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Geisler, L., A. K. Hansen, J. J. Shaw, and A. Solodovnikov. 2024. Integrative taxonomy suggests species status for Philonthus sideropterus Kolenati, 1846 sp. propr., the former color form of Philonthus splendens (Fabricius, 1793) (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae). Integrative Systematics: Stuttgart Contributions to Natural History 7. https://doi.org/10.18476/2024.210366

Philonthus splendens sideropterus Kolenati, 1846 (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) was considered a Caucasian intraspecific form of the widespread West Palearctic Philonthus splendens (Fabricius, 1793) with an unclear diagnosis and volatile status. Mostly, it has been considered a variety of P. splendens or, recently, its subspecies, without firm justification. Using material from across the range of P. splendens and methods of integrative taxonomy, we conclude that Philonthus sideropterus, restricted to the forests of the Caucasus in the broad sense and northeastern Asia Minor, and Philonthus splendens, confined to a broad range of habitats in the Euro-Siberian forest belt, represent two allopatric sister species. Their clear divergence in the COI barcode (4.3%), distinct morphological difference in elytral coloration, lack of transitional forms, and allopatric distribution prompted us to raise Philonthus sideropterus sp. propr. to species level. The origin of both sister species from their common ancestor can possibly be explained by the paleoclimatic fluctuations that fragmented the initially or periodically more widespread forest biota into the Eurasian forest belt and the montane forests of the Caucasian region. A lectotype is designated for Philonthus splendens (Fabricius, 1793).

da Silva, C. R. B., and S. E. Diamond. 2024. Local climate change velocities and evolutionary history explain multidirectional range shifts in a North American butterfly assemblage. Journal of Animal Ecology 93: 1160–1171. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.14132

Species are often expected to shift their distributions either poleward or upslope to evade warming climates and colonise new suitable climatic niches. However, from 18‐years of fixed transect monitoring data on 88 species of butterfly in the midwestern United States, we show that butterflies are shifting their centroids in all directions, except towards regions that are warming the fastest (southeast).Butterflies shifted their centroids at a mean rate of 4.87 km year−1. The rate of centroid shift was significantly associated with local climate change velocity (temperature by precipitation interaction), but not with mean climate change velocity throughout the species' ranges.Species tended to shift their centroids at a faster rate towards regions that are warming at slower velocities but increasing in precipitation velocity.Surprisingly, species' thermal niche breadth (range of climates butterflies experience throughout their distribution) and wingspan (often used as metric for dispersal capability) were not correlated with the rate at which species shifted their ranges.We observed high phylogenetic signal in the direction species shifted their centroids. However, we found no phylogenetic signal in the rate species shifted their centroids, suggesting less conserved processes determine the rate of range shift than the direction species shift their ranges.This research shows important signatures of multidirectional range shifts (latitudinal and longitudinal) and uniquely shows that local climate change velocities are more important in driving range shifts than the mean climate change velocity throughout a species' entire range.

Mestre, F., A. L. Pereira, and M. B. Araújo. 2024. Climate correlates of bluetongue incidence in southern Portugal. Medical and Veterinary Entomology. https://doi.org/10.1111/mve.12738

Model forecasts of the spatiotemporal occurrence dynamics of diseases are necessary and can help understand and thus manage future disease outbreaks. In our study, we used ecological niche modelling to assess the impact of climate on the vector suitability for bluetongue disease, a disease affecting livestock production with important economic consequences. Specifically, we investigated the relationship between the occurrence of bluetongue outbreaks and the environmental suitability of each of the four vector species studied. We found that the main vector for bluetongue disease, Culicoides imicola, a typically tropical and subtropical species, was a strong predictor for disease outbreak occurrence in a region of southern Portugal from 2004 to 2021. The results highlight the importance of understanding the climatic factors that might influence vector presence to help manage infectious disease impacts. When diseases impact economically relevant species, the impacts go beyond mortality and have important economic consequences.

Li, Y., Y. Wang, and X. Liu. 2024. Half of global islands have reached critical area thresholds for undergoing rapid increases in biological invasions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.0844

Biological invasions are among the threats to global biodiversity and social sustainability, especially on islands. Identifying the threshold of area at which non-native species begin to increase abruptly is crucial for early prevention strategies. The small-island effect (SIE) was proposed to quantify the nonlinear relationship between native species richness and area but has not yet been applied to non-native species and thus to predict the key breakpoints at which established non-native species start to increase rapidly. Based on an extensive global dataset, including 769 species of non-native birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles established on 4277 islands across 54 archipelagos, we detected a high prevalence of SIEs across 66.7% of archipelagos. Approximately 50% of islands have reached the threshold area and thus may be undergoing a rapid increase in biological invasions. SIEs were more likely to occur in those archipelagos with more non-native species introduction events, more established historical non-native species, lower habitat diversity and larger archipelago area range. Our findings may have important implications not only for targeted surveillance of biological invasions on global islands but also for predicting the responses of both non-native and native species to ongoing habitat fragmentation under sustained land-use modification and climate change.

Moctezuma, V., V. Lizardo, I. Arias-Del Razo, and A. Ramírez-Ponce. 2024. Overcoming the Wallacean shortfall in sky-islands of central Mexico: the case of copro-necrophagous beetles and two national parks. Journal of Insect Conservation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-024-00598-9

Insects are the most diverse group of organisms, but their large number of species and the lack of specialists to study them have made this group particularly vulnerable to the main limitations in biological diversity, such as the Wallacean deficit. This study will contribute to the geographical knowledge of an insect trophic guild that has been widely used as an indicator group, the Scarabaeoidea and Silphidae copro-necrophagous beetles, emphasizing their geographical distribution in two Mexican national parks (Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatepetl and La Malinche) and the intermediate region, which includes sky-island ecosystems in central Mexico. Geographic records of the 32 species that have been previously recorded in the study region were compiled and used to generate potential distribution models aiming to generate potential alpha (species richness) and beta (total beta diversity, nestedness and replacement) diversity maps. The greatest predicted species richness was found between 3,000 and 3,500 m a.s.l. in the study region. Potential species richness ranged from 2 to 24 species. Total beta diversity was low in the study region (mean 0.1), while nestedness was the most important component of beta diversity (0.8). The maximum alpha and beta diversity values were predicted outside the national parks. Consequently, we consider that the studied national parks are not able to protect completely the regional alpha and beta diversities by themselves. Implications for insect conservation: Our results show that the highest alfa and beta diversity values of copro-necrophagous beetles might occur outside the national parks, and a suitable way to protect them could be the Archipelago reserve model as an alternative to protect the regional diversity.

López‐Aguilar, T. P., J. Montalva, B. Vilela, M. P. Arbetman, M. A. Aizen, C. L. Morales, and D. de P. Silva. 2024. Niche analyses and the potential distribution of four invasive bumblebees worldwide. Ecology and Evolution 14. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.11200

The introduction of bees for agricultural production in distinct parts of the world and poor management have led to invasion processes that affect biodiversity, significantly impacting native species. Different Bombus species with invasive potential have been recorded spreading in different regions worldwide, generating ecological and economic losses. We applied environmental niche and potential distribution analyses to four species of the genus Bombus to evaluate the similarities and differences between their native and invaded ranges. We found that B. impatiens has an extended environmental niche, going from dry environmental conditions in the native range to warmer and wetter conditions in the invaded range. Bombus ruderatus also exhibited an extended environmental niche with drier and warmer conditions in the invaded range than in its native range. Bombus subterraneus expanded its environmental niche from cooler and wetter conditions in the native range to drier and warmer conditions in the invaded range. Finally, B. terrestris showed the most significant variation in the environmental niche, extending to areas with similar and different environmental conditions from its native range. The distribution models agreed with the known distributions for the four Bombus species, presenting geographic areas known to be occupied by each species in different regions worldwide. The niche analysis indicate shifts in the niches from the native to the invaded distribution area of the bee species. Still, niche similarities were observed in the areas of greatest suitability in the potential distribution for B. ruderatus, B. subterraneus, and B. terrestris, and to a lesser degree in the same areas with B. impatiens. These species require similar environmental conditions as in their native ranges to be established in their introduced ranges. Still, they can adapt to changes in temperature and humidity, allowing them to expand their ranges into new climatic conditions.

Krivosheeva, V., A. Solodovnikov, A. Shulepov, D. Semerikova, A. Ivanova, and M. Salnitska. 2023. Assessment of the DNA barcode libraries for the study of the poorly-known rove beetle (Staphylinidae) fauna of West Siberia. Biodiversity Data Journal 11. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.11.e115477

Staphylinidae, or rove beetles, are one of the mega-diverse and abundant families of the ground-living terrestrial arthropods that is taxonomically poorly known even in the regions adjacent to Europe where the fauna has been investigated for the longest time. Since DNA barcoding is a tool to accelerate biodiversity research, here we explored if the currently-available COI barcode libraries are representative enough for the study of rove beetles of West Siberia. This is a vast region adjacent to Europe with poorly-known fauna of rove beetles and from where not a single DNA barcode has hitherto been produced for Staphylinidae. First, we investigated the faunal similarity between the rove beetle faunas of the climatically compatible West Siberia in Asia, Fennoscandia in Europe and Canada and Alaska in North America. Second, we investigated barcodes available for Staphylinidae from the latter two regions in BOLD and GenBank, the world's largest DNA barcode libraries. We conclude that the rather different rove beetle faunas of Fennoscandia, on the one hand and Canada and Alaska on the other hand, are well covered in both barcode libraries that complement each other. We also find that even without any barcodes originating from specimens collected in West Siberia, this coverage is helpful for the study of rove beetles there due to the significant number of widespread species shared between West Siberia and Fennoscandia and due to the even larger number of shared genera amongst all three investigated regions. For the first time, we compiled a literature-based checklist for 726 species of the West Siberian Staphylinidae supplemented by their occurrence dataset submitted to GBIF. Our script written for mining unique (i.e. not redundant) barcodes for a given geographic area across global libraries is made available here and can be adopted for any other regions.

Kebaïli, C., S. Sherpa, M. Guéguen, J. Renaud, D. Rioux, and L. Després. 2023. Comparative genetic and demographic responses to climate change in three peatland butterflies in the Jura massif. Biological Conservation 287: 110332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110332

Climate is a main driver of species distributions, but all species are not equally affected by climate change, and their differential responses to similar climatic constraints might dramatically affect the local species composition. In the context of climate warming, a better knowledge of the ability of dispersal-limited and habitat-specialist species to track climate change at local scale is urgently needed. Comparing the population genetic and demographic impacts of past climate cycles in multiple co-distributed species with similar ecological requirements help predicting the community-scale response to climate warming, but such comparative studies remain rare. Here, we studied the relationship between demographic history and past changes in spatial distribution of three protected peatland butterfly species (Boloria aquilonaris, Coenonympha tullia, Lycaena helle) in the Jura massif (France), using a genomic approach (ddRAD sequencing) and species distribution modeling (SDM). We found a similar and narrow thermal niche among species, and shared demographic histories of post-glacial decline and recent fragmentation of populations. Each species functions as a single metapopulation at the regional scale, with a North-South gradient of decreasing genetic diversity that fits the local dynamics of the ice cover over time. However, we found no correlation between changes in the quantity or the quality of suitable areas and changes in effective population size over time. This suggests that species ranges moved beyond the Jura massif during the less favorable climatic periods, and/or that habitat loss and deterioration are major drivers of the current dramatic decline observed in the three species. Our findings allow better understanding how history events and contemporary dynamics shape local biodiversity, providing valuable knowledge to identify appropriate conservation strategies.

Westerduin, C., M. Suokas, T. Petäjä, U. Saarela, S. Vainio, and M. Mutanen. 2023. Exploring and validating observations of non‐local species in eDNA samples. Ecology and Evolution 13. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10612

AbstractThe development of DNA‐based methods in recent decades has opened the door to numerous new lines of research in the biological sciences. While the speed and accuracy of DNA methodologies are clearly beneficial, the sensitivity of these methods has the adverse effect of increased susceptibility to false positives resulting from contamination in field or lab. Here, we present findings from a metabarcoding study on the diet of and food availability for five insectivorous birds, in which multiple lepidopteran species not known to occur locally were discovered. After describing the pattern of occurrences of these non‐local species in the samples, we discuss various potential origins of these sequences. First, we assessed that the taxonomic assignments appeared reliable, and local occurrences of many of the species could be plausibly ruled out. Then, we looked into the possibilities of natural environmental contamination, judging it to be unlikely, albeit impossible to fully falsify. Finally, while dissimilar combinations of non‐local species' occurrences across the samples did not initially suggest lab contamination, we found overlap with taxa and sequences handled in the same lab, which was undoubtedly not coincidental. Even so, not all exact sequences were accounted for in these locally conducted studies, nor was it clear if these and other sequences could remain detectable years later. Although the full explanation for the observations of non‐local species remains inconclusive, these findings highlight the importance of critical examination of metabarcoding results, and showcase how species‐level taxonomic assignments utilizing comprehensive reference libraries may be a tool in detecting potential contamination events, and false positives in general.

Lopes, D., E. de Andrade, A. Egartner, F. Beitia, M. Rot, C. Chireceanu, V. Balmés, et al. 2023. FRUITFLYRISKMANAGE: A Euphresco project for Ceratitis capitata Wiedemann (Diptera: Tephritidae) risk management applied in some European countries. EPPO Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1111/epp.12922

Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann), the Mediterranean fruit fly or medfly, is one of the world's most serious threats to fresh fruits. It is highly polyphagous (recorded from over 300 hosts) and capable of adapting to a wide range of climates. This pest has spread to the EPPO region and is mainly present in the southern part, damaging Citrus and Prunus. In Northern and Central Europe records refer to interceptions or short‐lived adventive populations only. Sustainable programs for surveillance, spread assessment using models and control strategies for pests such as C. capitata represent a major plant health challenge for all countries in Europe. This article includes a review of pest distribution and monitoring techniques in 11 countries of the EPPO region. This work compiles information that was crucial for a better understanding of pest occurrence and contributes to identifying areas susceptible to potential invasion and establishment. The key outputs and results obtained in the Euphresco project included knowledge transfer about early detection tools and methods used in different countries for pest monitoring. A MaxEnt software model resulted in risk maps for C. capitata in different climatic regions. This is an important tool to help decision making and to develop actions against this pest in the different partner countries.