Simona Augyte who completed her Ph.D. dissertation in EEB with Dr. C. Yarish, lead-authored a publication focused on the brown alga Saccharina angustissima. Specimens studied are deposited in the CONN herbarium. The reference of the publication is: Augyte, S., L. Lewis, S. Lin, C. D. Neefus and C. Yarish. 2018. Speciation in the exposed intertidal zone: the case of Saccharina angustissima comb. nov. & stat. nov. (Laminariales, Phaeophyceae). Phycologia 57: 100–112. pdf

The abstract reads: Saccharina latissima is a perennial kelp with a circumboreal distribution from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic coasts. Our study clarified the taxonomy of the morphologically distinct Saccharina latissima forma angustissima (Collins) A.Mathieson from the low intertidal zone on exposed islands and ledges of Casco Bay, Maine, USA. To identify genetic divergence between the two morphotypes, S. latissima and S. latissima f. angustissima, we used a multilocus phylogenetic approach including nuclear-encoded internal transcribed spacer, mitochondrial cox1 and cox3, and plastid-encoded rbcL gene sequences. Genetic analysis of the individual markers and combined data set using SVDquartets resulted in p-distance values for all markers of , 1%, suggesting low divergence between the two forms. However, there was as much or more genetic divergence between S. latissima and S. latissima f. angustissima as there were between other taxonomically accepted species of Saccharina. To investigate sexual compatibility between the two forms, we made reciprocal crosses of the gametophytes and observed sporophyte formation. All crosses were successfully grown to the juvenile sporophyte stage, suggesting that the two are reproductively compatible in vitro. It is unknown if the two populations freely hybridize in the field. Last, we compared wave action, the ecological factor most likely driving the unique morphology, at exposed sites with S. latissima f. angustissima and protected sites with S. latissima. The mean wave force at the exposed site was over 30 times higher in magnitude than at the protected site at 160.04 6 32.58 N and 4.75 6 6.75 N, respectively, during the summer. The significant differences in morphology, the lack of specimens with intermediate morphologies, and the results of a common garden experiment suggest that the morphological differences in S. latissima f. angustissima are heritable with a genetic basis. Therefore, on the basis of our molecular evidence coupled with ecological studies, we are elevating S. latissima f. angustissima (Collins) A.Mathieson to specific rank as S. angustissima (Collins) Augyte, Yarish & Neefus comb. nov.& stat. nov.

Dr. Daru (Harvard) and collaborators are presenting a study of holdings of herbaria in three regions with complete digitized floras, including New England, and thus based on CONN specimens. Their study, entitled “Widespread sampling biases in herbaria revealed from large-scale digitization” is to appear in the New Phytologist.

The summary reads: 

• Nonrandom collecting practices may bias conclusions drawn from analyses of herbarium records. Recent efforts to fully digitize and mobilize regional floras online offer a timely opportunity to assess commonalities and differences in herbarium sampling biases.
• We determined spatial, temporal, trait, phylogenetic, and collector biases in c. 5 million herbarium records, representing three of the most complete digitized floras of the world: Australia (AU), South Africa (SA), and New England, USA (NE).
• We identified numerous shared and unique biases among these regions. Shared biases included specimens collected close to roads and herbaria; specimens collected more frequently during biological spring and summer; specimens of threatened species collected less frequently; and specimens of close relatives collected in similar numbers. Regional differences included overrepresentation of graminoids in SA and AU and of annuals in AU; and peak collection during the 1910s in NE, 1980s in SA, and 1990s in AU. Finally, in all regions, a disproportionately large percentage of specimens were collected by very few individuals. We hypothesize that these mega-collectors, with their associated preferences and idiosyncrasies, shaped patterns of collection bias via ‘founder effects’.
• Studies using herbarium collections should account for sampling biases, and future collecting efforts should avoid compounding these biases to the extent possible.

Antoine Simon, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Liège, Belgium, published his assembly and study of the structure of the mitochondrial genome in a lichen forming fungus: Simon, A., Y. Liu, E. Sérusiaux & B. Goffinet. 2017. Complete mitogenome sequence of Ricasolia amplissima (Lobariaceae) reveals extensive mitochondrial DNA rearrangement within the Peltigerales (lichenized ascomycetes). The Bryologist 120(3): 335–339. pdf

Antoine initiated this study while visiting UConn in 2015, and completed it during his stay last spring. The voucher and other collections made by Antoine are deposited in the CONN herbarium.

Abstract reads: The structure of mitochondrial genomes varies among non-lichenized fungi in terms of their genic and intronic content and genic order. Whether lichenized fungal mitogenomes are equally labile is unknown due to the paucity of available mitogenomes. We assembled the mitogenome of Ricasolia amplissima (Peltigerales, Lobariaceae), using massive parallel sequencing, and compared its structure to that of two species of Peltigera (Peltigeraceae). The mitochondrial genome of R. amplissima comprised 82,333 bp, with a 29.8% G+C content, and holds 15 unique protein-coding genes, 29 tRNA genes, two rRNA genes, and one non-coding RNA gene. Although the protein-coding gene content in the mitogenome of Peltigera and Ricasolia was identical, the relative gene order differed substantially, revealing that significant gene rearrangements also characterize the evolution of mitogenomes of lichenized ascomycetes at a relatively shallow phylogenetic depth, such as within the order Peltigerales.

The significance of the Biodiversity Research Collection to undergraduate and graduate education, its role in a global community of institutions in recording changes in biodiversity through time and its critical contribution to the discovery of new species have been highlighted and shared with the UConn community through an article published in UConn today.

In a recent article entitled “Flocking to Storrs. A birder’s tour of campus” in the UCONN magazine the value of the collection of starlings in the Biodiversity Research Collection is highlighted.

Dr. Sarah Taylor will join EEB as the new herbarium collection manager in early November.

Sarah is a Connecticut native who became passionate about plants as an undergraduate. She has spent the last 15 years exploring some of North America’s diverse botanical habitats, from remote gypsum outcrops of the Chihuahuan Desert, to the awe-inspiring vistas of the alpine tundra of the Rocky Mountains, to the sandhills, blackwater swamps, and inner coastal plain of South Carolina.  At the University of Texas at Austin, she examined the evolution of edaphic endemism in Nama (Hydrophyllaceae) using morphological and molecular systematics methods to investigate what patterns we can observe to explain how approximately 20% of the species in this group became partially or totally restricted to gypsum deposits. Most recently, Sarah has been the Collections Manager at the A.C. Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina (USCH), where her focus was on databasing incoming accessions and preserving the herbarium of Henry William Ravenel, a prominent South Carolina botanist active during the Civil War.

Members of the Goffinet lab contributed to this study for which voucher specimens are deposited in the CONN herbarium.

Carvalho-Silva M., M. Stech, L.H. Soares-Silva, W.R. Buck, N. J. Wickett, Y. Liu & P.E.A.S. Câmara. 2017. A molecular phylogeny of the Sematophyllaceae sl (Hypnales) based on plastid, mitochondrial and nuclear markers, and its taxonomic implications. Taxon 66: 811–831.

Abstract reads: The Sematophyllaceae s.l. (Sematophyllaceae + Pylaisiadelphaceae) is a family of pleurocarpous mosses that is widely distributed throughout the globe, with centers of diversity in tropical forests. The circumscriptions of the family and its genera have been unstable, due to reductions in morphological complexity and alternative weightings of discrete morphological traits. Based on a sample spanning much of the generic diversity of the family, we inferred the phylogenetic relationships within the Sematophyllaceae s.l. from the variation in eight molecular markers from all three genomes (nuclear, mitochondrial, chloroplast). The Sematophyllaceae s.l. was resolved as monophyletic, as was the Sematophyllaceae s.str.; whereas the Pylaisiadelphaceae was found to be paraphyletic, although its monophyly could not be rejected. The morphological definition of the Pylaisiadelphaceae remains dubious, in the absence of unambiguous synapomorphies. The relationships of the clades of Pylaisiadelphaceae and Sematophyllaceae are discussed with respect to the circumscription of morphogenera, with a focus on the Sematophyllaceae crown clade (Aptychopsis, Chionostomum, Colobodontium, Donnellia, Macrohymenium, Paranapiacabaea, Pterogoniopsis, Rhaphidorrhynchium, Schroeterella, Sematophyllum, Warburgiella). Most genera of Sematophyllaceae were resolved as polyphyletic (e.g., Acroporium, Donnellia, Schroeterella, Sematophyllum, Trichosteleum) indicative of severe homoplasy in their putative diagnostic traits. We propose 4 new genera (Brittonodoxa, Microcalpe, Pocsia, Vitalia) and 19 new combina- tions (Aptychopsis cylindrothecia, A. estrellae, A. tequendamensis, Brittonodoxa allinckxiorum, B. cataractae, B. lithophila, B. squarrosa, B. steyermarkii, B. subpinnata, Microcalpe subsimplex, Pocsia matutina, Pterogoniopsis paulista, Schroeterella exigua, Trichosteleum amnigenum, T. lonchophyllum, Vitalia caespitosa, V. cuspidifera, V. esmeraldica, V. galipensis).

Matt Brandt was offered a short internship this summer in the Biodiversity Collection to measure condylobasal (CB) length, using digital calipers, of about 1,000 of our 1,600 accessioned Fisher (Martes pennanti) skulls. He plans to use these data, in combination with data on CB lengths of skulls of American Pine Martens (Martes americana) for his Honors thesis. In addition, he transferred field measurements and data on reproductive status from original paper files to an excel table, from which they can be added to our specimen database.

Kevin Burgio and Veronica Bueno, currently graduate students in EEB, joined EEB alumnus Colin Carlson and others in reporting their study “Parasite biodiversity faces extinction and redistribution in a changing climate” in Science Advances. The study rests on data for countless samples preserved in natural history collections including the Biodiversity Research Collection EEB at UCONN.

Carlson, C.J., Burgio, K.R., Dougherty, E.R., Phillips, A.J., Bueno, V.M., Clements, C.F., Castaldo, G., Dallas, T.A., Cizauskas, C.A., Cumming, G.S. and Doña, J., 2017. Parasite biodiversity faces extinction and redistribution in a changing climate. Science Advances 3(9), p.e1602422.

The abstract reads: Climate change is a well-documented driver of both wildlife extinction and disease emergence, but the negative impacts of climate change on parasite diversity are undocumented. We compiled the most comprehensive spatially explicit data set available for parasites, projected range shifts in a changing climate, and estimated extinction rates for eight major parasite clades. On the basis of 53,133 occurrences capturing the geographic ranges of 457 parasite species, conservative model projections suggest that 5 to 10% of these species are committed to extinction by 2070 from climate-driven habitat loss alone. We find no evidence that parasites with zoonotic potential have a significantly higher potential to gain range in a changing climate, but we do find that ectoparasites (especially ticks) fare disproportionately worse than endoparasites. Accounting for host-driven coextinctions, models predict that up to 30% of parasitic worms are committed to extinction, driven by a combination of direct and indirect pressures. Despite high local extinction rates, parasite richness could still increase by an order of magnitude in some places, because species successfully tracking climate change invade temperate ecosystems and replace native species with unpredictable ecological consequences.

Drs. Janine Caira and Kirsten Jensen edited a special volume of the University of Kansas, Museum of Natural History publication entitled “Tapeworms from the vertebrate bowels of the earth” presenting the outcome of their NSF funded Planetary Biodiversity Inventory project. This publication is open source (available through the above link).

The preface reads: This document is organized into 22 peer-reviewed chapters. Each of the chapters focuses on an individual cestode group, begins with the status of knowledge of the group prior to the inception of the PBI project, and ends with an assessment of the current understanding of the group. In each case, diversity, classification, morphology, phylogenetic relationships, host associations, and geographic distribution are addressed. In all but one case, each chapter includes a list of valid taxa. Synonyms have not generally been listed; this was determined to be beyond the scope of the project given the immensity of such lists for some groups.  With over 3,000 valid species, the generation of a list of species for the Cyclophyllidea was also determined to be beyond the scope of this project. However, a list of valid higher taxa is provided. Each of the 19 cestode orders is addressed alphabetically in separate chapters with two exceptions. The Mesocestoididae are treated as a family in the Cyclophyllidea. Although evidence supporting recognition of the former as an independent order is mounting, the case remains to be formally made based on more detailed investigations of this enigmatic group of mammal parasites. The Onchoproteocephalidea are the second exception. So as to emphasize the dual nature of the host associations and scolex morphology of its members, the freshwater fish-parasitizing taxa (formerly assigned to the order Proteocephalidea) are treated in a chapter as the Onchoproteocephalidea I separately from the taxa that parasitize elasmobranchs, which are treated as the Onchoproteocephalidea II. Use of quotation marks around taxon names (e.g., the order “Tetraphyllidea”) is to remind readers of the definitively non-monophyletic nature of these groups. The first and last chapters are more synthetic in nature. The first chapter provides an overview of the results of the project both in terms of its Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact elements (to use NSF terminology). The final chapter provides a molecular framework for the phylogenetic relationships among the cestodes as they are understood at the end of the PBI project. The final chapter also describes the molecular methods and taxon sampling employed to achieve that framework. This Special Issue concludes with an Appendix listing the more than 220 publications directly resulting from project efforts, all of which cite the PBI award (NSF DEB Nos. 0818696 and 0818823).