Comparative landscape genetics of two widespread, endemic species, the common and McCann’s skink in Canterbury and Otago, New Zealand

Understanding how genetic variation within a particular species is spatially structured is important for knowing how populations are connected and how landscape configuration affects population connectivity. Landscape genetics provides an ideal toolbox to determine patterns and processes structuring populations. These techniques were applied to two species of New Zealand skink, the common skink Oligosame nigraplantare polychorma and McCann’s skink Oligosoma maccanni, to investigate how these populations are structured in Canterbury and Otago, New Zealand. Specific objectives for this study were (1) to determine the genetic structure of both species, (2) to determine the influence of landscape features on genetic structure, (3) to determine how geography and genetic structure influence patterns of morphological variation and (4) to use this information to recommend conservation management plans for these species. Microsatellite genotyping was used to determine genetic structuring for both species. Distance matrices were created for genetics, land use, Euclidean distance and morphology. Population genetic structure was calculated using GenAlEx. All realtionships between distance matrices were analysed using Mantel and partial Mantel tests. The results showed signicant genetic structure in both species. Landscape and geographic distances had a significant relationship with genetic distance for the common skink, but not for McCann’s skink. Morphology was not correlated with genetic distance in either species, but there was some correlation between geography and morphology. Based on this, the study has highlighted that populations of congeneric species, that are sympatric and ecologically similar, are not necessarily influenced by the same landscape features. This has implications for conservation, indicating that species-specific conservavtion strategies should be applied

Precision glycerine jelly swab for removing pollen from small and fragile insect specimens

Abstract Historical datasets can establish a critical baseline of plant–animal interactions for understanding contemporary interactions in the context of global change. Pollen is often incidentally preserved on animals in natural history collections. Techniques for removing pollen from insects have largely been developed for fresh insect specimens or historical specimens with large amounts of pollen on specialized structures. However, many key pollinating insects do not have these specialized structures and thus, there is a need for a method to extract pollen from these small and fragile insects. Here, we propose a precision glycerine jelly swab tool to allow for the precise removal of pollen from old, small and fragile insect specimens. We use this tool to remove pollen from five families of insects collected in the late 1970s. Additionally, we compare our method with four previously published techniques for removing pollen from pinned contemporary specimens. We show the functionality of the precision glycerine jelly swab for removing small quantities of pollen across insect families. We found that across the five methods, all removed pollen; yet, it was clear that some are better suited for fragile specimens. In particular, the traditional glycerine jelly swab and the precision glycerine jelly swabs both performed well for removing pollen from bee faces. The shaking wash resulted in specimen fracture and residue left behind, the ethanol rinses left setae matted, and the glycerol swabbing left residue on the specimen. Additionally, we present photographs documenting the effects of these methods on pinned honey bee specimens. The precision glycerine jelly swab opens up opportunities to sample pollen from a variety of insects in natural history collections. These pollen samples can be incorporated into downstream analyses for pollen identification either via microscopy or DNA sequencing, and the resulting plant–insect interaction data can establish historical baselines for contemporary comparison. Beyond our application of this method to pollen on insects, this precision glycerine jelly swab tool could be used to explore pollen placement specialization or to sample bryophyte, fungal and tree fern spores dispersing on animals

Catalogue of New Zealand land, freshwater and estuarine molluscan taxa named by Frederick Wollaston Hutton between 1879 and 1904

Brook, Fred J., Kennedy, Martyn, King, Tania M., Ridden, Johnathon, Shaw, Matthew D., Spencer, Hamish G. (2020): Catalogue of New Zealand land, freshwater and estuarine molluscan taxa named by Frederick Wollaston Hutton between 1879 and 1904. Zootaxa 4865 (1): 1-73, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4865.1.