Open Access

We describe a new species of Dravidogecko from the poorly-inventoried Periyar Plateau of Southern Western Ghats, Peninsular India. The new species Dravidogecko beddomei sp. nov. is characterized by: precloacal-femoral pores 46‒52; scales across belly 31‒33; supralabials 9–11; infralabials 8–9; lamellae on digit IV of pes 10–11. Additionally, the new species is divergent (>13%) from its related congeners. Like its congeners, the new species is currently known only from its type locality and its vicinity – the Devar Malai, Kakki Reservoir – and Sivagiri Hills in the Periyar Plateau of Southern Western Ghats. This discovery further increases the list of new reptiles described from this under-studied massif in the Southern Western Ghats.

This contribution adds data to the conservation and distribution of Histeridae species (Coleoptera) in the Neotropical region through a survey of Brazil’s South region. More specifically, it provides: i) a list of local Histeridae species; ii) a list of species that are inside Conservation Units in southern Brazil; iii) biotic (biome, ecoregion and associations/affinities) and abiotic information (altitude and month of occurrence) for each species. In total, 66 genera and 164 histerid beetle species were recorded, distributed in seven subfamilies and 11 tribes. Among these, one genus and three species are new records for the region. Fifty percent of the species are known from a single geographic record. The Atlantic Forest is the richest biome in the South, in terms of number of species, and the Alto Paraná Atlantic forest is the richest ecoregion. Carcinops (s. str.) troglodytes (Paykull), Euspilotus (Hesperosaprinus) azureus (Sahlberg) and Omalodes (s. str.) angulatus (Fabricius) were recorded every month of the survey. Species’ richness was higher in October, December and January. Of the species recorded, 45 (27% of the total) are legally protected by Conservation Units in southern Brazil. Twenty-seven percent of the species recorded are associated with live animals. Collectively, the data presented here is a contribution to the taxonomic catalog of the Brazilian fauna. ZooBank registration. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:C98D50BA-2F29-4B1D-B396-16F20054E942

Between 2019 and 2021, samplings were carried out from seashores in Italy and Croatia, where specimens were found morphologically similar to the species of the Enchytraeus albidus complex. The taxon Enchytraeus albidus was recently divided into a number of separate species, and the new Italian and Croatian specimens of Enchytraeus proved to be three additional species, all new to science, based on the results of morphological and molecular studies. In this paper, we present the description of these new species, namely Enchytraeus adrianensis sp. nov., Enchytraeus andrasi sp. nov. and Enchytraeus andrasiformis sp. nov., and provide additional morphological data and new reference sequences for E. albidus s. str., E. krumbachi, E. irregularis and further unidentified specimens that belong to the E. albidus group collected formerly from Hungary, Korea, Svalbard and Kerguelen Islands.

Background: Ever decreasing costs along with advances in sequencing and library preparation technologies enable even small research groups to generate chromosome-level assemblies today. Here we report the generation of an improved chromosome-level assembly for the Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) that was carried out during a practical university Master’s course. The Siamese fighting fish is a popular aquarium fish and an emerging model species for research on aggressive behaviour. We updated the current genome assembly by generating a new long-read nanopore-based assembly with subsequent scaffolding to chromosome-level using previously published HiC data. Findings: The use of nanopore-based long-read data sequenced on a MinION platform (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) allowed us to generate a baseline assembly of only 1,276 contigs with a contig N50 of 2.1 Mbp, and a total length of 441 Mbp. Scaffolding using previously published HiC data resulted in 109 scaffolds with a scaffold N50 of 20.7 Mbp. More than 99% of the assembly is comprised in 21 scaffolds. The assembly showed the presence of 95.8% complete BUSCO genes from the Actinopterygii dataset indicating a high quality of the assembly. Conclusion: We present an improved full chromosome-level assembly of the Siamese fighting fish generated during a university Master’s course. The use of ~35× long-read nanopore data drastically improved the baseline assembly in terms of continuity. We show that relatively in-expensive high-throughput sequencing technologies such as the long-read MinION sequencing platform can be used in educational settings allowing the students to gain practical skills in modern genomics and generate high quality results that benefit downstream research projects.

Die Tiefsee macht mehr als zwei Drittel der Erdoberfläche aus und sie beherbergt wahrscheinlich mehr als die Hälfte aller Arten auf der Erde. Und doch ist über diesen riesigen Lebensraum bislang nur wenig bekannt. Die Zoologin Angelika Brandt untersucht die uns weitgehend fremde Tierwelt der dunklen Tiefe – und hat dabei herausgefunden, wie sehr diese durch den Klimawandel und durch die anderen globalen Auswirkungen menschlichen Handelns bedroht ist.