Tag: Diptera

Novel cybercatalog of flower-loving flies suggests the digital future of taxonomy

Charting Earth’s biodiversity is the goal of taxonomy and to do so the scientists need to create an extensive citation network based on several hundred million pages of scientific literature. By providing a novel taxonomic ‘cybercatalog’ of southern African flower-loving (apiocerid) flies, Drs. Torsten Dikow and Donat Agosti demonstrate how the network of taxonomic knowledge can be made available through links provided to online data providers. Their work is available in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal.

The present research showcases that the information cannot only be made available to the reader who follows the links, but also to machines that use the growing number of digital, online resources that are linked through persistent identifiers.

Primary data providers for taxonomic information such as species names (ZooBank), specimen images (Morphbank), species descriptions (Plazi), and digitized literature (BHL, Biodiversity Heritage Library; BioStor; and BLR, Biodiversity Literature Repository) play an important role in making data on species available in electronic form. Aggregators such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL) gather this information automatically to distribute it even further to audiences beyond the reach of the life sciences.

In contrast to previous species catalogs, in cybercatalogs access to information is provided through links to open-access, online data repositories such as the ones listed above. Taxonomists and other users can now access this literature, species descriptions, and specimen records immediately without a search in a natural history library or collection. The cybercatalog takes advantage of a new publishing platform within the Biodiversity Data Journal that makes it easy to upload species information and links to data about these species through a CheckList template. Furthermore, the Biodiversity Data Journal now allows future updates and re-publications of the cybercatalog with the new unique persistent identifier (DOI, Digital Object Identifier) whenever a new species is described or other taxonomic changes take place.

The authors argue that cybercatalogs are indeed the future of taxonomic catalogs since the online data in them are easily accessible to anyone.

“It is a taxonomist’s dream to have online access to all previously published information on a species and through this step the discipline of taxonomy can (re-)position itself as a central resource within the life sciences and beyond to the public and society at large,” add the authors. “Online access will also help to narrow the gap between the South and the North as a fantastic example of unhindered access to our knowledge of the global biological diversity, which is increasingly under pressure from human populations.”

###

For the realization of this project Plazi and Pensoft were partially supported by the EC-FP7 EU BON project (ENV 30845) (Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network).

###

Original source:

Dikow T, Agosti D (2015) Utilizing online resources for taxonomy: a cybercatalog of Afrotropical apiocerid flies (Insecta: Diptera: Apioceridae). Biodiversity Data Journal 3: e5707. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.3.e5707

One new fly species, zero dead bodies: First insect description solely from photographs

The importance of collecting dead specimens or not when verifying a new species has been a hot ongoing discussion for quite a while now. Amid voiced opinions ranging from specimen collection being “no longer required” to relying on anything but physical evidence being defined as mere “malpractice,” science is now witnessing the first description of an insect species based solely on high-resolution photographs.

The unequivocally new bee fly species belongs to an extremely rare genus and was described by Drs. Stephen A. Marshall from the University of Guelph, Canada, and Neal Evenhuis from the Bishop Museum, Hawaii. Their research along with their commentary on the controversial topic are published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

The authors in no way denounce dead specimen collection and dissection and even speak of it as the “gold standard” in new species description, they stress the fact that given the continued increased difficulty in obtaining permits to collect in many areas, and the resulting low probability of collecting and preserving specimens, there ought to be an alternative.

The newly described bee fly species, called Marleyimyia xylocopae, is a huge fly with a remarkable resemblance to a co-occurring carpenter bee. The new species might be a parasite of the bee, but not much is known about its behaviour. Therefore, the scientists stress that more observations are needed, something that will be encouraged by the availability of a name and an associated image.

Speaking of their own experience while studying their presently described new species, the scientists point out that relying on several high-resolution photographs has not only increased their knowledge of the biodiversity of the area and the genus, but has also provided some “interesting ecological and biological information”.

“As these image collections become curated just as dead specimens are curated today, the digital specimens will find their way into the work of practicing taxonomists, and they will need names,” the team explained. “It is unrealistic to think that distinct and diagnosable new taxa known only from good photographs and appropriate associated metadata should be organized and referred to only as “undescribed species” when they can and should be organized and named using the existing rules of nomenclature.”

###

Original source:

Marshall SA, Evenhuis NL (2015) New species without dead bodies: a case for photo-based descriptions, illustrated by a striking new species of Marleyimyia Hesse (Diptera, Bombyliidae) from South Africa. ZooKeys 525: 117-127. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.525.6143