New Species

Dr. Lyubomir Penev is the Managing Director and Founder of Pensoft Publishing and a Professor of Ecology at the Bulgaria Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria. He talks to me about the founding of Pensoft Publishing and the books and journals published by Pensoft, like ZooKeys, a journal often cited in this podcast! We discuss the importance of biodiversity discovery, the causes of and possible solutions to the taxonomic impediment (see Episode 21 for Part I), XML publishing in biodiversity, and the joy of doing science!

To learn more about Dr. Lyubomir Penev and Pensoft Publishing, follow Pensoft on Twitter, @Pensoft, or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Pensoft and visit his biography page: https://pensoft.net/lyubomir_penev

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies), like the podcast page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast), and music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom).

If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast

You’ve got to hand it to leaf insects; their camouflage is so well-refined that studying them is difficult and collecting them is near-impossible. A sub-group of stick insects, members of the family Phylliidae have evolved to leaf like the best of them, even going so far as to uptake leaf pigments to match their colors. In order to study these creatures, Royce Cumming had to visit and take loans from collections all over the world, looking at historic specimens often found only because a passing storm had knocked them out of the canopy.

But Royce is not deterred. He and his coauthors are organizing and describing Phylliids in order to make studying them more approachable, and to help people better appreciate their uniqueness. Listen in as he describes identifying and reclassifying leaf insects, pulling us into their strange and beautiful world.

Royce Cumming’s paper “On seven undescribed leaf insect species revealed within the recent “Tree of Leaves” (Phasmatodea, Phylliidae)” is in issue 1173 of Zookeys.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1173.104413

New Species: Phyllium iyadaon, Phyllium samarense, Phyllium ortizi, Pulchriphyllium heracles, Pulchriphyllium delislei, Pulchriphyllium bhaskarai, Pulchriphyllium anangu

Episode image was taken by Ashwin Viswanathan via iNaturalist and is used with permission by Royce Cumming

Follow Royce on Instagram: @RoyceCumming

Or check out his ResearchGate profile, where all of his work is shared open access: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Royce-Cumming

Check out this video on the phytochemical camouflage Royce talks about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JygVv3coRaU&t=1s

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Royce Cumming - Transcript

Further coverage of Royce and this paper:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/science/leaf-stick-insects-phyllium-asekiense.html

https://www.iflscience.com/these-7-new-species-of-leaf-insect-are-masters-of-cryptic-camouflage-70459?fbclid=IwAR2J4dMO9DUPiwVfecoyR9jQS5MS0KpAz3oUzvBPPDS67tsaFR9CawaNrKA

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/31/new-walking-leaf-insect-species-discovered-genetic-analysis?fbclid=IwAR2eUc8vKouQz4oV7Cmkg_Boj9gihStzxE8r6n3TlzjYlmMCdIySvPIxYg4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUymjLIPWUk

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Dr. Shahan Derkarabetian is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. He talks to us about his upcoming paper to be published in the next issue of Invertebrate Systematics! Dr. Derkarabetian and his coauthors describe not only two new species, but each new species is in a new genus, and each genus is in a new family! Moreover, we talk about how these species got their names, including a new species named after Abaddon the Despoiler in Warhammer 40,000, acquiring DNA from specimens collected at the time of the signing of the truce of the American Civil War, and why people should care about these small predators of the leaf litter!

Dr. Derkarabetian also issues a Twitter Challenge! He wants listeners to send him pictures of daddy longlegs from around the world and he’ll try to identify all of them! Tag him with @sderkarabetian and he’ll try to ID your daddy longlegs! Listen to the challenge at the end of the podcast.

The title of the paper is “Phylogenomic re-evaluation of Triaenonychoidea (Opiliones: Laniatores), and systematics of Tiaenonychidae, including new families, genera, and species.” The paper is available free as Open Access through the month of March: https://www.publish.csiro.au/IS/IS20047

To learn more about Dr. Derkarabetian, follow him on Twitter, @sderkarabetian.

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies), like the podcast page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast), and music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom).

If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast

In part 2 of Taxonomy Basics, Ashleigh Whiffin of National Museums Scotland brings us into the entomology collection to learn the fundamentals of curation and preservation, including which pins to use, the importance of collection data, and much more.

Ashleigh is responsible for the care and development of a collection of 2.5 million insect specimens. She is particularly interested in collections care and science communication, and is a coleopterist, specializing in Carrion beetles (Silphidae). In the UK, she works with the Biological Records Centre to co-organise a National Recording Scheme for Carrion Beetles, promoting the importance of the group and encouraging more people to record them. In 2020, she co-authored an atlas on Silphids and Histerids and has featured on national TV, sharing her passion for these beetles.

Ashleigh recently helped develop a new training resource hosted on the National Museums Scotland website:

https://www.nms.ac.uk/about-us/our-services/training-and-guidance-for-museums/caring-for-entomology-collections/

This self-guided resource is an introduction to Caring for Entomology Collections, covering the basics through a combination of videos and text, as well as links for where to go for additional information.

Taxonomy Basics is a three part series on basic components of species description including collecting, preserving, and describing new species. This series focuses on entomological specimens, but has concepts that work across disciplines. Listen in as Evan Waite, Ashleigh Whiffin, and Marc Milne share their guidelines and discuss important concepts in taxonomy, curation, and beyond.

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Ashleigh Whiffin - Transcript

Episode image credit: Molly Wilders

Connect with Ashleigh on Instagram/Threads: @ash_whiffin

X: @AshWhiffin

BlueSky: @ashwhffin.bsky.social

More info here: https://www.nms.ac.uk/collections-research/collections-departments/natural-sciences/meet-the-team/ashleigh-whiffin/

Places to be involved in virtual curation and other citizen science projects:

https://www.zooniverse.org/

https://scistarter.org/

https://transcription.si.edu/

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Cedric Lee was collecting slugs with another diplopodologist James Bailey when they stumbled upon a very odd creature; thin and string-like with lots of fine legs and a long body. “We recognized that it might be something special,” explains Cedric as he shares how they uploaded the image to iNaturalist. Enter Dr. Paul Marek, who saw the pictures and immediately got in touch. After some collection and analysis, they have a new millipede to share, Illacme socal, one of only three species in genus Illacme, which is the only genus of the family Siphonorhinidae present in North America. Millipedes are critically understudied and there’s so much more for us to learn. Listen in as Paul and Cedric tell you all about diplopodology and their new discovery!

Cedric and Paul’s paper “A new species of Illacme from southern California (Siphonophorida, Siphonorhinidae)” is published in issue 1167 of Zookeys.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1167.102537

Watch a video of an individual of the new species burrowing here: https://vimeo.com/823446011?share=copy

New Species: Illacme socal

Episode image courtesy of Paul Marek

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Paul Marek and Cedric Lee - Transcript

You can find Cedric’s work on his inaturalist profile: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/cedric_lee

You can find Paul’s work on his university website: https://millipedes.ento.vt.edu/

Or on Twitter at @apheloria

A guide to myriapods by Paul Marek and WIlliam Shear: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/113652/CURBIO.18835_PEM_28Oct22_VTWorks.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

Check out our new website: www.newspeciespodcast.net

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod