Feng Zhang

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Nanjing Agricultural University

Molecular markers are critical for elucidating the evolution and genetic diversity of species. The relentless progress and innovation in sequencing technology have enabled the acquisition of a vast repository of high‐quality organism genomic data. A more precise and high‐resolution set of molecular markers can provide deeper insights into species e...

Based on available records, a comprehensive overview of the biodiversity and geographical distribution of Collembola in China is presented. A total of 735 species, 155 genera and 20 families were recorded in the checklist, including current name information, synonyms, geographical records, and bibliographic references. Taxonomic notes were added wh...

Two new species of Tomocerus (Ocreatomurus) are described from Gyirong Valley, Xizang Autonomous Region, China. Tomocerus (Ocreatomurus) gyirongensis sp. nov. and Tomocerus (Ocreatomurus) oppositus sp. nov. are both similar to Tomocerus (Ocreatomurus) spinulus Chen & Christiansen, 1998 in the absence of blunt dorsal chaetae on manubrium and presenc...

Megachile is one of the largest bee genera, including nearly 1,500 species, but very few chromosome-level assemblies exist for this group or the family Megachilidae. Here, we report the chromosome-level genome assembly of Megachile lagopoda collected from Xizang, China. Using PacBio CLR long reads and Hi-C data, we assembled a genome of 256.83 Mb w...

Insects represent the most diverse animal group, yet previous phylogenetic analyses based on morphological and molecular data have failed to agree on the evolutionary relationships of early insects and their six-legged relatives (together constituting the clade Hexapoda). In particular, the phylogenetic positions of the three early-diverging hexapo...

Aphidoletes aphidimyza is widely recognized as an effective predator of aphids in agricultural systems. However, there is limited understanding of its predation mechanisms. In this study, we generated a high-quality chromosome level of the A. aphidimyza genome by combining PacBio, Illumina, and Hi-C data. The genome has a size of 192.08 Mb, with a...

Despite the rapid advances in sequencing technology, limited genomic resources are currently available for phytophagous spider mites, which include many important agricultural pests. One of these pests is Tetranychus piercei (McGregor), a serious banana pest in East Asia exhibiting remarkable tolerance to high temperature. In this study, we assembl...

Collembola is a highly diverse and abundant group of soil arthropods with chromosome numbers ranging from 5 to 11. Previous karyotype studies indicated that the Tomoceridae family possesses an exceptionally long chromosome. To better understand chromosome size evolution in Collembola, we obtained a chromosome-level genome of Yoshiicerus persimilis...

How many species of life are there on Earth? This is a question that we want to know but cannot yet answer. Some scholars speculate that the number of species may reach 2.2 billion when considering cryptic diversity and that each morphology-based insect species may contain an average of 3.1 cryptic species. With nearly two million described species...

Insects represent the most diverse animal group, yet previous phylogenetic analyses based on the morphological and molecular data have failed to agree on the evolutionary relationships of early insects and their six-legged relatives (together constituting the clade Hexapoda). In particular, the phylogenetic positions of the three early-diverging he...

Aphidoletes aphidimyza is a predator that is an important biological agent used to control agricultural and forestry aphids. Although many studies have investigated its biological and ecological characteristics, few molecular studies have been reported. The current study was performed to identify suitable reference genes to facilitate future gene e...

Homidia cingula Börner, 1906, the type species of the genus Homidia Börner, 1906, is widespread from India to Southeast Asia, but its detailed morphological characteristics have not yet been described. We examined the morphology of specimens of H. cingula from Indonesia and southwestern China and confirmed their conspecific status by comparing thei...

The Entomobryoidea, the largest superfamily of Collembola, encompasses over 2,000 species in the world. However, the lack of high-quality genomes hinders our understanding of the evolution and ecology of this group. This study presents a chromosome-level genome of Entomobrya proxima by combining PacBio long reads, Illumina short reads, and Hi-C dat...

Parasitoid wasps are invaluable natural enemies extensively used to control coleopteran, dipteran, and lepidopteran pests in agriculture and forestry owing to their killing and reproductive actions on the hosts. The important larval endoparasitoid wasp Microplitis manilae, which belongs to the Microgastrinae subfamily, parasitizes the larval stages...

The phytophagous mite Tetranychus truncatus is a serious pest in East Asia but has a relatively narrower host range than the pest mite Tetranychus urticae, which can feed on over 1200 plant species. Here, we generated a high-quality chromosomal level genome of T. truncatus and compared it with that of T. urticae, with an emphasis on the genes relat...

Phylogenomics is a new field that infers evolutionary relationships of taxa at the genome-scale level. The increment of molecular data may raise the potential bias as the limiting factor in phylogenomics. It is particularly important to explore these factors in phylogenomic analyses by simple, convenient, time-saving and (relatively) robust means....

Mitogenomes represent useful tools for investigating the phylogeny of many metazoan clades. Regarding Collembola, the use of mitogenomics has already shown promising results, but few published works include sufficient taxon sampling to study its evolution and systematics on a broader scale. Here, we present a phylogenetic study based on the mitogen...

土壤动物类群包含庞大的生物多样性, 由于传统的形态学鉴定技术很难满足该类群多样性调查和监测的巨大需求, 基于DNA等遗传物质的分子层面的鉴定技术(分子分类预测)逐渐登上舞台。然而, 分子分类预测能否在参考分子序列严重匮乏的土壤动物分类研究中实现有效鉴定、如何利用分子分类预测更为准确高效地获取土壤动物的分类信息, 是当下分子分类预测在土壤动物应用中的两大难题。为探究这两大难题, 本文基于宏条形码技术, 对5款常用的分子分类预测软件(VSEARCH、HS-BLASTN、 EPA-NG、 RAPPAS和APPLES; 前两款基于相似度算法, 其余基于系统发育位置算法)进行了准确性(科和属阶元)、运行速度和内存占用等性能的比较和评估。其中, 预测准确性的评估基于4类土壤动物(弹尾纲, 蜱螨亚纲, 环...

Species are fundamental biological units, but their discovery and delimitation requires appropriate data and methods. To better circumscribe species, we must improve our species concepts and bolster the underlying data resources necessary to enact them. Here, we provide six prescriptions for better collecting and synergizing our knowledge on specie...

Species are fundamental biological units, but their discovery and delimitation requires appropriate data and methods. To better circumscribe species, we must improve our species concepts and bolster the underlying data resources necessary to enact them. Here, we provide six prescriptions for better collecting and synergizing our knowledge on specie...

Background In the last decades, Southeast Asia has experienced massive conversion of rainforest into rubber and oil palm monoculture plantations. The effects of this land-use change on canopy arthropods are still largely unknown. Arboreal Collembola are among the most abundant canopy arthropods in tropical forests, potentially forming a major compo...

Entomobryoidea has been the focus of phylogenetic studies in recent years owing to a divergence between morphological and genetic data. Recent phylogenies have converged on the sister relationship of Orchesellidae with the remaining Entomobryoidea, and on the non‐monophyly of the traditional Paronellidae and Entomobryidae, but still lack resolution...

This paper reviews current progresses on insect diversity monitoring in China and gives a brief introduction to the planning and progress of the Insect Diversity Monitoring Network, China (Sino BON–Insects). Because insects play a key role in ecosystem processes it is important to monitor their diversity over the long term. Different monitoring tec...

The Sminthurididae family includes Symphypleona species highly adapted to courtship, with males exhibiting remarkable modifications on their antennae. Here we describe a new Neotropical genus and species of Sminthurididae from a Cerrado-Caatinga ecotonal zone in Brazil. Males of Parasminthurides spinosus gen. nov. sp. nov. have highly dimorphic ant...

The collembolan Folsomia candida Willem, 1902, is widely distributed throughout the world and has been frequently used as a test organism in soil ecology and ecotoxicology studies. However, it is questioned as an ideal “standard” because of differences in reproductive modes and cryptic genetic diversity between strains from various geographical ori...

Taxonomy plays an important role in understanding the origin, evolution, and ecological functionality of biodiversity. There are large number of unknown species yet to be described by taxonomists, which together with their ecosystem services cannot be effectively protected prior to description. Despite this, taxonomy has been increasingly underrat...

The second species of Arrhopalites from China is described and illustrated and an identification key to the Asian species of the caecus group is presented. Arrhopalites brevicornis sp. nov. is the eleventh species of the caecus group recorded in Asia and it can be clearly differentiated by the unguiculus III with 2 internal teeth (0-1 in all other...

Mitochondrial metagenomics (MMG) using Illumina sequencers for mixed-species samples provides a promising tool for evolutionary and ecological studies using mitogenomes. However, the traditional assembly procedure is still computationally intensive and expensive. Here, a novel MMG pipeline was applied to different DNA extractions, one per species,...

Three novel mitogenomes of Entomobryoidea were assembled and annotated. Sequences final lengths were 14,683 bp for Alloscopus bannaensis, 14,884 bp for Sinhomidia bicolor, and 14,794 bp for Coecobrya sp., including 13 PCGs, 22 tRNA, and 2 rRNA genes. To confirm the morphological identifications, maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses were perform...

The superfamily Entomobryoidea has been the focus of molecular studies in recent years due to an intriguing divergence between morphological and genetic data. Recent studies based on mitogenomes have converged on a result that suggests the non-monophyly of Paronellidae and Entomobryidae. Here, we reanalyzed some of the raw published data and newly...

Soil has become a major hotspot of biodiversity studies, yet the pattern and timing of the evolution of soil organisms are poorly known because of the scarcity of palaeontological data. To overcome this limitation, we conducted a genome-based macroevolutionary study of an ancient, diversified, and widespread lineage of soil fauna, the elongate-bodi...

The halictid genus Lasioglossum, as one of the most species‐rich bee groups with persistently contentious subgeneric boundaries, is one of the most challenging bee groups from a systematic standpoint. An enduring question is the relationship of Lasioglossum and Homalictus, whether all halictine bees with weakened distal wing venation comprise one o...

Anthidiini, a large bee tribe characterized by light-colored maculations, represents nearly one thousand pollinator species, but no genomes are yet available for this tribe. Here, we report a chromosome-level genome assembly of Anthidium xuezhongi collected from the Tibetan Plateau. Using PacBio long reads and Hi-C data, we assembled a genome of 18...

Aim Both ecological and evolutionary processes shape biological communities along elevational gradients. Compared to above‐ground taxa, elevational patterns and processes of below‐ground animals are little studied. Here, we investigated how environmental gradients across elevation may affect species divergence in the past and act as filters of cont...

The cotton bollworm Helicoverpa armigera is a cosmopolitan pest and its diverse habitats plausibly contribute to the formation of diverse lineages. Despite the significant threat it poses to economic crops worldwide, its evolutionary history and genetic basis of local adaptation are poorly understood. In this study, we de novo assembled a high‐qual...

The collembolan Folsomia candida Willem, 1902, is an important representative soil arthropod that is widely distributed throughout the world and has been frequently used as a test organism in soil ecology and ecotoxicology studies. However, it is questioned as an ideal “standard” because of differences in reproductive modes and cryptic genetic dive...

Here, the first record of Seira dowlingi from Asia is reported and its newly generated mitogenome is compared with Neotropical specimens. Molecular analyses were performed based on low-coverage whole-genome sequencing and the complete mitogenome was assembled using NovoPlasty. Our results show that the Chinese specimens have the same color pattern,...

Background The two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae , is a major agricultural pest with a cosmopolitan distribution, and its polyphagous habits provide a model for investigating herbivore-plant interactions. There are two body color forms of T. urticae with a different host preference. Comparative genomics and transcriptomics are used here...

The evolution of insecticide resistance represents a global constraint to agricultural production. Because of the extreme genetic diversity found in insects and the large numbers of genes involved in insecticide detoxification, better tools are needed to quickly identify and validate the involvement of putative resistance genes for improved monitor...

Background: The spider Trichonephila antipodiana (Araneidae), commonly known as the batik golden web spider, preys on arthropods with body sizes ranging from ∼2 mm in length to insects larger than itself (>20‒50 mm), indicating its polyphagy and strong dietary detoxification abilities. Although it has been reported that an ancient whole-genome dup...

Mitogenomes have been widely used as markers to reconstruct phylogenies of various groups of arthropods, but specifically for Collembola they have not been useful to resolve the relationships between some families, such as Paronellidae and Entomobryidae. Here, we present a phylogenetic study integrating previously published data and 20 new mitogeno...

Collembola, a common pest of mushrooms, could reduce the yield and quantity of edible mushroom and causes great economic losses in their production. During the investigation of Collembola in the main edible mushroom production areas in China, 27 species belonging to five families and 16 genera, hosted by more than ten species of edible mushrooms ha...

A new species of Seira from Koh Rong Sanloem Island, Cambodia, as well as its mitochondrial genome information, are herein described. Seira sanloemensis sp. nov. has a similar colour pattern compared to nine other species of Seira worldwide distributed, but the dorsal chaetotaxy is more similar to S. arunachala Mitra from India, S. camgiangensis Ng...

Collembola are among the most abundant and diverse soil microarthropods, which are found in almost all (semi)terrestrial environments and often serve as model organisms in empirical studies. Diverse data collected on the biology and ecology of Collembola over the last century are waiting for synthesis studies, while developing technologies may faci...

Classification of Heteromurini represented by Heteromurus and Dicranocentrus is currently under debate due to the presence of 5 or 6 antennal segments, respectively. Among the Heteromurini, Alloscopus is traditionally considered to be closely related to Heter omurus but its phylogenetic position is challenged by recent molecular evidence. A multilo...

Despite intense interest in bees, no genomes are available for the bee family Colletidae. Colletes gigas, one of the largest species of the genus Colletes in the world, is an ideal candidate to fill this gap. Endemic to China, C. gigas has been the focus of studies on its nesting biology and pollination of the economically-important oil tree Camell...

The labium in Collembola consists of three parts (Folsom 1899): labial palp, basomedian (submentum) and basolateral (mentum) fields. Labial chaetotaxy, i.e. number, nature and relative position of chaetae, has been one of the standard descriptive components for species diagnoses in Entomobryoidea. Labial palp, including labial papillae, guard chaet...

The 4th Systematic Biology Forum, China took place in December 2019, covering a vast array of topics across animals, bacteria, fungi, plants, and viruses in the fields of systematics and evolutionary biology. Here, we discuss the emergent themes of this meeting and how these and other interdisciplinary research programs can be synthesized to better...

Genomic data sets are increasingly central to ecological and evolutionary biology, but far fewer resources are available for invertebrates. Powerful new computational tools and the rapidly decreasing cost of Illumina sequencing are beginning to change this, enabling rapid genome assembly and reference marker extraction. We have developed and tested...

Seirinae is one of the most diverse subfamilies of Collembola. To date no detailed phylogeny of Seirinae has been proposed, which leads to difficulties in the understanding of evolutionary patterns regarding this taxon. The main aim of this study is to clarify the phylogenetic relationships within the Neotropical Seirinae, by generating and analysi...

We assembled one mitochondrial genome of Pseudachorutes palmiensis from Illumina sequencing data. The circularized mitochondrial assembly is 17,110 bp in length, including 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, and two ribosomal RNA genes, which showed the typical insect mitochondrial gene composition, but had different order with most spr...

Background The beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua (Hübner), is a worldwide, polyphagous agricultural pest feeding on vegetable, field, and flower crops. However, the lack of genome information on this insect severely limits our understanding of its rapid adaptation and hampers the development of efficient pest management strategies. Findings We repo...

We reported one mitochondrial genome of Brachystomella parvula assembled from Illumina sequencing and discussed its phylogenetic position within Poduromorpha. Our mitochondrial assembly has a length of 15,002 bp, consisting of 36 genes (13 protein-coding genes, 21 transfer RNA genes, and two ribosomal RNA genes) with tRNASer unsuccessfully assemble...

The largest superfamily Entomobryoidea is one of the key groups in Collembola. However, incorrect recognition of chaetotaxic homology within Entomobryoidea severely impedes the accurate species comparison of adults and phylogenetic reconstruction. Traditional classification of the superfamily at suprageneric level is disputable in the light of rece...

We herein present the first reliable record of Lepidosira from Neotropical Region. Lepidosira neotropicalis sp. n. from Brazil is described and illustrated in detail, including its complete mitochondrial genome. We perform a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis to place the new species within the Entomobryidae, and at the same time to test previous contr...

Sinella curviseta, among the most widespread springtails (Collembola) in Northern Hemisphere, has often been treated as a model organism in soil ecology and environmental toxicology. However, little information on its genetic knowledge severely hinders our understanding of its adaptations to the soil habitat. We present the largest genome assembly...

Phylogenetic studies are increasingly reliant on next‐generation sequencing. Transcriptomic and hybrid enrichment sequencing techniques remain the most prevalent methods for phylogenomic data collection due to their relatively low demands for computing powers and sequencing prices, compared to whole‐genome sequencing (WGS). However, the transcripto...

Integrative taxonomic approaches are increasingly providing species-level resolution to ‘cryptic’ diversity. In the absence of an integrative taxonomic approach, formal species validation is often lacking because of inadequate morphological diagnoses. Colouration and chaetotaxy are the most commonly used characters in collembolan taxonomy but can c...

A new species, Dicranocentrus hainanicus Ren & Zhang, sp. n., is described from Hainan Province, China. Complete tergal chaetotaxy including microchaetae is illustrated and discussed. It is characterized by having the dental spines arranged in 2–3 rows, two inner teeth on unguis, 5, 2, 2 central macrochaetae on Abd. I–III, two inner S-chaetae on Ab...

Tomocerus ocreatus species complex is among the commonest groups of Tomoceridae in East Asia and mainly distributed in the southern areas of China. Previous multi-locus molecular analyses have proved its monophyly and revealed extensive cryptic diversity within the complex. However, members of the complex are highly similar in traditional character...

Traditional species delimitation only based on morphological diagnostics does not fully meet the needs of modern taxonomy. Cryptic diversity revealed by molecular evidence has been increasingly discovered in many groups; however, subsequent species description is often lacking because of inadequate taxonomy and being devoid of operational criteria....

Highly diversified colourations among springtails (Collembola) have been widely used for species diagnosis, but their phylogenetic significance is poorly known. We addressed this issue in the largest Entomobryinae genus Entomobrya, which possesses variable colour patterns among species. The relationships within the genus and to other genera were al...

Species delimitation remains a significant challenge when the diagnostic morphological characters are limited. Integrative taxonomy was applied to the genus Protaphorura (Collembola: Onychiuridae), which is one of most difficult soil animals to distinguish taxonomically. Three delimitation approaches (morphology, molecular markers and geography) we...

Three new species of the genus Coecobrya are described from caves in the Thai Peninsula for the first time: C. cavicta sp. Nov. and C. polychaeta sp. Nov. from Satun Province, and C. chumphonensis sp. Nov. from Chumphon Province. These species differ in antennal length, clypeal chaetae, labial palp, sublobal chaetae of maxillary outer lobe, labial...

We describe here two new species, Zhuqinia jingwanae, gen. & sp. nov. and Paronellides praefectus, sp. nov., both from Mount Twynam, New South Wales, Australia. The systematic position of Zhuqinia, gen. nov. in relation to other paronellids is not clear because the new genus possesses pointed, heavily striated scales similar to species of Callyntru...

The endosymbiont Wolbachia has been detected in a few parthenogenetic collembolans sampled in Europe and America, including three species of Poduromorpha, two species of Entomobryomorpha, and two species of Neelipleona. Based on 16S rRNA and ftsZ gene sequences, most of the Wolbachia infecting parthenogenetic collembolans were characterized as memb...

The genus Lepidobrya Womersley, previously placed in Willowsiini, is re-diagnosed based on a redescription of the type species L. mawsoni (Tillyard) and its DNA barcode. Specimens possess narrow, pointed scales on the dens, two inner teeth on unguis, a truncate unguiculus with an outer tooth, a bidentate mucro with a basal spine and ordinary tergal...

Body scales are fundamental in the classification of Entomobryidae at all taxonomical levels. Traditionally, scales on dens were considered to be absent in Entomobryinae, but present in other scaled subfamilies; however, this opinion was strongly challenged by recent morphological advances in tergal specialised chaetae (S-chaetae). A new genus, Lep...

Four new species of the genus Willowsia Shoebotham, 1917 are described from China: W. fascia Zhang & Pan sp. nov., W. pseudoplatani Zhang & Pan sp. nov., W. pseudobuskii sp. nov., and W. similis sp. nov. Willowsia qui Zhang, Chen & Deharveng, 2011 is re-described based on types and fresh material. All fi ve species possess the pointed body scales w...

Springtails, especially entomobryids, are abundant in Karst faunas. Five new species of Sinella Brook are described here from caves in southern China: S. liuae sp. nov., S. hunanica sp. nov., S. tigris sp. nov., S. minuta sp. nov. and S. tiani sp. nov. A new record of Sinella sineocula Chen & Christiansen, is also recorded. These species differ in...

Four new species of the genus Coecobrya, C. gejianbangi sp. nov., C. annulata sp. nov., C. ciliata sp. nov., and C. oculata sp. nov., are described from Guangxi caves as the representative of the genus in China. Coecobrya oculata sp. nov. of the boneti-group has 1+1 eyes and a serrate outer edge of the unguiculus. The other three species, devoid of...

Two new blind species of Sinella are described from Nanjing, China. Sinella quinseta sp. n. from Purple Mountain possesses unique 5+5 central macrochaetae on Abd. II, and can be distinguished from other species of the genus by the postlabial chaetae and the dorsal chaetotaxy. Sinella qixiaensis sp. n. from Qixia Mountain is characterized by the pad...

Many known collembolan species lack sufficient descriptive details so that further taxonomical comparison cannot be achieved. When sorting documents and materials from Prof. Jian-Xiu CHEN, Nanjing University, we found many old but valuable drafts on Sinella and Coecobrya species from North America, Hawaii and Japan. Supplementary descriptions, part...

The relationship of Pseudoparonella to other paronellid genera is currently unresolved. Authors have proposed different taxonomical systems for which the proposed subgeneric divisions have not been compared. We compared these genera in detail and conclude here that antennal length is a reliable diagnostic character. The antennae of species in the g...

Tomoceridae is common but among the most problematic groups of Collembola. Its position within Collembola and the relationships within the family remain obscure. This also extends to the generic division of the subfamily Tomocerinae that remains controversial. This study examines these issues by integrating both molecular and morphological evidence...

The jumping organ (furcula) is the most characteristic structure among collembolans, and it is of great taxonomical values at higher levels. The largest superfamily Entomobryoidea is traditionally classified into four families only by the morphology of the furcula. Actually, many taxa among these families are strikingly similar in morphology withou...

Two new 1+1 eyed species of Sinella Brook, 1882, S. uniseta sp. nov. and S. abietis sp. nov., are described from China. New collection records are reported for nine known species: S. qufuensis Chen & Christiansen, 1993, S. quinocula Chen & Christiansen, 1993, S. affluens Chen & Christiansen, 1993, S. wui Wang & Christiansen, 2000, S. umesaoi Yosii,...

Tibiotarsi, particularly their chaetotaxy, vary from species to orders in Collembola. Symphypleona, Poduromorpha and Isotomidae have been shown to possess characteristic patterns of tibiotarsal chaetotaxy, but the patterns in Entomobryoidea and Tomoceroidea, where a strong plurichaetosis is the rule, remains undocumented. The tibiotarsal chaetotaxy...

Two new Coecobrya species, which were newly collected in 2014, are described from China. Coecobrya sanmingensis sp. n. from southeast China (Fujian) is the fourth 1+1 eyed species in the genus; it can be distinguished from other three species by the ciliate chaetae X and X2-4 on the ventral side of head, the abundant chaetae on the trochanteral org...

Two closely related Homidia species, H. fascia Wang & Chen, 2001 and H. pseudofascia sp. nov., are recognized by both morphological and molecular approaches. Both species have minor morphological differences except distinct colour patterns on thorax. Genetic distances (18%) of COI barcodes between them greatly exceed commonly employed threshold (3%...

Willowsia bartkei Stach, 1965 and W. pseudosocia Stach, 1965 from Vietnam are redescribed based on type material. Willowsia cassagnaui sp. nov. from Nepal is described here and is similar to another Nepalese species, W. ieti Yosii, 1971, but differs from the latter in colour pattern and mouthparts. Additions are given here to the original descripti...

The genus Willowsia is reported for the first time from New Caledonia. Two new species, W. neocaledonica sp. nov. and W. nigra sp. nov., are described based on material deposited at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The new species can be distinguished from other members of the genus by coloration and characters of the dorsal chaetot...

Entomobryidae, the largest collembolan family, is traditionally classified at suprageneric level using a limited set of morphological structures, such as scales, antennal segmentation. Most tribal and subfamilial delimitations appear, however, disputable in the light of recent works. Integrating molecular and morphological evidence, we propose here...

The genera Sinella and Coecobrya are reported from New Caledonia for the first time, with four new species: Sinella quadriseta sp. nov., S. claviseta sp. nov., S. copiosa sp. nov., and Coecobrya neocaledonica sp. nov. Sinella species studied here exhibit several morphological features that are not found in other non-cave species of the genus: paire...

AbstractDicranocentrus liuae sp. n. is described from the northern subtropical region of China. The new species is most similar to D. wangi Ma & Chen, 2007, but differs from it in the relatively shorter Ant. V, the 1+1 central macrochaetae on Abd. III, the number of chaetae on tenaculum, and the absence of dental spines. The systematic position of...

A new genus of Oncopoduridae, Sinoncopodura gen. nov., is described from China for a new species S. nana sp. nov. It exhibits unique generic characters including absence of spines and scales on dens, modified labrum and labral chaetae, absence of modified chaetae on tibiotarsus, and unusual structure of the mucro. Its systematic position is discuss...

Springtails (Collembola) are a group of arthropods that are found in terrestrial ecosystems throughout the world. Two species complexes, Tomocerus ocreatus and T. nigrus complexes, are widely distributed in the southern and northern parts of eastern China, respectively. There is a poor understanding of the species diversity within these complexes a...