Alejandro Velasco-Castrillón

University of Adelaide · Faculty of Sciences

There is substantial debate about the relative roles of climate change and human activities on biodiversity and species demographies over the Holocene. In some cases, these two factors can be resolved using fossil data, but for many taxa such data are not available. Inferring historical demographies of taxa has become common, but the methodologies...

Abantiades penneshawensis Moore & Beaver sp. nov. and Abantiades rubrus Moore & Beaver sp. nov. are described as new. Both species are endemic to Kangaroo Island, and although both are related to species that occur on the Australian mainland and other islands, they are distinguished from those sister and phenotypically similar species by morphology...

Aim The long history of isolation of the Antarctic continent, coupled with the harsh ecological conditions of freezing temperatures, could affect the patterns of genetic diversity in the organisms living there. We aim (a) to test whether such pattern can be seen in a mitochondrial marker of bdelloid rotifers, a group of microscopic aquatic and limn...

Abantiades cephalocorvus sp. nov. and Abantiades tembyi sp. nov. are described, along with the previously undescribed females of A. macropusinsulariae Simonsen, 2018 and A. pallida Simonsen, 2018. All of these species belong to a triforked Abantiades Herrich-Schäffer clade that is loosely centred around the Nullarbor and other arid regions of Austr...

Four new Aenetus Herrich-Schäffer species are described from northern Australasia; Aenetus simonseni sp. nov. from the top-end of the Northern Territory, Australia, A. maiasinus sp. nov. from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, A. trigonogrammus sp. nov. from south-eastern Queensland, Australia, and A. albadamanteum sp. nov. from eastern Pap...

A distinct group of Abantiades Herrich-Schäffer species is here confirmed as a valid clade that we refer to as the “dark obscura clade” supported by morphological and mtDNA evidence. The clade is the sister group of A. obscura Simonsen of north-western Australia and comprises four new species: Abantiades centralia sp. nov., A. kayi sp. nov., A. zon...

The halictine bee genus Homalictus (Apoidea: Halictidae) is distrib- uted broadly across south east Asia, Indonesia, Australia and the archipelagos of the Pacific. The group is well represented in the bee faunas of Australia and Papua New Guinea, but Homalictus is parti- cularly important in the Pacific where it plays a keystone pollination role as...

Three new species of ghost moth, Oxycanus ephemerous sp. nov., O. flavoplumosus sp. nov., and O. petalous sp. nov. are described from South Australia, New South Wales, and southwest Western Australia, respectively. We illustrate these species and compare morphological and molecular (mtDNA COI gene) characters with similar Oxycanus Walker, 1856 spec...

We present a data set on Antarctic biodiversity for the phylum Rotifera, making it publicly available through the Antarctic Biodiversity Information facility. We provide taxonomic information, geographic distribution, location, and habitat for each record. The data set gathers all the published literature about rotifers found and identified across...

Over a century ago microfaunal diversity was first recorded by James Murray in lakes at Cape Royds, Ross Island, Antarctica. The report stands as the seminal study for today’s biodiversity investigations, and as a baseline to evaluate changes in faunal communities and introductions. In the present study, Cape Royds lakes were revisited and the mito...

Australia was once thought to be a biodiversity desert when considering the subterranean world however, recent work has revealed a fascinating collection of cave creatures, many with surprising biogeographic histories. This has especially been so in the karstic regions of north-western Australia (Cape Range peninsula, Barrow Island, Pilbara), which...

Antarctica contains some of the most challenging environmental conditions on the planet due to freezing temperatures, prolonged winters and lack of liquid water. Whereas 99.7% of Antarctica is permanently covered by ice and snow, some coastal areas and mountain ridges have remained ice-free and are able to sustain populations of microinvertebrates....

Antarctic arthropods (mites and springtails) have been the subject of numerous studies. However, by far, the most diverse and numerically dominant fauna in Antarctica are the limno-terrestrial microfauna (tardigrades, rotifers and nematodes). Although they have been the focus of several studies, there remains uncertainty of the actual number of spe...

Antarctica is one of the harshest environments on the planet because of its extreme climatic conditions, with prolonged winters, freezing temperatures and lack of liquid water. While almost the entire continent (99.7%) is covered year round by snow and ice, some mountain peaks and coastal areas are ice-free and sustain life. Invertebrates dominate...

Antarctic arthropods (mites and springtails) have been the subject of numerous studies. However, by far the most diverse and numerically dominant fauna in Antarctica are the limno-terrestrial microfauna (tardigrades, rotifers and nematodes). Although they have been the focus of several studies there remains uncertainty of the actual number of speci...

Antarctica is one of the harshest environments on the planet because of its extreme climatic conditions, with prolonged winters, freezing temperatures and lack of liquid water. While almost the entire continent (99.7%) is covered year round by snow and ice, some mountain peaks and coastal areas are ice-free and sustain life. Invertebrates dominate...

Terrestrial life in Antarctica has been described as some of the simplest on the planet, and mainly confined to soil microfaunal communities. Studies have suggested that the lack of diversity is due to extreme environmental conditions and thought to be driven by abiotic factors. In this study we investigated soil microfauna composition, abundance,...

Drought is a major constraint to common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) production, especially in developing countries where irrigation for the crop is infrequent. The Mesoamerican genepool is the most widely grown subdivision of common beans that include small red, small cream and black seeded varieties. The objective of this study was to develop a r...

Reproductive biology of the black land crab, Gecarcinus ruricola (Linnaeus, 1758), has been studied in the San Andres Archipelago in the Western Caribbean, on the islands of San Andres and Old Providence. Both sexes become mature at about 50 mm maximum carapace width, and very few specimens below this size take part in the annual breeding migration...

Black land crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) populations and their dependent catchery in the San Andres Archipelago, Colombia, are under threat from overexploitation, habitat loss and degradation, and road-kill during annual spawning migrations to the sea. This article discusses the participatory approach used to define management of the species and descr...