Pensoft blog - Part 60

Ancient Mantis-Man Petroglyph Discovered in Iran

A unique rock carving found in the Teymareh rock art site (Khomein county) in Central Iran with six limbs has been described as part man, part mantis. Rock carvings, or petroglyphs, of invertebrate animals are rare, so entomologists teamed up with archaeologists to try and identify the motif. They compared the carving with others around the world and with the local six-legged creatures which its prehistoric artists could have encountered.

Entomologists Mahmood Kolnegari, Islamic Azad University of Arak, Iran; Mandana Hazrati, Avaye Dornaye Khakestari Institute, Iran; and Matan Shelomi, National Taiwan University teamed up with freelance archaeologist and rock art expert Mohammad Naserifard and describe the petroglyph in a new paper published in the open access Journal of Orthoptera Research.

The Teymareh rock art site in central Iran (Markazi Province, Iran), where the petroglyph was found
Photo by Mr Mahmood Kolnegari

The 14-centimetre carving was first spotted during surveys between 2017 and 2018, but could not be identified due to its unusual shape. The six limbs suggest an insect, while the triangular head with big eyes and the grasping forearms are unmistakably those of a praying mantid, a predatory insect that hunts and captures prey like flies, bees and even small birds. An extension on its head even helps narrow the identification to a particular genus of mantids in this region: Empusa.

Even more mysterious are the middle limbs, which end in loops or circles. The closest parallel to this in archaeology is the ‘Squatter Man,’ a petroglyph figure found around the world depicting a person flanked by circles. While they could represent a person holding circular objects, an alternative hypothesis is that the circles represent auroras caused by atmospheric plasma discharges.

It is presently impossible to tell exactly how old the petroglyphs are, because sanctions on Iran prohibit the use of radioactive materials needed for radiocarbon dating. However, experts Jan Brouwer and Gus van Veen examined the Teymareh site and estimated the carvings were made 40,000–4,000 years ago.

One can only guess why prehistoric people felt the need to carve a mantis-man into rock, but the petroglyph suggests humans have linked mantids to the supernatural since ancient times. As stated by the authors, the carving bears witness, “that in prehistory, almost as today, praying mantids were animals of mysticism and appreciation.”

Sarkubeh village (Markazi province, Iran) is the closest
to the studied site human habitation
Photo by Mr Mahmood Kolnegari

Original source:

Kolnegari M, Naserifard M, Hazrati M, Shelomi M (2020) Squatting (squatter) mantis man: A prehistoric praying mantis petroglyph in Iran. Journal of Orthoptera Research 29(1): 41-44. https://doi.org/10.3897/jor.29.39400

Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), the new journal of the Int’l Association for Vegetation Science

The journal is to launch with a big editorial and several diverse, high-quality papers over the next months

In summer 2019 IAVS decided to start a new, third association-owned journal, Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), next to Journal of Vegetation Science (JVS) and Applied Vegetation Science (AVS).

Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) is an international, peer-reviewed journal of plant community ecology published on behalf of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS) together with its sister journals, Journal of Vegetation Science (JVS) and Applied Vegetation Science (AVS). It is devoted to vegetation survey and classification at any organizational and spatial scale and without restriction to certain methodological approaches.

The journal publishes original papers that develop new vegetation typologies as well as applied studies that use such typologies, for example, in vegetation mapping, ecosystem modelling, nature conservation, land use management or monitoring. Particularly encouraged are methodological studies that design and compare tools for vegetation classification and mapping, such as algorithms, databases and nomenclatural principles. Papers dealing with conceptual and theoretical bases of vegetation survey and classification are also welcome. While large-scale studies are preferred, regional studies will be considered when filling important knowledge gaps or presenting new methods. VCS also contains Permanent Collections on “Ecoinformatics” and “Phytosociological Nomenclature”.

VCS is published by the innovative publisher Pensoft as a gold open access journal. Thanks to support from IAVS, we can offer particularly attractive article processing charges (APCs) for submissions during the first two years. Moreover, there are significant reductions for IAVS members, members of the Editorial Team and authors from low-income countries or with other financial constraints (learn more about APCs here).

Article submissions are welcomed at: https://vcs.pensoft.net/

Post by Jürgen Dengler, Idoia Biurrun, Florian Jansen & Wolfgang Willner, originally published on Vegetation Science Blog: Official blog ot the IAVS journals.

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Follow Vegetation Classification and Survey on Twitter and Facebook.

Book on plants in the Murmansk region (Russia) scores 4/19 correct insect identifications

Mistakes can occur in any environment, but what if the records we read about are actually incorrect? The case of unqualified scientists publishing false records of insects in the Murmansk oblast of Russia is described in the recent paper in the open-access journal Arctic Environmental Research.

A recently published book on some aspects of the ecology of woody introducents in the Murmansk oblast of Russia provides the information on 19 species of plant-damaging insects out of which only 4 species are identified correctly. Dr Mikhail V. Kozlov from the University of Turku provides correct identifications for the insects, illustrated in the book, in his paper, published in the open-access journal Arctic Environmental Research in order to prevent the spread of erroneous information across future publications and databases.

Insect fauna of the Murmansk region is relatively well-studied and that’s why any new faunistic records from this region immediately attract the attention of entomologists. Those findings are especially exciting when they extend the distribution range of certain species by 1,000 to 2,000 km towards the North Pole.

The published misidentifications of insect species can lead to a cascading effect of mistakes, because entomologists commonly use faunistic data published by colleagues decades and even centuries ago. That’s why it is very important to keep a track of such cases and provide correct identifications if possible, remarks the author.

“In particular, three moth species (Archips crataegana, A. podanaand Erannis defoliaria) reported in this book to occur around Kirovsk have not yet been found either in the Murmansk oblast or in the more southern Karelia. In neighbouring Finland, the northernmost records of these species are from locations some 1,000 km to the south of Kirovsk”,
Dr Kozlov shares his concerns.

The most striking examples of misidentification in the book are at the order level: a syrphid fly (Diptera) identified as a leafcutter bee (Hymenoptera), and a sawfly (Hymenoptera) identified as a psyllid (Hemiptera).

Leaf beetle *Chrysomela lapponica*, erroneously mentioned in the criticized book as a pest of bird cherry, shadbush and chokeberry, feeds in the Murmansk oblast only on willows.
Credit: Vitali Zverev
License: CC-BY 4.0

In conclusion, Dr Kozlov’s revision found that 15 out of the 19 species illustrated were incorrectly identified. Thus, the leaf damage associated with certain insect species, considered in the book, also becomes very questionable.

“The misidentification of pest species can easily result in incorrect pest management and face unnecessary costs, while publication of incorrect data distorts our knowledge of the distribution and biology of insects. Therefore, insect identification for scientific, educational or pest management purposes should always be performed by professionals or by volunteers and students who have specific training for this
purpose”,
concludes Dr Mikhail V. Kozlov.

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Original source:
Kozlov MV (2019) Insects identified by unqualified scientists: multiple “new” records from the Murmansk oblast of Russia are dismissed as false. Arctic Environmental Research 19(4): 153-158. https://doi.org/10.3897/issn2541-8416.2019.19.4.153

Call for data papers from European Russia

Partners GBIF, FinBIF and Pensoft to support publication of data papers that describe datasets from Russia west of the Ural Mountains

Original post via GBIF

GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—in collaboration with the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (FinBIF) and Pensoft Publishers, are happy to issue a call for authors to submit and publish data papers on European Russia (west of the Urals) in an upcoming special issue of Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ).

Between now and 31 August 2020, the article processing fee (normally €450) will be waived for the first 20 papers, provided that the publications are accepted and meet the following criteria that the data paper describes a dataset:

The manuscript must be prepared in English and is submitted in accordance with BDJ’s instructions to authors by 31 August 2020. Late submissions will not be eligible for APC waivers.

Sponsorship is limited to the first 20 accepted submissions meeting these criteria on a first-come, first-served basis. The call for submissions can therefore close prior to the stated deadline of 31 August. Authors may contribute to more than one manuscript, but artificial division of the logically uniform data and data stories, or “salami publishing”, is not allowed.

BDJ will publish a special issue including the selected papers by the end of 2020. The journal is indexed by Web of Science (Impact Factor 1.029), Scopus (CiteScore: 1.24) and listed in РИНЦ / eLibrary.ru

For non-native speakers, please ensure that your English is checked either by native speakers or by professional English-language editors prior to submission. You may credit these individuals as a “Contributor” through the AWT interface. Contributors are not listed as co-authors but can help you improve your manuscripts.

In addition to the BDJ instruction to authors, it is required that datasets referenced from the data paper a) cite the dataset’s DOI and b) appear in the paper’s list of references.

Authors should explore the GBIF.org section on data papers and Strategies and guidelines for scholarly publishing of biodiversity data. Manuscripts and datasets will go through a standard peer-review process.

To see an example, view this dataset on GBIF.org and the corresponding data paper published by BDJ.

Questions may be directed either to Dmitry Schigel, GBIF scientific officer, or Yasen Mutafchiev, managing editor of Biodiversity Data Journal.

Definition of terms

Datasets with more than 5,000 records that are new to GBIF.org

Datasets should contain at a minimum 5,000 new records that are new to GBIF.org. While the focus is on additional records for the region, records already published in GBIF may meet the criteria of ‘new’ if they are substantially improved, particularly through the addition of georeferenced locations.

Justification for publishing datasets with fewer records (e.g. sampling-event datasets, sequence-based data, checklists with endemics etc.) will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Datasets with high-quality data and metadata

Authors should start by publishing a dataset comprised of data and metadata that meets GBIF’s stated data quality requirement. This effort will involve work on an installation of the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit.

Only when the dataset is prepared should authors then turn to working on the manuscript text. The extended metadata you enter in the IPT while describing your dataset can be converted into manuscript with a single-click of a button in the ARPHA Writing Tool (see also Creation and Publication of Data Papers from Ecological Metadata Language (EML) Metadata. Authors can then complete, edit and submit manuscripts to BDJ for review.

Datasets with geographic coverage in European Russia west of the Ural mountains

In correspondence with the funding priorities of this programme, at least 80% of the records in a dataset should have coordinates that fall within the priority area of European Russia west of the Ural mountains. However, authors of the paper may be affiliated with institutions anywhere in the world.

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Data audit at Pensoft’s biodiversity journals

Data papers submitted to Biodiversity Data Journal, as well as all relevant biodiversity-themed journals in Pensoft’s portfolio, undergo a mandatory data auditing workflow before being passed down to a subject editor.

Learn more about the workflow here:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-10/pp-aif101819.php.

Check out the case study below to see how the data audit workflow works in practice.

CASE STUDY: Data audit for the “Vascular plants dataset of the COFC herbarium (University of Cordoba, Spain)”, a data paper in PhytoKeys

How quickly do flower strips in cities help the local bees?

Insects rely on a mix of floral resources for survival. Populations of bees, butterflies, and flies are currently rapidly decreasing due to the loss of flower-rich meadows. In order to deal with the widespread loss of fauna, the European Union supports “greening” measures, for example, the creation of flower strips.

A group of scientists from the University of Munich, led by Prof. Susanne S. Renner, has conducted the first quantitative assessment of the speed and distance over which urban flower strips attract wild bees, and published the results of the study in the open-access Journal of Hymenoptera Research.

Flower strips are human-made patches of flowering plants that provide resources for flower-visiting insects and insect- and seed-feeding birds. Previous experiments have proved their conservation value for enhancing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.

The success of flower strips in maintaining populations of solitary bees depends on the floristic composition, distance from suitable nesting sites, and distance from other habitats maintaining stable populations of bees. To study the attractiveness of the flower strips in urban landscapes, the scientists used an experimental set-up of nine 1,000 sq. meters flower strips recently established in Munich by a local bird conservation agency.

“We identified and counted the bees visiting flowers on each strip and then related these numbers to the total diversity of Munich’s bee fauna and to the diversity at different distances from the strips. Our expectation was that newly planted flower strips would attract a small subset of mostly generalist, non-threatened species and that oligolectic species (species using pollen from a taxonomically restricted set of plants) would be underrepresented compared to the city’s overall species pool,”
shared Prof. Susanne S. Renner.

Bees need time to discover new habitats, but the analysis showed that the city’s wild bees managed to do that in just one year so that the one-year-old flower strips attracted one-third of the 232 species recorded in Munich between 1997 and 2017.

Surprisingly, the flower strips attracted a random subset of Munich’s bee species in terms of pollen specialization. At the same time, as expected, the first-year flower-strip visitors mostly belonged to common, non-threatened species.

The results of the study support that flower strip plantings in cities provide extra support for pollinators and act as an effective conservation measure. The authors therefore strongly recommend the flower strip networks implemented in the upcoming Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform in the European Union.

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Original source:

Hofmann MM, Renner SS (2020) One-year-old flower strips already support a quarter of a city’s bee species. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 75: 87-95. https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.75.47507

Exceptional catapulting jump mechanism in a tiny beetle could be applied in robotic limbs

The fascinating and highly efficient jumping mechanism in flea beetles is described in a new research article in the open-access journal Zookeys. Despite having been known since 1929, the explosive jump – which is also the reason behind the colloquial name of this group of leaf beetles – has so far not been fully understood.

By joining forces, a team of Chinese and US scientists, led by Dr Xingke Yang, Siqin Ge and Yongying Ruan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dr Alexander Konstantinov of the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, tested the existing theories, using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT scans), 3D reconstructions, high-speed filming and dissection. Following their experiments, the scientists provided comprehensive insights into the mechanics behind the spectacular jump in flea beetles and reported, for the first time, the role of a structure found in the legs of these insects, known as “elastic plate”.

The flea beetles (members of the tribe Alticini) are plant feeders that belong to a hyperdiverse group of about 9,900 species and occur in various environments worldwide: from lowland tropical rain forests to high-altitude mountain meadows and deserts. Most of them live, feed and procreate on the upper leaf surface of their host plants, thus making them particularly vulnerable to predators, including birds, ants and spiders. One of their defence mechanisms is their incredible jumping skills, which allow the beetles to escape an approaching predator in an instant.

The apparatus responsible for this exceptional jump is hidden inside the beetle’s hind legs and is relatively simple. It contains only three sclerotised parts and a few muscles. Yet, it is, in reality, a highly efficient “catapult”, able to propel the beetle at a distance hundreds of times its body length. Using micro-computed tomography, 3D reconstructions and high-speed filming data, the scientists revealed that the acceleration during the jump can reach an explosive peak of 8,650 m/s2, which is 865 times the acceleration of gravity. The peak power output of the hind legs of the beetle peaked at 2.24 × 105 W/kg (per unit mass). This is about 450 times the capabilities of the fastest known muscle and 100~200 times that of a powerful rally car engine.

The 3D reconstructions revealed two processes inside the hind leg that amplify the power output of the beetle’s muscles and reduce energy waste.

Firstly, the tibial extensor and tibial flexor muscles contract simultaneously and cumulatively build up elastic strain energy inside the femur (the longest segment of an insect’s leg). The energy is stored in a sclerotised structure, called a metafemoral spring, while another two structures inside the leg, previously known as “triangular plate” and “elastic plate”, act together as a trigger for the catapult mechanism. When the trigger is released, the metafemoral spring contracts and converts elastic potential energy into kinetic energy, which allows the flea beetle to attain an extraordinarily high acceleration. Instead of gradual acceleration throughout the jump, the flea beetle employs a ‘high-efficiency mechanism’ at the start, in order to store colossal strain energy to be released later on.

Thus, flea beetles avoid muscle fatigue (energy waste) and improve their jumping performance to the point where they can do over 30 consecutive jumps, as recorded by the scientists in their laboratory experiments. In nature, this mechanism is an adaptation for the insects to escape predators by quickly disappearing from the leaf surfaces where they normally spend their lives. In fact, it is this “explosive” jump that, according to the researchers, is amongst the key traits responsible for the high evolutionary success and remarkable species diversity in flea beetles.

In conclusion, the scientists note that the catapulting jump mechanism in flea beetles is so efficient and yet so simple that it might find an excellent use in robotics, as well as in engineering and industrial installations. In their research paper, they also propose a design of a bionic limb inspired by the studied beetles.

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Original source:

Ruan Y, Konstantinov AS, Shi G, Tao Y, Li Y, Johnson AJ, Luo X, Zhang X, Zhang M, Wu J, Li W, Ge S, Yang X (2020) The jumping mechanism of flea beetles (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Alticini), its application to bionics and preliminary design for a robotic jumping leg. ZooKeys 915: 87-105. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.915.38348

Citizen scientists discover a new snail and name it after Greta Thunberg

A new to science species of land snail was discovered by a group of citizen scientists working together with scientists from Taxon Expeditions, a company that organises scientific field trips for teams consisting of both scientists and laypeople. Having conducted a vote on how to name the species, the expedition participants and the local staff of the National Park together decided to name the mollusc Craspedotropis gretathunbergae. The species name honors the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg for her efforts to raise awareness about climate change. The study is published in the open-access journal Biodiversity Data Journal.

“The newly described snail belongs to the so-called caenogastropods, a group of land snails known to be sensitive to drought, temperature extremes and forest degradation”,
says snail expert and co-founder of Taxon Expeditions, Dr. Menno Schilthuizen.

All individuals were found very close to the research field station (Kuala Belalong Field Studies Centre) at the foot of a steep hill-slope, next to a river bank, while foraging at night on the green leaves of understorey plants.

Citizen scientist J.P. Lim, who found the first specimen of Greta Thunberg’s snail says:

“Naming this snail after Greta Thunberg is our way of acknowledging that her generation will be responsible for fixing problems that they did not create. And it’s a promise that people from all generations will join her to help”.

Taxon Expeditions participant J.P. Lim collecting snails.
*Credit:* Taxon Expeditions – Pierre Escoubas
*License: CC-BY 4.0*

The expedition team approached Ms. Thunberg who said that she would be “delighted” to have this species named after her.

Video about Taxon Expeditions & Greta Thunberg snail
Credit: Taxon Expeditions

However, this is not the first time that Taxon Expeditions team names a species in honour of an environmental advocate. In 2018, they named a new species of beetle after famous actor and climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio. Mr. DiCaprio temporarily changed his profile photo on Facebook to the photo of “his” beetle to acknowledge this honour.

View of the Ulu Temburong National Park in Brunei from the canopy bridge.
*Credit:* Taxon Expeditions – Pierre Escoubas
*License: CC-BY 4.0*

Original source:

Schilthuizen M, Lim JP, van Peursen ADP, Alfano M, Jenging AB, Cicuzza D, Escoubas A, Escoubas P, Grafe U, Ja J, Koomen P, Krotoski A, Lavezzari D, Lim L, Maarschall R, Slik F, Steele D, Ting Teck Wah D, van Zeeland I, Njunjić I (2020) Craspedotropis gretathunbergae, a new species of Cyclophoridae (Gastropoda: Caenogastropoda), discovered and described on a field course to Kuala Belalong rainforest, Brunei. Biodiversity Data Journal 8: e47484. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e47484

Fifteen years & 20 million insects later: Sweden’s impressive effort to document its insect fauna in a changing world

The Swedish Malaise Trap Project (SMTP) was launched in 2003 with the aim of making a complete list of the insect diversity of Sweden. Over the past fifteen years, an estimated total of 20 million insects, collected during the project, have been processed for scientific study. Recently, the team behind this effort published the resulting inventory in the open-access journal Biodiversity Data Journal. In their paper, they also document the project all the way from its inception to its current status by reporting on its background, organisation, methodology and logistics.

The SMTP deployed a total of 73 Malaise traps – a Swedish invention designed to capture flying insects – and placed them across the country, where they remained from 2003 to 2006. Subsequently, the samples were sorted by a dedicated team of staff, students and volunteers into over 300 groups of insects ready for further study by expert entomologists. At the present time, this material can be considered as a unique timestamp of the Swedish insect fauna and an invaluable source of baseline data, which is especially relevant as reports of terrifying insect declines keep on making the headlines across the world.

The first author and Project Manager of the SMTP, Dave Karlsson started his academic paper on the project’s results years ago by compiling various tips, tricks, lessons and stories that he had accumulated over his years as SMTP’s Project Manager. Some fun examples include the time when one of the Malaise traps was destroyed by a moose bull rubbing his antlers against it, or when another trap was attacked and eaten by a group of 20 reindeer. The project even had a trap taken out by Sweden’s military! Karlsson’s intention was that, by sharing the details of the project, he would inspire and encourage similar efforts around the globe.

Animals were not as kind to our traps as humans,” recall the scientists behind the project. One of the Malaise traps, located in the Brännbergets Nature Reserve in Västerbotten, was destroyed by a bull moose rubbing his antlers against it.
Photo by Anna Wenngren

Karlsson has worked with and trained dozens of workers in the SMTP lab over the past decade and a half. Some were paid staff, some were enthusiastic volunteers and a good number were researchers and students using SMTP material for projects and theses. Thus, he witnessed first-hand how much excitement and enthusiasm the work on insect samples under a microscope can generate, even in those who had been hesitant about “bugs” at first.

Stressing the benefits of traditional morphological approaches to inventory work, he says: “Appreciation for nature is something you miss when you go ‘hi-tech’ with inventory work. We have created a unique resource for specialists in our sorted material while fostering a passion for natural history.”

Sorted SMTP material is now available to specialists. Hundreds of thousands of specimens have already been handed over to experts, resulting in over 1,300 species newly added to the Swedish fauna. A total of 87 species have been recognised as new to science from the project thus far, while hundreds more await description.

The SMTP is part of the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative, from where it also receives its funding. In its turn, the latter is a project by the Swedish Species Information Center, a ground-breaking initiative funded by the Swedish Parliament since 2002 with the aim of documenting all multicellular life in Sweden.

The SMTP is based at Station Linné, a field station named after the famous Swedish naturalist and father of taxonomy, Carl Linneaus. Situated on the Baltic island of Öland, the station is managed by Dave Karlsson. Co-authors Emily Hartop and Mathias Jaschhof are also based at the station, while Mattias Forshage and Fredrik Ronquist (SMTP Project Co-Founder) are based at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

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Original source:

Karlsson D, Hartop E, Forshage M, Jaschhof M, Ronquist F (2020) The Swedish Malaise Trap Project: A 15 Year Retrospective on a Countrywide Insect Inventory. Biodiversity Data Journal 8: e47255. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e47255

Faster than a speeding bullet: Asian hornet invasion spreads to Northern Germany

Known to prey on many insects, including honey bees and other beneficiary species, the Asian hornet, which had recently invaded parts of Europe, presents a serious threat to apiculture and even to ecosystems. In their paper, published in the open-access journal Evolutionary Systematics, German scientists share concerns about this fast invader spreading to the north. In early September 2019, a single specimen was collected alive in Hamburg (Germany), representing the northernmost find of the species so far.

In early September 2019, an Asian hornet (Vespa velutina nigrithorax) was collected alive in Hamburg, Germany, representing the northernmost find of the species so far in Europe and indicating its further spread to the north. The paper by the research group from Hamburg, which also serves to update the occurrence of the dangerous invader, was published in the open-access journal Evolutionary Systematics.

Known to prey on many insects, including honey bees and other beneficiary species, the Asian hornet, which had already invaded parts of Southern and Central Europe, is a potential threat to apiculture and even to ecosystems.

The first specimen was captured in south-western France in 2005 and started to spread quickly. Over the next years, it invaded large parts of France and regions of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Great Britain and south-western parts of Germany. The estimated invasion speed for France has been estimated at around 78 km/year, but in reality, the species spread might be occurring much faster due to anthropogenic factors.

It’s not yet clear if the collected Asian hornet belonged to an already settled population or it’s rather the first record of a new invasion. Nevertheless, considering the fast invasion speed of the species and its relatively high climatic tolerance, it’s quite possible that it had reached Hamburg on natural routes and now reproduces there.

Even though other models suggest that the Hamburg area is not suitable for the species today, the new find might be a sign that the Asian hornet has begun spreading at a speed above that previously known and even in climatically less favourable regions.

“Therefore, the current find needs to be taken seriously, no matter if it is only a single specimen or a member of an established population”, shares the lead researcher Martin Husemann from Centrum für Naturkunde, University of Hamburg.

Invasive species are one of the great challenges in the modern world. Their occurrence can be considered as one of the key important ecological and evolutionary drivers.

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Original source:
Husemann M, Sterr A, Maack S, Abraham R (2020) The northernmost record of the Asian hornet Vespa velutina nigrithorax (Hymenoptera, Vespidae). Evolutionary Systematics 4(1): 1-4.
https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.4.47358

French mathematician and spider aficionado Cédric Villani honoured with a new orb-weaver

Considered as one of the best studied spiders, the orb-weavers remain poorly known in the central parts of the Palearctic ecozone. Hence, an international research team took to the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia. Their article in the open-access peer-reviewed journal ZooKeys documents three new-to- science species, where one is named after the Indo-Iranian god of light Mithra. Another carries the name of the flamboyant French mathematician and spider aficionado Cédric Villani.

With their astonishingly precise spiral webs, orb-weaving spiders are the arachnid analogy of first-class mathematicians, note the researchers behind the study

Despite being considered as one of the best-studied spiders in the Palearctic, the orb-weaver spiders (family Araneidae) remain poorly known in the central parts of the ecozone. To bridge the knowledge gaps, an international research team of researchers took to the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia to study two of those genera: Araniella and Neoscona.

As a result, in their article, recently published in the open-access scientific journal ZooKeys, arachnologists Alireza Zamani (University of Turku, Finland), Yuri M. Marusik (Institute for Biological Problems of the North RAS, Russia) and Anna Šestáková (The Western Slovakian Museum, Slovakia) describe three new-to-science species, where one: Araniella villanii – carries the name of the flamboyant French mathematician and spider aficionado Cédric Villani, who has been dubbed the “Lady Gaga of Mathematics”. Even if unknown until now, the species turned out to have a wide distribution, ranging from south-western Iran to eastern Kazakhstan and northern India.

A female specimen of the newly described orb-weaver species *Araniella villanii* on its web (Kazakhstan)
Photo by Alireza Zamani

“It’s a well-known fact within the arachnological community that spiders are masters of mathematics and architecture. Orb-web spiders, in particular, tend to build beautiful and architecturally aesthetic webs, some of which are formed in spirals in line with the repetitive pattern of the golden ratio,”
explains lead author of the study Alireza Zamani.

The web of the garden orb-web spider Araneus diadematus, for example, usually has 25 to 30 radial threads forming an astonishingly precise angle of about 15°, which the spider carefully measures using its front legs. According to scientific observations, if the front legs are removed, the regularity of the angles between adjacent radial threads is impaired.

For these and many other reasons, spiders must have been an inspiration for mathematicians like Cédric Villani, who has publicly shown a mysterious love for these arachnids. Awarded the Fields Medal (some say it is the Mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize) in 2010 and having served as the director of Sorbonne University‘s Institut Henri Poincaré from 2009 to 2017, the Frenchman’s love for spiders is quite evident, thanks to the constant presence of a spider brooch on his lapel. Although he has never explained the reason behind his appreciation of these eight-legged wonders, now he has a real, even scientifically sound connection to them in the real world.

Apart from Araniella villanii, whose scientific name honours the prominent scientist and recognises his love for spiders, the other two newly-described species also have a story behind their names. One of them: Neoscona isatis, discovered in central Iran, was named after the historical name of its type locality; and Araniella mithra, known from north-western, central and south-western Iran, was named after Mithra, the god of light in the ancient Indo-Iranian mythology.

Curiously, spiders in the genus Araniella are green in colour due to certain bile pigments (biliverdin) that make them very difficult to spot in their natural habitat, as they live mostly on leaves.

French mathematician and spider aficionado Cédric Villani (left) with lead author and discoverer of the three new-to-science orb-weaver spiders Alireza Zamani (right) in Iran (2015)

“I met Mr. Villani in May 2015 at University of Tehran, where he was an invited speaker. We got to briefly talk about our shared interest in spiders, and I had the opportunity to present him an Iranian wolf spider as a souvenir!”
recalls Zamani.

“It’s important to note that, with the efforts of taxonomists, new species are being discovered and described with an average rate of 18,000 species per year, but simultaneously both known and undescribed species go extinct due to human activities, with the current rate being within or even higher than the range of the newly described ones. A first step towards conservation of biodiversity includes taxonomic research to document species and to define hotspots of species diversity in order to protect such carefully selected habitats,”
he points out.

A female specimen of the newly described orb-weaver species Araniella villanii in its natural habitat (Kazakhstan)
Photo by Anatoliy Ozernoy

“However, with the current situation of low funding for taxonomic research, the number of students doing taxonomic research is in severe decline and the current average ‘shelf life’ (between discovery and description) of a new species remains at about 21 years. Araniella villanii is a great example of how much we don’t know about our biodiversity.”

Despite being discovered all the time, new species mostly have very restricted ranges and are only known from a few nearby localities. Orb-weaver spiders have very good dispersal abilities and it is relatively uncommon to detect new species of them.

“Araniella villanii is known from a few localities in southwestern Iran, eastern Kazakhstan and northern India, a distribution range covering at least ten countries, and yet the species was unknown to science until now. I think that the message that this particular discovery implies is that while there are such widely-distributed undescribed species out there, we need more and more taxonomic research, both in the field and in the natural history museum collections, which house a considerable number of undescribed species, in order to preserve the remaining biodiversity on earth, before it’s too late”.

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Original source:

Zamani A, Marusik YM, Šestáková A (2020) On Araniella and Neoscona (Araneae, Araneidae) of the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia. ZooKeys 906: 13-40. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.906.47978