Tag: biodiversity

LifeWatchGreece launches a Special Paper Collection for Greek biodiversity research

Developed in the 1990s and early 2000s, LifeWatch is one of the large-scale European Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) created to support biodiversity science and its developments. Its ultimate goal is to model Earth’s biodiversity based on large-scale data, to build a vast network of partners, and to liaise with other high-quality and viable research infrastructures (RI).

Being one of the founding LifeWatch member states, Greece has not only implemented LifeWatchGreece, but it is all set and ready to “fulfill the vision of the Greek LifeWatch RI and establish it as the biodiversity Centre of Excellence for South-eastern Europe”, according to the authors of the latest Biodiversity Data Journal‘s Editorial: Dr Christos Arvanitidis, Dr Eva Chatzinikolaou, Dr Vasilis Gerovasileiou, Emmanouela Panteri, Dr Nicolas Bailly, all affiliated with the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and part of the LifeWatchGreece Core Team, together with Nikos Minadakis, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), Alex Hardisty, Cardiff University, and Dr Wouter Los, University of Amsterdam.

Making use of the technologically advanced open access Biodiversity Data Journal and its Collections feature, the LifeWatchGreece team is publishing a vast collection of peer-reviewed scientific outputs, including software descriptions, data papers, taxonomic checklists and research articles, along with the accompanying datasets and supporting material. Their intention is to demonstrate the availability and applicability of the developed e-Services and Virtual Laboratories (vLabs) to both the scientific community, as well as the broader domain of biodiversity management.

The LifeWatchGreece Special Collection is now available in Biodiversity Data Journal, with a series of articles highlighting key contributions to the large-scale European LifeWatch RI. The Software Description papers explain the LifeWatchGreece Portal, where all the e-Services and the vLabs provided by LifeWatchGreece RI are hosted; the Data Services based on semantic web technologies, which provide detailed and specialized search paths to facilitate data mining; the R vLab which can be used for a series of statistical analyses in ecology, based on an integrated and optimized online R environment; and the Micro-CT vLab, which allows the online exploration, dissemination and interactive manipulation of micro-tomography datasets.

The LifeWatchGreece Special Collection also includes a series of taxonomic checklists (preliminary, updated and/or annotated); a series of data papers presenting historical and original datasets; and a selection of research articles reporting on the outcomes, methodologies and citizen science initiatives developed by collaborating research projects, which have shared human, hardware and software resources with LifeWatchGreece RI.

LifeWatchGreece relies on a multidisciplinary approach, involving several subsidiary initiatives; collaborations with Greek, European and World scientific communities; specialised staff, responsible for continuous updates and developments; and, of course, innovative online tools and already established IT infrastructure.

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Original source:

Arvanitidis C, Chatzinikolaou E, Gerovasileiou V, Panteri E, Bailly N, Minadakis N, Hardisty A, Los W (2016) LifeWatchGreece: Construction and operation of the National Research Infrastructure (ESFRI). Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e10791. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e10791

Additional information:

This work has been supported by the LifeWatchGreece infrastructure (MIS 384676), funded by the Greek Government under the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT), ESFRI Projects, National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF).

35 years of work: More than 1000 leaf-mining pygmy moths classified & catalogued

The leaf-mining pygmy moths (family Nepticulidae) and the white eyecap moths (family Opostegidae) are among the smallest moths in the world with a wingspan of just a few millimetres. Their caterpillars make characteristic patterns in leaves: leaf mines. For the first time, the evolutionary relationships of the more than 1000 species have been analysed on the basis of DNA, resulting in a new classification.

Today, a team of scientists, led by Dr Erik J. van Nieukerken and Dr. Camiel Doorenweerd, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, published three inter-linked scientific publications in the journal Systematic Entomology and the open access journal ZooKeys, together with two online databases, providing a catalogue with the names of all species involved.

The evolutionary study, forming part of the PhD thesis of Doorenweerd, used DNA methods to show that the group is ancient and was already diverse in the early Cretaceous, ca. 100 million years ago, partly based on the occurrence of leaf mines in fossil leaves. The moths are all specialised on some species of flowering plants, also called angiosperms, and could therefore diversify when the angiosperms diversified and largely replaced ecologically other groups of plants in the Cretaceous. The study lead to the discovery of three new genera occurring in South and Central America, which are described in one of the two ZooKeys papers, stressing the peculiar character and vastly undescribed diversity of the Neotropic fauna.

Changing a classification requires a change in many species names, which prompted the authors to simultaneously publish a full catalogue of all 1072 valid species names that are known worldwide and the many synonymic names from the literature from the past 150 years.

Creating such a large and comprehensive overview became possible from the moths and leaf-mine collections of the world’s natural history museums, and culminates the past 35 years of research that van Nieukerken has spent on this group. However, a small, but not trivial, note in one of the publications indicates that we can expect at least another 1000 species of pygmy leafminer moths that are yet undiscovered.

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Original sources:

Doorenweerd C, Nieukerken EJ van, Hoare RJB (2016) Phylogeny, classification and divergence times of pygmy leafmining moths (Lepidoptera: Nepticulidae): the earliest lepidopteran radiation on Angiosperms? Systematic Entomology, Early View. doi: 10.1111/syen.1221.

Nieukerken EJ van, Doorenweerd C, Nishida K, Snyers C (2016) New taxa, including three new genera show uniqueness of Neotropical Nepticulidae (Lepidoptera). ZooKeys 628: 1-63. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.628.9805.

Nieukerken EJ van, Doorenweerd C, Hoare RJB, Davis DR (2016) Revised classification and catalogue of global Nepticulidae and Opostegidae (Lepidoptera: Nepticuloidea). ZooKeys 628: 65-246. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.628.9799.

Nieukerken EJ van (ed) (2016) Nepticulidae and Opostegidae of the world, version 2.0. Scratchpads, biodiversity online.

Nieukerken EJ van (ed) (2016). Nepticuloidea: Nepticulidae and Opostegidae of the World (Oct 2016 version). In: Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life, 31st October 2016 (Roskov Y., Abucay L., Orrell T., Nicolson D., Flann C., Bailly N., Kirk P., Bourgoin T., DeWalt R.E., Decock W., De Wever A., eds). Digital resource at http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col. Species 2000: Naturalis, Leiden, the Netherlands. ISSN 2405-8858. http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/details/database/id/172

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

Family of scaffold web spiders increased with ~20% following discovery of 43 new species

Recent study into spider specimens collected from across China, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Madagascar over the past 15 years, revealed the striking number of 43 scaffold web spiders that have stayed hidden from science until now. By describing the new species in a paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys, scientists from Sichuan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences increase the number of a scaffold web spider family (Nesticidae), known from around the world, with about twenty percents.

The studied family of scaffold web spiders is a relatively small group of arachnids, which can be found at almost any locality, apart from Siberia, Central Asia, Northern and Southern Africa and places at high latitude. Prior to the study of Drs Yucheng Lin, Francesco Ballarin and Shuqiang Li, the species counted 245 in total, 12 of which are extinct and known from fossils only. A curious peculiarity in these spiders is their comb of serrated bristles, located on their rear legs, used to pull silk bands for their webs.

Although large-scale taxonomic surveys of scaffold web spiders have long remained scarce, recently the interest towards spider research in China and Southeast Asia has seen a significant rise. Thus, over the last 15 years, Chinese, American and European arachnologists have carried out several surveys, ending up with precious samples. As a result, Dr Yucheng Lin and his team followed with deeper morphological and molecular studies to discover remarkable diversity.

In their work, the researchers have also established a new genus (Speleoticus) for five previously known, but misplaced species, which spend a lot of their time taking shelter in caves.

The majority of scaffold web spiders occur in temperate areas of the Holarctic realm, where the species tend to be medium-sized, long-legged, and prefer cave-like environments. The species found in the tropical and subtropical areas are, on the other hand, usually smaller, with shorter legs, and can be quite often spotted outside, where they crawl in forest litter, on grass, and under stones.

Original source:

Lin Y, Ballarin F, Li S (2016) A survey of the spider family Nesticidae (Arachnida, Araneae) in Asia and Madagascar, with the description of forty-three new species. ZooKeys 627: 1-168. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.627.8629

New species of pea-size crab parasitizing a date mussel has a name of a Roman god

Tiny crabs, the size of a pea, dwell inside the mantles of various bivalves, living off the food filtered by their hosts. A new species of these curious crustaceans has recently been reported from the Solomon Islands, where an individual was found to parasitise a large date mussel.

Because of the new pea crab’s characteristic large additional plate, covering its upper carapace, giving it the illusion of having two faces, it has been named after Janus, the Roman two-faced god. Discoverers Dr Peter Ng, National University of Singapore, and Dr Christopher Meyer, U.S. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, have their findings published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Being only the second species in the genus (the first was from Malaysia), the new pea crab Serenotheres janus can be distinguished by its broader carapace and other features. It is cream-yellow in colour.

Both representatives of the genus are unique in having an additional large plate covering the upper side of the carapace. However, its purpose is still unknown. The two pea crabs are also the only known parasites of the rock-boring bivalves of the mytilid subfamily Lithophaginae.

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Original source:

Ng PKL, Meyer C (2016) A new species of pea crab of the genus Serenotheres Ahyong & Ng, 2005 (Crustacea, Brachyura, Pinnotheridae) from the date mussel Leiosolenus Carpenter, 1857 (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Mytilidae, Lithophaginae) from the Solomon Islands. ZooKeys 623: 31-41. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.623.10272

New species of extremely leggy millipede discovered in a cave in California

Along with many spiders, pseudoscorpions, and flies discovered and catalogued by the cave explorers, a tiny threadlike millipede was found in the unexplored dark marble caves in Sequoia National Park.

The enigmatic millipede was sent to diplopodologists (scientists who specialize in the study of millipedes) Bill Shear and Paul Marek, who immediately recognized its significance as evolutionary cousin of the leggiest animal on the planet, Illacme plenipes. The new species may possess “only” 414 legs, compared to its relative’s 750, yet, it has a similar complement of bizarre anatomical features, including a body armed with 200 poison glands, silk-secreting hairs, and 4 penises. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

This new millipede, named Illacme tobini after cave biologist Ben Tobin of the National Park Service, is described by its discoverer Jean Krejca, at Zara Environmental LLC, and millipede taxonomists Paul Marek at Virginia Tech and Bill Shear, Hampden-Sydney College.

“I never would have expected that a second species of the leggiest animal on the planet would be discovered in a cave 150 miles away,” says Paul Marek, Assistant Professor in the Entomology Department at Virginia Tech. It’s closest relative lives under giant sandstone boulders outside of San Juan Bautista, California.

In addition to the new millipede’s legginess, it also has bizarre-looking mouthparts of a mysterious function, four legs that are modified into penises, a body covered in long silk-secreting hairs, and paired nozzles on each of its over 100 segments that squirt a defense chemical of an unknown nature.

In conclusion, the authors note that by exploring our world and documenting the biodiversity of this planet we can prevent anonymous extinction, a process in which a species goes extinct before we know of its role in the ecosystem, potential benefit to humanity, or its beauty.

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Original source:

Marek PE, Krejca JK, Shear WA (2016) A new species of Illacme Cook & Loomis, 1928 from Sequoia National Park, California, with a world catalog of the Siphonorhinidae (Diplopoda, Siphonophorida). ZooKeys 626: 1-43. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.626.9681

New termite species condemned to 100 years of solitude with a second chance

While the last species of the termite genus Proneotermes genus has been discovered more than a hundred years ago, now scientists have discovered a new and a third one. Part of the fauna living in the dry forests in Colombia, its name was inspired by the magic realism of the fictional town of “Macondo” from the novel ‘One hundred years of solitude’ by Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Marquez.

Termitologists Robin Casalla, Freiburg University, Germany, and Universidad del Norte, Colombia, Dr Rudolf H. Scheffrahn, University of Florida, USA, and Prof Dr Judith Korb, Freiburg University, discovered a termite species and described it as new based on its unique shapes and colors, as well as its genes. The new termite is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Furthermore, there is a story behind the name of this new species, called Proneotermes macondianus. “Macondianus” refers to the fictional town of “Macondo” in the novel ‘One hundred year of solitude’ written by Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Marquez. Macondo stands for a forgotten microcosm in the history of Colombia with unimaginable events. According to the story, the magical realm was eventually wiped off the map by gigantic storms of the Caribbean as a form of divine punishment to the violation of the biblical laws of genetics, incest.

“P. macondianus may have been one of those characters playing in the novel during the destruction of Macondo, remaining unrecognized until today,” comments lead author Robin Casalla.

In Colombia many species still await their discovery, either in the wild, or frozen in time in museum cabinets and lacking a name. The only way to refer to them, is by pointing to them with your finger. But now, P. macondianus has been described in ZooKeys.

The soldiers of this species have a characteristic elongated, rectangular heads, about 5 – 7 mm long, ranging in color from black (at the tip) to ferruginous orange (at the back). P. macondianus has a voracious appetite for drywood, especially thin branches of less than 2 cm in diameter, and lives in small colonies of about 20 individuals. Although few drywood termites are considered pests in some urban areas, P. macondianus lives only in the wild and prefers tropical dry forests.

The termite P. macondianus ‘sentenced’ to over a hundred years of ‘solitude’, has now been given a second chance to not be forgotten again, being recognized as part of the Colombian natural ecosystem.

Original source:

Casalla R, Scheffrahn RH, Korb J (2016) Proneotermes macondianus, a new drywood termite from Colombia and expanded distribution of Proneotermes in the Neotropics (Isoptera, Kalotermitidae). ZooKeys 623: 43-60. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.623.9677

Scientists identify northeast Mindanao as major ‘bull’s-eye’ of biodiversity

Butuan City, Agusan del Norte. In a scientific report appearing Monday October 17th in the open access journal Zookeys, a team of researchers led by herpetologist Dr. Marites Sanguila of Father Saturnino Urios University announced that they have identified a new “epicenter” of southern Philippine biodiversity in amphibians and reptiles.

The international team of herpetologists (scientists who study frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, and crocodiles) collaborating on the study is composed of scientists from Father Saturnino Urios University, the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, the National Museum of the Philippines, Silliman University, and the Philippine Department of the Environment and Natural Resources. After an intensive five-year study, the team came to the ground-breaking conclusion that the Caraga Region of northeast Mindanao has the single highest herpetological species count of any similarly sized region in the country known to date.

Following a series of expeditions to four mountains in northern Mindanao, plus analyses of the distributions of species documented in museums around the world, the multi-institution effort culminated today with the announcement that the Caraga region is home total of 126 species of amphibians and reptiles.

According to Dr. Sanguila, this strikingly high diversity includes 40 species of frogs, one kind of caecilian (a secretive eel-like amphibian), 49 types of lizards, 35 varieties of snakes, plus one native freshwater turtle and, of course, one species of crocodile. According to the new study, the key to understanding the Caraga Region’s high biodiversity newly documented distributions of those 126 species, which overlap in northeast Mindanao. At a boundary between mainland Mindanao Island and the eastern Visayas (Samar, Leyte, Bohol, Dinagat, Siargao islands), “the Caraga region is an area where many species’ distributions come together and overlap, making this spot a kind of central hub of biodiversity,” said Dr. Sanguila. The new study brings more good news from the Philippines, a country internationally recognized as global biodiversity conservation hotspot of biodiversity.

“International collaborative biodiversity inventories are a great way to promote student training and faculty research development,” said Dr. Marites Sanguila, “In this research, we followed the example of the life-long collaboration between Dr. Angel Alcala, from the Silliman University, and Dr. Walter Brown, from California Academy of Sciences, and invited our U.S. counterparts to join in the effort to synthesize information on Caraga amphibian and reptile biodiversity. The results have unfolded in ways we could not have predicted, and generated opportunities for students on both sides of the Pacific.”

“Dr. Sanguila’s research tells us in a very special way something we have known intuitively for years, but have been unable to articulate: there is something very special about the unique biodiversity of the Caraga region! At the ‘center of the center’ of southern Philippine biodiversity, our small corner of Mindanao is undoubtedly unique, in need of conservation, and worthy of intensive scientific study,” said Rev. Fr. John Christian Young, president of Father Saturnino Urios University.

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Original Source:

Sanguila MB, Cobb KA, Siler CD, Diesmos AC, Alcala AC, Brown RM (2016) The amphibians and reptiles of Mindanao Island, southern Philippines, II: the herpetofauna of northeast Mindanao and adjacent islands. ZooKeys 624: 1-132. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.624.9814

Unfamiliar bloodline: New family for an earthworm genus with exclusive circulatory system

New earthworm family, named Kazimierzidae, has been established for a South African indigenous genus of 21 species. Although the circulatory system in the group has been regarded as exclusive upon their original description in 2006, their raising to a family status have only recently been confirmed by a research team from South Africa.

Scientists Mrs Thembeka Nxele, Dr Danuta Plisko (original discoverer of the genus Kazimierzus, now known as family Kazimierzidae), affiliated with Natal Museum (NMSA), Oliver Tendayi Zishiri, affiliated with University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Dr Taro Mwabvu, University of Mpumalanga, looked into the earthworm collection at the NMSA, as well as the type material and the available literature. Their study is published in the open access journal African Invertebrates.

When compared to the rest of the members in the family Microchaetidae, where the former genus had been placed, the studied earthworms show a number of distinct characters, including an “exclusive” circulatory system. In these species it is a simple single tube stretching along the whole body.

All 21 earthworm species, now members of the newly established family, can only be found in small areas restricted in the western and south-western Atlantic coast of South Africa. These locations have long been known for their endemic invertebrates and diverse flora.

In their paper, the authors note that it is actually the restricted range, and therefore the specific ecological requirements, that might have led these earthworms to become that different from other species. Their distribution and, hence, poor dispersal ability, are also the reason why the newly established group would be particularly vulnerable if the habitat is transformed.

“The species distribution of earthworms in Southern Africa is presently poorly known hence the urgency for extended study on earthworm diversity and their distribution patterns,” point out the scientists. “Extensive earthworm collection in the western Atlantic coast may bring more data on this and other taxa.”

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Original source:

Nxele TC, Plisko JD, Mwabvu T, Zishiri TO (2016) A new family Kazimierzidae for the genus Kazimierzus, earlier recorded to the composite Microchaetidae (Annelida, Oligochaeta). African Invertebrates 57(2): 111-117. doi: 10.3897/AfrInvertebr.57.10042

Claims that declines of pollinator species richness are slowing down in Europe revisited

Having conducted a thorough interpretation of the results of a recent study that inferred decrease in the biodiversity loss among pollinators across Europe, Dr Tom J. M. Van Dooren reveals that this conclusion cannot in fact be drawn. It is only supported for the bee fauna in the Netherlands. His study is published in the open access journal Nature Conservation.

Changes in pollinator abundances and diversity are of major concern. Pollinator diversity is quantified by their species richness: the number of species from a specific taxonomic group of pollinating animals present at a given time in a given area. A recent study, adopted in the recent UN IPBES Pollination Report draft summary, inferred that pollinator species richnesses are decreasing more slowly in recent decades in several taxonomic groups and European countries.

However, Dr Tom J. M. Van Dooren, affiliated with both Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the Netherlands, and the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences of Paris, France, has now published his own study to show in detail the inaccuracies that the earlier conclusion has been based on.

Among other points, the scientist notes that the earlier study contained no explicit statistical comparisons between species richness changes in different periods. The earlier study also treated richness changes at country level and small spatial resolution as equivalent, while they probably represent different processes.

“Plants in Great Britain at the smallest spatial scales suggest a reduced rate of changes, but the results for larger spatial scales are not significant,” he illustrates. “The same holds for butterflies in the Netherlands.”

Dr Tom J. M. Van Dooren only finds support in the results of the earlier publication for a decelerating decline in bumblebees and other wild bees in the Netherlands. “This is in fact one taxon, the bees Anthophila, in a single country, the Netherlands”, he notes.

“The lack of robustness points again to the possibility that results found in the data can be due to changes in the shapes of species accumulation curves,” Dr Tom J. M. Van Dooren summarises. “Therefore the status of the statement on decelerating declines in the Pollination Report should be adjusted accordingly.”

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Original source:

Van Dooren TJM (2016) Pollinator species richness: Are the declines slowing down? Nature Conservation 15: 11-22. doi: 10.3897/natureconservation.15.9616

Photo credit:

Aiwok, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)