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An ichthyological borderland: The fishfauna of Nyungwe National Park and surroundings (Rwanda, East Africa)
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Nyungwe National Park (NP) is a mountainous region situated in the southwestern part of Rwanda on Congo-Nile watershed. In spite of the high biodiversity in pri- mates, birds and plants, no fish were reported to occur in the park, probably because of the cold temperatures of the rivers. An expedition in 2022 examined the fish diver- sity within the Nyungwe NP and its buffer zones. Additional sampling was performed in the main river draining the park into Lake Kivu: the Kamiranzovu. Three hundred and twenty specimens belonging to 13 species were collected. Specimens were col- lected only in the western part of the park, draining towards the Congo basin. The diversity within the park proper was limited to two putative species within the com- plex of Amphilius cf. kivuensis, which were caught on either side of the Kivu–Rusizi watershed. In contrast, a higher fish diversity, including one clariid species and two species of Enteromius, was observed in the rivers at a lower altitude of the buffer zone. However, the highest species diversity was found near the mouth of Kamiran- zovu River, including 11 species, of which 4 were non-native: the guppy Poecilia reti- culata, Astatotilapia burtoni, the blue-spotted tilapia Oreochromis leucosticus and the Egyptian mouth-brooder Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2025
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ANNiKEY Linear – diagnoses, descriptions, and a single-access identification key to Annelida family-level taxa
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Phylum Annelida are ubiquitous metazoans found in almost every terrestrial and aquatic habitat on Earth. Historically, taxonomic studies on the phylum have been focused largely on its majorgroups, polychaetes, oligochaetes and leeches, so that while family-level keys for each group are available, no single-source identification guide exists to the world’s annelid families. Here, the first illustrated linear key to annelid families is provided and family-level descriptions and diagnoses that distinguish individuals of each family from those of other families in the phylum are updated. This information is generated from an annelid DELTA database of 334 characters and 166 mostly family-level taxa. A link is provided to downloadable software (ANNiKEY Interactive) allowing the same data to be interrogated using the open-source DELTA program Intkey, which enables both interactive identification and taxonomic query functionality. For each family-level taxon, a diagnosis, full description, links to taxonomic data at the World Register of Marine Species, illustrations of diagnostic features, and a summary of the recent literature, including a list of published keys to genera and species are provided.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2025
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The bats of the Congo and of Rwanda and Burundi Revisited (Mammalia: Chiroptera)
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RBINS Staff Publications 2017
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The complete phylogeny of extant pangolins: scaling up the molecular tracing of the most trafficked mammals on earth
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RBINS Staff Publications 2017
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Genetic turnovers and northern survival during the last glacial maximum in European brown bears
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RBINS Staff Publications 2018
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Consequences of past climate change and recent human persecution on mitogenomic diversity in the arctic fox
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
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Ancient DNA suggests modern wolves trace their origin to a Late Pleistocene expansion from Beringia
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
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Penaeus aztecus Ives, 1891 (Crustacea, Decapoda), in the Scheldt estuary (Belgium): Isolated record or forerunner of a penaeid invasion?
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A single specimen of the penaeid prawn Penaeus aztecus (Ives, 1891) was recorded in 2018 in the brackish zone of the Scheldt estuary near Antwerp (Belgium). The presence of this species, native to the West Atlantic, might result either from ships' ballast water coming from transatlantic boat shipping, from illegal import or from a considerable expansion leap northwards from the Mediterranean Sea, where this species has recently established and now has rapidly expanding invasive populations.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2020
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An integrated high-resolution bathymetric model for the Danube Delta system
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Acting as a buffer between the Danube and the Black Sea, the Danube Delta plays an important role in regulating the hydro-biochemical flows of this land-sea continuum. Despite its importance, very few studies have focused on the impact of the Danube Delta on the different fluxes between the Danube and the Black Sea. One of the first step to characterize this land-sea continuum is to describe the bathymetry of the Delta. However, there is no complete, easily accessible bathymetric data on all three branches of the Delta to support hydrodynamic, biogeochemical or ecological studies. In this study, we aim to fill this gap by combining 4 different datasets, three in the river and one for the riverbanks, each varying in density and spatial distribution, to create a high-resolution bathymetry dataset. The bathymetric data was interpolated on a hybrid curvilinear-unstructured mesh with an anisotropic Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation method. The resulting product offers resolutions ranging from 2 m in a connection zone to 100 m in one of the straight unidirectional channel. Cross validation of the dataset underlined the importance of the data source spatial pattern, with average Root Mean Square Error (RRMSE) of 0.55 %, 6.3 % and 27.6%, for river segments covered by the densest to the coarsest dataset. These error rates are comparable to those observed in bathymetry interpolation in rivers with similar source datasets. The bathymetry presented in this study is the first unique, high-resolution, comprehensive and easily accessible bathymetric model covering all three branches of the Danube Delta. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14055741.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2025
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New early Eocene vertebrate assemblage from western India reveals a mixed fauna of European and Gondwana affinities
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Abstract The Ypresian Cambay Shale Formation at Vastan and Mangrol lignite mines in Gujarat, western India, has yielded a rich vertebrate fauna with numerous taxa of European affinities. Here we report a new, approximately contemporary vertebrate assemblage from two fossiliferous layers in the nearby mine of Tadkeshwar. These layers have yielded a similar mammal fauna with the co-occurrence of the perissodactyl-like cambaytheriid Cambaytherium thewissi, the adapoid primates Marcgodinotius indicus and cf. Asiadapis cambayensis, and the hyaenodontid Indohyaenodon raoi. The presence of these species in both Vastan and Tadkeshwar mines and at different levels suggests that the deposits between the two major lignite seams represent a single land mammal age. Apart from the aforementioned species there is a new, smaller species of Cambaytherium, and a new genus and species of esthonychid tillodont. This fauna also contains the first large early Eocene vertebrates from India, including an unidentified Coryphodon-like pantodont, a dyrosaurid crocodyliform and a new giant madtsoiid snake. Among the Tadkeshwar vertebrates several taxa are of Gondwana affinities, such as Pelomedusoides turtles, dyrosaurids, and large madtsoiids, attesting that the early Eocene was a crucial period in India during which Laurasian taxa of European affinities co-existed with relict taxa from Gondwana before the India-Asia collision. Our results suggest that terrestrial faunas could have dispersed to or from Europe during episodes of contact between the Indian subcontinent and different island blocks along the northern margin of the Neotethys, such as the Kohistan–Ladakh island-arc system. Gondwana taxa might represent remnants of ghost lineages shared with Madagascar, which reached the Indian subcontinent during the late Cretaceous; alternatively they might have come from North Africa and passed along the southern margin of the Neotethys to reach the Indian subcontinent. These dispersals would have been possible as a result of favourable paleogeographic conditions such as the particular Neotethys conformation during the beginning of the early Eocene.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2016