Assessing Negative Welfare Measures for Wild Invertebrates: The Case for Octopuses.

Welfare metrics have been established for octopuses in the laboratory, but not for octopuses living in the wild. Wild octopuses are constantly exposed to potentially harmful situations, and the ability to assess the welfare status of wild octopuses could provide pertinent information about individuals' health and species' resilience to stressors. Here, we used underwater photos and videos to identify injuries and stress-related behaviors in wild in a variety of contexts, including interacting with fishermen, interacting with other octopuses and fish, proximity to predators, in den, foraging, and in senescence.

Harnessing the power of AI language models for taxonomy and systematics: a follow-up to "Can ChatGPT be leveraged for taxonomic investigations? Potential and limitations of a new technology" by Davinack (2023).

N/A.

Comparing Phylogenetic Trees Side by Side Through iPhyloC, a New Interactive Web-Based Framework.

Current frameworks of side-by-side phylogenetic trees comparison face two issues: (1) accepting mainly binary trees as input and (2) assuming input trees having identical or highly overlapping taxa. However, cladistic comparative studies often lead with multiple nontotally resolved trees with nonidentical sets of taxa. We tackle these issues in this study, presenting the iPhyloC, an interactive web-based framework for comparing phylogenetic trees side by side.

BuM 2.0: Software for online generation of matrices for Brooks Parsimony Analysis.

Brooks Parsimony Analysis is a cladistic biogeographic method that aims to extract biogeographic information from phylogenetic trees, depicting from a group of cladograms a general pattern of relationships among the areas the taxa inhabit. We present here BuM 2.0, an online framework to automatically create matrices for Brooks Parsimony Analysis (BPA) using Baum Ragans algorithm for Matrix Representation with Parsimony.

A sketch-based system for modeling 3D objects: Applications to taxonomy.

We present a sketch-based system for modeling 3D objects with multiple contours as overlaid structures, allowing users to infer perceivable symmetries and occluded parts of the model prior to its automatic 3D reconstruction. Many approaches for sketch-based interfaces and modeling focus on the final drawing and 3D reconstruction of solid objects, exploring, as inputs, contours; however, when the subject consists of multiple drawings as overlaid structures, as usual in species descriptions, these approaches have to roughly infer or discard occluded parts. Unlike previous sketch-based techniques, we explore a set of 2D visual effects to enhance the visual perception of users while sketching multiple overlaid objects in single-view.

A worldwide catalog of the Vermileonidae (Diptera: Brachycera).

The genera and species of worldwide wormlions (Diptera: Rhagionidae) are listed, with annotated references to nomenclature, synonymies and generic combinations, type localities, primary type depositories, distribution, and citations for the most recent revisions. The most diverse genera of the family are Vermileo Macquart, Vermipardus Stuckenberg and Lampromyia Macquart, with 13 described species each. The bulk of Vermileonidae diversity, with nearly half of the valid species, remains in the Afrotropical region.

Endemism within endemism: a new species of Austroleptis Hardy, 1920 (Diptera: Austroleptidae) from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest highlands.

A third species of the southern temperate tabanomorph genus Austroleptis Hardy, 1920 (Diptera: Austroleptidae)-A. camposgerais sp. nov.

The dynamics between in vitro culture and metabolism: embryonic adaptation to environmental changes.

Previous studies have discussed the importance of an optimal range of metabolic activity during preimplantation development. To avoid factors than can trigger an undesirable trajectory, it is important to learn how nutrients and metabolites interact to help launching the correct developmental program of the embryo, and how much the in vitro culture system can impair this process. Here, using the bovine model, we describe a factorial experimental design used to investigate the biochemical and molecular signature of embryos in response to different combinations of morphological features-i.

A catalog of Rhagionidae (Diptera: Brachycera) from Chile.

The genera and species of Chilean rhagionids (Diptera: Rhagionidae) are listed, with annotated references to nomenclature, synonymies and generic combinations, type localities, the primary type depositories, distribution, and citations for the most recent revisions. The genus Atherimorpha White is the richest genus in Chile, with 15 described species. Only Leptis basalis Philippi, 1865 is kept as incertae sedis in the family.

Building combined MRP-matrices with BuM, an automated web-tool.

The most common methods for combining different phylogenetic trees with uneven but overlapping taxon sampling are the Matrix Representation with Parsimony (MRP) and consensus tree methods. Although straightforward, some steps of MRP are time-consuming and risky when manually performed, especially the preparation of the matrix representations from the original topologies, and the creation of the single matrix containing all the information of the individual trees. Here we present Building MRP-Matrices (BuM), a free online tool for generating a combined matrix, following Baum and Ragan coding scheme, from files containing phylogenetic trees in parenthetical format.

iTUPA: an online automated application to perform Topographic-Unit Parsimony Analysis.

Summary: iTUPA is a free online application for automatizing the Topographic-Unit Parsimony Analysis (TUPA), which identifies areas of endemism based on topography. iTUPA generates species-occurrences matrices based on user-defined topographic units (TUs) and provides a parsimony analysis of the generated matrix. We tested iTUPA after a proposal of regionalization for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

GeX: an automated tool for generating XYD files for analysis of endemicity using VNDM.

In the last decade, a method widely used to delimit areas of endemism is the analysis of endemicity (AE), a non-hierarchical and grid-dependent algorithm implemented through the package NDM/VNDM. Its input files are based on lists of georeferenced taxa, and any mistakes in their preparation will influence the results of the analyses. We describe here a free online automated tool for generating the input files for VNDM from simple spreadsheets.

Functional morphology and paleoecology of Pilosa (Xenarthra, Mammalia) based on a two-dimensional geometric Morphometrics study of the Humerus.

The relationship between humerus shape and the modes of exploring substrate among extinct and extant Pilosa (especially anteaters and ground sloths) were investigated here. We used geometric morphometrics and discriminant analyses to relate morphological patterns and their possible ecological categories. Our results suggest that plesiomorphic taxa such as Nothrotheriidae, most Megalonychidae and basal Megatheriidae tend to have more slender humerus, associated to generalist habitus (climbing, swimming and digging activities), and while Mylodontidae developed specialized digging habitus.

Primary hypotheses of global areas of endemism based on the distribution of Tabanomorpha (Diptera, Brachycera).

Areas of endemism, or worthy for conservation, are mainly determined based on large data sets of vertebrates and plants. Herein, we investigated the global distribution at the species-level of the infraorder Tabanomorpha (Diptera, Brachycera), identifying areas of endemism for the group. We performed an endemicity analysis through a grid-based method-NDM/VNDM-using 1,385 species (6,392 geographical records) of Tabanomorpha.

First two species of Austroleptis Hardy (Diptera: Brachycera: Austroleptidae) from Brazil.

Two new species of the genus Austroleptis Hardy, so far known only from Australia and Chile, are described from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest-A. longirostris nov. sp.

Timeless standards for species delimitation.

Recently a new species of bombyliid fly, Marleyimyia xylocopae, was described by Marshall & Evenhuis (2015) based on two photographs taken during fieldwork in the Republic of South Africa. This species has no preserved holotype. The paper generated some buzz, especially among dipterists, because in most cases photographs taken in the field provide insufficient information for properly diagnosing and documenting species of Diptera.

FAMILY RHAGIONIDAE.

The family Rhagionidae is one of the oldest Brachyeran lineages. Its monophyly is still uncertain. There are four rhagionid genera distributed in Neotropical Region but only three species of Chrysopilus are found in Colombia.

Areas of endemism in the Neotropical region based on the geographical distribution of Tabanomorpha (Diptera: Brachycera).

We aim to investigate the geographical distribution patterns of the infraorder Tabanomorpha and to delimit primary hypotheses of areas of endemism for the group in the Neotropical region. The results were compared to areas of endemism proposed in previous works for other taxa and particularly with the recent Morrone's regionalisation proposal. An endemicity analysis was performed with the ndm/vndm algorithm using 3826 occurrence records for 1361 species of Tabanomorpha.

The world's biogeographical regions revisited: global patterns of endemism in Tipulidae (Diptera).

This paper explores the distributional data of 4,224 Tipulidae (Insecta: Diptera) species to search for endemism patterns in a worldwide scale and to test the extent to which the global patterns of endemism of the group fit into previously proposed regionalization schemes, particularly Wallace's system and recent revisions of it. Large scale areas of endemism are assessed using the grid-based method implemented in VNDM. VNDM depends on the prior definition of the grid size for analysis, but a criterion for choosing beforehand a particular grid size is not clear.

The man who loved flies: a biographical profile of Nelson Papavero .

Nelson Papavero is one of the major Brazilian zoologists. His contribution to the field began in the second half of the twentieth century, when he started publishing in the areas of entomology, systematics, biogeography, and history of science, while working at graduate courses and training teachers and students. Papavero was one of the earliest Brazilian advocates of Hennig's phylogenetic systematics.

[A life among insects and books: an interview with Nelson Papavero].

Nelson Papavero is one of the top representatives of Brazilian zoology. His decisive contributions to this science began in the second half of the twentieth century, when he started publishing in the areas of zoology, systematics, biogeography, and the history of science while also working at graduate courses and training teachers and students. He was key to the introduction of Hennig's phylogenetic systematics in Brazil and its chief advocate.

Realism in systematics through biogeographical consilience.

There is an overlooked gap between any phylogenetic hypothesis and the natural world shaped by historical evolutionary processes, since the main concern during phylogenetic analyses is solely the search for congruence among characters under a defined criterion. Given a scientific realistic view, however, phylogenetic hypotheses are scientific theories that try to depict the historical series of cladogenetic events among biological entities. In this sense, the challenge is to establish a form of measuring the degree of truthfulness of our phylogenetic hypotheses.