Ciencia habilitada por datos de especímenes

László, Z., C. Looney, H. Prázsmári, E. Poor, and J. D. Shorthouse. 2024. The cynipid gall wasp Diplolepis rosae is more successful in North America than in Europe because of enemy release. Insect Conservation and Diversity. https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12745

The Enemy Release Hypothesis predicts that introduced species in their new range are freed from natural enemies (e.g., pathogens, parasitoids and predators) that control their populations.Diplolepis rosae (Hymenoptera, Diplolepididae), native to the Western Palearctic, induces readily apparent galls on wild roses (Rosa spp.) that support a robust component community of inquilines, parasitoids and hyperparasitoids in its native range. D. rosae was introduced to North America in the mid‐1800s, and has since become widespread and common across the continent.We compared the insect communities associated with D. rosae galls from Canada and the US Pacific Northwest with those of Eastern Europe.Throughout its introduced range, parasitism rates were lower compared with galls in their natural range. Component communities were also less diverse and species‐rich. The relationship between gall size and parasitism rates showed no significant difference between the two continents.These results show that the component community in its introduced range is depauperate and provide support for the Enemy Release Hypothesis.

Cooper, N., A. L. Bond, J. L. Davis, R. Portela Miguez, L. Tomsett, and K. M. Helgen. 2019. Sex biases in bird and mammal natural history collections. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286: 20192025. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2025

Natural history specimens are widely used across ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation. Although biological sex may influence all of these areas, it is often overlooked in large-scale studies using museum specimens. If collections are biased towards one sex, studies may not be representativ…

Zigler, K., M. Niemiller, C. Stephen, B. Ayala, M. Milne, N. Gladstone, A. Engel, et al. 2020. Biodiversity from caves and other sub-terranean habitats of Georgia, USA. Journal of Cave and Karst Studies 82: 125–167. https://doi.org/10.4311/2019LSC0125

We provide an annotated checklist of species recorded from caves and other subterranean habitats in the state of Georgia, USA. We report 281 species (228 invertebrates and 53 vertebrates), including 51 troglobionts (cave-obligate species), from more than 150 sites (caves, springs, and wells). Endemi…