| 1. |
- Ericson, Per G P, 1956-, et al.
(författare)
-
Dating the diversification of the major lineages of Passeriformes (Aves)
- 2014
-
Ingår i: BMC Evolutionary Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1471-2148. ; 14:8, s. 1-15
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The avian Order Passeriformes is an enormously species-rich group, which comprises almost 60% ofall living bird species. This diverse order is believed to have originated before the break-up of Gondwana in the lateCretaceous. However, previous molecular dating studies have relied heavily on the geological split between NewZealand and Antarctica, assumed to have occurred 85–82 Mya, for calibrating the molecular clock and might thusbe circular in their argument.Results: This study provides a time-scale for the evolution of the major clades of passerines using seven nuclearmarkers, five taxonomically well-determined passerine fossils, and an updated interpretation of the New Zealandsplit from Antarctica 85–52 Mya in a Bayesian relaxed-clock approach. We also assess how different interpretationsof the New Zealand–Antarctica vicariance event influence our age estimates. Our results suggest that thediversification of Passeriformes began in the late Cretaceous or early Cenozoic. Removing the root calibration forthe New Zealand–Antarctica vicariance event (85–52 Mya) dramatically increases the 95% credibility intervals andleads to unrealistically old age estimates. We assess the individual characteristics of the seven nuclear genesanalyzed in our study. Our analyses provide estimates of divergence times for the major groups of passerines,which can be used as secondary calibration points in future molecular studies.Conclusions: Our analysis takes recent paleontological and geological findings into account and provides the bestestimate of the passerine evolutionary time-scale currently available. This time-scale provides a temporalframework for further biogeographical, ecological, and co-evolutionary studies of the largest bird radiation, andadds to the growing support for a Cretaceous origin of Passeriformes.
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
- Klopfstein, Seraina, 1980-, et al.
(författare)
-
An interactive key to the European genera of Campopleginae (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae) and 20 new species for Sweden
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Entomologisk Tidskrift. - Björnlunda, Sweden. - 0013-886X. ; 143, s. 121-156
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Darwin wasps of the subfamily Campopleginae are among the most poorly studied insect groups, which is to a large part due to inadequate identification tools. The currently 835 European species are classified into 42 genera, some of a somewhat unclear delimitation, and are very hard to identify using the incomplete, scattered and often poorly illustrated literature. We here assess different character systems for genus identification and provide an interactive, dynamic online key to the European genera. We apply this key to identify 3,500 specimens of the Swedish Malaise Trap Project to genus level. We then chose ten comparatively small genera for species-level identification, reporting a total of 37 species, 20 of which are new records for Sweden. The large number of species only found in a single trap location indicates that a lot remains to be discovered, even in an otherwise well-known fauna such as Sweden’s.
|
|
| 4. |
- Meier, Noah, 1996-, et al.
(författare)
-
Open access in a taxonomic sense: a morphological and molecular guide to Western Palaearctic Dusona (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae)
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Journal of Hymenoptera Research. - Sofia, Bulgaria : Pensoft Publishers. - 1070-9428 .- 1314-2607. ; 91, s. 83-183
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the present time of biodiversity crisis, assessing species diversity by accurate and accessible taxonomic revisions is more crucial than ever. Parasitoid wasps are considered as both one of the most diverse and under-studied groups in the tree of life. Dusona Cameron, 1901 (Ichneumonidae, Campopleginae) is with 442 species one of the most species - rich genera of Darwin wasps, but despite the existence of recent keys, species identification has proven difficult to impossible to non-specialists. In this study, we exam- ined about 1,500 Dusona specimens from recent and historical collections in Sweden and Switzerland. We provide a photographic guide to diagnostic characters and detailed plates for 57 out of 125 Western Palaearctic Dusona species, facilitating species identification based on existing keys. We add 11 and 3 species to the faunistic records of Sweden and Switzerland, respectively. Furthermore, we reconstruct the phylogeny of European Dusona based on four standard markers (COI, CAD, ITS2, 28S) for 45 species, complemented with a reliable reference barcode library for 46 species. Even though we can identify sev- eral morphologically distinct clades, we do not propose any new subgenera due to prevalent homoplasy of characters. While most species are well separated by barcodes, several morphologically distinct species have barely discriminatory barcode sequences (p-distances < 2%) or are even paraphyletic in this marker, indicating limitations in the applicability of barcodes for Darwin wasps. This study reveals severe gaps in the inventories of neglected taxa even for well-studied countries such as Sweden and Switzerland. As this study makes species determination for Western Palaearctic Dusona more accessible, we encourage more people, including non-specialists, to work with this genus.
|
|
| 5. |
- Ronquist, Fredrik, et al.
(författare)
-
Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: only 5,000 species left?
- 2020
-
Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 15:3
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we still have only a vague idea about the true size and composition of the faunas and floras of the planet. Many biodiversity inventories provide limited insight because they focus on a small taxonomic subsample or a tiny geographic area. Here, we report on the size and composition of the Swedish insect fauna, thought to represent roughly half of the diversity of multicellular life in one of the largest European countries. Our results are based on more than a decade of data from the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative and its massive inventory of the country’s insect fauna, the Swedish Malaise Trap Project The fauna is considered one of the best known in the world, but the initiative has nevertheless revealed a surprising amount of hidden diversity: more than 3,000 new species (301 new to science) have been documented so far. Here, we use three independent methods to analyze the true size and composition of the fauna at the family or subfamily level: (1) assessments by experts who have been working on the most poorly known groups in the fauna; (2) estimates based on the proportion of new species discovered in the Malaise trap inventory; and (3) extrapolations based on species abundance and incidence data from the inventory. For the last method, we develop a new estimator, the combined non-parametric estimator, which we show is less sensitive to poor coverage of the species pool than other popular estimators. The three methods converge on similar estimates of the size and composition of the fauna, suggesting that it comprises around 33,000 species. Of those, 8,600 (26%) were unknown at the start of the inventory and 5,000 (15%) still await discovery. We analyze the taxonomic and ecological composition of the estimated fauna, and show that most of the new species belong to Hymenoptera and Diptera groups that are decomposers or parasitoids. Thus, current knowledge of the Swedish insect fauna is strongly biased taxonomically and ecologically, and we show that similar but even stronger biases have distorted our understanding of the fauna in the past. We analyze latitudinal gradients in the size and composition of known European insect faunas and show that several of the patterns contradict the Swedish data, presumably due to similar knowledge biases. Addressing these biases is critical in understanding insect biomes and the ecosystem services they provide. Our results emphasize the need to broaden the taxonomic scope of current insect monitoring efforts, a task that is all the more urgent as recent studies indicate a possible worldwide decline in insect faunas.
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
