The demand for the digitization of natural history collections has increased with the advancement of imaging technologies. Large collections composed of millions of insect specimens are exploring efficient strategies and new technologies to digitize them. However, many of these new systems are quite elaborate and expensive, creating a need for more affordable and easy-to-use equipment.
75-by-47-cm foam platform with pinned insects in dorsal and lateral positions.
Creating a digital image for every specimen is an essential part of the DNA barcoding workflow at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG). A newly designed imaging rig has enabled the CBG to quickly and efficiently image specimens at high quality while controlling the specimen’s orientation to emphasize key morphological characters. This system allowed the CBG to take some 190,000 images over the past year.
The SLR rig is placed on a heavy-base table to minimize vibration. The inset shows the actual rig area with specimens on the styrofoam base.
Our new ZooKeys study describes this imaging rig, which was mainly created for pinned specimens. It is inexpensive and easy to install as it uses a camera mounted to a CNC machine rig to photograph specimens at high capacity. By using a foam board to array specimens, the user can choose their orientation, which contrasts some existing methods that do not provide such flexibility. This setup produces 95 high quality images within half an hour.
Panel of example images taken with the SLR rig.
The flexibility of the imaging rig could benefit many potential users who are looking for an accessible method for larger collections of specimens. By alternating various parameters, such as the distance between the camera and specimens or the type of camera and lens used, users can adapt their system to specimens of varying sizes. With further changes to the array, the imaging rig can also be adapted to support imaging specimens on slides, within vials, or other storage solutions.
The researchers suggest that urban green space can be used to improve food production efficiency, absorption, and processing, promoting the circulation of both food and culture
Agriculture, fishing, hunting, and gathering— through thousands of years of urbanization, these ways of acquiring food, which were deciding factors in settlement landscape patterns in the primitive society, have gradually been replaced by the manufacturing, financial, and service industry. Nowadays, urban planning seems to have lost its connection with food.
His research focused on four Chinese cities, Chengdu, Xi’an, Wuhan and Shanghai, all of them characterized by different and distinctive food culture. With a team of students from multiple cities, all working online collaboration during the pandemic, he explored the distribution patterns and potential of grain origin, delivery chains, processing chains and retailers in each of the four cities.
Urban green space, he believes, can be used to improve the efficiency of food production, absorption, and processing, promoting the circulation of both food and culture. This solution also has the potential to alleviate food problems in social crises and improve the cities’ ability to respond to social emergencies via what Shen calls “the foodscape.”
Magical Foodscape offers diverse planning guidelines based on the distinctive culture, food, and environment of the four iconic cities. It explores each city’s unique culinary landscape in detail, providing tailored strategies to address local challenges and opportunities.Available to download for free andpublished by Pensoft, Magical Foodscape offers useful guidelines to a wide range of actors. For example, it can serve as a gastronomical tourist guide, advise restaurant owners on the best place to open their establishments, or even inform the policy strategies of local and national governments. It also includes “food maps” for each city that invite readers to join the campaign and promote the positive development of cities through changes in their daily eating habits.
Chengdu: integrating traditional cuisine with urban efficiency
In Chengdu, terrace patches along rivers can be utilized to optimize the production-processing-supply chain of traditional cuisine, aiming to maximize profit while addressing significant waste issues. Three of Chengdu’s culinary highlights—hot pots, skewers, and teahouses—are facing serious waste problems. “As for hot pots, we proposed the concept of an ’urban farm,’ since traditional cooking methods provide conditions for the reuse of hot pot food waste; as for tea, we proposed to use waste tea as raw material for water purification devices and tea field fertilizers,” Shen says. “We found that the three types of restaurants with large passenger flow in Chengdu were mostly distributed along the terraces of the rivers. We combined the patches along the rivers with food production and food processing to improve the development of the high-efficiency cities.”
Xi’an: transforming food waste into cultural and ecological assets
The research team aimed to solve Xi’an’s food waste problem and use the resulting landscape as a medium to activate local culture. “We propose to establish the concept of ‘food funding’ and encourage ‘new means’ to turn the ecological problems caused by food waste or food packaging into opportunities to solve the existing ecological problems, build community gardens, and support the management of stray animals. At the same time, the resulting landscape activates the hidden special cuisine in Xi’an city and forms a food loop to meet the needs of tourists and residents for entertainment. On the city scale, the ‘food loop’ connects the cultural tourism within the city with the ecological tourism around the city as to promote urban development and optimize the ‘green pattern’,” says Shi.
Wuhan: enhancing urban resilience through green spaces and food
The study of Wuhan, the city of China’s earliest outbreak of COVID-19, reflects the lessons learned during the outbreak and uses geospatial data analysis to establish a scientific emergency mechanism. “Food production space and green space have similar functions in epidemic prevention and control,” Shi says. For example, arranging green spaces evenly helped shorten the distance for people to move, in order to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 disease in the early stage of the virus outbreak.
Shanghai: revitalizing traditional Chinese cuisine through urban planning
“We aimed to take the advantage of the processing methods and marketing models of Shanghai’s traditional gastronomy to revive Chinese restaurants by re-planning the city’s food pattern via the traditional Chinese cuisine,” Shi explains. His team studied catering efficacy, consumer efficacy and restaurant efficacy, combining their findings with geospatial data and mathematical modeling, to see how Shanghai’s vibrant culinary scene can help revive traditional Chinese restaurants through strategic urban planning.
Food as a catalyst for urban development
Magical Foodscape introduces food as a necessary element of urban planning. Moreover, it shows how food can be used to solve urban problems and optimize spatial structure in cities. “We hope that professional planners can rethink the role of food in guiding urban planning and promote the organic integration of city and food in different cities and revive the food industry,” Shi says in coclusion.
The research also highlights the relationship between food and urban resilience, particularly in the face of crises like COVID-19.
Original source:
Shen X (2024) Magical Foodscape: A Guidebook For Re-planning The Cities Base On The Culture, Food And The Built Environment. Advanced Books, Pensoft, Sofia, 1-148.https://doi.org/10.3897/ab.e129204
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer will go down in history as two of the greatest tennis players of our time, but their names have also been immortalized in science, as two new insect species were just named in honor of the athletes.
A team of insect scientists from the Integrative Insect Ecology Research Unit in Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University described two new wasp species named Troporhogas rogerfedereri and Troporhogas rafaelnadali in a tribute to the two tennis legends.
Troporhogas rafaelnadali. Photo by Marisa Loncle
“T. rogerfedereri and T.rafaelnadali are parasitoid wasps, whose larvae devour their hosts from the inside,” says Buntika Areekul Butcher, who led the study to describe the new insects. “As their names proclaim, they honour the tennis greats Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal, who although competitors on the court have been on the same doubles team too. Also, two of the authors are huge fans of both Roger and Rafa.”
Troporhogas rogerfedereri. Photo by Marisa Loncle
Both of the new wasps are 6 mm long, with black, white and orange colour patterns. They were found in two major Thai national parks, Khao Yai and Khao Sok, both of which are popular attractions for natural history tourists.
The scientists published their discoveries in a research article in the open-access zoology journal ZooKeys.
Research article:
Quicke DLJ, Ranjith AP, Loncle MK, Van Achterberg C, Long KD, Butcher BA (2024) Revision of Troporhogas Cameron (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Rogadinae) with six new species from India and Thailand. ZooKeys 1206: 99-136. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1206.120824
Pensoft joins the newly funded Biodiversa+ project ANTENNA focused on making technology work for monitoring pollinators and is tasked with the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities.
The overarching goal of ANTENNA is to fill key monitoring gaps through advancing innovative technologies that will underpin and complement EU-wide pollinator monitoring schemes, and to provide tested transnational pipelines from monitoring activities to curated datasets and enhanced indicators that support pollinator-relevant policyand end-users.
The ANTENNA project answers the BiodivMon call, which was launched in September 2022 by Biodiversa+ in collaboration with the European Commission. The BiodivMon call sought proposals for three-year research projects to improve transnational monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem change, emphasising innovation and harmonisation of biodiversity datacollection and management methodologies, addressing knowledge gaps on biodiversity status and trends to combat biodiversity loss, and the effective use of existing biodiversity monitoring data.
Supporting the work of Work Package #5: “Project coordination, and communication”, Pensoft is dedicated to maximising the project’s impact by employing a mix of channels to inform stakeholders about the results from ANTENNA and raise public awareness about pollinators.
Pensoft is also tasked with creating and maintaining a clear and recognisable project brand, promotional materials, website, social network profiles, internal communication platform, and online libraries. Another key responsibility is the development, implementation and regular updates of the project’s communication, dissemination and exploitation plans, that ANTENNA is set to follow for the next four years.
On 14-15 March 2024, ANTENNA held its official kick off meeting. Project partners came together in Halle, Germany for two days to outline objectives, discuss strategies, and set the groundwork for this venture.
Specifically, the combined expertise of the consortium will address the following objectives:
Advanceautomated sample sorting and image recognition tools from individual prototypesto systems that can be adopted by practitioners
Expand pollinator monitoring to under-researched pollinator taxa, ecosystems, and pressures
Quantify the added value of novel monitoring systems in comparison and combination with ‘traditional’ methods in terms of cost effectiveness
Provide a framework for integrative monitoring by combining multiple data streams and. The framework will also support the development of near real-time forecasting models as bases for early warning systems;
Upscale local demonstrations into the implementation of large-scale transnational pipelines and provide context-specific guidance to the use of policy-makers and other users who might need to select monitoring methods and indicators.
*Pensoft Publishers is a subcontractor tasked by the UFZ with multiple communication, dissemination and exploitation activities as part of Work Package 5.
Species of the crab family Xanthidae go by many names: gorilla crabs, mud crabs, pebble crabs, rubble crabs – the list goes on. But when it was time to name a tiny, ‘furry’ new species from China, researchers drew unlikely inspiration from the video game League of Legends.
Gothus teemo was named after the character Teemo from the immensely popular MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) thanks to its distinctive appearance.
Gothus teemo male holotype (left), Teemo (right).
Loosely resembling a raccoon, Teemo is small and fluffy with a brown and white intermingled fur coat. The new species’ small size, densely covered short setae (bristles), and brown-striped colouration quickly drew comparisons.
Published in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution, the discovery was made during an expedition to the coral reefs of the South China Sea. There researchers discovered the new species in the Xisha Islands (Paracel Islands) and Nansha Islands (Spratly Islands).
Illustration of Gothus teemo by by Fei Gao.
The team collected specimens while scuba diving, photographing them and conserving them for further study. The specimens are now housed at the Marine Biological Museum, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao, China.
This new-to-science crab represents not only a new species, but also an entirely new genus. Sticking to a theme, researchers named the genus after a game – albeit one created 2,500 years before League of Legends!
The ancient Chinese board game, Go.
They chose the name Gothus for the genus, drawing inspiration from the ancient Chinese strategy board game, Go. The name alludes to the intermingled black and white patterns on the carapace of Gothus species, beneath which lie circular granules resembling the pieces of the game.
As part of their study, the researchers suggested the reclassification of the species Actaea consobrina into the genus Gothus. This reclassification was based on both morphological and molecular evidence.
Actaea consobrina, proposed as Gothus consobrina.
Gothus teemo is by no means the only new species named after a video game character. Just last week, we shared a story from our Biodiversity Data Journal about a blind spider named after the Monster Hunter character Khezu – check out the story below!
Gothus teemo is yet another reminder that countless unknown creatures are just waiting to be discovered. The coral reefs of the South China Sea continue to be a rich source of new and fascinating species. And, who knows, perhaps there’s a Gothus tristana out there, too.
Original source
Yuan Z-M, Jiang W, Sha Z-L (2024) Morphological and molecular evidence for Gothus teemo gen. et sp. nov., a new xanthid crab (Crustacea, Brachyura, Xanthoidea) from coral reefs in the South China Sea, with a review of the taxonomy of Actaeodes consobrinus (A. Milne-Edwards, 1867). Zoosystematics and Evolution 100(3): 965-987. https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.100.117859
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Herbaria – collections of preserved plant specimens – are crucial in botanical research and biodiversity conservation. Digitising these collections is an important step towards making data available to all, preserving specimens by reducing the need for handling, and creating new research opportunities.
Mass digitisation of herbarium specimens on a conveyor belt at Meise Botanic Garden, allowing the imaging of 3,000–5,000 specimens per day.
Meise Botanic Garden recently completed a six-year project to digitise approximately three million specimens of their herbarium collection. While it was a big change for their organisation, it was one they deemed necessary to bring their collection into the digital age.
Joint restoration session of the herbarium team at Meise Botanic Garden.
Based on their experience, the team published ten valuable lessons they learned during the process to assist other institutions embarking on similar digitisation projects. These lessons are available in the open-access journal PhytoKeys.
1. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom ― Aristotle
Before starting digitisation, it is important to understand the full scope of your collection. This involves detailed inventory checks and assessments of the state of the specimens. Knowing the exact number and condition of the specimens will help in accurate budgeting and planning. A detailed inventory of a representative tenth of your collection can be extrapolated to the entire collection.
2. Prioritise (if lack of money forces you to do so)
If resources are limited, prioritising which parts of the collection to digitise first is key. Consider factors such as the scientific importance of the specimens, their physical state, and stakeholder needs. It is important to note that digitising the entire collection can be more efficient than selecting subcollections, as partial digitisation can complicate management.
3. Learn from other people’s successes – and mistakes
Do not reinvent the wheel. Engage with other institutions that have undertaken similar projects to learn from their successes and mistakes. Follow existing guidelines and adapt them to fit your specific needs. If you think you have a better way of doing things, talk it over with someone with experience.
4. Decide whether to do it yourself or have it done for you
Deciding whether to conduct the digitisation in-house or to outsource it depends on available resources. Consider the skills and availability of your staff and the costs associated with outsourcing. Some tasks, such as imaging or data transcription, might be more efficiently handled by external specialists.
5. Make a plan
A well-thought-out plan is crucial. Define workflows, procedures, and quality control mechanisms. And be specific about your requirements when outsourcing parts of the project to avoid any misunderstandings.
6. Go shopping
Ensure that all necessary supplies, such as barcodes, storage containers, and IT infrastructure, are in place before starting the digitisation process. Bulk purchasing is often cost-effective, and having everything ready will prevent delays.
7. Make your collection look its best for the photographer
Prepare the specimens for imaging by incorporating pre-digitisation curation steps like repairing damaged specimens and adding barcodes.
8. Expect problems, particularly ones that you don’t expect
Problems will arise, from equipment malfunctions to human errors. Establish quality control processes to catch issues early. Automate checks where possible and ensure prompt human review for aspects like image focus and lighting.
9. Make your data visible – make a big deal of it
Making digitised data publicly accessible is vital. Use online portals and ensure the data adheres to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Publicity will increase the use and impact of your collection.
10. Save your data for the future
Make sure the digitised data is backed up in a secure, offsite archive. Long-term storage solutions should be considered to preserve the data for future use. And factor this ongoing cost into the budget.
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To read extended advice from Meise Botanic Garden, as well as four case studies, check out the full research paper below:
Original source
De Smedt S, Bogaerts A, De Meeter N, Dillen M, Engledow H, Van Wambeke P, Leliaert F, Groom Q (2024) Ten lessons learned from the mass digitisation of a herbarium collection. PhytoKeys 244: 23-37. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.244.120112
“This switch of our journal to a cutting-edge platform, and its committed team of editors, should continue to raise the journal’s visibility and impact,” comments Prof. Dr. Susanne Renner, TIBS President.
This collaboration underscores the society’s commitment to maintaining high-quality, high-visibility and low-cost open-access publishing for the biogeographical community.
“This switch of our journal to a cutting-edge platform, and its committed team of editors, should continue to raise the journal’s visibility and impact,”
Established by TIBS in 2009, Frontiers of Biogeography serves as an independent forum for research dissemination, and publishes studies on all geographical variations of life at all levels of organisation. The journal adheres to rigorous academic standards, reflecting the mission of TIBS to promote and advance public understanding of biogeographical sciences.
The journal’s editorial leadership includes Prof. Robert J. Whittaker (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Dr. Janet Franklin (San Diego State University, USA) and Prof. Mark J. Costello (Nord University, Norway), all esteemed figures in the field.
Frontiers of Biogeography was launched on the ARPHA Platform on the 1st of July 2024. The platform is now open for new submissions and offers a robust review and publication process. Articles and supplementary materials published on ARPHA will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), ensuring wide accessibility and reuse. All previously published issues on the e-Scholarship platform will remain freely accessible, ensuring the continuity of knowledge dissemination.
Frontiers of Biogeography has recently been selected for inclusion in the Web of Science™. Beginning with volume 14(1), articles will be indexed in Emerging Sources Citation Index, Zoological Record, Biological Abstracts, and BIOSIS Previews, significantly enhancing the journal’s visibility.
Furthermore, the journal’s latest Scopus CiteScore of 4.3 places it in the Q1 category for Ecology and Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Systematics, and elevates it from Q3 to Q2 in the Global and Planetary Change category.
“I am looking forward to working with the new platform and to the start of a new partnership with our colleagues at Pensoft Publishers. This arrangement underlines the commitment of The International Biogeography Society to the growth and success of Frontiers of Biogeography as a service to our members and the broader scientific community,”
stated Prof. Dr. Robert J. Whittaker, Editor-in-Chief.
“In these days of sometimes exorbitant costs to pay publication charges by some of the big publishers, TIBS and Pensoft are joining forces to make it possible for all authors to be able to publish their work at reasonable costs while maintaining the high scholarly standards of peer-review and editorial management which are the foundation of good science,”
added Prof. Dr. Mark J. Costello, Co-Editor-in-Chief.
“We are excited to welcome Frontiers of Biogeography to the ARPHA Platform and look forward to a successful, open-access future. This partnership aligns with our mission to support scientific research through innovative publishing solutions,”
said Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft Publishers.
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Visit the Frontiers of Biogeography’s new website at https://biogeography.pensoft.net/. Use the Email alert field on the homepage to follow the latest publications, news, and highlights from Frontiers of Biogeography.
You can also follow the journal on X (formerly Twitter) at @newbiogeo.
Keep up to date with the latest from TIBS by following them on X (@Biogeography) and joining the society’s Facebook group.
Deep within a cave in the Du’an Yao Autonomous County of Guangxi, China, researchers discovered a pale, eyeless spider unknown to science.
This discovery, detailed in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal adds a remarkable member to the Otacilia genus. And, as is often the case, the scientist behind the revelation turned to popular culture to name the new species.
They settled on Otacilia khezu.
Khezu in Monster Hunter.
The Khezu wyvern features in the popular video game series Monster Hunter. It is known for its blindness and unsettling appearance, just like newly discovered species. By naming the spider Otacilia khezu, the researchers highlight its troglobitic – or cave-dwelling – nature, particularly the complete absence of its eyes.
“Its long, elastic neck stretching out while it clings to a wall or the ceiling is a sight straight out of a nightmare. Make sure you do not get overwhelmed by its horrific appearance.”
Otacilia khezu, like many troglobitic creatures, lacks eyes and pigmentation, has elongated appendages, and has developed heightened sensory adaptations to navigate and thrive in its dark environment.
Otacilia khezu juvenile, in life. Photo: Shanmi Zheng.
The research team led by Yejie Li, Langfang Normal University, note the significance of the discovery, as it marks the first recorded troglobitic Otacilia species in China. Prior to this, only two troglobitic Otacilia species had been identified, both in Laos.
The species is one of many spiders named after influential fictional characters. In fact, one spider was named after a character and the actor playing him.
The documentation and publication of this new species set the stage for further studies on the ecological roles of troglobitic spiders and their evolutionary adaptations.
Chinese civillians can rest assured that Otacilia khezu is considerably less dangerous than its namesake when they keep an eye out for the eyeless arachnid.
Original source:
Lin Y, Chen H, Wang X, Li S (2024) Otacilia khezu sp. nov., a new troglobitic spider (Araneae, Phrurolithidae) from Guangxi, China. Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e126716. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.12.e126716
Follow Biodiversity Data Journal on Facebook and X.
At the Pensoft’s stand, delegates learned about the scientific publisher’s versatile open-access journal portfolio, as well as related publishing services and the Horizon project where Pensoft is a partner.
Here’s a fun fact: the University of Bologna is the oldest one still in operation in the world. It is also etched in history for being the first institution to award degrees of higher learning.
This year, the annual event themed “Biodiversity positive by 2030” took place in the stunning Italian city of Bologna famous for its historical and cultural heritage, in a way building a bridge between the past of European civilisation and the future, which is now in our hands.
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At the Pensoft’s stand, delegates learned about the scientific publisher’s versatile open-access journal portfolio of over 30 journals covering the fields of ecology and biodiversity, as well as other related services and products offered by Pensoft, including the end-to-end full-featured scholarly publishing platform ARPHA, which hosts and powers all Pensoft journals, in addition to dozens other academic outlets owned by learned societies, natural history museums and other academic institutions.
In addition to its convenient collaborative online environment, user interface and automated export/import workflows, what ARPHA’s clients enjoy perhaps the most, are the various human-provided services that come with the platform, including graphic and web design, assistance in journal indexing, typesetting, copyediting and science communication.
Visitors at the stand could also be heard chatting with Pensoft’s Head of Journal development, Marketing and PR: Iva Boyadzhieva about the publisher’s innovative solutions for permanent preservation and far-reaching dissemination and communication of academic outputs that do not match the traditional research article format.
For example, the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal was launched in 2015 by Pensoft as an open-science journal that would publish ‘unconventional’ research outputs, such as Grant proposals, Policy briefs, Project reports, Data management plans, Research ideas etc. Its project-branded open-science collections are in fact one of the Pensoft’s products that enjoys particular attention to participants in scientific projects funded by the likes of the European Commission’s Horizon programme.
Another innovation by Pensoft that easily becomes a talking point at forums like ECCB, is the ARPHA Conference Abstract (ACA) platform, which is basically a journal for conference abstracts, where abstracts are treated and published much like regular journal articles (a.k.a. ‘mini papers’) to enable permanent preservation, but also accessibility, discoverability and citability. Furthermore, ACA has been designed to act as an abstracts submission portal, where the abstracts undergo review and receive feedback before being published and indexed at dozens of relevant scientific databases.
On Wednesday, delegates also got a chance to hear the talk by renowned vegetation ecologist at the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Editor-in-Chief at the Vegetation Classification and Survey journal: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Dengler. He presented findings and conclusions concerning neophytes in Switzerland, while drawing comparisons with other European countries and regions.
🌱 Presence of #neophytes is not necesarily problematic, and can actually have positive effect, concludes recent research on 🇨🇭Swiss #grasslands diversity.
At this year’s ECCB, Pensoft took a stand as an active Horizon project participant too. At the publisher’s booth, the delegates could explore various project outputs produced within REST-COAST, SpongeBoost and BioAgora. Each of these initiatives has been selected by the European Commission to work on the mitigation of biodiversity decline, while aiming for sustainable ecosystems throughout the Old continent.
In all three projects, Pensoft is a consortium member, who contributes with expertise in science communication, dissemination, stakeholder engagement and technological development.
Having started earlier this year, SpongeBoost is to build upon existing solutions and their large-scale implementation by implementing innovative approaches to improve the functional capacity of sponge landscapes. The project is coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and will be developed with the active participation of 10 partnering institutions from seven countries across Europe.
In the meantime, since 2022, the five-year BioAgora project has been working towards setting up the Science Service for Biodiversity platform, which will turn into an efficient forum for dialogue between scientists, policy actors and other knowledge holders. BioAgora is a joint initiative, which brings together 22 partners from 13 European countries led by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).
4/🧵 The @HorizonEU project @BioAgoraEU is to create an efficient platform for dialogue between #scientists, policy actors & other knowledge holders.
Still, REST-COAST, SpongeBoost and BioAgora were not the only Horizon projects involving Pensoft that made an appearance at ECCB this year thanks to the Pensoft team.
On behalf of OBSGESSION – another Horizon-funded project, Nikola Ganchev, Communications officer at Pensoft, presented a poster about the recently started project. Until the end of 2027, the OBSGESSION project, also led by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and involving a total of 12 partnering organisations, will be tasked with the integration of different biodiversity data sources, including Earth Observation, in-situ research, and ecological models. Eventually, these will all be made into a comprehensive product for biodiversity management in both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems.
On Tuesday evening, the CO-OP4CBD (abbreviation for Co-operation for the Convention on Biological Diversity) team: another Horizon Europe project, where Pensoft contributes with expertise in science communication and dissemination, held a workshop dedicated to what needs to be done to promote CBD activities in Central and Eastern Europe.
On the next day, scientists from the EuropaBON consortium: another project involving Pensoft that had concluded only about a month ago, held a session to report on the final conclusions from the project concerning the state and progress in biodiversity monitoring.
📌Eastern Europe and countries outside Europe underrepresented in the @EuropaBon_H2020 network, reports Christian Langer at #eccb2024bologna.
Researchers have described a remarkable new species of velvet worm from the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Take a look below:
Oroperipatus tiputini. Credit: Roberto J. León, Archive Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ.
While the Tiputini velvet worm (Oroperipatus tiputini) may look friendly, it is an accomplished hunter that shoots a sticky substance from a pair of glands to trap its prey.
However, lead author Jorge Montalvo from the USFQ Museum of Zoology, notes that the species also has a softer side, with the mother taking care of her considerably lighter-coloured young after they are born.
Adult female with her offspring.
Velvet worms, also known as onychophorans or peripatus, are rare and unique invertebrates often referred to as “living fossils” because they evolved over 500 million years ago, long before the appearance of dinosaurs.
Currently, only about 240 velvet worm species are known, inhabiting tropical regions in the Americas, southern Chile, Africa, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and New Zealand.
Oroperipatus tiputini. Pedro Peñaherrera-R., Archive Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ
Published in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution, the discovery was more than 20 years in the making. It also represented the first study of Ecuadorian velvet worms for over 100 years.
“The research on this new species took several decades. I discovered the first individual of this new species in 2001, and we finally managed to describe it as part of Jorge Montalvo’s graduation thesis, who is now my colleague at the Museum of Zoology at USFQ. To complete the description, we used not only macromorphological descriptions but also high-magnification images obtained with a scanning electron microscope.”
Diego F. Cisneros-Heredia, one of the authors and director of the USFQ Museum of Zoology, Ecuador.
The researchers named the species after the Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS), part of the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. The name recognises the hard work of the station’s management, research, and field team in protecting biodiversity.
Map of Ecuador showing the location of the Tiputini Biodiversity Station (white square), type locality of Oroperipatustiputini sp. nov., in the Amazonian lowlands.
The description of the Tiputini velvet worm raises the total number of described velvet worm species in Ecuador to seven. This species is the first from the Ecuadorian Amazon lowlands and the third in the western Amazon.
Original source
Montalvo-Salazar JL, Bejarano ML, Valarezo A, Cisneros-Heredia DF (2024) A new species of velvet worm of the genus Oroperipatus (Onychophora, Peripatidae) from western Amazonia. Zoosystematics and Evolution 100(3): 779-789. https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.100.117952
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