Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding 'Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil‑based scientific data': Myanmar amber

Recently, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has sent around a letter, dated 21st April, 2020 to more than 300 palaeontological journals, signed by the President, Vice President and a former President of the society (Rayfield et al. 2020). The signatories of this letter request significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology. With our present, multi-authored comment, we aim to argue why these suggestions will not lead to improvement of both practice and ethics of palaeontological research but, conversely, hamper its further development. Although we disagree with most contents of the SVP letter, we appreciate this initiative to discuss scientific practices and the underlying ethics. Here, we consider different aspects of the suggestions by Rayfield et al. (2020) in which we see weaknesses and dangers. It is our intent to compile views from many different fields of palaeontology, as our discipline is (and should remain) pluralistic. This contribution deals with the aspects concerning Myanmar amber. Reference is made to Haug et al. (2020a) for another comment on aspects concerning amateur palaeontologists/citizen scientists/private collectors

Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding “Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil‑based scientific data”: Myanmar amber

Non peer reviewe

Sequence alignments of South Shetland Placopsis mycobionts and photobionts

Since ice-free areas in Antarctica are predicted to increase by up to 25% before the end of this century, lichens such as the genus Placopsis will be important colonizers of these newly available grounds and will still be present in later successional stages of the lichen community. The main symbionts of Placopsis species are examined for 56 specimens collected from the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica using molecular (fungal and algal nrITS, fungal RPB1, algal rbcL sequences) and morphological methods. The specimens were collected from soils with different deglaciation times. Eight uni-algal photobiont cultures were obtained and analysed from two specimens. Placopsis antarctica and P. contortuplicata proved to be monophyletic and are sister species, only the former producing vegetative diaspores (soredia). Both share the same photobiont pool and are lichenized with two closely related species, Stichococcus antarcticus and S. allas. Two haplotypes of S. antarcticus are restricted to areas deglaciated for more than 5000 years and the volcanic Deception Island indicating a shift in the photobionts of Placopsis in the course of the soil and lichen community development. These photobiont haplotypes exhibit different ecological preferences, possibly leading to adaptation of the symbiotic entity to changing environmental conditions

The pioneer lichen Placopsis in maritime Antarctica: Genetic diversity of their mycobionts and green algal symbionts, and their correlation with deglaciation time

Since ice-free areas in Antarctica are predicted to increase by up to 25% before the end of this century, lichens such as the genus Placopsis will be important colonizers of these newly available grounds and will still be present in later successional stages of the lichen community. The main symbionts of Placopsis species are examined for 56 specimens collected from the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica using molecular (fungal and algal nrITS, fungal RPB1, algal rbcL sequences) and morphological methods. The specimens were collected from soils with different deglaciation times. Eight uni-algal photobiont cultures were obtained and analysed from two specimens. Placopsis antarctica and P. contortuplicata proved to be monophyletic and are sister species, only the former producing vegetative diaspores (soredia). Both share the same photobiont pool and are lichenized with two closely related species, Stichococcus antarcticus and S. allas. Two haplotypes of S. antarcticus are restricted to areas deglaciated for more than 5000 years and the volcanic Deception Island indicating a shift in the photobionts of Placopsis in the course of the soil and lichen community development. These photobiont haplotypes exhibit different ecological preferences, possibly leading to adaptation of the symbiotic entity to changing environmental conditions

Selaginella in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar

Selaginella (Selaginellales, Selaginellaceae) is the most speciose genus of lycophytes and, with approximately 750 recognized present-day species, also one of the largest genera of vascular plants. However, the evolutionary history of this species richness remains largely unresolved. Recent research suggests that Selaginella was diverse already in the mid-Cretaceous and shows that S. subg. Stachygynandrum dates back at least to the incipient Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution some 100 million years ago. Here, we describe 20 new fossil-species of Selaginella based on fertile shoots and spores preserved in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber from Myanmar and emend the previously described S. cretacea. Ten of the species (S. ciliifera, S. cretacea, S. grimaldii, S. heterosporangiata, S. longifimbriata, S. minutissima, S. ohlhoffiorum, S. patrickmuelleri, S. villosa, S. wangxinii) represent S. subg. Stachygynandrum because they possess anisophyllous strobili. The other eleven species have isophyllous strobili. Two of them (S. isophylla, S. wunderlichiana) are tentatively assigned to S. subg. Ericetorum, whereas the others (S. amplexicaulis, S. aurita, S. heinrichsii, S. konijnenburgiae, S. obscura, S. ovoidea, S. pellucida, S. tomescui, S. wangboi) cannot be placed into any fossil or extant subgenus. The fossils described in this study nearly duplicate the documented record of free-sporing plants from Kachin amber. The abundance and diversity of cryptogams, along with the absence of xerophytes among the taxa, is suggestive of constantly high humidity in the understory of the source forests of this amber.Peer reviewe

Integrative Taxonomy Reveals a New Species of the Genus Lejeunea (Marchantiophya: Lejeuneaceae) from Peninsular Malaysia

Prior to the advent of molecular work, the observable variation in vegetative reproduction has been used to classify Lejeunea into subgenera and sections. Thereby, the ability of developing caducous leaves was regarded as major factor. A reexamination of several Lejeunea specimens revealed that L. cocoes with caducous leaves shows considerable morphological differences with non-caducous leaved plants of L. cocoes. Phylogenetic analyses based on a three-marker dataset (rbcL, trnLF and the nuclear ribosomal ITS region) indicated two independent and robust lineages of the morpho-species L. cocoes. We consider both clades as two distinct species and therefore describe the new species, L. malaysiana for L. cocoes morpho-species with caducous leaves. Lejeunea malaysiana is characterized by its caducous leaves with ribbon-like and plantlet regenerants, strongly reduced leaf lobules, distant and deeply bilobed underleaves, long-keeled obovoid perianth, and autoicy and ranges from tropical Asia to the Pacific region

Selaginella was hyperdiverse already in the Cretaceous

Peer reviewe