often lacking to objectively assess these threats. A team of German and British researchers used satellite imagery to assess the conservation status of endangered reptiles and amphibians of the Comoro archipelago in the Western Indian Ocean. The researchers used their results to point out which species are most threatened and to define priorities for future protected areas. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

A typical problem in species conservation efforts, particularly in tropical regions, is the lack of information on the extent of suitable habitat available for threatened species. "The analysis of satellite images allows us to precisely estimate the remaining extent of rainforest and other natural habitats," says Oliver Hawlitschek from the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology. This approach has rarely been used in species conservation, and this is the first time that it is applied to all species of a group in an entire country.

In addition to their satellite imagery analyses, the researchers conducted intensive field surveys in order to detect the habitat preferences of the reptiles. "We found that only 9% of the island area is still covered by natural forest, but many native species have adapted to habitats under human influence like orchards, plantations, and gardens", Hawlitschek says. "Those species which are dependent on the remaining natural habitats are the ones most threatened by extinction".

This research was conducted in collaboration with Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation’s (BCSF) project in the Comoros. "This collaboration has provided an exciting piece of research for the Comoros. Our project will be using this knowledge and data in combination with our research on birds, reptiles, butterflies, and species of conservation importance to guide our conservation actions which are working towards protecting the remaining forests and threatened species of Anjouan", says Katie Green, Head of Ecological Research and Monitoring, BCSF.

The researchers chose the Comoros as a case study for their methodology because, in relation to large islands like neighbouring Madagascar or continental regions, these islands cover little area and are inhabited by a limited number of species. However, they hope that their methods will also be applied to other areas, where more threatened species are concerned. "Natural habitats are destroyed at a fast pace in many regions of the world", says Frank Glaw, herpetologist at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology. "We therefore need tools to assess quickly and objectively where we have to set our priorities in species conservation, especially for species endemic to small islands which are particularly vulnerable to extinction."

Original source:
Hawlitschek O, Brückmann B, Berger J, Green K, Glaw F (2011) Integrating field surveys and remote sensing data to study distribution, habitat use and conservation status of the herpetofauna of the Comoro Islands. ZooKeys 144: 21–79 doi: 10.3897/zookeys.144.1648

Nowadays, more and more animal habitats are being fragmented, or lost. Many species need assistance and conservation of their environments to survive, and it is important to know the best way this can be achieved. A research team from France, Poland and Germany has determined two butterfly movement strategies and their relative importance.

The study is based on the Bavarian populations of Dusky Large Blue butterflies (Maculinea nausithous). The species is endangered and listed in the European Union’s Habitats Directive. The butterflies were marked with waterproof numbers on their wings, in order to be repeatedly observed. The study was published in the “Journal of Animal Ecology”.

A large part of the movements are made over relatively small distances of a few hundred meters. There were, however, a few individuals (around 2.5%) that travel several kilometres. These movements are used for conservation analyses, because they are important for landscape level effects. The methodology of the shown approach will help with improving future analysis of similar data, where until now no distinction has been made between long and short distance movements.

More efficient and better recommendations for landscape configuration and design, as well as better conservation methods can be expected from gaining information on the portion of the individuals travelling the long distance. We see this study as a major achievement in this field.

Original source:
Thomas Hovestadt, Birgit Binzenhöfer, Piotr Nowicki, Josef Settele: Do all inter-patch movements represent dispersal? A mixed kernel study of butterfly mobility in fragmented landscapes. Journal of Animal Ecology 80: 1070–1077. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01848.x

Additional information:
This work has been carried out within the EU projects SCALES (FP7 grant 226852), MacMan (FP5 grant EVK2-CT-2001-00126), and CLIMIT (FP6 BiodivERsA Eranet grant funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the French ANR) as well as Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education project N N304 064139.

Coneheads (or Protura) collected from all over the territory of Italy were studied by three researchers of Genoa University (Loris Galli, Matteo Capurro and Carlo Torti). 40 species have been identified (belonging to 8 genera and 4 families), 6 of which are new records for the Italian fauna. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Coneheads (or Protura) is a group of primitive “insects” whose first species (Acerentomon doderoi) was discovered in 1907 by the famous Italian zoologist Filippo Silvestri, among the small animals collected by the coleopterologist Agostino Dodero from soil samples, taken from the grounds of a small villa in the center of Genoa, Italy. In the two following years Antonio Berlese, another very important zoologist (friend/foe of Silvestri) analyzed the morphology and anatomy of these strange and still poorly known soil-borne organisms and described a few other new species.

Normally less than 2 mm long, uncolored or pale yellow colored, eyeless, using their well developed forelegs as sense organs (they lack even the antennae) while they slowly walk between soil’s grains, the Coneheads are strongly adapted to their life in soil, litter and mosses where they eat meanly hyphae, contributing to the processes of organic matter degradation and so participating in recycling the nutrients in their ecosystems.

More than a century after their discovery, in the same town they have been collected the first time, the researchers summarize the knowledge of these animals in Italy, their “native” country. They identified 40 species (belonging to 8 genera and 4 families), 6 of which are new records for the Italian fauna, but it is very likely that many other have yet to be discovered.

The authors created also a taxonomic key to identify the Italian species and drew their distribution maps. Their survey will facilitate further work by zoologists, ecologists and soil scientists and contributes to the knowledge of the Italian biodiversity.

Original source:
Galli L, Capurro M, Torti C (2011) Protura of Italy, with a key to species and their distribution. ZooKeys 146: 19–67. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.146.1885

Recent findings of researchers from the North-Eastern Hill University, India show that C. indica occupies a special taxonomic position as reflected from the Karyomorphological data generated by them. The study was published in the open-access journal Comparative Cytogenetics.

A group of enthusiastic cytogeneticists (Marlykynti Hynniewta, Surendra Kumar Malik and Satyawada Rama Rao) from North Eastern Hill University show that C. indica occupies a special taxonomic position, as reflected in the karyomorphological data.

The genus Citrus is an economically important horticultural crop known for its fruit and juice. In India, there are about 30 species of Citrus of which at least nine species are available throughout India, while 17 species are confined to the North-Eastern states of India, which have been classified as a hot spot for Citrus biodiversity  and are threatened in their natural habitat as per the criteria fixed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). Seven Indian Citrus species are considered endangered or nearly so, including C. Indica, C. macroptera, C. latipes, C. assamensis, C. ichangensis, C. megaloxycarpa and C. rugulosa.

C. indica (Tanaka, 1937) is supposed to be the most primitive species and perhaps the progenitor of cultivated Citrus. From the karyomorphological data it can be observed that the asymmetry index of different species of Citrus presently investigated had shown significant variation. C. medica, C. grandis and C. reticulata which are considered as true basic species are characteristic in having low asymmetry index of 1.87, 1.89 and 2.46 respectively.  In the present investigation, the data from the karyomorphological observations on chromosome complements in 10 different Citrus species reflect that C. indica with its intermediate asymmetry index value (1.94) may be regarded as a true progenitor of cultivated Citrus. This study also supports the previous report that there are three true species of Citrus, viz. C. grandis, C. reticulata and C. medica.

Additional information:
The present work was carried out in the Department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong and was supported by University Grants Commission, New Delhi through scholarship.
A part of this research work was presented as a paper in National Symposium on Biodiversity Assessment, Conservation and Value Addition organised by School of Life Science (UPE-Biosciences) North-Eastern Hill University on 17th-19th March, 2011. pp 32.

Original source:
Hynniewta M, Malik SK, Rao SR (2011) Karyological studies in ten species of Citrus (Linnaeus, 1753) (Rutaceae) of North-East India. Comparative Cytogenetics 5(4): 19–29. doi: 10.3897/CompCytogen.v5i4.1796

An international team from the Zoological institute RAS (St Petersburg) and the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, BAS (Sofia) showed that true bugs differed from the majority of other insects in molecular composition of telomeres. The study was published in Comparative Cytogenetics.

In the 1930s B. McClintock from the University of Missouri, Columbia and H.J. Muller from the University of Edinburgh discovered (independently of one another) that chromosomes carry special components, or “telomeres”, which stabilize their structure and protect them from destruction. At present, it is known, that telomeres regulate cellular senescence (the cellular equivalent of aging) and their shortening plays the role of a molecular clock for the organism.

In most animal and plants, the telomeres consist of short DNA tandem motifs (repeated millions of times) and associated proteins. Comparative analysis of these motifs in various groups of organisms has showed that they are evolutionarily stable being invariant within a group.

The most common and (most probably) ancestral DNA motif of insect telomeres is known to be (TTAGG)n. Some Authors suggested the absence of this motif in true bugs (a large group of insects, among them bedbugs, firebugs, and significant agricultural pests) however this conclusion was based on available data, which are very scarce.

On the basis of the results obtained in several phylogenetically distant species studied by FISH (a technique for visualizing specific DNA sequences onto chromosomes) and dot-blot hybridization (a technique for detecting the presence/absence of target biomolecules in a sample) with a TTAGG probe, we confirmed that the insect consensus telomeric motif (TTAGG)n was lost in the evolution of true bugs.

To clarify the molecular composition of telomeres in these insects we used dot-blot hybridization of the genomic DNA from several true bug species with a number of telomeric probes known as specific to other organisms (ciliates, nematodes, shrimps, vertebrates, and plants). The result of these hybridization experiments was negative allowing suggesting that these telomerase-depended sequences are likewise not characteristic of the true bug telomeres.

Hence, the question of the molecular composition of true bug telomeres remains open and needs further studies.

Original source:
Grozeva S, Kuznetsova VG, Anokhin BA (2011) Karyotypes, male meiosis and comparative FISH mapping of 18S ribosomal DNA and telomeric (TTAGG)n repeat in eight species of true bugs (Hemiptera, Heteroptera). Comparative Cytogenetics 5(4): 355–374. doi: 10.3897/CompCytogen.v5i4.2307

Contact:
Snejana Grozeva
Tel (+359 2) 9885115
E-mail: sgrozeva@yahoo.com
 

A list of 235 planthoppers from Iran is recorded along with distribution data. This list is based on previous studies on Iranian Auchenorrhyncha during last 100 years. In addition to the latest species names for any record, new combinations and the transferring one species at family level is proposed. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys.

Planthoppers are studied relatively little, but are both economically important (they cause reduced crop yield through their feeding, oviposition and transferring pathogen microorganisms to a wide range of plants) and very interesting from a biodiversity aspect.

In a new published paper, the first complete list of Fulgoromorpha species recorded from Iran has been compiled, which is based on literature records and the addition of some new taxonomic data. The list consists of 235 species while nearly half of them are endemic from Iran. Iranissus ephedinus Dlabola, 1980 is transferred from Issidae to Nogodinidae. To resolve nomenclatural difficulty the following new combinations in Family Issidae are given: Iranodus dumetorus (Dlabola, 1981), Iranodus khatunus (Dlabola, 1981) and Iranodus repandus (Dlabola, 1981). Due to published generic synonomy the following are new combinations: Duilius seticulosus (Lethierry, 1874), D. tamaricis (Puton & Lethierry, 1887), D. tamaricicola (Dubovsky, 1966) D. vatrum (Dlabola, 1985). It is hoped that this list will encourage further studies on this important group of insects and also improve the view in practical fields such as pest control management.

Original source:
Mozaffarian F, Wilson MR (2011) An annotated checklist of the planthoppers of Iran (Hemiptera, Auchenorrhyncha, Fulgoromorpha) with distribution data. ZooKeys 145: 1-57. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.145.1846