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Macrophyte life forms influence the effects of environmental and spatial factors on the beta-diversity of associated ostracod communities (Crustacea).
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Beta-diversity measures have been used to understand patterns of community distribution in natural ecosystems. Recent studies included different facets of beta-diversity analyses, e.g. trait- and phylogeny-based. Here, we used ostracod communities to evaluate the influence of environmental and spatial factors structuring different facets of beta-diversity and their components (Beta-total, replacement and richness-difference) of ostracod communities associated with different macrophyte life forms. We test the hypotheses (1) that the influence of environmental factors is higher for ostracod beta-diversity facets of communities associated with submerged plants compared to emergent and floating plants and (2) that the influence of spatial factors is higher in communities associated with rooted, compared to non-rooted plants. Ostracods were sampled from five life forms of macrophytes, including emergent, rooted floating, rooted submerged, free submerged and free floating in 25 floodplain lakes. Our results showed that the environmental factors turned out to be important for all beta-diversity facets of ostracod communities, mainly for those associated with submerged macrophytes, thus corroborating the first hypothesis. We also found that spatial factors’ influence on ostracod beta-diversity was not related to whether the plant is rooted or not, thus refuting our second hypothesis. We also found differences in factors structuring each of the beta-diversity facets, showing the importance to include these three approaches (species-, traits- and phylogeny-based) in ecological surveys. Finally, we highlight the importance of considering different macrophyte life forms in biodiversity surveys for the preservation and management of the diversity of these plants and their associated communities.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2021
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Water chemistry and not urbanization influences community structure of non-marine Ostracoda (Crustacea) in northern Belgium
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Urbanization is one of the major causes of the destruction of natural habitats in the world. Cities are urban heat islands and can thus significantly influence populations of plants and animals. The research project SPEEDY investigated the effects of urbanization in northern Belgium with a nested sampling design at local and landscape scales for a variety of organisms. Here, we tested the effects of urbanization on non-marine ostracod communities, sampling 81 small pools in three urbanization categories, as defined by percentage built up cover (low, intermediate, high). We identified 17 ostracod species, together occurring in 60 of the 81 sampled pools. We found that urbanization per se had no significant effect on ostracod communities. Of all the measured local factors, ammonium and total phosphorus concentrations had a significant effect on the community structure. In contrast, water temperature had no significant effect, most likely because the ostracod species found in northern Belgium in the present survey mostly have wide temperature tolerances.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2021
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Safeguarding Freshwater Life Beyond 2021: Recommendations for the new Global Biodiversity Framework from the European Experience.
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Plans are currently being drafted for the next decade of action on biodiversity—both the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union (EU). Freshwater biodiversity is disproportionately threatened and underprioritized relative to the marine and terrestrial biota, despite supporting a richness of species and ecosystems with their own intrinsic value and providing multiple essential ecosystem services. Future policies and strategies must have a greater focus on the unique ecology of freshwater life and its multiple threats, and now is a critical time to reflect on how this may be achieved. We identify priority topics including environmental flows, water quality, invasive species, integrated water resources management, strategic conservation planning, and emerging technologies for freshwater ecosystem monitoring. We synthesize these topics with decades of first-hand experience and recent literature into 14 special recommendations for global freshwater biodiversity conservation based on the successes and setbacks of European policy, management, and research. Applying and following these recommendations will inform and enhance the ability of global and European post-2020 biodiversity agreements to halt and reverse the rapid global decline of freshwater biodiversity.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2021
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Novel Cardinium strains from non-marine ostracod (Crustacea) hosts
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
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Kowieria alveoformis gen. nov. sp. nov., a new heterosporous lycophyte from the Latest Devonian of Southern Africa
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RBINS Staff Publications 2018
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Lilingostrobus chaloneri gen. et sp. nov., a Late Devonian woody lycopsid from Hunan, China
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RBINS Staff Publications 2018
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A global approach for natural history museum collections
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Integration of the world’s natural history collections can provide a resource for decision-makers Over the past three centuries, people have collected objects and specimens and placed them in natural history museums throughout the world. Taken as a whole, this global collection is the physical basis for our understanding of the natural world and our place in it, an unparalleled source of information that is directly relevant to issues as diverse as wildlife conservation, climate change, pandemic preparedness, food security, invasive species, rare minerals, and the bioeconomy (1). Strategic coordination and use of the global collection has the potential to focus future collecting and guide decisions that are relevant to the future of humanity and biodiversity. To begin to map the aggregate holdings of the global collection, we describe here a simple and fast method to assess the contents of any natural history museum, and report results based on our assessment of 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums and herbaria from 28 countries.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2023
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Cyprideis (Crustacea, Ostracoda) in Australia
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RBINS Staff Publications 2016
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A New Mammal Skull from the Late Cretaceous of Romania and Phylogenetic Affinities of Kogaionid Multituberculates
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Among the Late Cretaceous fossil sites of Europe, only those from the so-called “Haţeg Island” in Transylvania, western Romania, are remarkable by their abundance in mammal remains. Curiously, all of them belong to a single family of multituberculates, the Kogaionidae, one of the rare families that survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction in Europe. Kogaionids are mostly represented by isolated teeth except for three partial large skulls from the Maastrichtian Sânpetru Formation of the Haţeg Basin that have been described from the Sânpetru locality as Kogaionon ungureanui and from the Pui locality as Barbatodon transylvanicus and Litovoi tholocephalos. Here we report for the first time the discovery of a partial skull associated with p4 of a small-sized kogaionid from the Nălaţ-Vad locality in the Sânpetru Formation that we refer to Kogaionon radulescui, sp. nov. An updated phylogenetic analysis, including seven Maastrichtian and Paleocene kogaionids is performed and confirms that Kogaionidae is a monophyletic clade at the base of Cimolodonta. Kogaionon differs from Barbatodon in its narrower snout, proportionally smaller P1, narrower anterior part of P4 with four similar-sized cusps in the middle row, more squared or rounded M1 with an anteroposteriorly longer lingual row, and shorter p4 (at least for K. radulescui). Litovoi tholocephalos is here considered to be a junior synonym of B. transylvanicus. Despite their Maastrichtian age, the very simple and conservative dental morphology of these Romanian kogaionids suggests that they originated from an eobaatarid-like ancestor dispersing from Asia or possibly already existing in Europe between the Barremian and Albian, 40 to 55 Ma earlier.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2021
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A new partial skeleton of Kryptobaatar from the Upper Cretaceous of Bayan Mandahu (Inner Mongolia, China) relaunch the question about variability in djadochtatherioid multituberculate mammals
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A new well-preserved partial skeleton of the djadochtatheriid multituberculate Kryptobaatar is here described from the Campanian Bayan Mandahu Formation of the southern Gobi Basin in Inner Mongolia, China. We refer to it as Kryptobaatar sp. because it presents characters that are specific to Kryptobaatar dashzevegi and others specific to Kryptobaatar mandahuensis, as well as characters of its own. When those taxa are incorporated into a phylogenetic analysis of the Djadochtatherioidea, the Kryptobaatar species appear to be paraphyletic. This raises again questions about the high intraspecific variability in some multituberculates. Based on a comparison with the published specimens, we conclude that K. mandahuensis is a valid species, close to but distinct from K. dashzevegi. Our results also suggest that endemism alone in the Gobi Basin is not the cause of the high variability observed in the genus Kryptobaatar. But the impact of a possible difference in age or paleoenvironment between the different Kryptobaatar-bearing sites of the Gobi Desert is, for the moment, not possible to test in the current state of knowledge.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2022
