biodiversity hotspot

Facebook and Instagram gave away the presence of the ‘Japan pig’ seahorse in Taiwan

Japan pig seahorse (Hippocampus japapigu) in its natural habitat at Hejie, Kenting, Taiwan

Credit: Chao-Tsung Chen
License: CC-BY 4.0

While monitoring of cryptic and elusive tiny creatures, such as pygmy seahorses that measure only 13 to 27 mm, might be too costly and time-consuming for research teams and institutions, the underwater activity might be proving of particular interest to photography and diving enthusiasts.

At least, this is what comes across from the recent reports of five miniature species identified from Taiwanese waters by local citizen scientists and passed along via Facebook and Instagram. Amongst the findings, there are two species that had never before been reported from the country, including last year’s media sensation: the ‘Japan pig’, considered to only be found in the “Land of the Rising Sun”. The study, conducted by the team Mr. Joseph Heard, Drs Jeng-Ping Chen and Colin Wen from Tunghai University and Taiwan Ocean Research Institute, is published in ZooKeys, the very same open-access journal that saw the description of the species in 2018.

The scientists note that pygmy seahorses are largely unknown species and even basic information regarding their habitats is largely inconsistent and based on unofficial reports. As monitoring of marine wildlife can be expensive and time-consuming, especially regarding its small and cryptic representatives, the researchers decided to use “Phone a Friend” lifeline. Scuba divers and underwater photographers were approached on social media to help investigate pygmy seahorse diversity in Taiwan.

Their call resulted in 259 social media items, including 75 photos of 78 miniature creatures from their natural habitats at five different locations. Identified as five separate species, their discovery ranks Taiwan as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots for pygmy seahorse, given that there are only seven species of pygmy seahorses out there.

A Japan pig seahorse (Hippocampus japapigu) in its natural habitat at Green Island, Taiwan.
Credit: Jolly Huang
License: CC-BY 4.0

Four of those were found at Green Island alone, a small volcanic Pacific island, measuring only 15 km2.

Pygmy seahorse specimen collection from Taiwan for future examination is still undergoing.

Heard J, Chen J-P, Wen CKC (2019) Citizen science yields first records of Hippocampus japapigu and Hippocampus denise (Syngnathidae) from Taiwan: A hotspot for pygmy seahorse diversity. ZooKeys 883: 83-90. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.883.39662

New ‘scaly’ snails species group following striking discoveries from Malaysian Borneo

Six new species of unique land snails whose shells are covered with what look like scales have been described from the biodiversity hotspot of Malaysian Borneo by scientists Mohd Zacaery Khalik, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Kasper Hendriks, University of Groningen, Jaap Vermeulen, JK Art & Science, and Prof Menno Schilthuizen, Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Their paper is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Thanks to their conspicuous structures, the mollusks have been added to a brand new species group of land snails to be commonly known as the ‘scaly’ snails, so that they can be set apart from the rest in the genus Georissa. Why it is that only some of the species in the genus sport the unique ‘scales’, remains unknown.

Fascinated with the minute ‘scaly’ snail fauna of Borneo, the researchers carried out fieldwork between 2015 and 2017 to find out how these curious shells evolved. In addition, they also examined material deposited in museum and private snail collections.

Apart from DNA data, which is nowadays commonly used in species identification, the team turned to yet-to-become-popular modern tools such as 3D modelling, conducted through X-ray scanning. By doing so, the researchers managed to look at both the inner and outer surfaces of the shells of the tiny specimens from every angle and position, and examine them in great detail.

The researchers note that to identify the ‘scaly’ snails to species level, one needs a combination of both DNA and morphological data:

“Objective species delimitation based solely on molecular data will not be successful for the ‘scaly’ snails in Georissa, at least if one wishes for the taxonomy to reflect morphology as well.”

The six new species are all named after the localities they have been originally collected from, in order to create awareness for species and habitat conservation.

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Watch rotation and cross-section of the 3D models of the studied species here.

Original source:

Khalik MZ, Hendriks K, Vermeulen JJ, Schilthuizen M (2018) A molecular and conchological dissection of the “scaly” Georissa of Malaysian Borneo (Gastropoda, Neritimorpha, Hydrocenidae). ZooKeys 773: 1-55. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.773.24878

Ottawa confirmed as the biodiversity hotspot for a subfamily of wasps in North America

What usually comes to mind when speaking about biodiversity hotspots are tropical regions, pristine areas and magnificent forests. Meanwhile, it is quite rare that a city in a temperate zone is considered significant in terms of biodiversity, much less mentioned as a hotspot. Yet, the city of Ottawa together with its surroundings, despite having population surpassing 1 million people, is now confirmed to be the locality in North America with the most recorded species of braconid wasps in the subfamily Microgastrinae, a group of parasitic insects that attack caterpillars and play an important role in the natural biocontrol of agriculture and forestry pests.

A study published in ZooKeys reports 158 species within 21 different genera of Microgastrinae for Ottawa. “To put this into perspective,” says Dr. Jose Fernandez-Triana, affiliated with the Canadian National Collection of Insects and lead author of the paper, “if Ottawa (a relatively small area of less than 7,800 km2) would be considered as a country itself, its species total would rank 17th among all countries in the world.”

There are close to 200 species of microgastrine wasps known from Canada and around 350 – from North America. Thus, the fauna in Ottawa equals to three quarters of the total recorded for the entire country, and almost half of all species in the Nearctic region. In fact, the diversity in the Canadian capital represents by far the highest number of species ever recorded for a locality in North America, a consequence of the city being a transition from an eastern deciduous forest biome to a boreal biome, with small areas of unusual habitats like dunes, alvars, floodplains and bogs.

Based on the analysis of almost 2,000 specimens, collected between 1894 and 2010, and housed in the Canadian National Collection of Insects, the paper also reports two new species for North America and two additional species records for Canada and Ontario, as well as dozens of new additions to the regional fauna. Seasonal distribution showed several peaks of activity, in spring, summer, and early fall.

The study highlights the incredible diversity of parasitoid wasps and how much remains to be discovered, even in temperate areas and/or city environments. “It is possible that southern localities in North America are eventually found to be more diverse than Ottawa,” notes Dr. Fernandez-Triana. “But for that to happen one would need to find an area that has a variety of habitats and has also been thoroughly sampled over the years, with thousands of specimens available for study.”

“In the meantime,” jokes the scientist, “the citizens of the Canadian capital will have the bragging rights in North America, at least for microgastrine wasp diversity.”

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Original source:

Fernandez-Triana J, Boudreault C, Buffam J, Mclean R (2016) A biodiversity hotspot for Microgastrinae (Hymenoptera, Braconidae) in North America: annotated species checklist for Ottawa, Canada. ZooKeys 633: 1-93. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.633.10480

Underwater mushrooms: Curious lake fungi under every turned over stone

While fungi are well known for being essential in cycling carbon and nutrients, there are only about 100,000 described species in contrast to the 1.5 to 3 millions, assumed to exist on Earth. Of these, barely 3000 fungi belong to aquatic habitats. In fact, freshwater fungi have been researched so little, it is only now that an international research team provide the first lake-wide fungal diversity estimate in the open access journal MycoKeys.

Over the spring and the early summer of 2010, a large team of scientists, led by Dr Christian Wurzbacher and Dr Norman Warthmann, affiliated with the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and the Berlin Center for Genomics in Biodiversity Research, Germany (currently at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Australian National University, Australia, respectively), collected a total of 216 samples from 54 locations, encompassing eight different habitats within Lake Stechlin in North-East Germany.

Having recovered samples on three occasions over the course of the study, their aim was to test how habitat specificity affects the fungal community and whether fungal groups would reflect the availability of particulate organic matter as substrate. Unlike previous studies of aquatic fungi that compared water samples among different lakes or seasons, theirs would compare the diversity among habitats within a single lake. This included the study of fungi living in the water and the sediments, as well as fungi living on the surfaces of plants and other animals.

As a result, the scientists concluded that every type of habitat, i.e. sediments, biofilms, and submerged macrophytes (large aquatic plants), has a specific fungal community that varies more than initially expected. Of these, lake biofilms, representing a group of microorganisms, whose cells stick to each other, and cling together to a surface, turned out to be the hotspots for aquatic fungi.

“Our study provides the first estimate of lake-wide fungal diversity and highlights the important contribution of habitat heterogeneity to overall diversity and community composition,” the scientists summarise. “Habitat diversity should be considered in any sampling strategy aiming to assess the fungal diversity of a water body.”

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Original source:

Wurzbacher C, Warthmann N, Bourne EC, Attermeyer K, Allgaier M, Powell JR, Detering H, Mbedi S, Grossart H-P, Monaghan MT (2016) High habitat-specificity in fungal communities in oligo-mesotrophic, temperate Lake Stechlin (North-East Germany). MycoKeys 16: 17-44. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.16.9646