Helminths of the sand lizard, Lacerta agilis (Reptilia, Lacertidae), in the Palaearctic: faunal diversity and spatial patterns of variation in the composition and structure of component communities

We studied variation in the structure of component communities of helminths in sand lizards, Lacerta agilis, from 30 localities in the Ukraine and Bulgaria. Thirty-five separate samples of lizards, with a total of 661 completely censused infracommunities, yielded 30 helminth species (4 cestodes, 10 trematodes, 3 acanthocephalans and 13 nematodes). In its range within the Ukraine, L. agilis serves as the final host for 13 species of which only 3 (S. lacertae, S. hoffmanni and P. molini) can be considered as lizard specialists. A characteristic feature of these helminth component communities was thelarge proportion of heteroxeneous helminth species for which L. agilis serves as paratenic host. Sand lizards in the meadow steppeland zone were primarily parasitized by larval helminths that represented a major proportion of the total number of all worms recovered while those sampled in the grassland}forest transition zone were characterized by substantially higher proportions of adult helminths using lizards as final hosts. However, L. agilis was parasitized by a much higher proportion of lizard specialists in the `typical ' habitats of the meadow steppeland zone as opposed to those located in `marginal' habitats in the grassland/forest transition zone, where helminths were shared to a greater extent with amphibian hosts

Enriched biodiversity data as a resource and service

Background: Recent years have seen a surge in projects that produce large volumes of structured, machine-readable biodiversity data. To make these data amenable to processing by generic, open source “data enrichment” workflows, they are increasingly being represented in a variety of standards-compliant interchange formats. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and taxonomists came together to address the challenges and highlight the opportunities in the enrichment of such biodiversity data by engaging in intensive, collaborative software development: The Biodiversity Data Enrichment Hackathon. Results: The hackathon brought together 37 participants (including developers and taxonomists, i.e. scientific professionals that gather, identify, name and classify species) from 10 countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The participants brought expertise in processing structured data, text mining, development of ontologies, digital identification keys, geographic information systems, niche modeling, natural language processing, provenance annotation, semantic integration, taxonomic name resolution, web service interfaces, workflow tools and visualisation. Most use cases and exemplar data were provided by taxonomists. One goal of the meeting was to facilitate re-use and enhancement of biodiversity knowledge by a broad range of stakeholders, such as taxonomists, systematists, ecologists, niche modelers, informaticians and ontologists. The suggested use cases resulted in nine breakout groups addressing three main themes: i) mobilising heritage biodiversity knowledge; ii) formalising and linking concepts; and iii) addressing interoperability between service platforms. Another goal was to further foster a community of experts in biodiversity informatics and to build human links between research projects and institutions, in response to recent calls to further such integration in this research domain. Conclusions: Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use case, areas of inadequacy were discussed and are being pursued further. It was striking how many possible applications for biodiversity data there were and how quickly solutions could be put together when the normal constraints to collaboration were broken down for a week. Conversely, mobilising biodiversity knowledge from their silos in heritage literature and natural history collections will continue to require formalisation of the concepts (and the links between them) that define the research domain, as well as increased interoperability between the software platforms that operate on these concepts

Spoofing detection in a loosely coupled GNSS and IMU system via Synthetic Arrays

With the ever-expanding need for accuracy in the world of navigation, Global Navigation Satellite Systems(GNSS) such as GPS and Galileo have become the primary option around the world. As such, the potential damage that can be caused by malicious tampering with the receivers continues to grow. One such threat, known as Spoofing, comprises of transmission of altered GNSS signals to a target receiver(s). This process leads to false positional and/or time data on the receiver's end. Spoofing has been a topic of discussion for roughly two decades. With many theoretical approaches to its detection, this work focuses on the Angle of Arrival technique via the construction of a synthetic array from a single moving element, aided by positional information provided by Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). This method relies on the periodic nature of the L1 signal, and focuses primarily on the case of GPS as an example. Using simulation and sample data, the possibility and limitations of constructing virtual antenna arrays is explored. It is shown that despite being viable for low number of sources during the simulation, the complexity of signal propagation within the real world implementation of GNSS system renders this technique inoperable in its first iteration

Polystoma macrocnemis n. sp. (Monogenea: Polystomatidae) from the Iranian longlegged wood frog Rana macrocnemis (Ranidae) in Turkey

Polystoma macrocnemis n. sp. (Polystomatidae) is described from the urinary bladder of Rana macrocnemis (Ranidae) in Turkey. Its general morphology is similar to that of other members of the genus, but it is distinguished from closely related species by numerical parameters of the hamuli and also by its host species and geographical range

Bibliographic references - state of the art, a possible solution

<p>A presentation explaining the problems that ReFindit is attempting to solve.</p