Zoodiversity

Description of the Male Caste of Leptogenys borneensis (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), with Its First Discovery in Sumatra

R. Satria, F. A. D. Nugraha, A. Achyar, D. Zulyetti, K. Eguchi — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 13:55:33 +0000

Males of Leptogenys (Lobopelta) borneensis Wheeler, 1919 are described, including their genital morphology, which is important for diagnostics and morphological phylogeny of the genus Leptogenys Roger, 1861. The mtDNA COI barcoding sequence of 607 bp obtained and uploaded to GenBank and BOLD. The species was previously known from Borneo (Malaysia: Sarawak — type locality), Thailand and Vietnam and is recorded for the first time from Sumatra (Indonesia)

The Breeding Population of the Rook, Corvus frugilegus (Aves, Corvidae) in Kharkiv, Ukraine: Nearly 22-times Decline in Numbers Over an 80-year Period

O. O. Brezghunova , O. I. Sinna — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:54:40 +0000

Based on regular surveys of the distribution of rookeries and the number of nesting birds of Corvus frugilegus Linnaeus, 1758 carried out in 2002–2020 using the TRIM (TRends & Indices for Monitoring data), the trajectory of change in the rook population has been estimated. The total size of the breeding population of rooks in Kharkiv City has decreased by 95.4 % over the last 80 years, from 940 to 43 breeding pairs. The general trend for 1939–2020 is a moderate decline (multiplicative slope 0.980, standard error 0.004; p < 0.01). A similar trend was observed for 2002–2020 when surveys were regular, i. e. a moderate decline (multiplicative slope 0.920, standard error 0.021; p < 0.01). Rooks still use the centre of the city for nesting, as they did in the early 1940s, but from the 1980s they began to breed in the eastern part of Kharkiv, where most of the population is now concentrated. Rooks breed in two clustered colonies, one in the central and one in the eastern part of Kharkiv City, about 13 km apart. The colonies are not numerous (all less than 50 pairs) in the last 10 years. The possible causes of the decline of the rook population in Kharkiv City are discussed.

Two New Species of Euscorpius (Scorpiones, Euscorpiidae) from Bulgaria and Greece

G. Tropea, V. Fet, A. Parmakelis, I. Stathi — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 08:19:51 +0000

Two scorpion species, Euscorpius petarberoni sp. n. (Bulgaria) and E. trichasi sp. n. (Greece), are described based on morphological and molecular evidence; E. petarberoni sp. n. is related to E. popovi Tropea et al., 2015, E. drenskii Tropea et al., 2015, and E. thracicus Kovařík et al., 2020, while E. trichasi sp. n. is related to E. kabateki Kovařík & Šťáhlavský, 2020.

Comparison of the Spreading History of Two Introduced Cepaea Species (Gastropoda, Helicidae) in Ukraine with Remarks on Their Phenotypic Variability

N. V. Gural-Sverlova, T. Rodych, R. Gural — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Trends of the current dispersal of Cepaea nemoralis and C. hortensis in Ukraine are analysed, which are closely related to the activities of several garden centres, which export a part of the sold seedlings of ornamental and garden plants from other European countries. Using Lviv and its environs as an example, we compared the qualitative and quantitative phenotypic composition of C. nemoralis at sites where both Cepaea species or only C. nemoralis were recently introduced. On average, the former were characterised by a greater phenotypic diversity of C. nemoralis, which may be due to a greater number of founding individuals of such colonies. At the sites of the second group, hereditary traits (brown ground colour, shell with three lower bands) or phenotypes (yellow unbanded), which are less common in the study area, were more often absent. Also, a clearly pronounced predominance of any one variant of the shell colouration was more often noted there, most often pink unbanded or yellow mid-banded.

Cryptic Speciation and Characteristics of the Transition Bias Following an Example of the cytb Gene in Palearctic Mammals

S. Mezhzherin, S. Morozov-Leonov, O. Rostovskaya, V. Tereshchenko, O. Zhalay — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:45:47 +0000

A study of taxonomic differentiation and transition bias of the cytb gene, focusing on the early stages of speciation, was carried out in 15 subfamilies/families of five orders of Palearctic mammals. It was confirmed that the genetic differentiation among taxa of small and large mammals is shifted by the same taxonomic level, in which connection the period of cryptic speciation of Micromammalia (semi- and allospecific levels) corresponds to the divergence of type species in their genus within Macromammalia. In all cases, both transition bias and its evolutionary compensation took place. The novelty of the study also lies in the proof that the alignment of the transitions and transversion rates in evolutionary lineages has the pattern of a phase transition, and the frequency of transversions in short-cycle species of the orders Insectivora and Rodentia is higher than in long-cycle orders Artiodactyla, Carnivora and Chiroptera while with relative equality of transitions. The latter circumstance might be associated with the traits of metabolism and determines the characteristics of the molecular evolution of mammalian groups with short and long life cycles.