High levels of species' extirpation in an urban environment-A case study from Berlin, Germany, covering 1700-2023.

Species loss is highly scale-dependent, following the species-area relationship. We analysed spatio-temporal patterns of species' extirpation on a multitaxonomic level using Berlin, the capital city of Germany. Berlin is one of the largest cities in Europe and has experienced a strong urbanisation trend since the late nineteenth century.

Developing the Protocol Infrastructure for DNA Sequencing Natural History Collections.

Intentionally preserved biological material in natural history collections represents a vast repository of biodiversity. Advances in laboratory and sequencing technologies have made these specimens increasingly accessible for genomic analyses, offering a window into the genetic past of species and often permitting access to information that can no longer be sampled in the wild. Due to their age, preparation and storage conditions, DNA retrieved from museum and herbarium specimens is often poor in yield, heavily fragmented and biochemically modified.

A conspectus of Australian (Diptera, Chloropidae) with the description of two new species.

The genus (Diptera, Chloropidae) has a global distribution with more than 80 valid described species, of which 22 are known to occur in Australia. The Australian fauna is poorly studied, with many species known from single type specimens, more with the morphology of the other sex unknown, and there have been no new species descriptions since 1959. Here, we describe two new species from Australia, Riccardi, and Ang, , and provide an updated illustrated key.

Reed bamboos drive skull shape evolution in bush frogs of the Western Ghats, Peninsular India.

Reed bamboo is a major ecological and economic resource for many animals, including humans. Nonetheless, the influence of this plant's evolutionary role on the morphology of animal species remains unexplored. Here, we investigated the significance of bamboo habitats as ecological opportunities in shaping the skull morphology of bush frogs () from the Western Ghats, Peninsular India.

Species- and sex-dependent changes in body size between 1892 and 2017, and recent biochemical signatures in rural and urban populations of two ground beetle species.

Increasing urbanisation and intensified agriculture lead to rapid transitions of ecosystems. Species that persist throughout rapid transitions may respond to environmental changes across space and/or time, for instance by altering morphological and/or biochemical traits. We used natural history museum specimens, covering the Anthropocene epoch, to obtain long-term data combined with recent samples.

Research Infrastructure Contact Zones: a framework and dataset to characterise the activities of major biodiversity informatics initiatives.

Background: The landscape of biodiversity data infrastructures and organisations is complex and fragmented. Many occupy specialised niches representing narrow segments of the multidimensional biodiversity informatics space, while others operate across a broad front, but differ from others by data type(s) handled, their geographic scope and the life cycle phase(s) of the data they support. In an effort to characterise the various dimensions of the biodiversity informatics landscape, we developed a framework and dataset to survey these dimensions for ten organisations (DiSSCo, GBIF, iBOL, Catalogue of Life, iNaturalist, Biodiversity Heritage Library, GeoCASe, LifeWatch, eLTER ELIXIR), relative to both their current activities and long-term strategic ambitions.

The disambiguation of people names in biological collections.

Scientific collections have been built by people. For hundreds of years, people have collected, studied, identified, preserved, documented and curated collection specimens. Understanding who those people are is of interest to historians, but much more can be made of these data by other stakeholders once they have been linked to the people's identities and their biographies.

Phylogenetic relationships among the species of the Cameroonian endemic freshwater crab genus Cumberlidge, 1994 (Crustacea, Brachyura, Potamonautidae), with notes on intraspecific morphological variation within two threatened species.

Cumberlidge, 1994 (Crustacea, Brachyura, Potamonautidae) currently includes four endemic Cameroonian freshwater crab species whose phylogenetic relationships were previously unresolved. In the present study, phylogenetic analyses are carried out involving three mtDNA loci (COI, 12S rRNA, and 16S rRNA). The COI locus revealed divergence times of 5.

The soundscape of swarming: Proof of concept for a noninvasive acoustic species identification of swarming bats.

Bats emit echolocation calls to orientate in their predominantly dark environment. Recording of species-specific calls can facilitate species identification, especially when mist netting is not feasible. However, some taxa, such as bats can be hard to distinguish acoustically.

Contributions to the biodiversity of Vietnam - Results of VIETBIO inventory work and field training in Cuc Phuong National Park.

VIETBIO [Innovative approaches to biodiversity discovery and characterisation in Vietnam] is a bilateral German-Vietnamese research and capacity building project focusing on the development and transfer of new methods and technology towards an integrated biodiversity discovery and monitoring system for Vietnam. Dedicated field training and testing of innovative methodologies were undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park as part and with support of the project, which led to the new biodiversity data and records made available in this article collection. VIETBIO is a collaboration between the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin - Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science (MfN), the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin (BGBM) and the Vietnam National Museum of Nature (VNMN), the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR), the Southern Institute of Ecology (SIE), as well as the Institute of Tropical Biology (ITB); all Vietnamese institutions belong to the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST).

Novel ideas to further expand the applicability of rhythm analysis.

The temporal structure of animals' acoustic signals can inform about context, urgency, species, individual identity, or geographical origin. We present three independent ideas to further expand the applicability of rhythm analysis for isochronous, that is, metronome-like, rhythms. A description of a rhythm or beat needs to include a description of its goodness of fit, meaning how well the rhythm describes a sequence.

Taxonomy notes and new occurrence data of four species of atyid shrimp (Crustacea: Decapoda: Atyidae) in Vietnam, all described from China.

Background: Freshwater shrimp of the family Atyidae De Haan, 1849 have been studied in Vietnam for more than a century. A total of 24 species of atyid shrimps from the genera H. Milne Edwards, 1837, Kubo, 1938, Chace, 1983 have been recorded from Vietnam.

Assessing acoustic competition between sibling frog species using rhythm analysis.

Male frog advertisement calls are species-specific vocalizations used to attract females for breeding. However, it is possible for environmental or biological sounds to overlap these calls in both frequency and duration resulting in signal confusion, influencing female decision and/or location abilities. It is therefore important for vocal species competing for the same acoustic space to partition their calls either spatially or temporally (via call alternation or suppression).

Rivers, not refugia, drove diversification in arboreal, sub-Saharan African snakes.

The relative roles of rivers versus refugia in shaping the high levels of species diversity in tropical rainforests have been widely debated for decades. Only recently has it become possible to take an integrative approach to test predictions derived from these hypotheses using genomic sequencing and paleo-species distribution modeling. Herein, we tested the predictions of the classic river, refuge, and river-refuge hypotheses on diversification in the arboreal sub-Saharan African snake genus .

Lake Poso's shrimp fauna revisited: the description of five new species of the genus (Crustacea, Decapoda, Atyidae) more than doubles the number of endemic lacustrine species.

Lake Poso, an ancient lake system on the Indonesian island Sulawesi, harbours an endemic species flock of six, four lacustrine and two riverine species of the freshwater shrimp genus . In this study, five new lacustrine species are described, bringing the total to eleven species altogether. The number of lacustrine species is more than doubled to nine species compared to the last taxonomic revision in 2009.

sp. nov., a new spider riffle beetle from Sarawak, and new distribution records for Kodada, Jäch & Čiampor based on DNA barcodes (Coleoptera, Elmidae).

(Coleoptera, Elmidae), a new spider riffle beetle from the Kelabit Highlands (Sarawak, northern Borneo), is described. Illustrations of the habitus and diagnostic characters of the new species and the similar, polymorphic Kodada et al. are presented.

An annotated checklist and integrative biodiversity discovery of barnacles (Crustacea, Cirripedia) from the Moluccas, East Indonesia.

To contribute to the taxonomic knowledge of barnacles in this understudied area, the first checklist of barnacles from the Moluccas is presented, including additional information on morphology, distribution, and substrate as well as molecular data. The species of barnacles from the Moluccas have been determined using morphological analysis and DNA sequences. During 19 field trips conducted between January 2016 and September 2017, 1,513 specimens of 24 species of intertidal and one species of deep-sea barnacles were collected from 51 localities from the islands.

Biodiversity inventory of the grey mullets (Actinopterygii: Mugilidae) of the Indo-Australian Archipelago through the iterative use of DNA-based species delimitation and specimen assignment methods.

DNA barcoding opens new perspectives on the way we document biodiversity. Initially proposed to circumvent the limits of morphological characters to assign unknown individuals to known species, DNA barcoding has been used in a wide array of studies where collecting species identity constitutes a crucial step. The assignment of unknowns to knowns assumes that species are already well identified and delineated, making the assignment performed reliable.

Matriline effects on metamorphic traits in a natural system in the European common frog ().

Successful reproduction is an important determinant of the fitness of an individual and of the dynamics of populations. Offspring of the European common frog () exhibit a high degree of variability in metamorphic traits. However, environmental factors alone cannot explain this phenotypic variability, and the influence of genetic factors remains to be determined.

Checklist of the Sarcophagidae (Diptera) of Croatia, with new records from Croatia and other Mediterranean countries.

An updated checklist of Croatian flesh flies is presented based on the literature, on material collected from 2004 to 2017, and on specimens in museum collections. The checklist comprises 22 genera and 148 species (two left unnamed), 105 of which are represented by new Croatian records. Twenty-five species are recorded from Croatia with certainty for the first time: (Rondani, 1859), Macquart, 1854, (Fabricius, 1805), (Zetterstedt, 1838), (Fallén, 1810), Villeneuve, 1911, Villeneuve, 1912, (Fallén, 1820), Meigen, 1824, (Fallén, 1810), Loew, 1844, (Fallén, 1810), (Zetterstedt, 1844), (Meigen, 1830), (Kramer, 1908), (Macquart, 1843), Blaesoxipha (Blaesoxipha) aurulenta Rohdendorf, 1937, Blaesoxipha (Blaesoxipha) batilligera Séguy, 1941, Blaesoxipha (Blaesoxipha) plumicornis (Zetterstedt, 1859), Sarcophaga (Helicophagella) okaliana (Lehrer, 1975), Sarcophaga (Heteronychia) amita Rondani, 1860, Sarcophaga (Heteronychia) ancilla Rondani, 1865, Sarcophaga (Heteronychia) pseudobenaci (Baranov, 1942), Sarcophaga (Myorhina) lunigera Böttcher, 1914 and Sarcophaga (Stackelbergeola) mehadiensis Böttcher, 1912.

Stable isotope analyses-A method to distinguish intensively farmed from wild frogs.

Consumption of frog legs is increasing worldwide, with potentially dramatic effects for ecosystems. More and more functioning frog farms are reported to exist. However, due to the lack of reliable methods to distinguish farmed from wild-caught individuals, the origin of frogs in the international trade is often uncertain.

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project.

The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.

Population-specific effects of developmental temperature on body condition and jumping performance of a widespread European frog.

All physiological processes of ectotherms depend on environmental temperature. Thus, adaptation of physiological mechanisms to the thermal environments is important for achieving optimal performance and fitness. The European Common Frog, Rana temporaria, is widely distributed across different thermal habitats.

Automated proximity sensing in small vertebrates: design of miniaturized sensor nodes and first field tests in bats.

Social evolution has led to a stunning diversity of complex social behavior, in particular in vertebrate taxa. Thorough documentation of social interactions is crucial to study the causes and consequences of sociality in gregarious animals. Wireless digital transceivers represent a promising tool to revolutionize data collection for the study of social interactions in terms of the degree of automation, data quantity, and quality.