“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.
***
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.
Leiden – also known as the ‘City of Keys’ and the ‘City of Discoveries’ – was aptly chosen to host the third Empowering Biodiversity Research (EBR III) conference. The two-day conference – this time focusing on the utilisation of biodiversity data as a vehicle for biodiversity research to reach to Policy – was held in a no less fitting locality: the Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
On 25th and 26th March 2024, the delegates got the chance to learn more about the latest discoveries, trends and innovations from scientists, as well as various stakeholders, including representatives of policy-making bodies, research institutions and infrastructures. The conference also ran a poster session and a Biodiversity Informatics market, where scientists, research teams, project consortia, and providers of biodiversity research-related services and tools could showcase their work and meet like-minded professionals.
BiCIKL stops at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center
The main outcome of the BiCIKL project: the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub, a one-stop knowledge portal to interlinked and machine-readable FAIR data.
The famous for its bicycle friendliness country also made a suitable stop for BiCIKL (an acronym for the Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library): a project funded under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme that aimed at triggering a culture change in the way users access, (re)use, publish and share biodiversity data. To do this, the BiCIKL consortium set off on a 3-year journey to build on the existing biodiversity data infrastructures, workflows, standards and the linkages between them.
Many of the people who have been involved in the project over the last three years could be seen all around the beautiful venue. Above all, Naturalis is itself one of the partnering institutions at BiCIKL. Then, on Tuesday, on behalf of the BiCIKL consortium and the project’s coordinator: the scientific publisher and technology innovator: Pensoft, Iva Boyadzhieva presented the work done within the project one month ahead of its official conclusion at the end of April.
As she talked about the way the BiCIKL consortium took to traverse obstacles to wider use and adoption of FAIR and linked biodiversity data, she focused on BiCIKL’s main outcome: the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub (BKH).
Key results from the BiCIKL project three years into its existence presented by Pensoft’s Iva Boyadzhieva at the EBR III conference.
Intended to act as a knowledge broker for users who wish to navigate and access sources of open and FAIR biodiversity data, guidelines, tools and services, in practicality, the BKH is a one-stop portal for understanding the complex but increasingly interconnected landscape of biodiversity research infrastructures in Europe and beyond. It collates information, guidelines, recommendations and best practices in usage of FAIR and linked biodiversity data, as well as a continuously expanded catalogue of compliant relevant services and tools.
At the core of the BKH is the FAIR Data Place (FDP), where users can familiarise themselves with each of the participating biodiversity infrastructures and network organisations, and also learn about the specific services they provide. There, anyone can explore various biodiversity data tools and services by browsing by their main data type, e.g. specimens, sequences, taxon names, literature.
While the project might be coming to an end, she pointed out, the BKH is here to stay as a navigation system in a universe of interconnected biodiversity research infrastructures.
To do this, not only will the partners continue to maintain it, but it will also remain open to any research infrastructure that wishes to feature its own tools and services compliant with the linked and FAIR data requirements set by the BiCIKL consortium.
Indisputably, the ‘hot’ topics at the EBR III were the novel technologies for remote and non-invasive, yet efficient biomonitoring; the utilisation of data and other input sourced by citizen scientists; as well as leveraging different types and sources of biodiversity data, in order to better inform decision-makers, but also future-proof the scientific knowledge we have collected and generated to date.
Project’s coordinator Dr Quentin Groom presents the B-Cubed’s approach towards standardised access to biodiversity data for the use of policy-making at the EBR III conference.
Amongst the other Horizon Europe projects presented at the EBR III conference was B-Cubed (Biodiversity Building Blocks for policy). On Monday, the project’s coordinator Dr Quentin Groom (Meise Botanic Garden) familiarised the conference participants with the project, which aims to standardise access to biodiversity data, in order to empower policymakers to proactively address the impacts of biodiversity change.
You can find more about B-Cubed and Pensoft’s role in it in this blog post.
Dr France Gerard (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) talks about the challenges in using raw data – including those provided by drones – to derive habitat condition metrics.
MAMBO: another Horizon Europe project where Pensoft has been contributing with expertise in science communication, dissemination and exploitation, was also an active participant at the event. An acronym for Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of BiOdiversity, MAMBO had its own session on Tuesday morning, where Dr Vincent Kalkman (Naturalis Biodiversity Center), Dr France Gerard (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) and Prof. Toke Høye (Aarhus University) each took to the stage to demonstrate how modern technology developed within the project is to improve biodiversity and habitat monitoring. Learn more about MAMBO and Pensoft’s involvement in this blog post.
MAMBO’s project coordinator Prof. Toke T. Høye talked about smarter technologies for biodiversity monitoring, including camera traps able to count insects at a particular site.
On the event’s website you can access the MAMBO’s slides presentations by Kalkman, GerardandHøye, as presented at the EBR III conference.
***
The EBR III conference also saw a presentation – albeit remote – from Prof. Dr. Florian Leese (Dean at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and Editor-in-Chief at the Metabarcoding and Metagenomics journal), where he talked about the promise, but also the challenges for DNA-based methods to empower biodiversity monitoring.
Amongst the key tasks here, he pointed out, are the alignment of DNA-based methods with the Global Biodiversity Framework; central push and funding for standards and guidance; publication of data in portals that adhere to the best data practices and rules; and the mobilisation of existing resources such as the meteorological ones.
He also made a reference to the Forum Paper “Introducing guidelines for publishing DNA-derived occurrence data through biodiversity data platforms” by R. Henrik Nilsson et al., where the international team provided a brief rationale and an overview of guidelines targeting the principles and approaches of exposing DNA-derived occurrence data in the context of broader biodiversity data. In the study, published in the Metabarcoding and Metagenomics journal in 2022, they also introduced a living version of these guidelines, which continues to encourage feedback and interaction as new techniques and best practices emerge.
***
You can find the programme on the conference website and see highlights on the conference hashtag: #EBR2024.
Guest blog post by Dr Alireza Zamani (@Arachno_AZ)
In the latest issue (1174th) of the scientific open-access journal ZooKeys, you can find our paper describing a new species of tarantula (family Theraphosidae) found in northwestern Iran.
This species belongs to Chaetopelma, a relatively small genus, distributed in Crete, Sudan, and the Middle East, and one of the only two tarantula genera inhabiting the Mediterranean region.
Our discovery is significant for several reasons. Firstly, it marks the first record of this genus in Iran and the third known species of tarantulas in this country. Additionally, it extends the known range of Chaetopelma spiders by almost 350 km eastwards.
We named this species Chaetopelma persianum, paying homage to its occurrence in Iran, which has historically been known as Persia. As a potential common name, we suggest “Persian Gold Tarantula”, where we are also making a reference to the “woolly, golden hairs’’ on its carapace.
The newly described tarantula species (Chaetopelma persianum) seen in a defensive posture. Photo by Kari Kaunisto.
For the purpose of our study, we only had one specimen: a female with a leg span of almost 9 cm, available. Yet, its distinct characteristics allowed us to confidently differentiate it from other known Chaetopelma species.
This tarantula is an obligate burrower and inhabits high elevations in well-vegetated mountainous regions of the northern Zagros Mountains. The holotype specimen was collected from a self-made ground burrow on sloped rocky ground, amidst sparse low vegetation and grasses.
It all started with local nature enthusiast Mehdi Gavahyan, who photographed a wandering male and sent me the photo. When I figured it was most likely an undescribed species, I asked him to team up with Amir Hossein Aghaei, a nature enthusiast and a friend of mine, and send me specimens of these spiders for further examination. Unfortunately, they only managed to collect that one female. However, it turned out to be enough for us to describe the Persian Gold Tarantula!
Additionally, thanks to local citizen scientists and naturalists, we later also got hold of photos of another two males of the same genus, taken very close to the type locality of the new species: one in Sardasht in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran, and the other in the surroundings of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq. While it is highly probable that both these males belong to Ch. persianum, this cannot be confirmed until further examination of collected material from both sexes is conducted.
Burrow of Persian Gold Tarantulas in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. The arrow in the photo on the right indicates the location of the burrow. Photos by Amir Hossein Aghaei.
During our research, we also noted that one species of Chaetopelma described from Cameroon is misclassified and should be transferred to another genus. However, this transfer is pending until the type material undergoes examination.
Looking ahead, we believe that more comprehensive investigations employing integrative methods would greatly benefit the taxonomy of Chaetopelma.
Habitat of the newly described Persian Gold Tarantula (Chaetopelma persianum) in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. Photo by Amir Hossein Aghaei.
For example, Ch. olivaceum, a species with seven junior synonyms and one of the broadest ranges within the entire family, covering an area of approximately 1,493,978 km2, might potentially have cryptic species within its range. Moreover, the disjunct distribution of Ch. olivaceum in Turkey, where it occurs both in the southern regions and as far north as Istanbul, raises the possibility of distinct species status for the latter population, which is geographically isolated from the rest of the recorded occurrences. Integrative studies incorporating molecular data could offer insights into this.
Additionally, further collection efforts in lesser-sampled or completely unexplored regions, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, eastern Turkey and western Iran, could lead to the discovery of additional Chaetopelma species or records. These findings would be instrumental in gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the taxonomy and distribution of this genus.
A spectacular crocodile newt from the Central Highlands of Vietnam was just published in the international peer-reviewed open-access academic journal ZooKeys.
“It is an exceptional discovery as it is one of the most colourful species in the genus Tylototriton. This is also the first time that a crocodile newt species is recorded from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Occurring at elevations from 1,800 to 2,300 m above sea level, this discovery sets an elevational record for the genus in the country, with former distribution ranges between 250 m and 1,740 m.”
says discoverer and first author of the study Trung My Phung.
Furthermore, the discovery by the Vietnamese-German researcher team, which was supported by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology and the Cologne Zoo (Germany), represents the southernmost distribution range of the genus known to date.
The habitat of the new species is located approximately 370 air km away from the nearest Tylototriton population, which makes it an important discovery in terms of evolution and zoogeography.
The name “ngoclinhensis” refers to the type locality of the new species, Ngoc Linh Mountain. Restricted to evergreen montane forest, the Ngoc Linh Crocodile Newt is currently known only from the Ngoc Linh Nature Reserve, Kon Tum Province, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. This is the eighth salamander taxon described from Vietnam, and is the thirty-ninth Tylototriton species officially recognized.
The newly described crocodile newt Tylototritonngoclinhensis sp. nov. Photo by Prof. Dr. Tao Thien Nguyen.
Crocodile newts, scientifically known as the genus Tylototriton,include nearly 40 species inhabiting montane forest areas throughout the Asian monsoon climate zone. Remarkably, 15 of these species have been described in the past five years, and there remain several unnamed taxa, which contain cryptic species that are morphologicallydifficult to distinguish.
Established in 1986, Ngoc Linh Nature Reserve is a key biodiversity area for rare species like the endangered Golden-winged Laughingthrush and the Truong Son Muntjac. The Ngoc Linh Crocodile Newt certainly will represent another flagship species of this protected area and its surroundings, say the researchers.
“[The Central Highlands is] where the highest amphibian species diversity was recorded for Vietnam, with 130 species, while also containing the highest number of regionally occurring, micro-endemic amphibians, amounting for 26 species,”
This recent discovery is another remarkable case, “demonstrating that the Central Highlands play a special role in Vietnamese amphibian diversification and evolution,” by the words of co-author Dr. Cuong The Pham from IEBR.
The Ngoc Linh Crocodile Newt belongs to the group of range-restricted, so-called micro-endemic species, which face the greatest risk of extinction because of their presumably small population size. Unfortunately, on top of its special zoogeographic situation and rarity, its particularly colorful appearance will likely make it highly attractive to illegal collectors.
“Therefore, this discovery is of high conservation relevance,”
Now, conservation activities on site have priority, but the team is already working on breeding conservation measures, which is in line with the One Plan Approach to Conservation, developed by IUCN’s Conservation Planning Specialist Group, which combines in-situ and ex-situ efforts and various expertises for the optimum protection of a species.
“This has already been successfully implemented for another recently discovered, micro-endemic crocodile newt species from Vietnam, Tylototriton vietnamensis, of which already more than 350 individuals could have successfully been reproduced at the Cologne Zoo in Germany and also at the Melinh Station for Biodiversity in Vietnam, which is a promising example for IUCN’s Reverse the Red campaign and the idea of the conservation zoo”,
says Prof. Dr. Thomas Ziegler, Vietnam conservation team member and coordinator from Cologne Zoo, Germany.
***
Research article:
Phung TM, Pham CT, Nguyen TQ, Ninh HT, Nguyen HQ, Bernardes M, Le ST, Ziegler T, Nguyen TT (2023) Southbound – the southernmost record of Tylototriton (Amphibia, Caudata, Salamandridae) from the Central Highlands of Vietnam represents a new species. ZooKeys 1168: 193-218. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1168.96091
The shore is a mutual caress. More than just a place of encounter between land and water, it is one of the physical and imagined thresholds between humans and the other-than-human world. This place of touch - through thoughts, actions, interconnections, and affect - is the inevitable crossing at the beginning and end of every inquiry into the world’s bodies of water.
🥈Second prize for Best Talk Award at #esp22europe goes to @KrBurkhard and her couple of gorgeous co-authors🥰 about her research on co-benefits and risks of carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/hsQufK9Ncm
I find the idea of improving the understanding of how ecosystems – and more generally the natural world – contribute to our well-being to be very inspiring and refreshing in a high-tech profit-oriented world,
she says to explain how she stays motivated in her research work.
To communicate this knowledge to policy- and decision-makers, as well as the general public is key, especially when we consider the threats of climate change and the fact that our deep dependency on nature seems to be largely undervalued,
she adds.
Kremena highlights the role of nature-based solutions:
When utilising conventional and nature-based solutions, the focus is often on a single benefit that is demanded in a certain area, time and situation.
In contrast to conventional solutions, nature-based solutions provide additional co-benefits. These may include biodiversity protection and other ecosystem services that address broader societal demands and are more sustainable in the long term.
As part of the CDRmare research mission “Marine carbon sinks in decarbonisation pathways” of the German Marine Research Alliance, Kremena’s work on coastal ecosystems aims to develop approaches and methodologies which can be applied in an international context.
Our project sea4soCiety focuses on the carbon storage capacity and co-benefits of four coastal vegetated ecosystems which play a key role as carbon sinks around the world and thus contribute to climate regulation. The analysis and methods developed in the project contribute scientifically to the studied topics and have an international relevance.
The German coast is representative of three coastal ecosystems, namely seagrass, salt marsh and macroalgae. The fourth ecosystem – that of mangrove forests in the tropics, is also investigated within the project as a key ocean carbon sink of global relevance.
But climate regulation is only one of the multiple services that these ecosystems provide. Coastal protection, water purification, food and material provision and recreation are among the key services of coastal ecosystems, the benefits of which are used and highly appreciated by the local communities and have significant role in the local safety, economy and culture.
What are the strategies for mitigating or further analysing the risks of carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems?
We prioritise conservation and restoration of coastal vegetated ecosystems, which are often heavily degraded, and we identify the most suitable areas for establishment of new ecosystems. This reduces the risk of carbon release and provides additional carbon sink capacity.
Further risks are related to unknown climate change impacts. The sea temperature and hydrodynamics are changing, and we are not sure how those changes of habitat will impact the coastal ecosystems. We are studying their reaction in laboratory environments and in the field, identifying thresholds for their functionality and capacity to supply ecosystem services.
Finally, the identification and mitigation of conflicts with other users of those ecosystems is also key to reduce the social risks for all beneficiaries, including labour, human rights, public health issues, and political uncertainty.
When it comes to stakeholders and non-experts, is science communication around the topic of carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems effective?
On a national and international level, Germany seems to be on track with setting targets and planning actions to become climate neutral through the Climate Action Programme 2030.
The CDRmare research mission and in particular the sea4soCiety project on carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems are in a way part of that effort, receiving funding to provide the knowledge base for the action programme. Thus, to some extent, the science communication on that level is working and the action plan is based on scientific knowledge.
The shortcomings are in the implementation phase. Local governments are often lacking established mechanisms that allow and support the implementation of action plans related to the national targets.
Such regulated implementation strategies should operationalise the uptake of scientific knowledge in the management of coastal ecosystems and by the local communities, and also in all fields of policy and management.
OpenBiodiv is a biodiversity database containing knowledge extracted from scientific literature, built as an Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System.
Apart from coordinating the Horizon 2020-funded project BiCIKL, scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft has been the engine behind what is likely to be the first production-stage semantic system to run on top of a reasonably-sized biodiversity knowledge graph.
OpenBiodiv is a biodiversity database containing knowledge extracted from scientific literature, built as an Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System.
As of February 2023, OpenBiodiv contains 36,308 processed articles; 69,596 taxon treatments; 1,131 institutions; 460,475 taxon names; 87,876 sequences; 247,023 bibliographic references; 341,594 author names; and 2,770,357 article sections and subsections.
In fact, OpenBiodiv is a whole ecosystem comprising tools and services that enable biodiversity data to be extracted from the text of biodiversity articles published in data-minable XML format, as in the journals published by Pensoft (e.g. ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal), and other taxonomic treatments – available from Plazi and Plazi’s specialised extraction workflow – into Linked Open Data.
“I believe that OpenBiodiv is a good real-life example of how the outputs and efforts of a research project may and should outlive the duration of the project itself. Something that is – of course – central to our mission at BiCIKL.”
explains Prof Lyubomir Penev, BiCIKL’s Project Coordinator and founder and CEO of Pensoft.
“The basics of what was to become the OpenBiodiv database began to come together back in 2015 within the EU-funded BIG4 PhD project of Victor Senderov, later succeeded by another PhD project by Mariya Dimitrova within IGNITE. It was during those two projects that the backend Ontology-O, the first versions of RDF converters and the basic website functionalities were created,”
he adds.
At the time OpenBiodiv became one of the nine research infrastructures within BiCIKL tasked with the provision of virtual access to open FAIR data, tools and services, it had already evolved into a RDF-based biodiversity knowledge graph, equipped with a fully automated extraction and indexing workflow and user apps.
Currently, Pensoft is working at full speed on new user apps in OpenBiodiv, as the team is continuously bringing into play invaluable feedback and recommendation from end-users and partners at BiCIKL.
As a result, OpenBiodiv is already capable of answering open-ended queries based on the available data. To do this, OpenBiodiv discovers ‘hidden’ links between data classes, i.e. taxon names, taxon treatments, specimens, sequences, persons/authors and collections/institutions.
Thus, the system generates new knowledge about taxa, scientific articles and their subsections, the examined materials and their metadata, localities and sequences, amongst others. Additionally, it is able to return information with a relevant visual representation about any one or a combination of those major data classes within a certain scope and semantic context.
Users can explore the database by either typing in any term (even if misspelt!) in the search engine available from the OpenBiodiv homepage; or integrating an Application Programming Interface (API); as well as by using SPARQL queries.
On the OpenBiodiv website, there is also a list of predefined SPARQL queries, which is continuously being expanded.
“OpenBiodiv is an ambitious project of ours, and it’s surely one close to Pensoft’s heart, given our decades-long dedication to biodiversity science and knowledge sharing. Our previous fruitful partnerships with Plazi, BIG4 and IGNITE, as well as the current exciting and inspirational network of BiCIKL are wonderful examples of how far we can go with the right collaborators,”
Between now and 15 September 2021, the article processing fee (normally €550) will be waived for the first 36 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 15 September 2021. Late submissions will not be eligible for APC waivers.
Sponsorship is limited to the first 36 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 15 September 2021. 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 2021. The journal is indexed by Web of Science (Impact Factor 1.331), Scopus (CiteScore: 2.1) 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, b) appear in the paper’s list of references, and c) has “Russia 2021” in Project Data: Title and “N-Eurasia-Russia2021“ in Project Data: Identifier in the dataset’s metadata.
Questions may be directed either to Dmitry Schigel, GBIF scientific officer, or Yasen Mutafchiev, managing editor of Biodiversity Data Journal.
The 2021 extension of the collection of data papers will be edited by Vladimir Blagoderov, Pedro Cardoso, Ivan Chadin, Nina Filippova, Alexander Sennikov, Alexey Seregin, and Dmitry Schigel.
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.” Artificial reduction of records from otherwise uniform datasets to the necessary minimum (“salami publishing”) is discouraged and may result in rejection of the manuscript. New submissions describing updates of datasets, already presented in earlier published data papers will not be sponsored.
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 Russia
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 Russia. However, authors of the paper may be affiliated with institutions anywhere in the world.
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Check out the Biota of Russia dynamic data paper collection so far.
Follow Biodiversity Data Journal on Twitter and Facebook to keep yourself posted about the new research published.
A new species of bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis) has been described from Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary by Wild Earth Allies Biologist Thy Neang in collaboration with North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences‘ Herpetologist Bryan Stuart. This new species is described in ZooKeys.
The species was discovered by Thy Neang during Wild Earth Allies field surveys in June-July 2019 on an isolated mountain named Phnom Chi in the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary when he encountered an unusual species of bent-toed gecko. “It was an extremely unexpected discovery. No one thought there were undescribed species in Prey Lang,” said Neang.
The geckos were found to belong to the C. irregularis species complex that includes at least 19 species distributed in south¬ern and central Vietnam, eastern Cambodia, and southern Laos. This is the first member of the complex to be found west of the Mekong River, demonstrating how biogeographic barriers can lead to speciation. Additionally, the geckos were unique in morphological characters and mitochondrial DNA, and distinct from C. ziegleri to which they are most closely related. Researchers have named the species Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis after Phnom Chi mountain where it was found.
A new species of bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis) has been discovered in Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary by Wild Earth Allies Biologist Thy Neang in collaboration with Bryan Stuart of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Photo by Thy Neang
Bent-toed geckos of the genus Cyrtodactylus are one of the most species-diverse genera of gekkonid lizards, with 292 recognized species. Much of the diversity within Cyrtodactylus has been described only during the past decade and from mainland Southeast Asia, and many of these newly recognized species are thought to have extremely narrow geographic ranges. As such, Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis is likely endemic to Phnom Chi, which consists of an isolated small mountain of rocky outcrops (peak of 652 m elevation) and a few associated smaller hills, altogether encompassing an area of approximately 4,464 hectares in Kampong Thom and Kratie Provinces within the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, Cambodia.
The forest habitat in Phnom Chi remains in relatively good condition, but small-scale illegal gold extraction around its base threatens the newly discovered species. A second species of lizard, the scincid Sphenomorphus preylangensis, was also recently described from Phnom Chi by a team of researchers including Neang. These new discoveries underscore the importance of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary for biodiversity conservation and the critical need to strengthen its management.
Habitat at Phnom Chi, the type locality of the newly described bent-toed gecko. Photo by Thy Neang
Further, an assessment of C. phnomchiensis is urgently warranted by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN 2020) because of its small area of occupancy, status as relatively uncommon, and ongoing threats to its habitat.
“This exciting discovery adds another reptile species to science for Cambodia and the world. It also highlights the global importance of Cambodia’s biodiversity and illustrates the need for future exploration and biological research in Prey Lang,”
said Neang.
“When [Neang] first returned from fieldwork and told me that he had found a species in the C. irregularis group so far west of the Mekong River in Cambodia, I did not believe it. His discovery underscores how much unknown biodiversity remains out there in unexpected places. Clearly, Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary is important for biodiversity and deserves attention,”
said Neang’s co-author Stuart of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
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Original source:
Neang T, Henson A, Stuart BL (2020) A new species of Cyrtodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. ZooKeys 926: 133-158. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.926.48671
A remarkable bioluminescent click beetle was discovered in the subtropical evergreen broadleaf forests in southwest China. Having prompted the description of a brand new subfamily, the species is the very first bioluminescent click beetle known from the continent.
A remarkable bioluminescent click beetle was discovered in the subtropical evergreen broadleaf forests in southwest China. Scientists Mr. Wen-Xuan Bi, Dr. Jin-Wu He, Dr. Xue-Yan Li, all affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Kunming), Mr. Chang-Chin Chen of Tianjin New Wei San Industrial Company, Ltd. (Tianjing, China) and Dr. Robin Kundrata of Palacký University (Olomouc, Czech Republic) published their findings in the open-access journal ZooKeys.
Even though the family of click beetles (Elateridae) contain approximately 10,000 species worldwide, it is only about 200 species able to emit light, and they inhabit Latin America and Oceania. Interestingly, the position of the luminous organs varies amongst the different click beetle lineages. In some, they are found on the foremost of the three thoracic segments of the body (prothorax), in others – on both the prothorax and the abdomen, and in few – only on the abdomen.
Luminescent behavior of Sinopyrophorus schimmeli gen. et sp. nov. Video by Mr Wen-Xuan Bi.
“In 2017, during an expedition to the western Yunnan in China, we discovered a dusk-active bioluminescent click beetle with a single luminous organ on the abdomen, ” recalls lead scientist Mr. Wen-Xuan Bi.
Since no bioluminescent click beetle had previously been recorded in Asia, the team conducted simultaneous morphological and molecular analyses in order to clarify the identity of the new species and figure out its relationship to other representatives of its group.
Co-author Dr. Xue-Yan Li explains:
“The morphological investigation in combination with the molecular analysis based on 16 genes showed that our taxon is not only a new species in a new genus, but that it also represents a completely new subfamily of click beetles. We chose the name Sinopyrophorus for the new genus, and the new subfamily is called Sinopyrophorinae.”
In conclusion, the discovery of the new species sheds new light on the geographic distribution and evolution of luminescent click beetles. The authors agree that as a representative of a unique lineage, which is only distantly related to the already known bioluminescent click beetles, the new insect group may serve as a new model in the research of bioluminescence within the whole order of beetles.
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Original source:
Bi W-X, He J-W, Chen C-C, Kundrata R, Li X-Y (2019) Sinopyrophorinae, a new subfamily of Elateridae (Coleoptera, Elateroidea) with the first record of a luminous click beetle in Asia and evidence for multiple origins of bioluminescence in Elateridae. ZooKeys 864: 79-97. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.864.26689
For the first time, the bivalve mollusc Guyanella clenchi has been reported from Abrolhos Bank, Brazil. This almost unknown bivalve had previously been reported solely from the Caribbean region. Apart from being the southernmost record for the species, its presence also helps the experts to determine the way the marine fauna from the Caribbean interacts with its South American relatives.
The bivalve, which is a minute mollusc of only a few millimetres, had been known from Suriname, Guadeloupe, Colombia and French Guiana for nearly half a century. However, it is almost absent from the bibliographical registers and zoological collections.
According to the scientists, the discovery is very important for the understanding of the interaction between the mollusc faunas from the Caribbean and Southern Atlantic regions. While a mixture of these had long been known at both localities, serving as evidence that many species are indeed capable of crossing the geographical barriers between the two oceanic areas, it seems that no one had managed to answer how exactly this is happening. Now, the discovery of the tiny species shows that even small-sized molluscs have the ability to disperse so widely.
Additionally, the discovery of fresh specimens, complete with the body inside the shell, brings to light new information about the anatomy of the species itself, since the existing knowledge had only been derived from dry shells. Now, the secretive bivalve is to finally undergo molecular analyses.
The researchers behind the study explain:
“Despite its small size, the new occurrence of Guyanella clenchi brings new key data needed to understand the biogeography of the Caribbean and Southern Atlantic regions and improve our knowledge of the molluscs inhabiting the Brazilian coast, specifically the Abrolhos Bank, which is an important South Atlantic biodiversity hotspot.”
Abrolhos Bank is the largest and most species-rich coral reef in the Southern Atlantic. It is located in the Abrolhos Archipelago area and is part of the Abrolhos Marine National Park. Its most notable peculiarity is the giant coral structures shaped like mushrooms, locally known as “Chapeiroes”. A “chapeirao” can reach up to 25 metres in height and 50 metres in diameter. The region is considered the most biodiverse spot in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, providing home to several species that occur nowhere else.
Abrolhos Bank region (Bahia, Brazil). Image by Dr Bárbara Louise Valentas-Romera.
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Original source:
Valentas-Romera BL, Costa FMP, Pires-Vanin AMS (2019) Range extension of Guyanella clenchi (Altena, 1968) (Bivalvia, Lucinidae) with new records from Abrolhos Bank, Brazil. Check List15(4): 549-554. https://doi.org/10.15560/15.4.549
