Conus hughmorrisoni, a new species of cone snail from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (Gastropoda: Conidae)

Lorenz, Felix, Puillandre, Nicolas, Umr, Biodiversité Isyeb - (2015): Conus hughmorrisoni, a new species of cone snail from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (Gastropoda: Conidae). European Journal of Taxonomy 129: 1-15, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2015.12

The first Cenozoic roproniid wasp from the Paleocene of Menat, France (Hymenoptera: Proctotrupoidea)

Garrouste, Romain, Pouillon, Jean-Marc, Nel, André, Umr, Isyeb - (2016): The first Cenozoic roproniid wasp from the Paleocene of Menat, France (Hymenoptera: Proctotrupoidea). European Journal of Taxonomy 239: 1-9, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2016.23

Global phylogeny and biogeography of the fern genus Ctenitis (Dryopteridaceae), with a focus on the Indian Ocean region

The diverse and pantropical genus Ctenitis, in the Dryopteridaceae, has been largely ignored in phylogenetic studies until now. In this study, we fill in this gap by reconstructing the first comprehensive phylogeny of the genus including 53 species currently recognized in the genus Ctenitis, among which seven species formerly were assigned to the genus Pseudotectaria and one to Heterogonium. Special emphasis was given to the sampling of species occurring in the African-Indian Ocean region. The presented results include reconstruction of a biogeographic scenario based on estimated divergence times and ancestral area reconstruction. Our findings confirm the inclusion, within Ctenitis, of the Indian Ocean species formerly placed in Pseudotectaria and Heterogonium. The crown group divergence was estimated to date back to the Oligocene or Early Miocene. The biogeographical scenario indicates an initial divergence of the Asian-Pacific ranges and the neotropical ranges, and a subsequent colonization of the Afro-Madagascan region by a lineage with neotropical ancestors. The Afro-Madagascan lineage splits into a lineage endemic to the Mascarene islands and a lineage occurring in Madagascar, the Comoros and Africa. The range expansion towards Africa and Madagascar was estimated to date back to the late Miocene, whereas the estimated ages for the onset of the diversification of the Mascarene diversity is consistent with the ages of these young, volcanic islands. The absence of any extant species of Ctenitis with a multi-continental distribution range and the rarity of inter-island dispersal and speciation in the Indian Ocean region suggest a limited contribution of long distance dispersal to the biogeographical history of this fern genus, versus a high contribution of local speciation

Environmental constraints and call evolution in torrent-dwelling frogs

Although acoustic signals are important for communication in many taxa, signal propagation is affected by environmental properties. Strong environmental constraints should drive call evolution, favoring signals with greater transmission distance and content integrity in a given calling habitat. Yet, few empirical studies have verified this prediction, possibly due to a shortcoming in habitat characterization, which is often too broad. Here we assess the potential impact of environmental constraints on the evolution of advertisement call in four groups of torrent-dwelling frogs in the family Ranidae. We reconstruct the evolution of calling site preferences, both broadly categorized and at a finer scale, onto a phylogenetic tree for 148 species with five markers (approximate to 3600 bp). We test models of evolution for six call traits for 79 species with regard to the reconstructed history of calling site preferences and estimate their ancestral states. We find that in spite of existing morphological constraints, vocalizations of torrent-dwelling species are most probably constrained by the acoustic specificities of torrent habitats and particularly their high level of ambient noise. We also show that a fine-scale characterization of calling sites allows a better perception of the impact of environmental constraints on call evolution