News

Don't Be Fooled: Flowers Mislead Traditional Taxonomy

8. May 2013

Floral morphologies may be less reliable than other traits in determining the relationships of papilionoid species and genera.

For hundreds of years, plant taxonomists have worked to understand how species are related. Until relatively recently, their only reliable source of information about these relationships was the plants' morphology -- traits that could be observed, measured, counted, categorized, and described visually. And paramount among these morphological traits were aspects of flower shape and arrangement. However, an international team of researchers have found that floral morphologies may be less reliable than other traits in determining the relationships of papilionoid species and genera. Despite their striking differences in flower shape, Luetzelburgia, Sweetia, Vatairea, and Vataireopsis turned out to be close relatives. Moreover, the two genera with papilionate flowers were not each other's closest relatives. According to Cardoso, "We showed that similarity in floral morphology does not predict phylogenetic relatedness. Indeed, genera with very different flower shapes are often very closely related (Luetzelburgia and Vatairea), and genera with highly similar flowers share such similarity via convergent evolution (Vatairea and Vataireopsis)."

Their findings can be found in the recent issue of the American Journal of Botany.

 

Link to article (March 4, 2013)

Call For Papers - European Journal of Taxonomy

7. May 2013

EJT is an international, fully electronic, Open Acces journal for descriptive taxonomy, in zoology, entomology, botany and palaeontology. Publishing in EJT is free (there are no page charges) and also access is free (there are no subscription charges). So neither authors, nor readers have to pay!

EJT-papers must be original and of a high standard both in scientific content and technical execution (language, artwork, ...). The scope of EJT is global; neither authorship nor the geographical region is restricted to Europe.

EJT publishes taxonomic contributions and revisions, monographs and opinion papers. Less comprehensive taxonomic papers (e.g. those dealing with a few species of a taxon) will be accepted for review provided their wider context and impact is both high and explained clearly.

EJT follows Creative Commons Copyright, so authors retain the copyright of their papers.

How?

EJT manuscripts should be submitted through the Open Journal Systems. Submit your article today on our website, where full Instructions to Authors are available (see Submission).

The smallest frog and SpongeBob - new species 2011

29. December 2011

Every year a number of new species are described, the smallest frog of the world, a fungus looking like a comic figure, and the monster-wasp from Sulawesi. More records can be found →here.

Trapping data to aid conservation

26. July 2011

A pilot project to help digitise data captured by the network of camera traps in India has been launched in a collaboration between Norwegian and Indian scientific institutions. The Norwegian government is providing 1.2 million Norwegian Kroner (US$ 217,000) towards the two-year project. read more

Winner of 2011 Ebbe Nielsen prize announced

26. July 2011

Prof Jens-Christian Svenning of the Department of Biological Sciences at Aarhus University, Denmark, is the winner of the Ebbe Nielsen prize this year. The award of €30,000 recognises innovations in biodiversity informatics. Prof Svenning intends to use the award towards gaining a better understanding of what determines species diversity. read more

Young scientists showcase GBIF data use

26. July 2011

An ornithologist from Mexico and a marine biologist from Ireland are this year’s winners of the GBIF Young Researchers Award. César Antonio Ríos-Muñoz and Conor Ryan, both Ph.D. students, will each receive €4000 to help fund research proposals making innovative use of data made available through the GBIF network. read more

Roentgen technology reveals plumage samples of the Urvogels

20. July 2011

Which colors did the plumage of the first birds have? Researchers revealed this mystery for the first time: With a special Roentgen technology they could reconstruct the pigments chemically. Metal-pure in the 120 million years old fossils tell: Particularly the feather dress was however not colorful.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,771716,00.html

Syndicate content