Effects of land use and soil properties on taxon richness and abundance of soil assemblages

Abstract: Land‐use change and habitat degradation are among the biggest drivers of aboveground biodiversity worldwide but their effects on soil biodiversity are less well known, despite the importance of soil organisms in developing soil structure, nutrient cycling and water drainage. Combining a global compilation of biodiversity data from soil assemblages collated as part of the PREDICTS project with global data on soil characteristics, we modelled how taxon richness and total abundance of soil organisms have responded to land use. We also estimated the global Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)—the average abundance and compositional similarity of taxa that remain in an area, compared to a minimally impacted baseline, for soil biodiversity. This is the first time the BII has been calculated for soil biodiversity. Relative to undisturbed vegetation, soil organism total abundance and taxon richness were reduced in all land uses except pasture. Soil properties mediated the response of soil biota, but not in a consistent way across land uses. The global soil BII in cropland is, on average, a third of that originally present. However, in grazed sites the decline is less severe. The BII of secondary vegetation depends on age, with sites with younger growth showing a lower BII than mature vegetation. We conclude that land‐use change has reduced local soil biodiversity worldwide, and this further supports the proposition that soil biota should be considered explicitly when using global models to estimate the state of biodiversity.Copyright © 2023 The Authors. European Journal of Soil Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Society of Soil Science. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The linked file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

Experts’ opinions on threats to Leach’s Storm-Petrels ( Hydrobates leucorhous ) across their global range

Seabirds are declining globally, though the threats they face differ among and within species and populations. Following substantial population declines at several breeding colonies, Leach’s Storm-Petrel (Hydrobates leucorhous) was uplisted from Least Concern to Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2016. Reasons for these declines are unclear, and it is important to identify threats the species faces across its global breeding range to guide research directions and inform conservation efforts. We solicited feedback from 37 Leach’s Storm-Petrel scientific experts from eight countries on the importance of different threats facing the species on land and at sea. Perceived threats to extant colonies varied spatially, with a consensus within regions for main threats. Most researchers agreed that the main threats at or near colonies are avian and mammalian predators and onshore light attraction. At-sea threats have been less studied and were harder to identify and rank, but include offshore lights and structures, spatial shifts in prey, and contaminants. Climate change was not listed specifically because of its multifaceted repercussions, but several perceived threats are linked to climate change. Globally, introduction of mammalian predators is an overarching driver of seabird colony decline or extirpation; thus biosecurity must be considered an important measure for the conservation of storm-petrels. In addition, filling knowledge gaps and implementing a series of regionally relevant and targeted strategies that lead to small but cumulative conservation successes may be the best approach for this species.Copyright © by the author(s). Published here under license by The Resilience Alliance. This article is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt the work provided the original author and source are credited, you indicate whether any changes were made, and you include a link to the license. ACE-ECO-2022-2370.pdf. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

The genome sequence of the Shoulder-striped Wainscot moth, Leucania comma Linnaeus, 1761

We present a genome assembly from an individual female Leucania comma (the Shoulder-striped Wainscot moth; Arthropoda; Insecta; Lepidoptera; Noctuidae). The genome sequence spans 751.70 megabases. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 32 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the Z and W sex chromosomes. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 15.37 kilobases in length. Gene annotation of this assembly on Ensembl identified 12,477 protein-coding genes.Copyright: © 2024 Holt S et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

New Species of Grotea (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae, Labeninae) from Ecuador, with New Records and a Key to the Neotropical Species

Abstract - Here we describe two new Grotea species from Ecuador, G. akakana Mazón & Bordera sp. nov., and G. romeri Mazón sp. nov., as well as the male of G. cundinamarquesa Herrera-Flórez 2018. G. akakana sp. nov. is characterized by the combination of a postgenal process long, a 45-flagellomeres antenna without a white band and a mesopleuron black with two yellow spots separated by a red one. On the other hand, G. romeri sp. nov. is characterized by the combination of a postgenal process very short, a 36-flagellomeres antenna without a white band, a propodeum with a long and narrow area lateralis, uninterrupted yellow-colored orbits and a mesopleuron black with a yellow spot in the middle. The species G. santandereana Herrera-Flórez 2018 and G. surinamese Herrera-Flórez 2019 are recorded from Ecuador for the first time. This brings the total of described Grotea species to 31, all from the New World, with 27 of these exclusively Neotropical. A key for the identification of Neotropical species is included.Copyright © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

New Chilopoda from the Chagos Archipelago

The single published record of centipedes from the Chagos Archipelago, British Indian Ocean Territory, is for the scolopendrid Rhysida longipes Newport, 1845, from Eagle Island. Recent collections from Diego Garcia atoll include new records of R. longipes as well as four other centipede species, including the first records of the orders Lithobiomorpha and Geophilomorpha. A new species of the lithobiid Australobius Chamberlin, 1920, A. chagosensis sp. n., is closely allied to species described from southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The henicopid Lamyctes is represented by two geographically widespread species, L. mauriesi Demange, 1981 and L. tristani (Pocock, 1893), from which sequence data for the COI barcode marker are presented and analysed phylogenetically. The types of Lamyctes albipes (Pocock, 1894), and L. tristani, from Java and Tristan da Cunha, respectively, are illustrated for the first time to facilitate taxonomic comparisons with Chagos material. Specimens of Mecistocephalus are identified as Mecistocephalus lohmanderi Verhoeff, 1939, closely resembling specimens from the Seychelles. Collections from the archipelago in 1971–1972 also included Mecistocephalus angusticeps (Ribaut, 1914), and Nycternyssa dekania dekania (Verhoeff, 1938). The Chagos centipede fauna reveals affinities to those of the southern Indian Subcontinent, East Africa, Madagascar, the Maldives, the Seychelles, and Java. http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:52337A1E-95DF-46C5-9D9A-8F294968A89DCopyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

The Fe/S ratio of pyrrhotite group sulfides in chondrites: An indicator of oxidation and implications for return samples from asteroids Ryugu and Bennu

Determining compositional trends among individual minerals is key to understanding the thermodynamic conditions under which they formed and altered, and is also essential to maximizing the scientific value of small extraterrestrial samples, including returned samples and meteorites. Here we report the chemical compositions of Fe-sulfides, focusing on the pyrrhotite-group sulfides, which are ubiquitous in chondrites and are sensitive indicators of formation and alteration conditions in the protoplanetary disk and in small Solar System bodies. Our data show that while there are trends with the at.% Fe/S ratio of pyrrhotite with thermal and aqueous alteration in some meteorite groups, there is a universal trend between the Fe/S ratio and degree of oxidation. Relatively reducing conditions led to the formation of troilite during: (1) chondrule formation in the protoplanetary disk (i.e., pristine chondrites) and (2) parent body thermal alteration (i.e., LL4 to LL6, CR1, CM, and CY chondrites). Oxidizing and sulfidizing conditions led to the formation of Fe-depleted pyrrhotite with low Fe/S ratios during: (1) aqueous alteration (i.e., CM and CI chondrites), and (2) thermal alteration (i.e., CK and R chondrites). The presence of troilite in highly aqueously altered carbonaceous chondrites (e.g., CY, CR1, and some CM chondrites) indicates they were heated after aqueous alteration. The presence of troilite, Fe-depleted pyrrhotite, or pyrite in a chondrite can provide an estimate of the oxygen and sulfur fugacities at which it was formed or altered. The data reported here can be used to estimate the oxygen fugacity of formation and potentially the aqueous and/or thermal histories of sulfides in extraterrestrial samples, including those returned by the Hayabusa2 mission and due to be returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission in the near future.Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

Disporella guada sp. nov., an erect-ramose rectangulate cyclostome (Bryozoa, Stenolaemata) from the Carribean Sea: convergent evolution in bryozoan colony morphology

The taxonomy of cyclostome bryozoans is founded on characters of the skeleton, but molecular sequence data have increasingly shown that established higher taxa are not monophyletic. Here we describe the skeletal morphology of a new species from Guadeloupe (French West Indies) with erect ramose colonies consisting of long, curved zooids that are typical of the suborder Cerioporina among living cyclostomes. However, molecular evidence from nuclear ribosomal RNA genes 18S and 28S places the new taxon in the suborder Rectangulata, where this colony-form has not been previously recorded. It nests firmly within the genus Disporella Gray, 1848, in a strongly supported clade that also includes Plagioecia patina (Lamarck, 1816) (Tubuliporina) and the sister taxa Doliocoitis cyanea Gordon & Taylor, 2001 (Rectangulata) and Favosipora rosea Gordon & Taylor, 2001 (Cerioporina). The short and robust branches of the new Guadeloupe cyclostome, here named Disporella guada Harmelin, Taylor & Waeschenbach sp. nov., are well adapted to life in shallow rocky sites exposed to severe wave action, which appear to be its exclusive habitat.Copyright (c) 2021 Paul D. Taylor, Jean-Georges Harmelin, Andrea Waeschenbach, Claude Bouchon. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

Phylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms

AbstractAngiosperms are the cornerstone of most terrestrial ecosystems and human livelihoods1,2. A robust understanding of angiosperm evolution is required to explain their rise to ecological dominance. So far, the angiosperm tree of life has been determined primarily by means of analyses of the plastid genome3,4. Many studies have drawn on this foundational work, such as classification and first insights into angiosperm diversification since their Mesozoic origins5–7. However, the limited and biased sampling of both taxa and genomes undermines confidence in the tree and its implications. Here, we build the tree of life for almost 8,000 (about 60%) angiosperm genera using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes8. This 15-fold increase in genus-level sampling relative to comparable nuclear studies9 provides a critical test of earlier results and brings notable change to key groups, especially in rosids, while substantiating many previously predicted relationships. Scaling this tree to time using 200 fossils, we discovered that early angiosperm evolution was characterized by high gene tree conflict and explosive diversification, giving rise to more than 80% of extant angiosperm orders. Steady diversification ensued through the remaining Mesozoic Era until rates resurged in the Cenozoic Era, concurrent with decreasing global temperatures and tightly linked with gene tree conflict. Taken together, our extensive sampling combined with advanced phylogenomic methods shows the deep history and full complexity in the evolution of a megadiverse clade.</jats:p

The genome sequence of the Common Wainscot moth, Mythimna pallens Linnaeus, 1758

We present a genome assembly from an individual male Mythimna pallens (the Common Wainscot moth; Arthropoda; Insecta; Lepidoptera; Noctuidae). The genome sequence has a total length of 719.10 megabases. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 31 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the Z sex chromosome. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 15.33 kilobases in length. Gene annotation of this assembly on Ensembl identified 18,343 protein-coding genes.Copyright: © 2024 Holt S et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

NEW AND POORLY-KNOWN TAXA OF LAGRIINAE LATREILLE, 1825 (COLEOPTERA: TENEBRIONIDAE) FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE NATURKUNDEMUSEUM ERFURT. 2

In the second paper of the series devoted to the study of lagriine material deposited at the Naturkundemuseum Erfurt, the following three species from the subtribe Lagriina Latreille, 1825, are described and illustrated: Lagria (s. str.) arfaka sp. nov., L. (s. str.) hatam sp. nov., L. (s. str.) undulata sp. nov. (all from New Guinea).The linked file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor