Molecular phylogeny of the Orthalicoidea land snails: Further support and surprises.

The superfamily Orthalicoidea comprises approximately 2,000 species of terrestrial gastropods, mostly concentrated in the Neotropics but also present in southern Africa and Oceania. We provide a multi-marker molecular phylogeny of this superfamily, reassessing its family- and genus-level classification. We exclude two families from the group, Odontostomidae and Vidaliellidae, transferring them to Rhytidoidea based on their phylogenetic relationships as recovered herein.

Towards nationally harmonized mapping and quantification of ecosystem services.

The EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy requests EU Member States to map and assess ecosystem services within national territories, and to promote and integrate these values into policy-making. This calls for standardized and harmonized data, indicators, and methods to assess ecosystem services within national boundaries. Current approaches for assessing ecosystem services often oversimplify cross-scale heterogeneity, sacrificing the spatial and thematic detail required to support the needs and expectations of decision-makers at different levels.

An ironic twist of fate: replacement name for Stenogyra gracilenta Morelet, 1885, not Achatina gracilenta Morelet, 1867 (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Achatinidae).

During work on a monograph of Morelet's contributions to malacology (Breure, Audibert Ablett, forthcoming) we found that two of his newly introduced taxa currently have to be considered as homonyms belonging to the genus Subulina H. Beck, 1837 (classified within the family Achatinidae according to Fontanilla et al. (2017: 385)).

Quantifying biomass production for assessing ecosystem services of riverine landscapes.

Society is increasingly in need of renewable resources to replace fossil fuels and to prevent resource depletion. River-floodplain systems are known to provide important societal functions and ecosystem services to mankind, such as production of vegetative biomass. In order to determine the potential of harvesting vegetative riparian biomass, the capacity of river systems to produce such biomass needs to be determined.

Soil and land management in a circular economy.

This article elaborates the role of soil and land management in a circular economy. The circular economy is highly dependent on the functioning of soils and land for the production of food and other biomass; the storage, filtration and transformation of many substances including water, carbon, and nitrogen; the provision of fresh mineral resources and fossil fuels; and the use of their functions as the platform for nature and human activities. Resource demand is increasing as a result of the growing human population.