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Aim Temporal dynamics of biodiversity along tropical elevational gradients are unknown. We studied seasonal changes of Lepidoptera biodiversity along the only complete forest elevational gradient in the Afrotropics. We focused on shifts of species richness patterns, seasonal turnover of communities, and seasonal shifts of species’ elevational ranges, the latter often serving as an indicator of the global change effects on mountain ecosystems. Location Mount Cameroon, Cameroon. Taxon Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) Methods We quantitatively sampled nine groups of Lepidoptera by bait-trapping (16,800 trap-days) and light-catching (126 nights) at seven elevations evenly distributed along the elevational gradient from sea level (30 m asl) to timberline (2,200 m asl). Sampling was repeated in three seasons. Result Altogether, 42,936 specimens of 1,099 species were recorded. A mid-elevation peak of species richness was detected for all groups but Eupterotidae. This peak shifted seasonally for five groups, most of them ascending during the dry season. Seasonal shifts of species’ elevational ranges were mostly responsible for these diversity pattern shifts along elevation: we found general upward shifts in fruit-feeding butterflies, fruit-feeding moths and Lymantriinae from beginning to end of the dry season. Contrarily, Arctiinae shifted upwards during the wet season. The average seasonal shifts of elevational ranges often exceeded 100 metres and were even several times higher for numerous species. Main conclusion We report seasonal uphill and downhill shifts of several lepidopteran groups. The reported shifts can be driven by both delay in weather seasonality and shifts in resource availability, causing phenological delay of adult hatching and/or adult migrations. Such shifts may lead to misinterpretations of diversity patterns along elevation if seasonality is ignored. More importantly, considering the surprising extent of seasonal elevational shifts of species, we encourage taking account of such natural temporal dynamics while investigating the global climate change impact on communities of Lepidoptera in tropical mountains. The dataset was collected by two methodologies: 1/ bait-trapping and 2/ manual catching of target group at light. See Maicher et al. (2019) for details.

Bioluminescent beetles of the superfamily Elateroidea (fireflies, fire beetles, glow-worms) are the most speciose group of terrestrial light-producing animals. The evolution of bioluminescence in elateroids is associated with unusual morphological modifications, such as soft-bodiedness and neoteny, but the fragmentary nature of the fossil record discloses little about the origin of these adaptations. We report the discovery of a new bioluminescent elateroid beetle family from the mid-Cretaceous of northern Myanmar (ca. 99 Ma), Cretophengodidae fam. nov. Cretophengodes azari gen. et sp. nov. belongs to the bioluminescent lampyroid clade, and represents a transitional fossil linking the soft-bodied Phengodidae + Rhagophthalmidae clade and hard-bodied elateroids. The fossil male possesses a light organ on the abdomen which presumably served a defensive function, documenting a Cretaceous radiation of bioluminescent beetles coinciding with the diversification of major insectivore groups such as frogs and stem-group birds. The discovery adds a key branch to the elateroid tree of life and sheds light on the timing of the evolution of soft-bodiedness and historical biogeography of elateroid beetles. The Burmese amber specimen studied here originates from amber mines near the Noije Bum Hill (26°20' N, 96°36' E), Hukawng Valley, Kachin State, northern Myanmar. The specimen is deposited in the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology (NIGP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China. The amber piece was trimmed with a small table saw, ground with emery papers of different grain sizes, and finally polished with polishing powder. Photographs under incident light were taken with a Zeiss Discovery V20 stereo microscope. Widefield fluorescence images were captured with a Zeiss Axio Imager 2 light microscope combined with a fluorescence imaging system. Confocal images were obtained with a Zeiss LSM710 confocal laser scanning microscope. Images under incident light and widefield fluorescence were stacked in Helicon Focus 7.0.2 or Zerene Stacker 1.04. Confocal images were manually stacked in Adobe Photoshop CC. Images were further processed in Adobe Photoshop CC to enhance contrast. 

Predators attack conspicuous prey phenotypes that are present in the environment. Male display behaviour of conspicuous nuptial colouration becomes risky in the presence of a predator, and adult males face higher predation risk. High predation risk in one sex will lead to low survival and sex ratio bias in adult cohorts, unless the increased predation risk is compensated by higher escape rate. Here, we tested the hypothesis that sand lizards (Lacerta agilis) have sex-specific predation risk and escape rate. We expected the differences to manifest in changes in sex ratio with age, differences in frequency of tail autotomy, and in sex-specific survival rate. We developed a statistical model to estimate predation risk and escape rate, combining the observed sex ratio and frequency of tail autotomy with likelihood-based survival rate. Using a Bayesian framework, we estimated the model parameters. We projected the date of the tail autotomy events from growth rates derived from capture-recapture data measurements. We found statistically stable sex ratio in age groups, equal frequency of tail regenerates between sexes, and similar survival rate. Predation risk is similar between sexes, and escape rate increases survival by about 5%. We found low survival rate and a low number of tail autotomy events in females during months when sand lizards mate and lay eggs, indicating high predator pressure throughout reproduction. Our data show that gravid females fail to escape predation. The risks of reproduction season in an ectotherm are a convolution of morphological changes (conspicuous colouration in males, body allometry changes in gravid females), behaviour (nuptial displays), and environmental conditions which challenge lizard thermal performance. Performance of endotherm predators in cold spring months endangers gravid females more than displaying males in bright nuptial colouration.  Capture-recapture data of sand lizards (Lacerta agilis, Lacertidae, Reptilia) from Hustopeče, Czechia (48.93 N, 16.72 E). animal - identification of the animal; prefix indicates the latest possible year of hatching day - day of capture month - month of capture year - year of capture season - phase I started from the arousal from hibernation, and lasted until the first adult male started to lose nuptial colouration; phase II constituted the season after males started to lose nuptial colouration, and lasted until the beginning of hibernation sex - sex of the animal ventralia - number of scales in the second rows from the ventral medial line age - young animals were juveniles and subadults, the remaining animals were considered adult aged.month - approximate age of the animal in months regenerate - presence of tail regenerate predation.attempt - first record of tail regenerate or reduced tail length at recapture Lreg - tail regenerate length in mm; 0 - animal with intact tail, 0.01 - recent tail autotomy, no tail regenerate growth measurable tailL - tail length from cloaca to tail tip corrected for body length from rostrum to cloaca48.93 N, 16.72 E48.93 N, 16.72 E)

Published as part of Krahulec, František, Kirschner, Jan & Krahulcová, Anna, 2023, Valeriana dacica, a distinctive tetraploid in the Eastern Carpathians, pp. 210-222 in Phytotaxa 629 (3) on page 217, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.629.3.3, http://zenodo.org/record/10281261 FIGURE 5. The lectotype specimen of the name Valeriana tripteris var. heterophylla Baumgarten (CL, herb. Baumgartenianum, no. 8330).

FIGURE 1. Amylotheca cleofei Tandang, Galindon & A.S.Rob. A) Twig with young inflorescence. B. Single dichasium (triad). Note the sessile central flower. C) Cupule. D) Corolla tube. E) Expanded corolla) F. Corolla lobes with fused anthers and filaments. G) Pistil. H) Floral bract of sessile flower. I) Floral bract of pedicellate flower J) Seed. K) Fruit in longitudinal section. L) Fruit in cross section. Scale bars: A = 1 cm; B = 5 mm; C, H, I = 1 mm; D, E, G, J, K, L = 5.0 mm; F = 2.0 mm. Illustration: Bing Famoso Tac-an. Published as part of Tandang, Danilo N., Galindon, John Michael M., Lagunday, Noel E., Coritico, Fulgent P., Amoroso, Victor B. & Robinson, Alastair S., 2021, Amylotheca cleofei sp. nov. (Loranthaceae), a new species and genus record for the Philippines, pp. 113-120 in Phytotaxa 507 (1) on page 115, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.507.1.7, http://zenodo.org/record/5425559

This product is constructed using the Observation Package (ObsPack) framework [Masarie et al., 2014; www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/6/375/2014/]. The framework is designed to bring together atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) observations from a variety of sampling platforms, prepare them with specific applications in mind, and package and distribute them in a self-consistent and well-documented product. ObsPack products are intended to support GHG budget studies and represent a new generation of cooperative value-added GHG data products. This product includes 429 atmospheric methane datasets derived from observations made by 54 laboratories from 22 countries. Data for the period 1983-2021 (where available) are included.

Additional file 1. Dataset.

In this study, we present data related to optimizing Si-PVdF slurry mixing and electrode fabrication techniques to enhance the performance of lithium-ion batteries. Three critical experimental conditions are documented in Tables 1, 2, and 3, corresponding to different stages of the research. Table 1 records data from an initial unsuccessful attempt, while Table 2 captures data from a subsequent trial that did not yield successful results. Figure 1(a) clearly depicts an unsuccessful endeavor in the slurry mixing process of Si-PVdF, utilizing a volume of 0.9 ml of NMP. The image presented exhibits notable visual characteristics that illustrate the difficulties encountered in attaining a uniform slurry, as evidenced by noticeable irregularities and accumulation within the mixture [3]. The proposed visual representation emphasizes the crucial significance of accurate quantity control of NMP (N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone) and sheds light on the challenges encountered during the electrode fabrication process in this research phase [4]. Fig. 1(b) depicts an additional instance of an unsuccessful endeavor in the slurry mixing process of Si-PVdF, wherein 1.0 ml of NMP was employed. The sharp and detailed image captures the persistence of issues observed in Fig. 1(a), emphasizing the importance of optimizing the NMP concentration. This striking visual evidence accentuates the necessity for fine-tuning the formulation to overcome challenges and attain a consistent slurry mixture. Table 3, on the other hand, represents the outcome of a successful experiment. Each table provides information on the materials used, including Silicon (Si), Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVdF), Graphite (G), and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), along with their respective weights and proportions. Figure 1(c) represents a significant achievement in the research, illustrating the successful fabrication of Si-PVdF slurry following a crucial aging procedure [5]. The visual representation conveys a perception of achievement through its consistent and seamless surface quality, effectively demonstrating enhanced bonding between the slurry material and the copper foil. Additionally, the tables include electrode and copper foil weight measurements and active Si weight percentage values. The data in these tables highlight the critical role of NMP quantity and aging time in achieving a homogenous slurry and successful electrode fabrication. Notably, the successful experiment in Table 3 is marked by improved adhesion of the slurry material to the copper foil, preventing delamination. This dataset provides valuable insights into the optimization process for Si-PVdF electrode fabrication in lithium-ion batteries. It can serve as a reference for future research in battery materials science [9].

Rapid and reliable identification of insects is important in many contexts, from the detection of disease vectors and invasive species to the sorting of material from biodiversity inventories. Because of the shortage of adequate expertise, there has long been an interest in developing automated systems for this task. Previous attempts have been based on laborious and complex handcrafted extraction of image features, but in recent years it has been shown that sophisticated convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can learn to extract relevant features automatically, without human intervention. Unfortunately, reaching expert-level accuracy in CNN identifications requires substantial computational power and huge training datasets, which are often not available for taxonomic tasks. This can be addressed using feature transfer: a CNN that has been pretrained on a generic image classification task is exposed to the taxonomic images of interest, and information about its perception of those images is used in training a simpler, dedicated identification system. Here, we develop an effective method of CNN feature transfer, which achieves expert-level accuracy in taxonomic identification of insects with training sets of 100 images or less per category. Specifically, we extract rich representations of intermediate to high-level image features from the CNN architecture VGG16 pretrained on the ImageNet dataset. This information is fed into a linear support vector machine classifier, which is trained on the target problem. We tested the performance of our approach on two types of challenging taxonomic tasks: (1) identifying insects to higher groups when they are likely to belong to subgroups that have not been seen previously; and (2) identifying visually similar species that are difficult to separate even for experts. For the first task, our approach reaches > 92 % accuracy on one dataset (884 face images of 11 families of Diptera, all specimens representing unique species), and > 96 % accuracy on another (2936 dorsal habitus images of 14 families of Coleoptera, over 90 % of specimens belonging to unique species). For the second task, our approach outperforms a leading taxonomic expert on one dataset (339 images of three species of the Coleoptera genus Oxythyrea; 97 % accuracy), and both humans and traditional automated identification systems on another dataset (3845 images of nine species of Plecoptera larvae; 98.6 % accuracy). Reanalyzing several biological image identification tasks studied in the recent literature, we show that our approach is broadly applicable and provides significant improvements over previous methods, whether based on dedicated CNNs, CNN feature transfer, or more traditional techniques. Thus, our method, which is easy to apply, can be highly successful in developing automated taxonomic identification systems even when training datasets are small and computational budgets limited. valan2018_SUPPLEMENT.tarThis directory contains: * metadata to obtain images from the three novel datasets we designed for our study * notebooks with thorough evaluation of off-the-shelf approach for image classification based on a feature extraction with a single feed forward pass trough pretrained VGG16 * script to run on your own dataset with what we found to be optimal settings. You can also access it here https://github.com/valanm/off-the-shelf-insect-identificationSupplementary_Figure1Impact of concatenating globally max pooled (MAX) and globally average pooled (AVG) features on identification accuracy for datasets D1, D2, D3 and D4. We used input images of size 416x416 and features are extracted after 4th convolutional block (c4). Concatenation of MAX and AVG features resulted in accuracy somewhere between the global average pooling (performed the best in all cases) and global max pooling (performed the worst in all cases).valan2018_latex