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Morphology, Development, and Sediment Dynamics of Elongating Linear Dunes on Mars
Get PDFLinear dunes occur on planetary surfaces, including Earth, Mars, and Titan, yet their dynamics are poorly understood. Recent studies of terrestrial linear dunes suggest they migrate by elongation only in supply‐limited environments. Here, we investigate elongating linear dunes in the Hellespontus Montes region of Mars which are morphologically similar to terrestrial systems. Multitemporal, high‐resolution orbital images show these linear dunes migrate by elongation only and that the fixed sediment source of the dunes probably restricts any lateral migration. Some linear dunes maintain their along‐length volume and elongate at rates comparable to adjacent barchans, whereas those which decrease in volume show no elongation, suggesting they are near steady state, matching morphometric predictions. Limited sediment supply may restrict Martian linear dunes to several kilometers, significantly shorter than many terrestrial linear dunes. Our results demonstrate the close similarities in dune dynamics across the two planetary surfaces.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.NHM Repositor
The mitogenome of a Malagasy butterfly Malaza fastuosus (Mabille, 1884) recovered from the holotype collected over 140 years ago adds support for a new subfamily of Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera)
Get PDFMalaza fastuosus is a lavishly patterned skipper butterfly from a genus that has three described species, all endemic to the mainland of Madagascar. To our knowledge, M. fastuosus has not been collected for nearly 50 years. To evaluate the power of our techniques to recover DNA, we used a single foreleg of an at least 140-year-old holotype specimen from the collection of the Natural History Museum London with no destruction of external morphology to extract DNA and assemble a complete mitogenome from next generation sequencing reads. The resulting 15 540 bp mitogenome contains 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, two ribosomal RNA genes, and an A+T rich region, similarly to other Lepidoptera mitogenomes. Here we provide the first mitogenome also for Trapezitinae (Rachelia extrusus). Phylogenetic analysis of available skipper mitogenomes places Malaza outside of Trapezitinae and Barcinae + Hesperiinae, with a possible sister relationship to Heteropterinae. Of these, at least Heteropterinae, Trapezitinae, and almost all Hesperiinae have monocot-feeding caterpillars. Malaza appears to be an evolutionarily highly distinct ancient lineage, morphologically with several unusual hesperiid features. The monotypic subfamily Malazinae Lees & Grishin subfam. nov. (type genus Malaza) is proposed to reflect this morphological and molecular evidence.NHM RepositoryThis is an open access article published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). The attached article is the published pdf.NHM Repositor
Annotated type catalogue of the Bothriembryontidae and Odontostomidae (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Orthalicoidea) in the Natural History Museum, London
Get PDFThe type status is described for specimens of 84 taxa classified within the families Bothriembryontidae and Odontostomidae (superfamily Orthalicoidea) and kept in the Natural History Museum, London. Lectotypes are designated for Bulimus (Liparus) brazieri Angas, 1871; Bulimus broderipii Sowerby I, 1832; Bulimus fuligineus Pfeiffer, 1853; Helix guarani d’Orbigny, 1835; Bulimus (Tomigerus) ramagei E.A. Smith, 1890; Helix rhodinostoma d’Orbigny, 1835; Bulimus (Bulimulus) ridleyi E.A. Smith, 1890. The type status of the following taxa is changed to lectotype in accordance with Art. 74.6 ICZN: Placostylus (Euplacostylus) cylindricus Fulton, 1907; Bulimus pyrostomus Pfeiffer, 1860; Bulimus turneri Pfeiffer, 1860. The following taxon is synonymised: Bulimus oblitus Reeve, 1848 = Bahiensis neglectus (Pfeiffer, 1847).This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.NHM Repositor
Ensuring tests of conservation interventions build on existing literature
No full textThis is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Sutherland, W.J., Alvarez‐Castañeda, S.T., Amano, T., Ambrosini, R., Atkinson, P., Baxter, J.M., Bond, A.L., Boon, P.J., Buchanan, K.L., Barlow, J., Bogliani, G., Bragg, O.M., Burgman, M., Cadotte, M.W., Calver, M., Cooke, S.J., Corlett, R.T., Devictor, V., Ewen, J.G., Fisher, M., Freeman, G., Game, E., Godley, B.J., Gortázar, C., Hartley, I.R., Hawksworth, D.L., Hobson, K.A., Lu, M.‐L., Martín‐López, B., Ma, K., Machado, A., Maes, D., Mangiacotti, M., McCafferty, D.J., Melfi, V., Molur, S., Moore, A.J., Murphy, S.D., Norris, D., van Oudenhoven, A.P., Powers, J., Rees, E.C., Schwartz, M.W., Storch, I. and Wordley, C. (2020), Ensuring tests of conservation interventions build on existing literature. Conservation Biology, 34: 781-783, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13555. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. The attached file is the final approved author manuscript version, you are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.NHM Repositor
Insights into the abundance and diversity of abyssal megafauna in a polymetallic-nodule region in the eastern Clarion-Clipperton Zone
Get PDFThere is growing interest in mining polymetallic nodules in the abyssal Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific. Nonetheless, benthic communities in this region remain poorly known. The ABYSSLINE Project is conducting benthic biological baseline surveys for the UK Seabed Resources Ltd. exploration contract area (UK-1) in the CCZ. Using a Remotely Operated Vehicle, we surveyed megafauna at four sites within a 900 km2 stratum in the UK-1 contract area, and at a site ~250 km east of the UK-1 area, allowing us to make the first estimates of abundance and diversity. We distinguished 170 morphotypes within the UK-1 contract area but species-richness estimators suggest this could be as high as 229. Megafaunal abundance averaged 1.48 ind. m−2. Seven of 12 collected metazoan species were new to science, and four belonged to new genera. Approximately half of the morphotypes occurred only on polymetallic nodules. There were weak, but statistically significant, positive correlations between megafaunal and nodule abundance. Eastern-CCZ megafaunal diversity is high relative to two abyssal datasets from other regions, however comparisons with CCZ and DISCOL datasets are problematic given the lack of standardised methods and taxonomy. We postulate that CCZ megafaunal diversity is driven in part by habitat heterogeneity.This open access work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images
or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license,
unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license,
users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/NHM Repositor
Exploration of the Mid-Cayman Rise
Get PDFOceanography articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately (e.g., authors, Oceanography, volume number, issue number, page number[s], figure number[s], and DOI for the article), provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content.NHM Repositor
Environmental impacts of the deep-water oil and gas industry: a review to guide management strategies
Get PDFThe industrialization of the deep sea is expanding worldwide. Increasing oil and gas exploration activities in the absence of sufficient baseline data in deep-sea ecosystems has made environmental management challenging. Here, we review the types of activities that are associated with global offshore oil and gas development in water depths over 200 m, the typical impacts of these activities, some of the more extreme impacts of accidental oil and gas releases, and the current state of management in the major regions of offshore industrial activity including 18 exclusive economic zones. Direct impacts of infrastructure installation, including sediment resuspension and burial by seafloor anchors and pipelines, are typically restricted to a radius of ~100 m on from the installation on the seafloor. Discharges of water-based and low-toxicity oil-based drilling muds and produced water can extend over 2 km, while the ecological impacts at the population and community levels on the seafloor are most commonly on the order of 200–300 m from their source. These impacts may persist in the deep sea for many years and likely longer for its more fragile ecosystems, such as cold-water corals. This synthesis of information provides the basis for a series of recommendations for the management of offshore oil and gas development. An effective management strategy, aimed at minimizing risk of significant environmental harm, will typically encompass regulations of the activity itself (e.g., discharge practices, materials used), combined with spatial (e.g., avoidance rules and marine protected areas), and temporal measures (e.g., restricted activities during peak reproductive periods). Spatial management measures that encompass representatives of all of the regional deep-sea community types is important in this context. Implementation of these management strategies should consider minimum buffer zones to displace industrial activity beyond the range of typical impacts: at least 2 km from any discharge points and surface infrastructure and 200 m from seafloor infrastructure with no expected discharges. Although managing natural resources is, arguably, more challenging in deep-water environments, inclusion of these proven conservation tools contributes to robust environmental management strategies for oil and gas extraction in the deep sea.Copyright © 2016 Cordes, Jones, Schlacher, Amon, Bernardino, Brooke, Carney,
DeLeo, Dunlop, Escobar-Briones, Gates, Génio, Gobin, Henry, Herrera, Hoyt, Joye,
Kark, Mestre, Metaxas, Pfeifer, Sink, Sweetman and Witte. This is an open-access
article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC
BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the
original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this
journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution
or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.NHM Repositor
sFDvent: A global trait database for deep‐sea hydrothermal‐vent fauna
Get PDFMotivation: Traits are increasingly being used to quantify global biodiversity patterns,
with trait databases growing in size and number, across diverse taxa. Despite grow‐
ing interest in a trait‐based approach to the biodiversity of the deep sea, where the
impacts of human activities (including seabed mining) accelerate, there is no single re‐
pository for species traits for deep‐sea chemosynthesis‐based ecosystems, including
hydrothermal vents. Using an international, collaborative approach, we have compiled
the first global‐scale trait database for deep‐sea hydrothermal‐vent fauna – sFD‐
vent (sDiv‐funded trait database for the Functional Diversity of vents). We formed a
funded working group to select traits appropriate to: (a) capture the performance of
vent species and their influence on ecosystem processes, and (b) compare trait‐based
diversity in different ecosystems. Forty contributors, representing expertise across
most known hydrothermal‐vent systems and taxa, scored species traits using online
collaborative tools and shared workspaces. Here, we characterise the sFDvent da‐
tabase, describe our approach, and evaluate its scope. Finally, we compare the sFD‐
vent database to similar databases from shallow‐marine and terrestrial ecosystems to
highlight how the sFDvent database can inform cross‐ecosystem comparisons. We
also make the sFDvent database publicly available online by assigning a persistent,
unique DOI.
Main types of variable contained: Six hundred and forty‐six vent species names,
associated location information (33 regions), and scores for 13 traits (in categories:
community structure, generalist/specialist, geographic distribution, habitat use, life
history, mobility, species associations, symbiont, and trophic structure). Contributor
IDs, certainty scores, and references are also provided.
Spatial location and grain: Global coverage (grain size: ocean basin), spanning eight
ocean basins, including vents on 12 mid‐ocean ridges and 6 back‐arc spreading
centres.
Time period and grain: sFDvent includes information on deep‐sea vent species, and
associated taxonomic updates, since they were first discovered in 1977. Time is not
recorded. The database will be updated every 5 years.
Major taxa and level of measurement: Deep‐sea hydrothermal‐vent fauna with spe‐
cies‐level identification present or in progress.
Software format: .csv and MS Excel (.xlsx).This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.NHM Repositor
Orogen architecture and crustal growth from accretion to collision (IGCP#662): Scientific Activities 2018-2019
Get PDFThe scientific board of the International Geoscience Programme (IGCP), jointly sponsored by IUGS and UNESCO, approved for funding in March 2018 the IGCP-662 project (2018-2023) entitled “Orogenic architecture and crustal growth from accretion to collision”. Four meetings and field excursion, as well as training courses, have been successfully held respectively in 2018 and 2019. The first workshop was held during 21th - 22nd September 2018 in Beijing, China, with a 5-day (15th - 19th September) preworkshop field trip and one-day (23 September 2018) post-conference training course on “Using isotopes in zircon and sulfides to understanding crust-mantle evolution”. The second workshop and field trip of the IGCP-662 project were held in Mongolia from July 4th - 10th, 2019. Besides, the IGCP-662 project joined as co-sponsor the organization of an international symposium “The Geology of Eurasia” held at the Helmholtz-Centre Potsdam - German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) during 26th June - 1st July 2019.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.NHM Repositor
Trace element concentrations in feathers from three seabird species breeding in the Timor Sea
Get PDFMobile marine predators, such as seabirds, are frequently used as broad samplers of contaminants that are widespread in the marine environment. The Timor Sea off remote Western Australia is a poorly studied, yet rapidly expanding area of offshore development. To provide much needed data on contamination in this region, we quantified trace element concentrations in breast feathers of three seabird species breeding on Bedout Island. While adult Masked Boobies Sula dactylatra exhibited some of the highest concentrations, values for all species were below toxicology thresholds for seabirds and were comparable to those reported in other closely related species. The low concentrations detected in the birds provide a valuable baseline and suggest that the local marine environment around Bedout is in relatively good condition. However, careful monitoring is warranted in light increasing anthropogenic activity in this region.© 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. The attached file is the final authors' accepted manuscript version.NHM Repositor