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Female aristocrats in the natural history world before the establishment of the Geological Society of London
No full textA fascination with natural history does not recognize class, as is shown through the activities of female aristocrats who, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, contributed significantly by increasing the number of collections at natural history museums. These women were not members of the Geological Society of London because, at that time, women were not even allowed to be members, but they still left their impressive legacy in museums. This paper will focus on three women who made extensive collections that are now incorporated into British museums. The first of these, the Duchess of Portland, made one of the finest collections in England and, possibly, the best collection of shells and fossils in Europe of her time, which was later acquired by the Natural History Museum, London. She was followed by the Countess of Aylesford who made one of the most important mineral collections of her time, which is now at the Natural History Museum, London. Finally, Baroness Brassey collected geological samples during her trips that were used to establish the Brassey Institute in Hastings. These three women used their own income and influence to build collections.© 2020 The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Published by The Geological Society of London. All rights reserved. For permissions: http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/permissions. Publishing disclaimer: www.geolsoc.org.uk/pub_ethics. The attached document is the author(’s’) final accepted/submitted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.NHM Repositor
Disparate compound eyes of Cambrian radiodonts reveal their developmental growth mode and diverse visual ecology
Get PDFRadiodonts are nektonic stem-group euarthropods that played various trophic roles in Paleozoic marine ecosystems, but information on their vision is limited. Optical details exist only in one species from the Cambrian Emu Bay Shale of Australia, here assigned to Anomalocaris aff. canadensis. We identify another type of radiodont compound eye from this deposit, belonging to ‘Anomalocaris’ briggsi. This ≤4-cm sessile eye has >13,000 lenses and a dorsally oriented acute zone. In both taxa, lenses were added marginally and increased in size and number throughout development, as in many crown-group euarthropods. Both species’ eyes conform to their inferred lifestyles: The macrophagous predator A. aff. canadensis has acute stalked eyes (>24,000 lenses each) adapted for hunting in well-lit waters, whereas the suspension-feeding ‘A.’ briggsi could detect plankton in dim down-welling light. Radiodont eyes further demonstrate the group’s anatomical and ecological diversity and reinforce the crucial role of vision in early animal ecosystems.Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.NHM Repositor
Phylogenetic analyses suggest centipede venom arsenals were repeatedly stocked by horizontal gene transfer
No full textAbstract: Venoms have evolved over a hundred times in animals. Venom toxins are thought to evolve mostly by recruitment of endogenous proteins with physiological functions. Here we report phylogenetic analyses of venom proteome-annotated venom gland transcriptome data, assisted by genomic analyses, to show that centipede venoms have recruited at least five gene families from bacterial and fungal donors, involving at least eight horizontal gene transfer events. These results establish centipedes as currently the only known animals with venoms used in predation and defence that contain multiple gene families derived from horizontal gene transfer. The results also provide the first evidence for the implication of horizontal gene transfer in the evolutionary origin of venom in an animal lineage. Three of the bacterial gene families encode virulence factors, suggesting that horizontal gene transfer can provide a fast track channel for the evolution of novelty by the exaptation of bacterial weapons into animal venoms.Copyright: © The Authors, 2021. This is an open access article, available to all readers online, published under a creative commons licensing (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
Lack of support for Deuterostomia prompts reinterpretation of the first Bilateria
No full textThe bilaterally symmetric animals (Bilateria) are considered to comprise two monophyletic groups, Protostomia (Ecdysozoa and the Lophotrochozoa) and Deuterostomia (Chordata and the Xenambulacraria). Recent molecular phylogenetic studies have not consistently supported deuterostome monophyly. Here, we compare support for Protostomia and Deuterostomia using multiple, independent phylogenomic datasets. As expected, Protostomia is always strongly supported, especially by longer and higher-quality genes. Support for Deuterostomia, however, is always equivocal and barely higher than support for paraphyletic alternatives. Conditions that cause tree reconstruction errors—inadequate models, short internal branches, faster evolving genes, and unequal branch lengths—coincide with support for monophyletic deuterostomes. Simulation experiments show that support for Deuterostomia could be explained by systematic error. The branch between bilaterian and deuterostome common ancestors is, at best, very short, supporting the idea that the bilaterian ancestor may have been deuterostome-like. Our findings have important implications for the understanding of early animal evolution.This is an open access article, available to all readers online, published under a creative commons licensing (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Phylogeny of Lithobiidae Newport, 1844, with emphasis on the megadiverse genus Lithobius Leach, 1814 (Myriapoda, Chilopoda)
Get PDFPhylogenetic analyses based on molecular and morphological data were conducted to shed light on relationships within the
mostly Palaearctic/Oriental centipede family Lithobiidae, with a particular focus on the Palaearctic genus Lithobius Leach, 1814
(Lithobiidae, Lithobiomorpha), which contains >500 species and subspecies. Previous studies based on morphological data
resolved Lithobius as nonmonophyletic, but molecular-based phylogenetic analyses have until now sampled few species. To elucidate species inter-relationships of the genus, test the validity of its classification into subgenera, and infer its relationships with other Lithobiidae, we obtained molecular data (nuclear markers: 18S rRNA, 28S rRNA; mitochondrial markers: 16S rRNA,
COI) and 61 morphological characters for 44 species of Lithobius representing four of its eight subgenera and nine other representatives of Lithobiidae. The data were analyzed phylogenetically using maximum-likelihood, parsimony and Bayesian inference. This study suggests that (i) a close relationship between L. giganteus and the pterygotergine Disphaerobius loricatus
highlighted in recent morphological analyses is also strongly supported by molecular data, and Pterygoterginae is formally synonymized with Lithobiinae; (ii) the Oriental/Australian genus Australobius is consistently resolved as sister group to all other
sampled Lithobiidae by the molecular and combined data; (iii) the subfamily Ethopolyinae may be paraphyletic; (iv) the genus
Lithobius is nonmonophyletic; (v) the subgenera Lithobius, Sigibius and Monotarsobius are nonmonophyletic and should not be
used in future taxonomic studies; and (vi) there are instances of cryptic species and cases in which subspecies should be elevated to full species status, as identified for some European taxa within Lithobius.This is an open access article, available to all readers online, published under a creative commons licensing (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
Intense aqueous alteration on C-type asteroids: Perspectives from giant fine-grained micrometeorites
Get PDFThis study explores the petrology of five giant (>400μm) hydrated fine-grained micrometeorites from the Transantarctic Mountain (TAM) micrometeorite collection. For the first time, the extent and mechanisms of aqueous alteration in unmelted cosmic dust are evaluated and quantified. We use a range of criteria, previously defined for use on hydrated chondrites, including phyllosilicate fraction, matrix geochemistry and micro textures. Collectively, these micrometeorites represent ~2.22mm2 of intensely altered hydrated chondritic matrix (with petrologic subtypes of <1.2 in the scheme of Howard et al., [2015]) and reveal a range of alteration styles. Two particles are found to contain pseudomorphic chondrules with thick fine-grained rims, while another micrometeorite contains several aqueously altered CAIs. Their outlines range from well-defined to indistinct, demonstrating that the advanced stages of aqueous alteration progressively remove evidence of coarse-grained components. The remaining two micrometeorites entirely lack coarse-grained components but are similarly altered. Thus, the combined chondrule-to-matrix ratio among these giant micrometeorites is extremely low (6.45 area%), and significantly below the average ratio found in typical CM or CR chondrites (~20%, Weisberg et al., 2006). Our findings are consistent with previous analyses from smaller Antarctic micrometeorites, which suggest that chondrules (and CAIs) derived from hydrated carbonaceous chondrite parent bodies are underrepresented among the micrometeorite flux, even when considering contributions from coarse-grained micrometeorites. Therefore, to explain the relative paucity of anhydrous material, we propose that the flux of fine-grained micrometeorites is primarily derived from intensely aqueously altered, primitive C-type asteroids, which have lost the majority of their refractory coarse-grained components by replacement with secondary phyllosilicate minerals.Copyright © 2021, Suttle M et al. This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.NHM Repositor
Step by step towards citizen science — deconstructing youth participation in BioBlitzes
No full textBioBlitzes, typically one-day citizen science (CS) events, provide opportunities for the public to participate in data collection for research and conservation, potentially promoting deeper engagement with science. We observed 81 youth at 15 BioBlitzes in the U.S. and U.K., identifying five steps participants use to create a biological record (Exploring, Observing, Identifying, Documenting and Recording). We found 67 youth engaged in at least one of the steps, but seldom in all, with rare participation in Recording which is crucial for contributing data to CS. These findings suggest BioBlitzes should reduce barriers to Recording for youth to increase engagement with science.This is an open access article, available to all readers online, published under a creative commons licensing
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
How climatic variability is linked to the spatial distribution of range sizes: seasonality versus climate change velocity in sphingid moths
Get PDFAim: To map the spatial variation of range sizes within sphingid moths, and to test hypotheses on its environmental control. In particular, we investigate effects of climate change velocity since the Pleistocene and the mid-Holocene, temperature and precipitation seasonality, topography, Pleistocene ice cover, and available land area.
Location: Old World and Australasia, excluding smaller islands.
Methods: We used fine-grained range maps (based on expert-edited distribution modelling) for all 972 sphingid moth species in the research region and calculated, at a grain size of 100 km, the median of range sizes of all species that co-occur in a pixel. Climate, topography and Pleistocene ice cover data were taken from publicly available sources. We calculated climate change velocities (CCV) for the last 21ky as well as 6ky. We compared the effects of seasonality and CCV on median range sizes with spatially explicit models while accounting for effects of elevation range, glaciation history and available land area.
Results: Range sizes show a clear spatial pattern, with highest median values in deserts and arctic regions and lowest values in isolated tropical regions. Range sizes were only weakly related to absolute latitude (predicted by Rapoport’s effect), but there was a strong north-south pattern of range size decline. Temperature seasonality emerged as the strongest environmental correlate of median range size, in univariate as well as multivariate models, whereas effects of CCV were weak and unstable for both time periods. These results were robust to variations in the parameters in alternative analyses, among them multivariate CCV.
Main conclusions: Temperature seasonality is a strong correlate of spatial range size variation, while effects of longer-term temperature change, as captured by CCV, received much weaker support.The attached document is the author(’s’) final accepted/submitted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from itNHM Repositor
The Natural History Museum Fossil Porifera Collection
Get PDFThis article provides updated information about the Porifera Collection at The Natural History Museum (NHM), London. With very little information available regarding fossil sponge digitization or any similar initiative, this paper covers the type and figured specimens and drawer label content data of the Porifera Collection and also describes the collection and its research potential. With approximately 71,000 specimens, of which more than 60% are Mesozoic, the NHM holdings offer the best Mesozoic sponge collection in the world and one of the most important due to its breadth and depth. The Porifera Collection covers all stratigraphic periods and all taxonomic groups and includes almost 3000 cited and figured specimens including types. Although most of the specimens come from the British Isles, worldwide samples are also present, with abundant specimens from other Commonwealth countries and from Antarctica.The attached document is the author(’s’) final accepted/submitted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.NHM Repositor
White feathers in black birds
Get PDFThe most common plumage abnormalities in birds involve some form
of white feathering, ranging from birds with just a few white feathers to individuals that are completely white. The causes of aberrant white feathers are diverse and, in many cases, unknown. Some are heritable, based on simple, genetically determined changes in the pigmentation process. More commonly, the causes are less clear-cut and can include environmental conditions (particularly in relation to food availability), and the physical condition and/or age of the bird. In this paper, white feathering is explored in three common species: Carrion Crow Corvus
corone, Hooded Crow C. cornix and Blackbird Turdus merula. Results from the BTO Abnormal Plumage Survey are summarised, and data from a museum-based study of Blackbirds with plumage abnormalities are reported. In all three species, partly white plumage is recorded regularly and is often referred to incorrectly as albinism or leucism.© British Birds. Articles from this journal can be made open access within institutional repositories two years following publication. The attached file is the published version of the article. If you wish to consult the rest of the issue visit the publisher's website.NHM Repositor