2,442 results match your criteria: "Natural History Museum of Denmark; University of Copenhagen. vmichelsen@snm.ku.dk.[Affiliation]"

Floodplain forests drive fruit-eating fish diversity at the Amazon Basin-scale.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

January 2025

Centre de Recherche sur la Biodiversité et l'Environnement, Université de Toulouse, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, Université Toulouse 3 - Paul Sabatier, Toulouse F-31062, France.

Unlike most rivers globally, nearly all lowland Amazonian rivers have unregulated flow, supporting seasonally flooded floodplain forests. Floodplain forests harbor a unique tree species assemblage adapted to flooding and specialized fauna, including fruit-eating fish that migrate seasonally into floodplains, favoring expansive floodplain areas. Frugivorous fish are forest-dependent fauna critical to forest regeneration via seed dispersal and support commercial and artisanal fisheries.

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Booidean snakes are a diverse and widespread lineage with an intriguing evolutionary and biogeographic history. By means of cranial morphology and osteology, this study investigates the evolutionary convergence in the Neotropical genera Boa and Corallus on the one hand and the Malagasy clade comprising Acrantophis and Sanzinia on the other. We hypothesize that the mostly arboreal Corallus and Sanzinia present larger jaws and longer teeth to keep hold of the prey and resist gravity and torsional forces acting on their skull while hanging from branches, while terrestrial genera such as Acrantophis show thinner jaws with shorter teeth because they can rely on the full length of their coils to immobilize and constrict the prey together with a substrate that supports the whole of their body.

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Ecological and anthropogenic effects on the genomic diversity of lemurs in Madagascar.

Nat Ecol Evol

January 2025

IBE, Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC), Department of Medicine and Life Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.

Ecological variation and anthropogenic landscape modification have had key roles in the diversification and extinction of mammals in Madagascar. Lemurs represent a radiation with more than 100 species, constituting roughly one-fifth of the primate order. Almost all species of lemurs are threatened with extinction, but little is known about their genetic diversity and demographic history.

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Understanding the habitat use of individuals can facilitate methods to measure the degree to which populations will be affected by potential stressors. Such insights can be hard to garner for marine species that are inaccessible during phases of their annual cycles. Here, we quantify the link between foraging habitat and behaviour in an aquatic bird of high conservation concern, the red-throated diver () across three breeding populations (Finland, Iceland and Scotland) during their understudied moult period.

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Annotated checklist of Sarcophagidae (Diptera) of Jamaica, with new records.

Zookeys

December 2024

Grupo de Entomología Universidad de Antioquia - GEUA, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia Universidad de Antioquia Medellín Colombia.

An annotated checklist of the Sarcophagidae of Jamaica is presented based on material collected from 2018 to 2024, supplemented with specimens in museum collections as well as literature records. The checklist comprises 45 species from 21 genera, of which 23 species from 15 genera were collected during the present study and identified based on male terminalia. The following species are recorded from Jamaica for the first time: Dodge, Peckia (Sarcodexia) dominicana (Lopes), Tibana & Lopes, and Lepidodexia (Harpagopyga) diversipes (Coquillet).

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Knowledge about seafloor depth, or bathymetry, is crucial for various marine activities, including scientific research, offshore industry, safety of navigation, and ocean exploration. Mapping the central Arctic Ocean is challenging due to the presence of perennial sea ice, which limits data collection to icebreakers, submarines, and drifting ice stations. The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) was initiated in 1997 with the goal of updating the Arctic Ocean bathymetric portrayal.

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Unveiling cryptic macroinvertebrate sentinels to enhance biomonitoring in tropical rivers: Bridging traditional approaches with DNA barcoding in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot.

Sci Total Environ

January 2025

Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Økernveien 94, 0579 Oslo, Norway; Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Electronic address:

Human activities present significant threats to tropical freshwater ecosystems, notably in many global biodiversity hotspots, threats that are further increased by inadequate taxonomic knowledge and the lack of appropriate biomonitoring tools. This study integrates globally validated biomonitoring approaches with DNA-based identification methods to create a macroinvertebrate-based tool for diagnosing ecosystem health and assessing the biodiversity of tropical river ecosystems in Myanmar (Indo-Burma bioregion). To evaluate river site degradation, comprehensive data on water and habitat quality, as well as land use information, were collected.

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Frogs of the genus Platypelis are known to have their center of species richness in the mountain massifs of northern Madagascar. We here formally describe a new species of Platypelis from this region. Platypelis saikamavo sp.

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Article Synopsis
  • - A new beetle species, Rhantus villumi sp. nov., has been identified from a single specimen found in the Fur Formation of Denmark, dating back about 55.4 million years to the early Eocene, making it the oldest known member of its genus.
  • - The discovery aligns with phylogenetic studies and suggests that the presence of this temperate beetle in a typically warm environment indicates potential short-term cooling trends during that period.
  • - The newly identified species might have fed on mosquito larvae, which have also been found in the same fossil site; however, another Dytiscidae species was noted but remains unidentified due to preservation issues.
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  • A new genus and species called Ceratonotha danica is introduced from Eocene Danish amber, belonging to the Erotylidae family of beetles.
  • Ceratonotha shares similarities with other fossil erotylids found in European amber but is distinct due to the length of its 4th tarsomere.
  • The previously described species Cycadophila mumia is now reclassified into this new genus, becoming Ceratonotha mumia.
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  • This text reviews and updates the classification of the muscid fly genera Phaonia and Muscina found in Macaronesia, including the Azores, Canary Islands, and Madeira.
  • The authors propose that the species Phaonia tuguriorum is a senior synonym of P. scutellata and that the name P. signata should be reinstated for P. tuguriorum in certain contexts.
  • The paper identifies three species each of Phaonia and Muscina in the region and highlights four endemic subspecies unique to the Canary Islands, along with identification keys for both male and female flies.
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Furochrysa alisae gen et sp. nov. is described, and Stephenbrooksia multifurcata Willmann, 1993 and Danochrysa madseni Willmann, 1993 are re-described based on their holotypes and additional specimens from the early Eocene Fur Formation of Denmark.

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A new species of cuterebrine rodent bot fly, Cuterebra yanayacui sp. nov., is described from the cloud forest of Ecuador, and it is argued that the species mimics a range of aculeate hymenopterans, including euglossine orchid bees of the genera Eufriesea Cockerell and Eulaema Lepeletier and bumble bees of the subgenus Cullumanobombus Vogt.

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On the Ciidae (Coleoptera) described by Michio Chûjô deposited in the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Zootaxa

September 2024

Laboratório de Sistemática e Biologia de Coleoptera; Departamento de Biologia Animal; Universidade Federal de Viçosa; 36570- 900; Viçosa; Minas Gerais; Brazil.

The Japanese entomologist Michio Chûjô described five Ciidae species collected during the Danish "Noona Dan" Expedition in 1961-62 to the southern Philippines and the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea. We had access to images of their holotypes deposited in the Natural History Museum of Denmark and concluded that some taxonomic changes are necessary to better position them within the currently recognized Ciidae genera. The following new combinations are proposed: Ditrichocis mussauense (Chûjô, 1966) comb.

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Two new records of the genus Idaea Treitschke, 1825 (Lepidoptera: Geometridae: Sterrhinae) for Iran.

Zootaxa

July 2024

State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart; Rosenstein 1; D-70191 Stuttgart; Germany.

Two species, Idaea admiranda Hausmann, 2004 and Idaea subsericeata (Haworth, 1809) are reported as new faunal elements for Iran. Wing pattern and genitalia structures of both species are depicted and their diagnostic characters are highlighted.

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The paper provides a detailed morphological description of a previously unknown female of Supella eocenica Anisyutkin et Perkovsky, 2023. The structure of the tegmina and wings of the type species of the genus Supella, S. longipalpa (Fabricius, 1798), is also redescribed.

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To date, only eight species of marine tardigrades have been recorded from the Southern Ocean. A total of 1210 tardigrade specimens were collected during various marine expeditions with R/V POLARSTERN: ANDEEP-1, ANDEEP-2, ANDEEP-3 and ANDEEP-SYSTCO. The sampled tardigrades belong to five families (Batillipedidae, Coronarctidae, Halechiniscidae, Styraconyxidae and Echiniscoididae), seven genera (Batillipes, Coronarctus, Moebjergarctus, Angursa, Styraconyx, Tholoarctus, Isoechiniscoides) and 15 species (Batillipes wyedeleinorum, Coronarctus dissimilis, Coronarctus tenellus, Coronarctus cf.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers analyzed COI barcodes from 22 specimens of Q. molochinus and found three distinct clades with significant genetic differences, indicating potential separate species.
  • Preliminary investigations of the aedeagal internal sac did not show major variations across these clades, which contrasts with similar studies in other beetles where such traits are key for identifying cryptic species.
  • Further research involving DNA barcoding, nuclear DNA markers, and detailed examinations of the endophallus is needed to understand the genetic diversity within Q. molochinus, along with new illustrations and distribution data provided in the study.
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Article Synopsis
  • The mantellid subgenus Phylacomantis, comprising four frog species in Madagascar, is analyzed using molecular techniques to confirm their genetic distinctness and relationships based on nuclear and mitochondrial gene data.
  • The study reveals that G. pseudoasper shows low genetic variation across its range, while new specimens from the North East and North West have high genetic distances, suggesting they may belong to a new subspecies of G. corvus, named G. corvus bakilana ssp. nov.
  • The findings highlight a rare biogeographic pattern of separated sister lineages in Madagascar, indicating an urgent need for further research in the understudied humid forest fragments in the region.
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The benthic pennate diatom Nitzschia navis-varingica, known for producing domoic acid (DA) and its isomers, is widely distributed in the Western Pacific (WP) region. To investigate the genetic differentiation and gene flow patterns among the populations in the WP, the genetic diversity of 354 strains of N. navis-varingica was analysed using two nuclear-encoded rDNA loci: the large subunit rDNA (LSU rDNA) and the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2).

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Article Synopsis
  • Indigenous maize varieties from eastern North America have significantly influenced breeding programs, but their origins remain unclear.
  • Paleogenomic studies trace maize's journey to this region, indicating multiple migrations from Mexico, especially towards the northern U.S., including a notable path from the Southwest.
  • Analysis shows that ancient Ozark maize specimens exhibit a unique wx1 gene linked to starch metabolism, demonstrating how selective pressures shaped maize domestication and connecting these varieties to the Northern Flints, vital for today's commercial maize.
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