Functional morphology, coaptation and palaeoecology of Hollardops (Trilobita, Acastidae), with descriptions of new species and two new genera from the Devonian of Morocco

The <i>Pseudomonas</i> Story

Herein the members of the Subcommittee on Taxonomy of Rhizobia and Agrobacteria of the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes review recent developments in rhizobial and agrobacterial taxonomy and propose updated minimal standards for the description of new species (and genera) in these groups. The essential requirements (minimal standards) for description of a new species are (1) a genome sequence of at least the proposed type strain and (2) evidence for differentiation from other species based on genome sequence comparisons. It is also recommended that (3) genetic variation within the species is documented with sequence data from several clearly different strains and (4) phenotypic features are described, and their variation documented with data from a relevant set of representative strains. Furthermore, it is encouraged that information is provided on (5) nodulation or pathogenicity phenotypes, as appropriate, with relevant gene sequences. These guidelines supplement the current rules of general bacterial taxonomy, which require (6) a name that conforms to the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes, (7) validation of the name by publication either directly in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology or in a validation list when published elsewhere, and (8) deposition of the type strain in two international culture collections in separate countries.

Recently, Meierotto et al. (2019) proposed a 'revolutionary' protocol for the description of understudied hyperdiverse taxa. The premise of their study was to champion exclusively DNA-barcode-based species descriptions (=diagnoses), which would dramatically increase the rate of description and provide a 'human-readable record in the literature' (unlike a Barcode Index Number, BIN; Ratnasingham & Hebert, 2013) that can later be supplemented with additional information. Species are always delimited against already known species (Linnaeus, 1753, 1758; Mayr, 1992; ICZN, 1999; Naciri & Linder, 2015; Renner, 2016). This was also recognized by Meierotto et al. (2019, p. 120): 'Requirements for the publication of new species include (…) that they be accompanied by either a description or diagnosis which can separate them from any known species with which they are likely to be confused'. However, the latter authors failed to diagnose their 15 new Zelomorpha Ashmead, 1900 species from 51 out of 52 previously known species (only the type species was used in the analysis) and their three new Hemichoma Enderlein, 1920 species from any of the five previously known species. This is not the first case of its kind in zoology; Hebert et al. (2004) proposed to recognize ten species of skipper butterflies (genus Astraptes) based on DNA characters and ecology and some morphological characters, but the species were not formally named until Brower (2010) described them based exclusively on unique mutations in the DNA barcode region. Brower (2010) hailed this method as a flagship example of DNA barcoding's success in overcoming the 'taxonomic impediment' (Brower, 2010). However, it has received extensive criticism (DeSalle et al., 2005; Pons et al., 2006; Rubinoff et al., 2006; Elias et al., 2007; Dupérré, 2020). Meierotto et al. (2019) have taken this approach one step further by immediately assigning names to the lineages. This is, in our opinion, a step too far. Each description includes a lateral habitus image of a single specimen, a short diagnosis based solely on COI barcode nucleotide differences, brief notes on biology, and largely unannotated type specimen information except for brief mention of the locality and host caterpillar of the holotype. There are no morphological descriptions, and as mentioned, the 'molecular diagnosis' of their new Zelomorpha spp. are compared only with that of the type species, and not to the other 51 already known species of that genus, and in the case of Hemichoma, with none of the five species that were already described. We consider this poor taxonomic practice, and their approach to be fundamentally flawed. We urge innovators to pursue revolutionary new approaches that do not undermine the value of taxonomic expertise or produce sloppy results, but rather seek to draw on the latest methodological advancements to increase the rate of taxonomy without compromising on quality. Over the last 20 years, there have been many calls for an increase in the rate of taxonomic description (Mora et al., 2011). Few have delivered on that promise. Undoubtedly, the single steepest increase in this rate was made possible by DNA barcoding (Hebert et al., 2003). Yet, in the wake of the genetic revolution, there were already concerns that too much emphasis might be placed on DNA barcoding data alone, leading taxonomists to neglect the importance of other data—integrative approaches, taking the congruence of genetic signals with other datasets, would be required to keep describing biologically meaningful units (Dayrat, 2005; Ebach & Holdrege, 2005; Will et al., 2005). DNA barcoding is a rapid means to sort specimens into clusters, identify species and discover new ones (when a library of the relevant named species is already available), but does not overcome the bottleneck of the description process itself. Proposals for methods to speed up that process were dubbed 'turbo' or 'fast-track' taxonomy—an approach that does not differ fundamentally from previous species descriptions, but relies more heavily on formulaic descriptions of large numbers of new species (Butcher et al., 2012; Riedel et al., 2013). In essence, the approach of Meierotto et al. (2019) is simply another one of these turbo-taxonomic approaches except in three key aspects: Fundamentally, a diagnosis should identify features or combinations of features of a new species that are unique, that is, that allow it to be distinguished from all previously named taxa. It thereby gives a means not only to identify the new species but also to demonstrate that the new taxon is not a synonym of an existing one. The diagnoses of Meierotto et al. (2019) are based solely on DNA barcodes, but no barcodes are presented for 51 of the 52 existing species of Zelomorpha. Indeed, the existing taxa are summarily ignored, except for a statement that the notes of the second author (M.J. Sharkey) were used to verify that the new species are distinct from the existing taxa, without providing any evidence. As a result, it is impossible, based on the study of Meierotto et al. (2019), to assess whether or not their 15 new Zelomorpha names are distinct from 51 of the 52 species that were already described. In our opinion, Meierotto et al. (2019) have impeded, not enhanced, the taxonomy of these wasps. Ignoring almost all previously described species in a genus is indeed a way to speed up taxonomy—the process of comparison becomes very easy when you neglect practically all existing names—but it also creates chaos. Even the fastest approach to taxonomy will always require consideration of existing names before new ones can be established. Morphologically homogeneous ('cryptic') species are difficult to diagnose from one another, even when substantial differences exist in their DNA barcodes. This can delay taxonomy, because more effort must be invested per species to identify characters that do indeed differ. To overcome this problem, Renner (2016) recently called for more widespread inclusion of DNA sequence data in diagnoses. However, we do not believe that Renner (2016) envisioned the complete replacement of the diagnosis by single nucleotide changes, but rather expansion of concise but comprehensive diagnoses with such information. In some cases, restriction exclusively to genetic markers may be appropriate (e.g. where morphology is highly plastic, or where extremely distinctive genetic lineages are demonstrably cryptic in all other available lines of evidence), but such cases are likely to be the exception rather than the rule. Having complementary lines of evidence, such as morphology, is particularly important when, as is the case in Meierotto et al. (2019), only a tiny portion of the available names have DNA sequence data available. The lack of overlap between morphological and genetic data will further delay the process of clarifying whether or not the new names are synonyms of existing species. It is also important to note that DNA barcoding relies wholly on mitochondrial markers (usually cytochrome oxidase-I). Mitochondrial trees often disagree with nuclear species trees, especially in taxa where Wolbachia may be altering mtDNA introgression (Klopfstein et al., 2016). In these cases, and especially when genetic data are the sole basis of species-level recognition, congruence between nuclear and mitochondrial signal should be tested to better reinforce the species units identified. Moreover, as explained by Dupérré (2020), purely DNA-based descriptions will not only make the identification of millions of historical specimens impossible, it will impair this science in developing countries which house most of the undiscovered portion of biodiversity, due to high costs and lack of staff and technology. Considering the status of taxonomy as a fundamental science, this would drastically affect other related fields of study and, importantly, conservation. Renner (2016) also called for more emphasis on diagnosis and not description. With highly descriptive taxonomy, a great deal of time is invested in description of features that are not informative for the distinction of species from one another, which is time that could be spent instead diagnosing substantially more species. Instead, she and others have emphasized the importance of high-resolution photographs as supplements to diagnoses. We agree that detailed high-resolution photographs of specimens can indeed be highly valuable, but we contend that (i) there must be several photographs available, not a single lateral photograph of a single specimen, as provided by Meierotto et al. (2019), and (ii) some text highlighting important diagnostic features is valuable to experts, and of paramount importance to nonexperts, who must instead play a game of 'spot-the-difference' when such information is lacking. Experts might know the difference between variable and nonvariable characters, whereas such features cannot be distinguished by nonexperts, and it is the purpose of the diagnosis, if not the description, to point such features out. Moreover, we note that the photographs of Meierotto et al. (2019) are sometimes blurry and almost all of them cut off the tips of the antennae! Finally, it has been shown that (e.g. in case of tropical parasitoid wasps) the most time-consuming part of species discovery is field sampling (Sääksjärvi et al., 2004; Hopkins et al., 2019), and the actual description of the species may be written within minutes when material and expertise are already available. To make up the gaps in the existing barcode database, which contains maybe 2% of currently named species worldwide (see http://www.boldsystems.org/), far more survey work needs to be undertaken. A comprehensive barcoding database for a given taxon is a prerequisite to contemplating a DNA-only approach akin to that of Meierotto et al. (2019), and one that will require substantial further work to assemble. In the face of the Holocene (=sixth) extinction, taxonomists are racing to describe the 8 million unnamed eukaryotes that lie between the 2.07 million species currently named (Frid & Caswell, 2016), and the estimated ten million extant species (Mora et al., 2011; but see also Larsen et al., 2017 for well-reasoned estimates orders of magnitude higher). Currently, the rate of description is around 18 000 species per year (IISE, 2011), but with species going extinct at a rate 1000 times higher than the natural background rate of extinction, the annual species loss is clearly within or even higher than the rate of new descriptions (Dirzo & Raven, 2003; Mora et al., 2011), and thousands of species will undoubtedly go extinct before they can be described to science (IPBES, 2019). As the current average shelf life of new species between discovery and description is about 21 years (Fontaine et al., 2012), we do indeed need revolutionary new approaches to the discovery and description of new species. BINs and candidate species numbers (Vieites et al., 2009) already serve a valuable purpose as alphanumeric placeholders to recognize potentially evolutionarily significant diversity before it is taxonomically described. Simply assigning all BINs taxonomic names as Meierotto et al. (2019) propose would indeed complete the inventory of life on Earth extremely quickly (at precisely the same pace as the rate of barcoding)—that we do not dispute. But it would also remove the quantitative and qualitative difference between these preliminary identifiers (based on a single DNA marker) and full taxonomic recognition (based on a more comprehensive diagnosis, ideally supported by multiple lines of evidence including genetic data) that lend taxonomy its value. It would supplant taxonomists with technicians, who need to know nothing of the biology of the units with which they are dealing. The purpose of inclusion of molecular data in species descriptions should be to produce more precise taxonomic framework. A species description can be thought of as a hypothesis that can be supported or rejected when more data are obtained. Other researchers must have an opportunity to scientifically evaluate the status of the species in question. In our eyes, methodological changes to the way species are delineated and described are an important component of increasing the rate of species description, but dismissing the existing literature, and producing 'descriptions' that contain almost no information on the morphology of species, its variation, their unique features, their biology, or other aspects, do not constitute a revolution, and cannot be adopted. We note that real revolutions are undoubtedly coming, especially from the fields of machine learning and integrative species delimitation (Solís-Lemus et al., 2015; Favret & Sieracki, 2016), and also that it is possible to produce massive, rapidly assembled taxonomic monographs without compromising on quality (Rakotoarison et al., 2017). But we also want to emphasize that there is no shortcut to nirvana, and a true paradigm shift in taxonomy will come only when there is a revolution in the level of financial investment in taxonomy and the natural history museums that house the described and undescribed reference material of life on Earth (Wheeler, 2020), and when legislature stops acting to prohibit the collecting work of dedicated taxonomists while turning a blind eye to the innumerable organisms destroyed with every hectare of habitat that is lost (Britz et al., 2020). The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

This paper describes a new species, Hierronius madeiraensis sp. nov., from Madeira belonging to the wingless group of the family Nitidulidae, together with the description of new cybocephalin genera from Japan (Apastillus gen. nov., type species: Pastillus eminentithorax Sadatomo Hisamatsu, 2013), South America (Amedissia gen. nov., type species: Pycnocephalus argentines Brethes, 1922) and Micronesia (Pacicephalus gen. nov., type species: Cybocephalus gressitti Endrody-Younga, 1971). A key to all recent and fossil genera of the subfamily is provided. Theticephalus Kirejtshuk, 1988 is regarded as a separate genus (stat. nov.). The genera with species having partly or completely reduced hindwings (Apastillus gen. nov., Hierronius Endrody-Younga, 1968, Pastillodes Endrody-Younga, 1968, Pastillus Endrody-Younga, 1962, and probably the fossil Pastillocenicus Kirejtshuk et Nel, 2008), characterized by a short metaventrite, are considered as independent lineages. The systematics and phylogeny of the family are discussed in regards to recent publications affecting the position of the subfamily Cybocephalinae and proposing changes in the general system of the family Nitidulidae.

From the very beginning, Nordic Journal of Botany has aimed at being a broad and truly international journal. Our scientific scope is broad, essentially covering all aspects of plant and fungal biodiversity research, including ecology, biogeography, conservation, evolution and taxonomy/systematics, and all related disciplines that provide results that will improve our understanding of ecology, conservation, biogeography, evolution and taxonomy (e.g. ecophysiology, anatomy and cytology). However, there always need to be some limits, and therefore we do not accept manuscripts that are focused on economic botany, cultivated plants, forestry or plant breeding, and studies focused on physiology, anatomy or cytology need to be presented in an ecological, evolutionary or systematic context to be considered for publication. The reasons why we want to keep our scope as broad as possible are that we want as many authors as possible in the field of botany, mycology and ecology to feel welcome to submit their manuscripts to us, without having to think about the possible restrictions set by our scope, and that as many readers as possible should find at least something interesting and relevant in our published content. To make this even more clear for authors and readers, we have this year explicitly introduced a number of different manuscript categories, and we have implemented routines for treating these separately when justified. Thus, apart from regular research papers, authors can now choose to submit manuscripts also in the categories ‘Short standard papers’ (which may be e.g. pilot studies with promising but inconclusive results), ‘Check lists’, ‘Methods’, ‘Reviews’ and ‘Initiatives’ (e.g. descriptions of new multinational research projects or calls for help/collaboration in such projects). Even though taxonomic botany tends to dominate our content, we are proud that we have so far been successful in covering most branches of our discipline, and we want to continue on that route. Thus, in our most recent volumes you can read about e.g. seed micromorphology (Koksheeva et al. 2015, Patil et al. 2015, Salimi Moghadam et al. 2015), wood and stem anatomy (Jangid and Gupta 2015, Novikoff and Mitka 2015), karyology (Hong et al. 2016) and flower ontogeny (Naghiloo et al. 2015), as well as the relative conservation benefits of different management practices (Tälle et al. 2015), interactions between the flora and wild boar (Brunet et al. 2016), ecophysiology of African Cyperus (Ayeni et al. 2015) and allelopathy in Empetrum (González et al. 2015), in addition to many contributions to plant systematics and taxonomy. As for these latter, we have published descriptions of new plant species from almost all parts of the world, e.g. China (among many others Liu et al. 2016, Wang et al. 2016, Zhou et al. 2016), India (among many others Chorghe et al. 2015, Gogoi and Borah 2015), Thailand (Kidyoo 2015) and Vietnam (Averyanov et al. 2016) in Asia, Ukraine and Spain in Europe (Chkalov 2015, Blanca et al. 2016), Tanzania, South Africa and Madagascar in Africa (Cupido 2015, Stone 2015, Byng 2016), Brazil (Wilmot-Dear et al. 2015, Freitas et al. 2016) and Guatemala (Archila et al. 2015) in South America, and Mexico in North America (González-Gallegos and Castro-Castro 2016, Vázquez-García et al. 2016). Likewise, our taxonomic contributions cover all major vascular plant groups from orchids (Hall et al. 2015, Sanguinetti 2015, Szlachetko and Kolanowska 2015, Kumar et al. 2016) and bamboos (Nguyen and Tran 2016) to Asteraceae (Øllgaard 2015, Attar et al. 2016, Negaresh and Rahiminejad 2016, Nilsson and Tyler 2016). Mycology and lichenology also has a natural position in our content, with important recent contributions such as those by Ekman (2015), Jüriado et al. (2015, 2016), Hestmark (2016), Liu and He (2016) and Spirin et al. (2016). Algaeology has been represented by contributions about chrysophytes (Němcová 2014, Wei et al. 2014), and bryology by a description of a new species of Didymodon (Kou et al. 2016). However, being broad also have some disadvantages that we are well aware of and which we try to counteract. There is a risk that contributions dealing with subjects that are less often included in our contents go unnoticed by researchers in the relevant fields if they are not used to search in our journal. To reduce this risk, our editors are very active in social media and try to advertise our content wherever possible, and this is something that should be advantageous for all our authors and readers, and which is likely to become even more important in the future. Thus, all contributions published by us are presented and highlighted on both Facebook and Twitter by the editors, and all contributions believed to be of special relevance for readers in China are presented in Mandarin on Weibo by our special Weibo editor. We will also soon begin to highlight particular contributions as ‘Editor's choice’. This ensures that all papers published by us are immediately seen by at least a few hundreds, and sometimes several thousands, botanists around the globe. Just as an example, the study by Andersen et al. (2016) on hybrid dogroses in Norway was in just a few weeks after publication viewed by more than 2500 followers on Facebook alone. Another problem of being broad is related to the use of bibliometric indices. It is well known that publication traditions and citation activity varies among scientific fields and this has of course consequences for the calculation of Journal Impact Factors (IF) for journals with different scopes. Thus, while the current IF of Nordic Journal of Botany is above average for journals with a plant taxonomic/systematic scope, as well as for journals focused on cryptogamic botany or mycology, an IF of about 1 may not be seen as competitive if compared to journals in fields like ecology, molecular phylogenetics or global change. Still, we have recently published important contributions in these latter fields, e.g. Li et al. (2015) and Yousefi et al. (2016) on molecular phylogeny, Moradi et al. (2016) on spatial plant ecology, Torres-García et al. (2015) on the evolutionary consequences of herbicide resistant plants, Paiva Farias et al. (2015) on tropical phenology and Tang et al. (2015) on molecular evolution in hybrids. We also know that many authors have found that the advantages of publishing with Nordic Journal of Botany, including a relatively fast review processes, rigorous editorial processing and editing of accepted manuscripts, advertising on social media, and Nordic Journal of Botany being society-owned and run on a non-profit basis, well compensate for the relatively low IF. Since the uncritical use of IF for ranking and evaluating scientists and institutions, in particular when it comes to comparisons between different scientific disciplines, has been much debated in recent years we also try to actively promote and present alternative measures of scientific quality and impact, such as the Altmetric score which is presented for all articles on our online platform. We also like to see our recent association with Publons as an initiative in this same direction, as Publons provide reviewers with a tool for tracking and getting credit for their work. Otherwise, the most important service provided by external peer reviewers, although extremely highly appreciated by the editors of all scientific journals, tend to go unnoticed since we for obvious reasons may not reveal the names of our anonymous reviewers. A somewhat related problem concerns the completeness of submitted manuscripts. Many authors and institutions nowadays appear to view the number of publications as more important than their quality and long-term usability for other scientists. ‘Salami publishing’, i.e. the habit of splitting the results of major research projects into numerous short manuscripts, is negative in many different ways for both journals and readers. For journals, their editors and reviewers, more work and resources than actually needed has to be put on handling an exaggerated quantity of submitted manuscripts. In particular, we should all strive to utilize the unpaid work done by external reviewers as well as possible. For readers and future generations of scientists, the result will be that to get the complete picture they will have to find, obtain and consult even more separate publications than today. Being a taxonomist myself, I very well know how much effort it may take to find and obtain e.g. all publications containing original descriptions of new species in a particular genus, and I will therefor try to contribute as much as I can to spare future generations of scientists that work. In addition, reading multiple closely similar publications in search for some new details may also be considered a waste of time and effort, and at the same time as it may appear necessary to repeat introductory background information in publications on closely related subjects, republishing closely similar sections in different publications is actually prohibited by international copyright regulations. Therefore, I strongly urge all authors to as far as possible combine their results into more complete and thorough contributions that will have a far greater value for both journals and future scientists. Although Nordic Journal of Botany will continue to publish short papers containing e.g. descriptions of single new species, we want to encourage authors to submit more complete revisions of e.g. a group of related taxa, and we will not accept contributions that obviously could have been better published in a broader context. As excellent examples of thorough contributions that beyond doubt will keep their value as baselines for future research for many decades I want to highlight e.g. Piirainen (2015) on Salicornia in northwest Europe, El Mokni et al. (2015) on Delphinium elatum s.l. in North Africa, and Fayed et al. (2015) on Teucrium in Egypt. We are also proud of being a truly international journal. Actually, both our submissions and our published content today fairly well reflect the distribution of the human population on earth, with large countries like China, India and Brazil contributing most to our published content. Still, over the last few years we have published papers with first authors from over 50 countries on all continents, including contributions from relatively small countries like Latvia (Auniņa and Auniņš 2015), Uzbekistan (Tojibaev and Beshko 2015) and Panama (Valdespino 2016). We want to see these figures as a final proof that we have no geographic or political biases and that publishing in Nordic Journal of Botany is an efficient way to reach a global audience. During the last years we have also actively worked on increasing our editorial team, both in terms of scientific competence and geographic coverage, and we now have Subject Editors on four continents. Being this international also implies that we have the responsibility to make sure that our published content is of international interest. Therefore, when we find that research is only relevant in a national or regional context we regularly have to reject submitted manuscripts and refer their authors to more regionally focused journals. However, since such decisions can usually be taken directly by the Editor-in-Chief, they are generally communicated within 1–3 working days such that authors do not need to lose any significant amount of time by letting us evaluate their manuscripts before seeking other outlets. Another implication of being truly international is that we have to accept that communication with authors not always runs smoothly, and even so in cases when it may slow down the publication process. Still today, not all scientists on earth have guaranteed access to fast electronic communication. Linguistic and cultural differences may also pose problems, although these can usually be avoided if acknowledged and respected by all parts involved. Manuscripts to be handled by Nordic Journal of Botany have to be written in English and fully understandable in all details, but all accepted manuscripts are edited linguistically by our editors to ensure readability and clarity. However, we cannot expect all authors worldwide to write as native English speakers and, even though responsibility for every word in the manuscripts will always stay with the author, offering some basic linguistic help is seen by us as a means to ensure that our decisions concerning what should be published is based solely on scientific merit and not subjected to any geographic or cultural biases. Likewise, our special editor for botanical nomenclature and Botanical Latin edit all manuscripts to ensure that all nomenclatural actions published by us conform to the International Code of Nomenclature. It is unavoidable that this editorial editing process takes some time and our authors therefore sometimes have to wait a little longer for the final publication of their accepted manuscripts, but we are convinced that it is worth to wait for. To conclude, although we are aware of the disadvantages of being broad, Nordic Journal of Botany wants to stay broad and become even broader. We feel confident that our authors and readers will acknowledge our continuous efforts to counteract and overcome the disadvantages, and agree that the value of publishing in a society-owned journal with rigorous editing services and dedicated to spreading botanical science worldwide, across all political, cultural and linguistic borders, as well as in all modern media, is unsurpassable.

Reprint of ‘Eighty years of chitinozoan research: From Alfred Eisenack to Florentin Paris’

Several scorpions of the genus Vaejovis in Arizona are restricted in range to mountain-top forests. These scorpions, informally referred to as the “vorhiesi complex” are very similar morphologically, but their geographic distribution has attracted the attention of several researchers, resulting in the description of a few new species in recent years. However, these species were described from small sample sizes and were diagnosed with questionable characters that were not sufficiently analyzed. This study evaluates the morphology of scorpions of the “vorhiesi complex” from seven regions in Arizona to verify the validity of the species and their accompanying diagnoses. Morphological characters examined include morphometrics, hemispermatophores, size and shape of subaculear tubercles of the telson vesicle, pectinal tooth counts, pedipalp chela denticle counts, metasomal setal counts, development of metasomal carinae, and tarsal spinule counts. New diagnoses are given for previously described specie...

Two rare genera of Pteromalidae viz., Neapterolelaps Girault and Thaumasura Westwood are reported for the first time from the Oriental Region. Distribution of both the genera is currently confined to Australasian Region with majority of species reported from the Australian continent and surrounding island groups in the Indo-Australian region. Here we report the range extension of both the genera in the Oriental region with the description and illustrations of new species Neapterolelaps paraeneiceps Sureshan and Binoy sp. nov. and Thaumasura indica Sureshan and Binoy sp. nov. from Southern Western Ghats, India. Affinities of the new species with closely related conspecifics are discussed and a partial key of Neapterolelaps is provided. http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:5BDBD180-3ADE-4E03-B56E-CC4A92928EEF http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:2BAC50DB-04DB-466E-B479-66C843D45F58

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The International Committee of Systematic Bacteriology Subcommittee on the taxonomy of Campylobacter and related bacteria has agreed in principle on minimum requirements for the description of new species of the genus Helicobacter. These requirements include the recommendation that the description of a putative new species or subspecies be based on examination of at least five strains in order to provide a measure of phenotypic and genotypic variation. Recommendations for required phenotypic and molecular data are presented. The requirements are consistent with the polyphasic approach to bacterial systematics.

A revision of pipistrelle-like bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) in East Africa with the description of new genera and species

The genus Dickeya includes plant pathogenic bacteria attacking a wide range of crops and ornamentals as well as a few environmental isolates from water. Defined on the basis of six species in 2005, this genus now includes 12 recognized species. Despite the description of several new species in recent years, the diversity of the genus Dickeya is not yet fully explored. Many strains have been analyzed for species causing diseases on economically important crops, such as for the potato pathogens D. dianthicola and D. solani. In contrast, only a few strains have been characterized for species of environmental origin or isolated from plants in understudied countries. To gain insights in the Dickeya diversity, recent extensive analyzes were performed on environmental isolates and poorly characterized strains from old collections. Phylogenetic and phenotypic analyzes led to the reclassification of D. paradisiaca (containing strains from tropical or subtropical regions) in the new genus, Musicola, the identification of three water species D. aquatica, D. lacustris and D. undicola, the description of a new species D. poaceaphila including Australian strains isolated from grasses, and the characterization of the new species D. oryzae and D. parazeae, resulting from the subdivision of the species D. zeae. Traits distinguishing each new species were identified from genomic and phenotypic comparisons. The high heterogeneity observed in some species, notably for D. zeae, indicates that additional species still need to be defined. The objective of this study was to clarify the present taxonomy of the genus Dickeya and to reassign the correct species to several Dickeya strains isolated before the current classification.

A molecular phylogeny of Planaltina, including the three previously described species and an undescribed species, is presented. The monophyly of the genus, included in Diapomini, is strongly supported. Its sister group, the remaining Diapomini, includes only species without modified caudal-fin squamation in the present analysis (species of Diapoma with caudal organs were not sampled). Creagrutus is sister to Planaltina plus remaining Diapomini instead of Planaltina being sister to Creagrutus plus Diapomini, as a previous analysis had suggested. Species of Planaltina form two clades: P. britskii plus the new species, with low support (< 50%); and P. myersi plus P. glandipedis, with higher support. Planaltina is rediagnosed from all Characidae based on the morphology of the caudal organ, the absence of a humeral spot and the presence of a complete lateral line. Comments on the caudal-fin squamation of Diapoma and Lepidocharax burnsi, on the type-series of L. burnsi and on the geographic distribution of Planaltina and Lepidocharax species are provided. Finally, a formal description of the aforementioned new species and a novel identification key to Planaltina are presented.

Eighty years of chitinozoan research: From Alfred Eisenack to Florentin Paris

This paper is one of a proposed series of papers in which the writer plans to present new data on the fungus flora of Louisiana. The description of new species as well as the report of new host records and noteworthy information on distribution of the fungi will be included. Both saprophytic and parasitic species will be considered. The present paper includes a description of several new genera and species of parasitic fungi found in Louisiana, in addition to new distributional and host records for several other species.