A new land snail species from Laos has been named in honor of the Biodiversity Heritage Library!

Vargapupa biheli, named in honor of BHL. Image courtesy Dr. Barna Páll-Gergely.

Vargapupa biheli, a medium-sized, slender turriform species with a well developed basal keel, was described in the article “Revision of the Genus Pseudopomatias and its Relatives (Gastropoda: Cyclophoroidea: Pupinidae” in Zootaxa: 3937(1), 2015, by Barna Páll-Gergely, Zoltán Fehér, András Hunyadi, and Takahiro Asami.

The species is part of a newly-described genus, also articulated within this article, Vargapupa, which includes this and one other newly-described species, Vargapupa oharai, both species of which are known from the northern Annamese Mountains in Northern Vietnam and Laos.

Dr. Barna Páll-Gergely, the lead author on the paper and a Biologist in the Department of Biology at Shinshu University in Japan, uses BHL as part of his daily work and has been profiled in the past on our blog. Deeply appreciative of the services BHL provides, Páll-Gergely decided to dedicate the new species to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, writing in the Zootaxa paper:

“The new species is named after the Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org) to thank the multitude of rare literature made available to us. The name “biheli” is an acronym derived from the name BIodiversity HEritage Library.”

Dr. Páll-Gergely’s current research focuses on the taxonomy of some land snail groups (genera and families) of East Asia. According to Páll-Gergely,

“Most species of this area were described at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries…with poor locality data, based on a few empty shells, and many of them have not been sufficiently illustrated. Therefore, whenever I want to describe new species, I have to examine the type specimens of every known species in museum collections and compare [them] with the material I have. My aim is to accumulate as many information on a particular group of snails as possible. I try to find morphological characters which help to distinguish species from each other and to categorized them into genera, tribes and families properly.”

The story of Páll-Gergely’s discovery of Vargapupa biheli began with the examination of a few shells of a Pseudopomatias species that his friend, András Hunyadi, collected in Vietnam. As Páll-Gergely explained:

“[András] told me they were possibly new species, so I started to compile all [available] literature about this genus. During my investigation I found a publication written by the French geologist and archaeologist Edmond Saurin (1904 -1977) in 1953 about some Laotian land snails. In the introduction, he mentioned that he collected Pseudopomatias fulvus in Laos, but no other information was written about that sample. I knew that Pseudopomatias fulvus was known from a small area in northeastern Vietnam, so the Laotian sample mentioned by Saurin was important to examine. I loaned it from the Paris museum, and when I first saw Saurin’s sample, later named Vargapupa biheli, it was immediately clear that it was new to science.”

According to Páll-Gergely, both new Vargapupa species differ from other members of the Pseudopomatias genus due to the presence of keels in their shells. Vargapupa biheli has a strange keel on the basal part of its shell, while Vargapupa oharai displays this and a second, lower keel. The keel is absent in the genus Pseudopomatias, thus indicating the need for a new genus: Vargapupa. External morphological and locality data is currently the only information available for these two new species; nothing is known of their behavior, diet, etc.

Left: A Pseudopomatias species without a basal keel (P. amoenus); Middle: Vargapupa oharai; Right: Vargapupa biheli. Both Vargapupa species possess a basal keel (indicated with an arrow). Image courtesy Dr. Barna Páll-Gergely.

While Páll-Gergely’s confirmation of Vargapupa biheli as a new species involved an examination of a specimen labeled as Pseudopomatias fulvus, which he loaned from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, the story of how that specimen came to be in the museum’s collection is quite a tale!

In the 1970s, Dr. Philippe Bouchet, a biologist at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, stumbled upon four obscure articles on the Pyramidellidae (a family of microgastropods that parasitize other marine invertebrates) of Vietnam by Edmond Saurin, published between 1958-62. The articles together described 210 new species of Pyramidellidae, but the type specimens that those species were based upon were missing. Bouchet set out to track them down, and through various communications finally discovered an old address for Edmond Saurin at the Château du Roussier in France. Bouchet wrote a letter to the address, inquiring after the types and whether Saurin would be willing to deposit them at the museum. Two weeks later, he received a reply from Madame Saurin, indicating that her husband had died two years earlier and that, while she did not know where the types might be, Bouchet was welcome to visit her home and comb through the attic in search of them.

Two months later, Bouchet and a museum technician named Annie arrived at the Château du Roussier, where they were warmly greeted by Madame Saurin, who, over a glass of port, told them of her trip with her husband to Indochina in 1937 – an adventure that involved crossing the Red Sea with the infamous French adventurer and arms smuggler, Henry de Monfreid! In the 1950s, Saurin became fascinated with microsnails, and it was during this period that he collected the many specimens described in his papers. Following her tales, as Bouchet related to Páll-Gergely,

“[Madame Saurin] said, ‘time is running and you would like to see if you can find the Pyramidellid types before it gets dark, wouldn’t you?’ She took me to the very large attic of their very large mansion. It was full of cabinets, crates and boxes, and she said she had no idea if it would be there. It was like searching for a pin in a haystack. So, I started searching cabinets with small drawers and, knowing the habits of collectors of the time, small boxes, like cigar boxes etc. In fact I found the Pyramidellid types in less than 10 minutes! Some tubes had suffered, but overall I rescued about 80% of Saurin’s Pyramidellid types, and at this occasion discovered that he had also amassed land snails, which Mme Saurin was happy to donate as well to Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. All the material was wrapped in newspaper cuts with place names scribbled in almost illegible handwriting across the print: clearly valuable scientific material but difficult to use! So we employed a Vietnamese student to curate this material, i.e. read place names, transcribe them on proper museum labels, and the result is what you have on loan.”

In total within the Zootaxa article, Páll-Gergely and his co-authors describe eleven species new to science, nine of which were found in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London, and in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. Eight of those nine were collected over a century ago, while Vargapupa biheli was collected, as described above, in the 1950s. Thus, this paper demonstrates the extreme importance of museum collections, not only for preserving known specimens but also as repositories of unknown new species. As Páll-Gergely expressed, “These century-old shells are not only important pieces for natural science, but in the same time, they are interesting pieces of human history.”

Going forward, Páll-Gergely plans to continue the revision of other south-east Asian land snail genera, examining type specimens, comparing them with newly collected specimens, and finally “describing species which are the result of millions of years of evolution on Earth.” Museum collections, and the historic literature contained in BHL, will continue to constitute a major part of that work.

Dr. Barna Páll-Gergely.

We at BHL are deeply humbled at Páll-Gergely’s recognition of BHL’s contributions through his newly-described species, Vargapupa biheli. According to Páll-Gergely, this is a well-deserved recognition:

“Simply speaking we need three main things for a taxonomy: (1) type specimens of known species deposited in museums, (2) previously not examined material, and (3) literature. BHL provided nearly all the literature we needed, because in most south-east Asian land snails groups most species were described before 1920. We may think it is natural to have old literature online, but if we didn’t, we would have serious trouble finding the relevant publications. Therefore I thought BHL definitely deserves a new species named after it for the help it provided.”

We are pleased to say that BHL not only hosts a vast library of life on Earth, it is now a part of that library.

Special thanks to Dr. Barna Páll-Gergely and Dr. Philippe Bouchet for their significant contributions to this post, and especially to Dr. Páll-Gergely for his recognition of BHL. The information about the discovery of Saurin’s type specimens was relayed by Dr. Bouchet to Dr. Páll-Gergely and gleaned from Dr. Bouchet’s book: Bouchet, P. and G. Mermet, 2008. Shells. Abbeville Press, New York. 164 pp.

The Delphinidae: Cetacean Taxonomy’s “Trash Basket”

When you think of oceanic dolphins, chances are you don’t think of trash. But if you’re a taxonomist, you might.

“The family Delphinidae has been called a ‘taxonomic trash basket’, because many small to medium-sized odontocetes of various forms have been lumped together in this group for centuries” (Dr. Edward Vanden Berghe, Flanders Marine Institute. WoRMS. Delphinidae).

Fig B: Commerson’s dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii); Fig. C: white-beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris); Fig. D: short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis); with the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) – Fig. A. (Listed by True as Phocaena communis within Delphinidae. Today named Phocoena phocoena in Phocoenidae family) in BHL. Norman, J.R. Field Book of Giant Fishes (1949). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/6279181.

Even today, multiple classifications exist, and depending on the schema used, anywhere from 30-50 species may be attributed to Delphinidae, ranging in size from 1-9.1 meters (see various taxonomies in EOL, WoRMS, Marine Mammal Science, and Animal Diversity Web). The distribution of Delphinidae species across such wide and diverse habitats and the lack of data for many members of the family impede conclusive taxonomic assertions regarding species distinctions and relationships.

Regardless of the questions still remaining, members of the Delphinidae family share many characteristics, including numerous conical teeth, compression and fusion of the neck vertebrae, and sophisticated echolocation ability.

Short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis). Gemeinnüzzige Naturgeschichte des Thierreichs. Bd. 2 Plates (1780). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/28342227.

The quest to understand and organize oceanic dolphins is one that requires patience and the continual acquisition of knowledge and data. This has been the reality since scientists first attempted to classify these marine mammals, and one poignantly felt by one of the world’s foremost cetacean authorities at the turn of the century: Frederick William True.

F.W. True: Pioneering Cetologist

Frederick W. True (1858-1914) began his career as a clerk at the U.S. Fish Commission in 1878. In 1881, he was hired by S.F. Baird as Librarian and Acting Curator of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, after which he was promoted to Head Curator of Biology in 1897 – a position he held until 1911 when he became the Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. With a focus on living and marine fossil mammals, True was the first marine mammals curator at the Smithsonian. Though he is most famous for his work on the mysticetes and beaked whales, True also provided invaluable contributions to the study of the Delphinidae family.

Frederick W. True. Image Courtesy the Smithsonian Institution Archives | Image # MAH-11716 http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_10333

At the turn of the century, the status of the Delphinidae family was even more confusing than it is today. The widespread distribution of the family meant that the same species might actually be found off the coasts of every continent (the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) for example, has a worldwide range). More crucially, the lack of access to the specimens and data of scientists in different parts of the world, led to the tendency of some naturalists (such as Edward Drinker Cope) to base new species descriptions on scant data (often relying on a single, perhaps incomplete, specimen to assert a new species). Consequently, our turn of the 20th century understanding of Delphinidae was saturated with questionable, often synonymous, scientific names.

Common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Beddard, Frank E. A Book of Whales (1900). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1398413.

True recognized that scientists at the time used non-uniform criteria to describe and classify species. Some based descriptions on external characteristics, while other relied on osteological examinations, resulting in, as True put it, two series of species. Varied criteria employment also resulted in drastically different classification schemes, resulting in a plethora of competing taxonomic trees for both Delphinidae and related families.

The preponderance of oceanic dolphin scientific names and uncertainty of species relationships was a major impediment to the advancement of Delphinidae research. Near the end of the nineteenth century, True set out to bring order to the chaos.

Revising the Delphinidae

True began his endeavor with a focus on the species found off the North American coasts, but the state of affairs compelled him to expand his scope to the entire Delphinidae family. Though his work was largely based on that of Gray, Flower, Stejneger and Baird, True was the first person to attempt to analyze all available data, harmonize the many synonyms, and produce a classified list of truly distinct Delphinidae species.

True quickly realized that “a proper comparison of the species described respectively by European and American naturalists could not be made without an examination of the types.” Thus, in the winter of 1883-84, True spent four months in the museums of England and Europe studying the type specimens of the described Delphinidae species. The result of his labor was the publication Contributions to the natural history of the cetaceans. A review of the family Delphinidae, which presented a revised Delphinidae classification.

During his time abroad, True kept a journal recording the observations, measurements and data he gathered. These records were used to inform the aforementioned publication. Dr. Nick Pyenson, current Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, recently discovered this journal amongst a box of True’s manuscripts and research materials in the Smithsonian’s Remington Kellogg Library of Marine Mammalogy.

F.W. True’s Journal (1883-84). Data recorded from specimens at European and English museums. Used to inform True’s Delphinidae publication.

As the journal (1883-84) shows, True carefully examined and measured all of the type specimens he could find, including specimen catalog numbers, locality, sex and age if known, various lengths including total, length of beak, and girth, and other data such as the number of teeth. These kinds of data remain relevant today, where the consistent collection and curation of this irreplaceable data provides the basis for answering many different ecological, evolutionary and conservation research questions.

F.W. True’s Journal (1883-84). Data recorded from specimens at European and English museums. Used to inform True’s Delphinidae publication.

Even more interesting, the logbook is annotated by Remington Kellogg, the aforementioned library’s namesake and himself an authority on cetaceans. Though his time at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History postdated True’s lifetime, Kellogg took a keen interest in True’s work and annotated many of his manuscripts, including not only this journal but also True’s fieldbook of collecting trips in 1906-08.

True. F.W. U. S. National Museum log book of collecting trips for fossil cetaceans (1906-08). Digitized by the Smithsonian Institution Archives for The Field Book Project. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/46701241.

The measurements and osteological examinations recorded in True’s 1883-84 journal were used to create limits of specific variation among species and inform a comparative analysis of species relationships to produce a revised taxonomic tree. The result was the harmonization of existing scientific names down to a total of 62, classified within 19 genera and 2 subfamilies within Delphinidae.

Of course, the science of taxonomy is not a static endeavor. Classifications are constantly improving and evolving as we have access to new information and specimens, discover new species, and employ new techniques (such as DNA sequencing) in our quest to better understand the world and the species in it. Indeed, even True himself acknowledged that the accuracy of classifications was dependent on the availability of data and the construction of a full biological picture. In his publication, True asserted,

“The writer is fully aware that the time is not yet ripe for a final review of the family Delphinidae. The work now accomplished must be regarded as provisional and subject to change in the future…Cetologists must be content to wait patiently until the acquisition of new specimens make a complete description possible.”

And indeed, new information has come to light since True revised the Delphinidae family over 100 years ago. While the total number of species, genera, and subfamilies differ depending on the classification schema used, of the 62 distinct species that True recognized, 38 are recognized as distinct today (though some under different names), and 32 are still included in the Delphinidae family. Twenty-four of the species True classified as distinct are now considered representatives of other species cataloged in his publication or are not recognized as distinct species today (i.e. nomen dubium). While many of the binomials employed by True are today considered invalid synonyms (though some have changed only slightly in spelling), 15 of the names included by True are still considered valid. (Comparisons made on whole species binomial. Data based on taxon information in WoRMS collected 1/30/2015. Note: some researchers have proposed using Sagmatias for species of Lagenorhynchus today — so Sag. amblodon may get resurrected.)

Table Comparing the species names presented by True (“True’s Species”) with the corresponding valid species names recognized today (“Today’s Species). Each unique species listed under “Today’s Species” is highlighted with a distinct color, and all names employed by True in the “True’s Species” column are color coded with the valid name they are recognized to represent today. The “Family” column indicates the taxonomic family to which the species identified by True are today understood to belong to. Comparisons based on taxon information in WoRMS collected on 1/30/2015.

Scientific Research in the Digital Age

The efficiency of scientific research depends on access to raw data, specimens, and previously published information. During True’s lifetime, access to this information was especially difficult, resulting in the proliferation of competing taxonomies. Satisfying information needs often required expensive trips across oceans and countries to consult dispersed institutional collections.

Today, open access digitization initiatives are working to provide global, online access to the information required to study, describe, and classify life. The digitization of museum specimens, scientist’s raw data contained in unpublished fieldbooks, and centuries’ worth of published natural history literature allows researchers to draw connections among all of this information, see the work upon which current systems are based, compare notes across disciplines and time, and more easily harmonize synonyms and create classifications. The Biodiversity Heritage Library and The Field Book Project, through the digitization of natural history fieldbooks and publications, are two programs amidst a growing cadre of initiatives dedicated to facilitating discovery of the natural world. Through continued collaboration and a commitment to open access, we can improve the efficiency of scientific research across the globe.

For more fun, browse historic Delphinidae illustrations from BHL: http://ow.ly/IuYCX

With contributions by: Dr. Nick Pyenson | Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals, NMNH

Systematics is the branch of biology concerned with classification and nomenclature. It is sometimes used synonymously with taxonomy.

In their 1970 publication Systematics in Support of Biological Research, Michener et al. defined systematic biology and taxonomy as:

Systematic biology (hereafter called simply systematics) is the field that (a) provides scientific names for organisms, (b) describes them, (c) preserves collections of them, (d) provides classifications for the organisms, keys for their identification, and data on their distributions, (e) investigates their evolutionary histories, and (f) considers their environmental adaptations…Taxonomy is that part of Systematics concerned with topics (a) to (d) above.

Identifying species, their relationships and evolutionary hierarchies, is critical to saving biodiversity. Recognizing this, the White House Subcommittee on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics declared systematics a research priority essential to ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation and identified improvements in the organization of, and access to, standardized nomenclature as a priority within the field.

ITIS (Integrated Taxonomic Information System) was established to address this priority.

A partnership of federal agencies (including BHL members the Smithsonian, United States Geological Survey, and CONABIO), ITIS is a database containing reliable information on species names and their hierarchical classification, including the authority (author and, in the case of zoological names, date), taxonomic rank, associated synonyms and vernacular names where available, a unique taxonomic serial number, data source information (publications, experts, etc.) and data quality indicators for each indexed scientific name. Among other applications, ITIS classifications are used as a taxonomic backbone for the Encyclopedia of Life, to which BHL also provides primary source materials such as publications and illustrations.

Dedicated ITIS working groups ensure that the system is designed and continually developed to meet user needs and that the information contained within is valid, thorough, and regularly updated with classification revisions and new species information. Ensuring such a high level of data quality requires extensive research and access to a wealth of primary natural history information.

Sara N. Alexander, Data Development Specialist for ITIS.

Sara N. Alexander is a Data Development Specialist for ITIS, stationed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. With a background in taxonomic botany and the benefit of six years working for the National Herbarium, Alexander joined ITIS five years ago to work with botanical data and has since branched out to proofread zoological taxonomic files.

For her work, Alexander requires access to historic taxonomic information, which is contained within the pages of natural history literature…literature which is made freely available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

“I rely on BHL for my daily work; it streamlines taxonomic research immensely,” applauds Alexander. “I am fortunate to have access to multiple libraries in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, but even so without BHL I would spend lots of time traveling back and forth to the libraries, scanning pages and making photocopies, waiting on interlibrary loans, and sending emails to taxonomic specialists. With BHL, not only do I have access to original and old literature, but I can easily include a stable and precise link in an email or on a website to allow coworkers to check the accuracy of my work, specialists to answer tricky questions without the burden of hunting down the physical literature themselves, and ITIS users to see the basis of our taxonomic information.”

While she primarily uses BHL to locate the original publication of a name or to find accurate bibliographic information, Alexander has found many additional applications for and points of interest within BHL resources.

“I’ve even occasionally been able to use BHL to discover errors on other online resources on which I rely heavily,” confides Alexander. “For example, I sometimes find a subspecific name published before 1975 that is not yet included in IPNI (The International Plant Names Index). I also enjoy getting ‘sidetracked’ on BHL to read early descriptions of ‘exotic’ animals and look at full-color plates and engravings.”

When asked to give an example of her use of BHL, Alexander related a project that resulted in extensive augmentation of ITIS records with BHL data.

“For worldwide Chiroptera (bats) I was tasked with double-checking the use of parenthetical authorship (whether a name was originally published in the same genus or a different genus than the genus in which it is treated today), which necessitated finding the originally published name for over 2,000 species and subspecific names,” recalls Alexander. “Many of these names were available through major checklists like Hall’s 1981 The Mammals of North America, but others had to be tracked down individually. The now-loaded ITIS treatment of Chiroptera includes links to 72 literature sources accessed through BHL.”

A member (Notopteris macdonaldi) of the Chiroptera, or bat, order, the ITIS treatment for which now includes 72 literature sources accessed through BHL, thanks to Sara Alexander. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. v. 1 Plates (1848-60). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/37028041.

As her work relies heavily on locating taxonomic names, BHL’s recent initiatives to improve the quality of our OCR, as through the Purposeful Gaming and Mining Biodiversity projects, are of particular interest for Alexander.

“Correcting OCR, and allowing more scientific names to be accurately indexed, will make my work a lot easier. My ideal would be to be able to type in a scientific name and always find its original publication among the returned documents.”

Through the work of dedicated contributors like Sara Alexander and collaboration among multiple agencies, ITIS is significantly advancing scientific research by providing a common framework for and widespread access to taxonomic data that is “fundamental to the description, conservation, and management of the nation’s biodiversity.” The application of BHL data within ITIS demonstrates once again the critical importance of historic, foundational biodiversity literature to modern scientific endeavors. BHL, ITIS, and other open, like-minded biodiversity initiatives are committed to ensuring that everyone, everywhere has the information they need to study, understand, and save the incredible biodiversity on our planet.

We hope you enjoyed this post. Interested in being interviewed for BHL? We’d love that! Email us at [email protected].