Heather C. Proctor’s research while affiliated with University of Alberta and other places
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Myosoma is a genus name proposed in 1900 by Alice Robertson for a colonial species of Entoprocta, Myosoma spinosa Robertson. Myosoma has been used for this genus up to the present time, which now includes two named species. However, we determined that Robertson’s name is preoccupied by the parasitoid wasp genus name Myosoma (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), described by Brullé in 1846. Therefore, we propose another epithet for this entoproct genus: Myopedicellina new replacement name. Brief descriptions of the genus Myopedicellina and the two species belonging to it are provided.
The phoretic mite assemblage of the Douglas-fir beetle, Dendroctonus pseudotsugae Hopkins (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), has not been thoroughly documented. Phoretic mites can impact fitness and population dynamics of hosts; documenting a mite assemblage may provide information on their ecological roles. We caught Douglas-fir beetles in central British Columbia, Canada, and sorted associated mites into morphospecies. Representatives of the morphospecies were DNA barcoded ( CO 1 barcode region), indicating at least nine operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Representatives of all OTUs were slide-mounted and morphologically identified. There was a mean of 50.5 ± 4.7 mites per beetle, with both females and males carrying similar numbers of most mite species, except for OTU B 1 , which was found in higher numbers on females. OTU B 1 , Parawinterschmidtia furnissi (Woodring) (Astigmata: Winterschmidtiidae), was found in substantially higher numbers than all other OTUs and was always clustered in large aggregations in an anterior pocket on the beetles’ subelytral surface. When this OTU was removed from the calculation, the mean number dropped to 1.3 ± 0.2 mites per beetle. The consistent high numbers of OTU B 1 in conjunction with its consistent anatomical aggregation suggests an important interaction between this particular mite species and the Douglas-fir beetle.
The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian megadiverse fauna is no exception, and the Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil (CTFB) (http://fauna.jbrj.gov.br/), made public in 2015, represents a database on biodiversity anchored on a list of valid and expertly recognized scientific names of animals in Brazil. The CTFB is updated in near real time by a team of more than 800 specialists. By January 1, 2024, the CTFB compiled 133,691 nominal species, with 125,138 that were considered valid. Most of the valid species were arthropods (82.3%, with more than 102,000 species) and chordates (7.69%, with over 11,000 species). These taxa were followed by a cluster composed of Mollusca (3,567 species), Platyhelminthes (2,292 species), Annelida (1,833 species), and Nematoda (1,447 species). All remaining groups had less than 1,000 species reported in Brazil, with Cnidaria (831 species), Porifera (628 species), Rotifera (606 species), and Bryozoa (520 species) representing those with more than 500 species. Analysis of the CTFB database can facilitate and direct efforts towards the discovery of new species in Brazil, but it is also fundamental in providing the best available list of valid nominal species to users, including those in science, health, conservation efforts, and any initiative involving animals. The importance of the CTFB is evidenced by the elevated number of citations in the scientific literature in diverse areas of biology, law, anthropology, education, forensic science, and veterinary science, among others.
The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian megadiverse fauna is no exception, and the Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil (CTFB) (http://fauna.jbrj.gov.br/), made public in 2015, represents a database on biodiversity anchored on a list of valid and expertly recognized scientific names of animals in Brazil. The CTFB is updated in near real time by a team of more than 800 specialists. By January 1, 2024, the CTFB compiled 133,691 nominal species, with 125,138 that were considered valid. Most of the valid species were arthropods (82.3%, with more than 102,000 species) and chordates (7.69%, with over 11,000 species). These taxa were followed by a cluster composed of Mollusca (3,567 species), Platyhelminthes (2,292 species), Annelida (1,833 species), and Nematoda (1,447 species). All remaining groups had less than 1,000 species reported in Brazil, with Cnidaria (831 species), Porifera (628 species), Rotifera (606 species), and Bryozoa (520 species) representing those with more than 500 species. Analysis of the CTFB database can facilitate and direct efforts towards the discovery of new species in Brazil, but it is also fundamental in providing the best available list of valid nominal species to users, including those in science, health, conservation efforts, and any initiative involving animals. The importance of the CTFB is evidenced by the elevated number of citations in the scientific literature in diverse areas of biology, law, anthropology, education, forensic science, and veterinary science, among others.
KEY WORDS:
Biodiversity; knowledge management; taxonomy; web services; zoology
The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian megadiverse fauna is no exception, and the Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil (CTFB) (http://fauna.jbrj.gov.br/), made public in 2015, represents a database on biodiversity anchored on a list of valid and expertly recognized scientific names of animals in Brazil. The CTFB is updated in near real time by a team of more than 800 specialists. By January 1, 2024, the CTFB compiled 133,691 nominal species, with 125,138 that were considered valid. Most of the valid species were arthropods (82.3%, with more than 102,000 species) and chordates (7.69%, with over 11,000 species). These taxa were followed by a cluster composed of Mollusca (3,567 species), Platyhelminthes (2,292 species), Annelida (1,833 species), and Nematoda (1,447 species). All remaining groups had less than 1,000 species reported in Brazil, with Cnidaria (831 species), Porifera (628 species), Rotifera (606 species), and Bryozoa (520 species) representing those with more than 500 species. Analysis of the CTFB database can facilitate and direct efforts towards the discovery of new species in Brazil, but it is also fundamental in providing the best available list of valid nominal species to users, including those in science, health, conservation efforts, and any initiative involving animals. The importance of the CTFB is evidenced by the elevated number of citations in the scientific literature in diverse areas of biology, law, anthropology, education, forensic science, and veterinary science, among others.
... During the compilation of data for the Hymenoptera species checklist organized under the framework of the Taxonomic Catalog of the Brazilian Fauna (Catálogo Taxo nômico da Fauna do Brasil -CTFB, Boeger et al. 2024), a few nomenclatural issues were found (Fernandes 2015, Araujo and Vivallo 2015, Fernandes et al. 2024). In addition to those, we have identified problems with two genus names and eleven species names listed in previous catalogs (Rocha 1908, 1918, 1950, Silva 1973. ...
... It is the product of the effort of around 800 qualified zoologists of all taxa that inhabit the Brazilian territory. Currently, CTFB encompasses around 125,000 valid extant animal nominal species, and includes information-e.g., year of publication, author's name, synonymic list, hosts and parasites, distribution across Brazilian states, ecological biomes, and hydrographic basins-for an important part of these species (Boeger et al. 2024). The type locality, information on name-bearing types, and their museum repository have already started to be added to the Megaloptera section of the CTFB. ...
... Thus, the phenomenon of concentration on some birds occurs as early as the breeding season. Feather mite populations are limited by the number of feather barbs available on a given host (Del Mar Labrador et al. 2023). They may also be more prevalent in young birds than older birds because young birds may produce more uropygial gland oil (Dowling et al. 2001;Proctor 2003;Galván et al. 2008). ...
... mm wide) that reproduce mainly asexually by paratomy (budding and fission). While C. limnaei (von Baer, 1827) is an ectosymbiont and/or endoparasite on snails and other molluscs, the other Chaetogaster species are predators of other invertebrates and/or feed on algae [1,2]. They are frequently found during biomonitoring surveys in streams in fine to coarse sediments [3]. ...
... Future experimental studies may help to identify in which (if any) feather microhabitat mites choose to feed, or if any other host-associated microbiomes drive the availability of resources on feathers (e.g. the uropygial gland [Grieves et al., 2021], cloaca [van Veelen et al., 2017], or gut [Baiz et al., 2023]). Nevertheless, our results indicate that feather mites exhibit a narrow dietary niche consisting mainly of a few microbial genera, and add to the growing knowledge regarding how feather mites interact with featherassociated microbes (Doña et al., 2019;Labrador et al., 2022) and operate within the feather ecosystem more generally (Labrador et al., 2024). Although the taxonomic resolution is limited due to sequencing technology, several microbial genera were highly prevalent in the Amerodectes and Proctophyllodes mites in our study (Table S3) and in four feather mite genera (including Proctophyllodes) studied by Doña et al. (2019). ...
... This paper gives a detailed description of four new species of Arrenuridae, bringing the known Chinese arrenurid fauna to 47 species, however, it is clear many new species still await discovery. To strengthen future work on Arrenuridae of China, we recommend the application of molecular techniques to assess species boundaries similar to the work of Więcek et al. (2021) and geometric morphometrics like Ramírez-Sánchez et al. (2016). ...
... Exploring this relationship in an experimental context in which the number of mites and the amount of food resources can be controlled (Cebolla et al., 2009) may help elucidate if density-dependent resource selection is occurring or if it is context-dependent. The ability to culture feather mites, off-host in vitro, is a necessary first step to isolating these factors, and is one of the many grand challenges in feather mite biology (Proctor, 2022). ...
... The following abbreviations have been used: Ac -acetabula; Cx-III -third coxae; Cxgl-2coxoglandularia 2; dc-1 -dorsocentralia 1; Dgl-1 -dorsoglandularia-1; IV-leg-5-6 -segments 5-6 of first to fourth leg; L -length; MNHN -Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris; P1-5 -palp segments 1-5; RMNH -Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden; Vgl-3 -ventroglandularia 3; W -width. For the description of the new Rhynchohydracarus species the terminology of De Castro et al. (2022) is followed. All measurements are in µm, measurements of palp and leg segments are of the dorsal margins, measurements of paratypes are given in parentheses. ...
... However, the diversity and community composition of parasites may differ between closely related hosts, especially if there are ecological or biological differences among the hosts (e.g., Grégoir et al. 2015;Dubiec et al. 2016;Leung and Koprivnikar 2016). Moreover, parasitic populations may be aggregated on hosts (e.g., Rózsa et al. 1996;Clark et al. 2023), or show geographical distribution (Bush et al. 2009;Grossi and Proctor 2021) and may thus escape detection if only a few host specimens from a single locality are examined. ...
... Rhynchohydracaridae Lundblad, 1936 is a new world family that inhabit lotic habitats (Cook 1974;1980), and presents a unique larval morphology among the Hydryphantoidea, with many features shared with the Neohydrachnidia (the more derived superfamilies: Lebertioidea, Hydrachnoidea, Hygrobatoidea and Arrenuroidea), such as five movable leg segments instead of six and enlarged coxal plates covering almost the whole venter, suggesting that Rhynchohydracaridae may be more closely related to those more derived taxa than to the other hydryphantoid taxa (Castro et al. 2020). Currently, it comprises five genera: Clathrosperchon Lundblad, 1936, Clathrosperchonella Lundblad, 1937(Clathrosperchontinae Lundblad, 1936, Rhynchohydracarus Lundblad, 1936(Rhynchohydracarinae Lundblad, 1936, Gledhillia Valdecasas, 2001, and Santiagocarus Valdecasas, 2001(Santiagocarinae Valdecasas, 2001. ...