Catarina pupfishNo bells tolled when the last Catarina pupfish on Earth died. Newspapers didn't carry the story when the Christmas Island pipistrelle vanished forever.Two vertebrate species go extinct every year on average, but few people notice, perhaps because the rate seems relatively slow - not a clear and present threat to the natural systems we depend on. This view overlooks trends of extreme decline in animal populations, which tell a more dire story with cascading…

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Simplified butterfly assessment scheme used in Viel-FalterOrdinary citizens have become increasingly important to scientific research over the past decade. Today, mobile phone technologies, relatively cheap cameras and almost ubiquitous internet connectivity have opened up new opportunities for conservation organisations to engage with ordinary citizens and encourage citizen science. A citizen scientist is a volunteer who collects and/or processes data as part of a scientific inquiry. This could mean noting the plants found on a day…

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This short week passed by quickly. Nevertheless, I was able to find some interesting weekend reads for you.Abrupt changes in the composition and function of fungal communities along an environmental gradient in the High ArcticFungi play a key role in soil-plant interactions, nutrient cycling, and carbon flow and are essential for the functioning of arctic terrestrial ecosystems. Some studies have shown that the composition of fungal communities is highly sensitive to variations in environmental conditions,…

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Why is tree biodiversity so large around the equator, moderate at mid-latitudes and monotonous at higher ones? As this is a global phenomenon most possible explanations involve long-term or large-scale mechanisms, such as climate stability (no glaciers in the tropics), rates of speciation (higher in the tropics) or rates of extinction (lower in the tropics according to the fossil record).In order to explain the high tree species biodiversity in tropical rainforests Daniel Janzen and Joseph Connell…

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A long weekend for Canadians lies ahead. Lots of parties around the country to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday. But the rest of the world has a regular weekend and all of you might want some good reads. Here we go:Using high-throughput sequencing of ITS2 to describe Symbiodinium metacommunities in St. John, US Virgin IslandsSymbiotic microalgae (Symbiodinium spp.) strongly influence the performance and stress-tolerance of their coral hosts, making the analysis of Symbiodinium communities in corals…

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Today a post on an interesting video series which is produced by the American Museum of Natural History. I have to admit I wasn't aware of it at all until a few days ago when the newest episode on cryptic species was shared with me:The web series Shelf Life highlights different aspects of the museums work and is certainly not the only one out there which is produced my the museum itself. The Smithsonian e.g.…

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Much of the published research in the life sciences is based on image data sets that sample 3D space, time and the spectral characteristics of detected signal to provide quantitative measures of cell, tissue and organismal processes and structures. The sheer size of biological image data sets makes data submission, handling and publication challenging. An image-based genome-wide 'high-content' screen (HCS) may contain more than 1 million images, and new 'virtual slide' and 'light sheet' tissue…

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New reading material for the weekend or for those of you that are blessed with some better weather perhaps for Monday morning back at work. Identifying Bird Remains Using Ancient DNA BarcodingBird remains that are difficult to identify taxonomically using morphological methods, are common in the palaeontological record. Other types of challenging avian material include artefacts and food items from endangered taxa, as well as remains from aircraft strikes. We here present a DNA-based method that…

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For the third year GBIF is running its Ebbe Nielsen Challenge. Developers and data scientists have three months to create and submit tools capable of liberating species records from open data repositories for scientific discovery and reuse. Here some more details:BackgroundThis year's Challenge will seek to leverage the growth of open data policies among scientific journals and research funders, which require researchers to make the data underlying their findings publicly available. Adoption of these policies represents an…

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Hot of the press - more reading material from the DNA barcoding community. Not as many as last week in which I had a lot of catch up to do. Nevertheless, very interesting reads.Molecular approaches for blood meal analysis and species identification of mosquitoes (Insecta: Diptera: Culicidae) in rural locations in southern England, United KingdomThirty-four species of Culicidae are present in the UK, of which 15 have been implicated as potential vectors of arthropod-borne viruses…

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