The story behind the discovery is as instructive as the specimen itself. Between 2021 and 2024, an extensive survey of bycatch from the silver-stripe round herring fishery at Chi-kan, on the northern coast of Penghu, has been steadily yielding new species and new distributional records. The lights of this fishery attract dense schools of Spratelloides gracilis, and with them an unappreciated menagerie of small reef and sand-dwelling fishes, including cardinalfish, goatfish, and sandperches, that end up in nets as non-target catch. It was among this material that collectors H.-W. Chen, L.-A. Chen, and R.-L. Quin secured the flounder on 16 August 2024, at depths not exceeding 30 meters. The specimen was fixed in 4% formaldehyde, transferred to 70% ethanol, and deposited in the museum’s Pisces Collection under the catalogue number NMMB-P 41171, becoming the physical anchor for a species previously invisible in Taiwanese checklists.

Identifying a flounder to species is a demanding exercise in counting and measuring, because the group’s members differ in subtle proportions rather than flamboyant markings. The genus Engyprosopon is the most species-rich in the family Bothidae, with 35 valid species, and its members share a suite of traits: the isthmus begins below about the middle of the lower eye, the interorbital space is usually concave and wider in males than in females, the scales on the eyed side are large with short, weak ctenii, and males often carry dark pigment on the blind side. The Taiwan specimen’s counts read like a fingerprint: 74 dorsal-fin rays, 51 anal-fin rays, a caudal fin of 3 + 11 + 3 rays, 11 and 9 pectoral-fin rays on the ocular and blind sides respectively, six pelvic rays on each side, six gill rakers on the first arch, roughly 38 lateral-line scales, and 33 vertebrae arranged as 10 plus 23.

Crucially, several of those characters exclude every close relative in Taiwanese waters. The gill rakers on the first arch are smooth rather than serrated along their inner edges, the teeth in the upper jaw are arranged in a single row, the lower jaw measures 11.9% of standard length on the eyed side, the front margin of the head is rounded without a notch, the interorbital space bears no dark cross bands, and the distal margin of the caudal fin carries no black blotches. Taken together, these features match the original 1990 description by Quéro and Golani, which was based on specimens from North Beach at Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba, where the fish was collected at depths of just one to 1.5 meters. The authors of the new study confirmed the identification by comparing the specimen against published data from the Red Sea types, New Caledonian material, Japanese records, and Australian listings.

The comparison also revealed that no two populations of Hureau’s flounder are perfectly alike. The Taiwanese female shows 51 anal-fin rays where previous specimens ranged from 52 to 58, a body depth of 59.6% of standard length against a previously documented range of 49.5% to 56.1%, a slightly longer interorbital width of 5.9% of standard length versus 2.7% to 5.2%, and a slightly shorter pelvic-fin base on the eyed side. The researchers interpret these departures as intraspecific variation rather than evidence of a distinct population, a caution that reflects a broader truth in flatfish taxonomy: meristic counts and proportions drift with geography, age, and sex, and a single specimen can only sketch the edges of a species’ natural variability. Fresh photographs of the unretained individual added valuable color information, showing a uniformly yellowish eyed side scattered with irregular brown spots and a pale, faintly yellowish blind side.

In life, the fish is a masterclass in camouflage suited to a life pressed against sand. The eyed side bears fins and flanks flecked with brown spots similar in size to those on the body, while all spots on the preserved specimen measure smaller than the pupil. Both eyes sit on the left side of the body, the hallmark of lefteye flounders, with the rostral spine present on the snout and no orbital spines or flaps. The mouth is small and oblique, teeth in both jaws uniserial, and scales deciduous on both sides of the body, so easily shed that scale pockets had to be used when counting lateral-line scales. These features, documented in painstaking detail with digital calipers under a stereomicroscope and X-radiography of the vertebral column, bring the total morphological picture of the species into sharper focus than any previous single account.

Beyond the specimen itself, the study delivers a practical gift to anyone sorting flatfishes in the region: a revised identification key to all 12 species of Engyprosopon now known from Taiwan. The key walks users through a branching sequence of contrasts, beginning with whether the distal half of the caudal fin carries a pair of black blotches, then moving through gill raker counts, body depth, upper-jaw dentition, interorbital width, and eye placement to separate species such as E. grandisquama, E. macrolepis, E. maldivense, and E. mogkii. Three of the dozen Taiwanese species, E. brevifrontale, E. keliaoense, and E. parvipectorale, were originally described from the island, underscoring how much of the local flatfish diversity has come to light only in recent years through targeted surveys of shallow, well-sampled-looking habitats.

The biogeographic implications are arguably the most striking part of the report. A species recorded from the Gulf of Aqaba, the Maldive Islands, Australia, New Caledonia, and Tanegashima Island in Japan, but not anywhere in between, poses an obvious puzzle: were those scattered records the result of sampling gaps, or does the flounder genuinely occur in disjunct pockets? The Taiwanese record, collected within a routine nearshore fishery at under 30 meters, strongly suggests the former. It fills the distribution gap in the northwestern Pacific between Japan and New Caledonia and implies that suitable sandy and muddy bottoms across the tropical West Pacific may harbor the species wherever anyone thinks to look. Given that Hureau’s flounder has been documented at depths of 1 to 81 meters, shallow lagoons, bays, and strait-floor sediments are all plausible habitat.

There is also a conservation-adjacent lesson in how the fish was found. Bycatch, the unwanted minority of a catch, is usually dismissed as ecological noise, yet systematic bycatch surveys have become one of the most productive engines of marine biodiversity discovery in Asia. The same Penghu herring fishery that yielded this flounder has recently produced new species and range extensions across multiple fish families, suggesting that small, shallow, heavily fished habitats still hold taxonomic surprises. For a species as small and cryptic as Hureau’s flounder, which would almost never appear in diver surveys or targeted collections, a fishing net can be the only realistic sampling instrument.

What remains to be learned dwarfs what this single specimen can tell us. Nothing is known of the species’ abundance in Taiwanese waters, its reproductive season, diet, or genetic relationship to populations in the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Coral Sea. Whether the Taiwanese fish belongs to a continuous west Pacific population or represents the edge of a chain of isolated demes will require DNA barcoding of material from across the range, ideally including fresh tissue from the bycatch fishery that produced this record. For now, the flounder’s quiet arrival on the national checklist stands as a reminder that even in well-studied seas, a humble four-centimeter fish can redraw a map, and that the frontier of discovery often lies not in distant abyssal trenches but in the mundane catches of small-scale fisheries examined by patient, well-trained eyes.

Subject of Research: First record of the lefteye flounder Engyprosopon hureaui in Taiwan and a revised identification key to the genus

Article Title: First record of Engyprosopon hureaui ( Actinopterygii , Pleuronectiformes , Bothidae ) from Taiwan, with a revised key to Engyprosopon in Taiwan

Article References: Su, Y., Cheng, Y.-N., & Shyu, J.-F. (2025). First record of Engyprosopon hureaui (Actinopterygii, Pleuronectiformes, Bothidae) from Taiwan, with a revised key to Engyprosopon in Taiwan. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, 55, 93-99. https://doi.org/10.3897/aiep.55.146367

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/aiep.55.146367

Keywords: Engyprosopon hureaui, flatfish, Bothidae, Taiwan, Penghu, new record, bycatch, marine biodiversity, taxonomy, biogeography, identification key, Pleuronectiformes

Spitting spiders, the family Scytodidae, are among the strangest hunters in the spider world. Rather than chasing prey or building webs, they stalk soft-bodied insects and squirt a sticky, venom-laced spray from openings near their fangs, gluing the victim to the ground before feeding at leisure. The family is relatively small, with over 250 extant species in four genera, and it is most diversified in tropical and subtropical regions. Several members are considered cosmopolitan, synanthropic species that thrive alongside humans. Until now, the Caucasus was thought to host just a single widely distributed representative of the family, Scytodes thoracica, absent only from the mountain regions.

That scarcity always looked suspicious. Neighboring Turkey and Iran harbor noticeably richer spitting spider faunas, which suggested that the Caucasus had simply been underexplored. Recent fieldwork partially confirmed this hunch: an expedition to Vashlovani National Park had already yielded six spider species new to the Caucasus from different families, including two described as new to science. The new study builds on that momentum, presenting the first Caucasian record of Dictis based on a female with an egg sac collected during a trip to the park, together with two adult males reared in captivity from that very egg sac.

The taxonomic centerpiece of the paper is a new combination. The species formerly known as Scytodes strandi, described by Spassky in 1941, is now transferred to the genus Dictis as Dictis strandi comb. nov. The transfer rests on careful examination of the collected female and the two males raised to maturity from the egg sac. Dictis strandi belongs to a genus whose type species, Dictis striatipes, was described by Ludwig Carl Christian Koch back in 1872. Distinguishing the two species required a close look at minute genital structures: males of D. strandi differ from the polymorphic D. striatipes by having a straight retrolateral subapical process located at the base of the psembolic apex, roughly 4.3 times shorter than the psembolus, whereas D. striatipes bears a prolateral pick in that position.

Females tell a parallel story. The female of D. strandi can be separated from D. striatipes by an oval receptacle head and a thinner receptacle stem in the endogyne, the internal female genital apparatus, in contrast to the rounded receptacle head and thicker stem of its congener. The postepigastric fovea and positioning ridges, two sets of cuticular landmarks on the ventral abdomen, are separated from each other by about three times their width in D. strandi, versus four times in D. striatipes. The endogyne of D. strandi is depicted for the first time in the new paper, a milestone for a species that had remained poorly studied since its original description more than eight decades ago.

The redescription documents both sexes in detail. Adult males measure about 4.73 to 4.75 millimeters in total length, with a carapace roughly 2.65 millimeters long and 2.31 millimeters wide. The female is dramatically larger, at 9.87 millimeters total length, with a carapace 3.97 millimeters long and 3.47 millimeters wide. Both sexes share a beige-light yellow carapace ornamented with two broad longitudinal light-brown bands running from the clypeus to the posterior part of the carapace, along with broken lateral bands of lines and spots. The abdomen carries three pairs of large dark spots forming longitudinal bands dorsally, and the female’s legs are far more boldly patterned, with dark-brown femora, patellae, and tibiae on the first two leg pairs and annulated segments on legs III and IV.

Leg proportions, a standard taxonomic character in spiders, are recorded for both sexes as sums of femur, patella, tibia, metatarsus, and tarsus lengths. In males, leg I reaches about 13.23 millimeters, by far the longest, followed by leg IV at roughly 9.91 millimeters, leg II at 9.12 millimeters, and leg III at 7.44 millimeters. The female shows a similar hierarchy, with leg I at 13.37 millimeters, leg IV at 12.81 millimeters, leg II at 12.24 millimeters, and leg III at 10.76 millimeters. These elongated first legs are typical of spitting spiders, whose long, slender limbs and oversized anterior lateral eyes give them a distinctive, almost giraffe-like silhouette under magnification.

The laboratory work behind the discovery reads like a miniature husbandry saga. The live female was placed in a 10 milliliter vial without substrate and was found dead on 1 July. A carefully opened egg sac revealed four fully developed spiderlings, of which only two molted successfully and were transferred to separate 5 milliliter vials. The juveniles were fed daily with soft-bodied arthropods, including Collembola, Thysanura, and Drosophila species, and reached sexual maturity about two and a half months later, in the first decade of September. Intriguingly, the adult males refused to eat once mature. These observations suggest an annual life cycle for the species, a useful natural-history data point for a spider whose biology had been essentially undocumented.

Field and imaging methods were equally meticulous. Elevations and GPS coordinates were logged with a Garmin GPSMAP 64s receiver, and the specimens were preserved in 96 percent ethanol and stored in a freezer at minus 22 degrees Celsius in the scientific collections of Ilia State University in Tbilisi. Specimens were examined with a Zeiss Stemi 508 stereo microscope fitted with an 8:1 zoom and a front lens, and diagnostic drawings of the left male palp and the endogyne were made from microscope photographs using a graphics tablet. The epigyne and endogyne were cleared in a 30 percent potassium hydroxide solution before study. Live specimens were photographed with a Canon EOS 90D and a 60 millimeter macro lens, while preserved material was imaged with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and an MP-E 65 millimeter macro photo lens, with final images prepared using focus-stacking software.

The geographic implications are striking. Dictis strandi was previously known from Iran and Central Asia, with the exception of Kazakhstan, and the Georgian record now stands as the westernmost occurrence of the entire genus. The new material was collected in the semidesert of Vashlovani National Park in Kakheti, under rocks, at coordinates of about 41.12 degrees north and 46.65 degrees east. For a genus most at home in tropical and subtropical latitudes, its presence in the Caucasus semidesert hints at relict populations or unrecognized dispersal corridors bridging Central Asia and western Eurasia. With the Caucasus spitting spider fauna now shown to be richer than a single species, and with adjacent Turkey and Iran still far better surveyed, the region’s semideserts may yet conceal more taxonomic surprises waiting under the next rock.

Subject of Research: Taxonomy and biogeography of spitting spiders in the Caucasus

Article Title: The first record of Dictis L. Koch, 1872 ( Araneae , Scytodidae ) in the Caucasus

Article References: Seropian, A. (2024). The first record of Dictis L. Koch, 1872 (Araneae, Scytodidae) in the Caucasus. Caucasiana, 3, 215-221. https://doi.org/10.3897/caucasiana.3.e138762

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/caucasiana.3.e138762

Keywords: spitting spiders, Scytodidae, Dictis strandi, Caucasus, Georgia, Vashlovani National Park, taxonomy, new record, endogyne, biogeography, first, record

The find, published in the journal Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, matters far beyond a single line on a distribution map. The bluntnose sixgill shark is one of the ocean’s most enigmatic large predators, a living relic whose lineage stretches back hundreds of millions of years. Yet despite a global distribution spanning every ocean except the Antarctic and Arctic, its populations are patchy and its records surprisingly scarce. In the western Atlantic, the species has been documented from Nova Scotia in Canada down to Brazil and Argentina, but confirmed sightings within the Gulf of Mexico had been limited exclusively to the northern portion, with a 433-centimeter female taken off Alabama in 1962 and a 325-centimeter male caught at Port Isabel, Texas, in February 1984. The new Veracruz specimen extends the species’ confirmed range more than 822 kilometers to the southwest.

Identification of the shark rested on the unmistakable anatomical hallmarks of the genus. Hexanchus griseus belongs to the family Hexanchidae, the cow sharks, a group distinguished by having six gill slits rather than the five found in most sharks. The Veracruz specimen displayed six large gill slits that were not inserted on the pectoral fins, a robust body, and a broad head whose length measured 14.7 percent of total length. Most striking is the dentition: six rows of large, serrated, comb-shaped teeth on each side of the lower jaw, a saw-like battery adapted for slicing through large prey, contrasted with ten hooked-cusped teeth on each side of the upper jaw. The snout was wide, the mouth large and ventrally arched, and the eye small, with a dark pupil ringed in white and a prominent tapetum lucidum that gave the living animal a fluorescent greenish eye-shine, an adaptation for hunting in dim depths.

The researchers, working with taxonomic keys and specialized identification guides, took a full suite of morphological measurements using a measuring tape following established protocols, and weighed the animal on a commercial scale rounded to the nearest kilogram. Because of the specimen’s enormous size, only the cephalic region and the mixopterygia, the male reproductive structures known as claspers, could be preserved. These were deposited in the Ichthyological Collection of the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México under catalog number CIFI-2400, transforming an anecdotal catch into a permanent scientific voucher.

Biometric comparisons reveal how closely this Mexican male mirrors its northern Gulf counterpart. The Texas specimen from 1984 measured 325 centimeters against the Veracruz animal’s 326, with precaudal lengths of 234 and 230 centimeters respectively, and remarkably similar fin dimensions, including dorsal fin heights of 14.8 and 15.5 centimeters. A comparative female from the Gulf of Trieste in Slovenia, at just 217 centimeters and 52 kilograms, illustrates the sexual size dimorphism typical of the species. The new data table, spanning more than sixty characters from prenarial length to caudal fork dimensions, provides one of the most complete morphometric profiles ever published for an Atlantic male of this species.

Perhaps the most biologically revealing details concern the shark’s reproductive condition. Dissection showed the animal to be sexually mature, with elongated, vascularized testes, a well-developed vas deferens, and seminal vesicles filled with sperm. The claspers were fully calcified and mobile, and bore several hematomas, evidence of recent mating activity. This is significant because male bluntnose sixgill sharks are known to reach sexual maturity between 309 and 330 centimeters in total length, placing the 326-centimeter Veracruz specimen squarely within that window. Intriguingly, Mediterranean populations appear to mature at smaller sizes, around 300 centimeters, hinting at regional variation in life-history traits that scientists are only beginning to understand.

The species’ biology is as unusual as its anatomy. Bluntnose sixgill sharks are aplacental viviparous, meaning females nourish embryos internally without a placenta and can give birth to more than 50 offspring at a time. Females do not mature until they exceed 400 centimeters, and the species can reach a total length of 480 centimeters, making it one of the largest predatory sharks in the ocean. Its diet is correspondingly broad, encompassing a wide variety of fishes as well as marine mammals. Bathymetrically, the species ranges from the surface down to 2,500 meters but is most commonly encountered between 200 and 1,000 meters, although at higher latitudes it ventures into shallower water more frequently. Stable isotope studies have shown that adults undertake ontogenetic migrations, and that pregnant females approach the outer coastal edge to give birth.

Why was a mature male patrolling the continental slope off Veracruz? The researchers suggest that the continuous deep-water adjacencies around the capture area provide access to productive feeding grounds, a pattern consistent with recent records of other benthic-demersal chondrichthyans in the Los Tuxtlas region. Nighttime bathymetric migrations into shallower waters for feeding, documented through tracking studies, are known to influence the incidence of sixgill sharks in longline fisheries elsewhere, and may explain why an artisanal longline set at a modest 120 meters could intercept such a deep-dwelling giant. Juveniles of the species also frequently approach coastal areas, adding another layer to its vertical movements.

Local knowledge adds a colorful chapter to the story. Fishermen in the region have reported capturing sixgill sharks on several occasions, but the animals were routinely released because the flesh is bland, poorly textured, and laden with fat considered toxic. Owing to this high oil concentration, the meat is regarded as ichthyosarcotoxic, capable of causing illness if consumed. For this reason, species of the genera Hexanchus and Heptranchias have earned the local nickname tiburón leche, or milk sharks. This unpalatability has a conservation silver lining: although the species is caught incidentally in deep-water fisheries throughout its range, its capture carries little economic importance, as has also been observed off Tunisia, and the Veracruz fishermen’s practice of releasing the animals may afford the species a measure of protection.

That protection matters. The bluntnose sixgill shark is currently listed as near threatened on the IUCN Red List, and there are indications that local populations have been extirpated in parts of its range due to overfishing. The genus itself has undergone a taxonomic revolution in recent years: once considered a duo, it is now recognized as comprising three species, with the Atlantic sixgill shark, Hexanchus vitulus, split from the bluntnose sixgill on genetic grounds in 2019, joining the bigeye sixgill shark, Hexanchus nakamurai. Accurate records like the Veracruz voucher are therefore essential for untangling which species occurs where, particularly in poorly surveyed tropical waters. While earlier Mexican reports of the species on the Gulf and Caribbean coasts existed, none had been backed by a preserved specimen, leaving the species’ presence in Mexican Atlantic waters officially unconfirmed until now. The green-eyed giant of Veracruz, preserved in a UNAM collection, closes that gap and signals that the deep waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico may harbor far more of these ancient predators than science has ever documented.

Subject of Research: First confirmed record of the bluntnose sixgill shark in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico

Article Title: First record of the bluntnose sixgill shark, Hexanchus griseus ( Elasmobranchii , Hexanchiformes , Hexanchidae ), from the southwestern Gulf of Mexico

Article References: Del Moral-Flores, L. F., Lozano-Quiroz, S. A., Escartín-Alpizar, V. R., García-Mercado, E., & Hernández-Ortiz, R. (2025). First record of the bluntnose sixgill shark, Hexanchus griseus (Elasmobranchii, Hexanchiformes, Hexanchidae), from the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, 55, 115-121. https://doi.org/10.3897/aiep.55.147223

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/aiep.55.147223

Keywords: bluntnose sixgill shark, Hexanchus griseus, Gulf of Mexico, Veracruz, deep-sea shark, new record, chondrichthyes, Hexanchidae, marine biodiversity, shark conservation, morphometrics, IUCN near threatened

Lanternfish are small, silvery denizens of the ocean’s twilight zone, named for the rows of light-producing photophores that stud their bodies. They are among the most abundant vertebrates on Earth, forming a critical link in the marine food web between the plankton they graze and the larger predators that hunt them at night. The genus Notoscopelus is a compact branch of this family, with only six species currently recognized as valid. Members of the group are distinguished by three or four precaudal photophores, stiff and spine-like procurrent caudal-fin rays, and a distinctive arrangement of light organs, including a second subpectoral photophore positioned distinctly above the level of the pectoral-fin origin.

Notoscopelus japonicus was originally described in 1908 from a single specimen collected in Sagami Bay, Japan. It can be separated from its close relatives by a combination of anatomical features: the body is covered in ctenoid scales, the lateral line carries 42 to 43 scales, the vertebral count totals 40 to 42, and the precaudal photophores are arranged in a two-plus-two pattern. Until this study, the species was known from temperate waters across a vast arc of the Pacific, including Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, Korea, the Japanese archipelago, the Hawaiian seamounts, the west coast of Canada, and Alaska. A mesopelagic species, it spends daylight hours below 300 meters and migrates upward to depths of 20 to 200 meters at night.

The four Taiwanese specimens were collected over a span of months from two geographically separate fishing grounds. One male, measuring 126.5 millimeters in standard length, came from off Dong-gang fishing port in Pingtung, southwestern Taiwan, in November 2024. The other three were taken by commercial trawler off Daxi fishing port in Yilan, northeastern Taiwan, in February and March of 2023 and 2024, ranging from 122.1 to 134.2 millimeters in standard length. Two of the specimens are males, one could not be sexed, and all were fixed in formaldehyde and preserved in ethanol for permanent curation at Taiwanese institutional collections.

Identifying lanternfish to species level is exacting work, because the family is defined largely by subtle differences in photophore placement, fin-ray counts, and scale characters. The researchers confirmed the identification through a detailed morphological examination supported by X-ray imaging. The Taiwanese specimens showed dorsal-fin rays of 20 to 21, pectoral-fin rays of 11, pelvic-fin rays of 9, anal-fin rays of 18 to 20, and gill rakers on the first arch totaling 23 to 26. Lateral-line scale counts of 42 to 44 and vertebral counts of 41 to 42 fell squarely within the published range for the species, as did the characteristic four precaudal photophores arranged in two pairs.

The photophore architecture matched the species diagnosis in every detail. The anterior anal organs numbered 8 to 10, the posterior anal organs 6 to 7, and the supraanal organs comprised three photophores all positioned ahead of the anal-fin origin. The dorsonasal organ was well developed and crescent-shaped, sitting at the ten o’clock position relative to the eye, while the smaller ventronasal organ sat at eight o’clock. In the males, both the infracaudal and supracaudal luminous glands were present but obscure, lacking the sharply defined borders seen in some related species. Fresh specimens displayed a pale body with scale pockets outlined in black, a uniformly black head, and dusky fin rays with a darker caudal base.

Not every measurement lined up perfectly with the historical descriptions, and the authors are candid about the discrepancies. The Taiwanese fish carry nine pelvic-fin rays rather than the eight reported in a recent Japanese study, along with proportionally longer eye diameters, wider interorbital spaces, and notably longer pectoral fins than their northern counterparts. The researchers suggest that additional specimens will be needed to determine whether these differences represent intraspecific geographic variation or something more significant. Minor deviations in body depth, prepelvic length, and caudal-peduncle proportions were judged to fall within normal variation for the species.

Beyond the range extension itself, the paper delivers a comprehensive checklist of Taiwan’s myctophid fauna, a tally that has grown considerably over three decades of incremental documentation. The first review in 1993 recognized just five genera and ten species; a 2001 synthesis raised that to 40 species across 16 genera, and subsequent additions have steadily expanded the list. With N. japonicus now included, 60 species in 17 genera are recognized from Taiwanese waters, three of them belonging to the genus Notoscopelus. The authors also flag inconsistencies in the historical record, including species reported without voucher specimens and several recent records that were new to Taiwan but never explicitly identified as such in the original publications.

Why a temperate lanternfish should appear in subtropical trawl nets is a question the record alone cannot answer. Deep-water mesopelagic species can be carried far from their usual haunts by currents, upwelling events, or the shifting thermal structure of the water column, and bottom trawlers sampling slopes and canyons routinely intercept animals that spend their days hundreds of meters down. Whatever the mechanism, the finding underscores how incompletely the twilight zone is surveyed even in heavily fished regions. Each new record refines the biogeographic map of a family that may account for a substantial share of the ocean’s total fish biomass, and the authors’ careful documentation, complete with fresh photographs, meristic tables, and museum-vouchered specimens, ensures that this southernmost outpost of the Japanese lanternfish can be verified and built upon by future surveys of the northwestern Pacific’s deep-pelagic fauna.

Subject of Research: First record and southernmost range extension of the Japanese lanternfish Notoscopelus japonicus in Taiwan

Article Title: A southward range extension of the Japanese lanternfish, Notoscopelus japonicus ( Actinopterygii , Myctophiformes , Myctophidae ), from Taiwan, northwestern Pacific Ocean, with a checklist of myctophids from Taiwan

Article References: Su, Y., Huang, J.-F., & Yang, F.-Y. (2025). A southward range extension of the Japanese lanternfish, Notoscopelus japonicus (Actinopterygii, Myctophiformes, Myctophidae), from Taiwan, northwestern Pacific Ocean, with a checklist of myctophids from Taiwan. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, 55, 123-131. https://doi.org/10.3897/aiep.55.151025

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/aiep.55.151025

Keywords: lanternfish, Notoscopelus japonicus, Myctophidae, Taiwan, range extension, deep-sea fish, mesopelagic, biogeography, taxonomy, new record, northwestern Pacific, ichthyology

Fissidens is no ordinary group of mosses. As the sole genus of the family Fissidentaceae, it encompasses an estimated 450 to 500 species worldwide, making it one of the most diverse moss genera on Earth and, with 65 species and 11 varieties currently documented, one of the most diverse in China as well. What sets these plants apart is their extraordinary leaf architecture. Each leaf consists of paired vaginant laminae, which sheath the stem like a folded pocket, plus an apical lamina at the tip and a dorsal lamina beneath. Arranged in a single plane along the shoot, these leaves create the dorsiventrally flattened, feather-like appearance that gives the genus its distinctive silhouette among mosses.

Most members of the genus are terrestrial, carpeting rocks and soil, but a select few have taken to life on tree trunks. In China, roughly 11 species and two varieties of Fissidens are known to grow epiphytically, and the newly recorded F. pokhrensis joins this exclusive club. The Chinese population was found clinging to a trunk near the base of a tree at an elevation of about 1,575 meters in Baoshan City’s Longyang District, a humid forest setting typical of the species’ known preferences across its range.

Identifying the specimen required a meticulous anatomical workup. The researchers examined the plants with an Olympus SZX16 stereomicroscope and an Olympus BX53 light microscope, capturing field images with a Nikon Z5 camera and documenting cellular detail with a digital imaging system. The resulting description, based exclusively on the newly collected material and deposited in the herbarium of Xiamen University, reveals a plant of modest proportions: shoots just 2.0 to 2.7 millimeters long and 1.0 to 1.3 millimeters wide, bearing 8 to 12 pairs of leaves that curl when dry.

Several characters combine to distinguish F. pokhrensis from its relatives. The leaves are oblong to oblong-obovate with distinctly acute apices, and the costa, the central nerve of the leaf, is of the bryoides type and terminates 7 to 19 cells below the apex. The laminal cells are thin-walled, irregularly quadrate to hexagonal, measuring roughly 6 to 8 micrometers across, and are pluripapillose, studded with four to six papillae at the cell corners. Perhaps most tellingly, the limbidium, a border of differentiated cells along the leaf margin, is entirely absent from the vegetative leaves and, based on the original description and related accounts, restricted to the vaginant laminae of the perichaetial leaves, the modified leaves that surround the female reproductive structures.

That combination of traits separates the species from its two closest look-alikes, F. gardneri and F. pallidinervis, which share pluripapillose laminal cells and a similar limbidium distribution but typically bear broadly acute, obtuse, or rounded leaf apices rather than the sharply acute tips of F. pokhrensis. It also distinguishes the new arrival from China’s other epiphytic Fissidens species, including F. anomalus, F. crispulus var. robinsonii, F. dubius, F. flabellulus, F. ganguleei, F. gymnogynus, F. holleanus, F. linearis var. obscuriretis, F. pseudoadelphinus, F. serratus, F. teysmannianus, and F. virens. Because no sporophytes or perichaetial leaves were present in the Chinese collection, the identification rests on gametophytic characters alone, but the authors argue that the small stature, pluripapillose cells, vaginant laminae extending about half the leaf length, complete absence of a vegetative limbidium, and epiphytic habit together provide a robust basis for the determination.

The biogeographic story behind the find is as compelling as the morphology itself. Fissidens pokhrensis was first validly described in 1979 from three specimens collected on the southern Himalayan slopes of northwestern India, all of them epiphytic. It later turned up in Japan, where fertile plants grew not on trees but on a cliff, and displayed narrowly lanceolate leaves that contrasted with the ovate-lingulate leaves of the original material. More recently it has been reported from Myanmar and from the Western Ghats of India, with those specimens once again collected from tree trunks. Taken together, the known occurrences span four global biodiversity hotspots: the Himalaya, the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, Indo-Burma, and Japan. The Gaoligong Mountains, situated within the Mountains of Southwest China hotspot and adjacent to both the Indo-Burma and Himalaya hotspots, are precisely the kind of place this species might be expected to appear, making the discovery biogeographically unsurprising even as it extends the moss’s mapped range.

The Gaoligong range itself deserves attention. Extending roughly 600 kilometers along the western margin of the Hengduan Mountains, it sits at the intersection of three biodiversity hotspots, and its complex geological history and heterogeneous environments have produced exceptional biological richness. A comprehensive survey by Ma and colleagues in 2020 recorded 840 bryophyte species from the region based on the examination of approximately 8,000 specimens, a testament to the area’s floristic wealth. Yet even such foundational catalogs leave gaps, and the authors emphasize that detailed, group-by-group taxonomic studies remain essential to refining our understanding of the region’s composition and evolutionary history. The F. pokhrensis record is a case in point: a species hiding in plain sight on a tree trunk until someone looked closely enough to see it.

Classification of the species has itself been a moving target, reflecting broader upheavals in Fissidens systematics. Suzuki and colleagues established the first comprehensive infrageneric classification in 2018 using chloroplast rbcL and rps4 genes, recognizing three subgenera. In 2023, Budke and colleagues expanded the genomic scope with target-capture sequencing of 400 loci, producing high-resolution phylogenomic trees that supported the monophyly of some groups, including subg. Aloma, subg. Octodiceras, subg. Pachyfissidens, subg. Neoamblyothallia sect. Neoamblyothallia, and subg. Fissidens sect. Areofissidens, but found all other subgenera and sections in the two systems to be non-monophyletic. These results underscore the evolutionary lability of key morphological traits and suggest that broader taxon sampling and more extensive molecular data will be needed to settle the genus’s internal tree.

Against that shifting backdrop, the authors assign F. pokhrensis to subg. Polypodiopsis sect. Antennidens, following the revised framework of Bruggeman-Nannenga, who demonstrated that the old sect. Semilimbidium, together with sections Polypodiopsis, Areofissidens, and Aloma, forms a clade corresponding to a redefined subg. Polypodiopsis, characterized by bryoides-type costae, capsules with roughly 32 columns of exothecial cells, and scariosus-type peristomes. Sect. Antennidens, the senior synonym of sect. Semilimbidium, is defined by typically semilimbate leaves, small to medium-sized laminal cells that are pluripapillose, mammillose, or rarely smooth, and bryoides-type costae. To help future researchers navigate this thorny group, the paper presents an updated identification key covering the Chinese species with small to medium-sized plants, mammillose or papillose laminal cells, and a limbidium restricted to the vaginant laminae, from F. capitulatus and F. rupicola through F. serratus, F. schwabei, F. virens, the two varieties of F. crenulatus, F. linearis var. obscuriretis, F. wichurae, F. kinabaluensis, F. incognitus, F. holleanus, F. ceylonensis, and finally F. pokhrensis, F. gardneri, and F. pallidinervis, separated by leaf apex shape, plant size, and peristome type.

The variability documented across the species’ range, in leaf morphology, substrate preference, and distribution, raises an intriguing question about what F. pokhrensis really is. Japanese plants on cliffs with lanceolate leaves, Indian and Myanmar plants on trunks with ovate leaves, and now a Chinese population in the mountains of Yunnan may represent a single ecologically flexible species or a complex of closely related forms. The authors call for further molecular and detailed morphological studies to clarify the full taxonomic limits and geographical range. For now, the moss stands as a reminder that even in well-surveyed landscapes, and even within a genus as familiar as Fissidens, new national records can still emerge from a single glance at the base of a tree, and that the world’s biodiversity hotspots continue to yield surprises to anyone patient enough to kneel down and look.

Subject of Research: First record of the moss Fissidens pokhrensis in China and an updated taxonomic key for Chinese Fissidens species with semilimbate leaves and papillose or mammillose laminal cells

Article Title: Discovery of Fissidens pokhrensis ( Fissidentaceae ) in China and an updated key to Chinese species with semilimbate leaves and papillose or mammillose laminal cells

Article References: Liu, Z.-Q., Ke, A.-R., Ho, B.-C., Wang, S.-L., Wei, Y.-M., & Ye, W. (2026). Discovery of Fissidens pokhrensis (Fissidentaceae) in China and an updated key to Chinese species with semilimbate leaves and papillose or mammillose laminal cells. PhytoKeys, 276, 25-33. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.276.187004

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/phytokeys.276.187004

Keywords: Fissidens pokhrensis, Fissidentaceae, mosses, bryophytes, Yunnan, Gaoligong Mountains, biodiversity hotspot, epiphytic plants, taxonomy, plant morphology, PhytoKeys, new record

Greenideinae is a distinctive subfamily within the aphid family Aphididae, comprising roughly 180 species in 16 genera worldwide. Taxonomists currently divide the group into three tribes: Cervaphidini, Greenideini, and Schoutedeniini, with the bulk of the diversity concentrated in Greenideini. What sets these aphids apart morphologically is a combination of unusual features: their dorsal body setae are pointed or forked into two branches, and their siphunculi, the paired tubes projecting from the rear of the abdomen, are elongated and swollen in the wingless forms, bristling with remarkably long, hair-like setae. These are not the drab, featureless aphids most people picture on garden roses.

Ecologically, the subfamily is closely tied to woody plants. Most greenideine species feed on trees and shrubs in the orders Fagales, Sapindales, and Malvales, drawing sap from oaks, chestnuts, and their relatives in the beech family, as well as from sabias, myrtles, lindens, and birches. This host specialization makes them sensitive indicators of forest composition, and it also means that changes in vegetation, whether through climate shifts or land use, can reshape their distributions in ways that are only now being documented with modern survey effort.

Before this study, South Korea’s Greenideinae fauna consisted of seven species in four genera. Cervaphidini was represented by a single species, Cervaphis quercus, an odd little aphid whose pale yellow body carries ten pairs of branched, projecting processes along its margins, giving it an almost crustacean silhouette. The remaining six species belonged to Greenideini: three species of Greenidea, one species of Mollitrichosiphum, and one species of Eutrichosiphum. That inventory has now grown, and the researchers behind the discovery have paired the new record with something the field has long needed: a fully illustrated identification key covering all eight Korean species.

The new country record came from fieldwork conducted in May 2025, when five apterous, that is wingless, viviparous females were hand-collected from Castanopsis sieboldii at Samgye-ri in Jinju, at coordinates 35.1477 degrees north, 128.0448 degrees east. The specimens were preserved in 95 percent alcohol and later mounted as slide preparations in Canada balsam, following standard techniques, and deposited in the insect collection of the Institute of Agriculture and Life Science at Gyeongsang National University. Under the microscope, the aphids revealed a suite of characters that confirmed their identity as E. sinense rather than the superficially similar E. pasaniae, which was already known from Korea.

The morphological evidence is detailed and diagnostic. The apterous viviparous females of E. sinense measure 2.22 to 2.51 millimeters in body length and are pale yellowish green in life, with dark brown markings on the antennae: the tip of the third segment, the distal half of the fourth, the base of the fifth, and the processus terminalis. The five-segmented antennae run 1.21 to 1.40 millimeters long, with the third segment bearing 15 to 19 setae and measuring 1.23 to 1.34 times the width of the head across the eyes. The ultimate rostral segment, the piercing tip of the feeding mouthparts, is 0.17 to 0.19 millimeters long and carries 8 to 12 accessory setae, and it falls short of reaching the hind coxae, a key separation from E. pasaniae, whose rostrum extends past that point.

Perhaps the most striking measurements concern the siphunculi. In E. sinense these dark brown tubes are exceptionally slender and long, spanning 0.45 to 0.53 times the body length and 15.10 to 19.08 times their own basal width, clothed in many long setae and spinulose but lacking reticulation at the base. The cauda, the tail-like structure behind the siphunculi, carries 7 to 10 setae, most often nine. The legs add further confirmation: the hind coxae and femora are spinulose, the femur is reticulated distally, and the hind tibia is smooth except for spinules on the distal third. Together, these characters distinguish the species from every other greenideine aphid known in Korea.

The known distribution of E. sinense now stretches from India through China and Japan to the Indonesian island of Java, with South Korea as the latest addition. Its host plants are similarly broad across its range, including several Castanopsis oak relatives such as C. eyrei, C. ferox, C. javanica, and C. mollissima, the stone oak Lithocarpus ovalis, and a species of Pterospermum in the mallow family. In Korea, it has so far been found only on Castanopsis sieboldii, an evergreen southern species whose presence on the warmer margins of the peninsula likely explains why the aphid has gone unnoticed until now. Similar logic applies to E. pasaniae, which the same team collected on the same host plant on Jeju Island in 2023 and 2024.

The paper does more than add one species. It provides full morphological descriptions, measurements, and illustrations of the apterous viviparous females of all eight Greenideinae species now known from South Korea, along with documented host plant associations and updated distributional data. The new dichotomous key walks a user through the fauna step by step: Cervaphis quercus is immediately separable by its pale yellow body and branched marginal projections; species with five-segmented antennae and non-reticulated siphunculi split between the dark brown E. pasaniae and the yellow-green E. sinense; and among the six-segmented species, characters such as ventral abdominal spinulation, transverse ridges on the hind tibia, siphunculus length relative to body length, and whether dorsal setae are pointed or bifurcated separate Greenidea nipponica, Mollitrichosiphum luchuanum, G. kuwanai, G. nigra, and G. prunicola.

Why does a single new aphid record matter? Aphids are among the most closely monitored insect groups in temperate Asia because of their agricultural importance, yet their taxonomy still depends on careful morphological work, and country-level checklists remain incomplete. Each new record refines our picture of how these sap-feeding insects track their host plants across East Asia’s forests, and each illustrated key lowers the barrier for future surveys. The voucher specimens, slide preparations, and occurrence data published with the study, including precise coordinates and collection dates, give other researchers the raw material to verify the record and to test whether E. sinense is expanding northward, perhaps in step with a warming climate, or has simply been overlooked among the evergreen oaks of Korea’s southern coast.

Subject of Research: First record of the aphid Eutrichosiphum sinense in South Korea with an illustrated taxonomic key to Korean Greenideinae

Article Title: First record of Eutrichosiphum sinense Raychaudhuri ( Hemiptera , Aphididae , Greenideinae ) from South Korea, with an illustrated key to the Korean Greenideinae species

Article References: Kang, Y., & Lee, W. (2026). First record of Eutrichosiphum sinense Raychaudhuri (Hemiptera, Aphididae, Greenideinae) from South Korea, with an illustrated key to the Korean Greenideinae species. Biodiversity Data Journal, 14, Article e190624. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.14.e190624

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.14.e190624

Keywords: aphids, Greenideinae, Eutrichosiphum sinense, Hemiptera, Aphididae, taxonomy, new record, South Korea, Castanopsis sieboldii, identification key, biodiversity, entomology

Darkling beetles, the family Tenebrionidae, are among the largest families in the entire beetle order Coleoptera, with tens of thousands of described species worldwide. Their greatest diversity is concentrated in arid landscapes, particularly the subtropical semi-deserts and deserts of the Palaearctic region, where they have radiated into an extraordinary array of forms adapted to dry, open habitats. In the Caucasus, a mountainous crossroads between Europe and Asia, the family is well represented, but the true richness of many groups remains poorly documented. The new record is a reminder of how much basic faunal inventory work is still to be done even in well-studied parts of the world.

The history of research on Georgian darkling beetles is sparse and episodic. One of the earliest lists of Caucasian beetles was published by the German naturalist Alfred Radde in 1899, and it included just a single species of the genus Palorus: P. ratzeburgi (Wissmann, 1848), recorded from Tbilisi, then known as Tiflis. More than a century later, the entomologist Dzhambazishvili, who studied Georgian darkling beetles for decades, produced the first comprehensive checklist of the family in the country in 2000, enumerating 87 species of Tenebrionidae. Once again, P. ratzeburgi stood as the only representative of the genus Palorus on Georgian territory.

Subsequent works gradually complicated that picture. In later catalogues published by Nikitski and colleagues in 2008 and by Abdurakhmanov and colleagues in 2011, a second species, P. depressus (Fabricius, 1790), was also indicated for Georgia. Meanwhile, a very recent survey of darkling beetles in the Lagodekhi Protected Areas, published by Japoshvili and colleagues in 2022, recorded no Palorus species at all. Taken together, these scattered reports paint a picture of a genus whose diversity and distribution in Georgia are simply not well understood, a gap that the new discovery begins to close.

The specimen that changed the tally was collected on 24 September 2021 by N. Bulbulashvili during a CaBOL expedition to Kumisi in the Gardabani Municipality, at coordinates 41.60794°N, 44.8655°E and an elevation of 498 metres above sea level. The beetle was found under a rock in heathland near farms, a habitat that hints at the species’ association with human-modified and agricultural landscapes. It was a single female, preserved immediately in 96 percent ethanol and stored in a freezer at minus 30 degrees Celsius, a protocol that keeps tissue in good condition for future DNA barcoding as part of the CaBOL programme.

Documentation of the specimen followed modern imaging standards. The preserved beetle was photographed with a Canon EOS 550D camera fitted with a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens and a Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Snap-On attachment. Because a single macro photograph cannot keep the whole depth of a curved beetle body in focus, the researchers used Zerene Stacker image-stacking software to combine multiple frames into one sharp composite, with final touches made in Adobe Photoshop CS6. The resulting dorsal-view image of the female serves as a permanent visual record accompanying the publication.

Identification rested on a subtle but decisive anatomical character: the shape of the genae, the cheek regions of the head on either side of the eyes. In P. subdepressus, these structures are petaloid, meaning petal-shaped, and form two little horn-like projections, a feature described in earlier taxonomic treatments by Fleischer in 1900, Abdurakhmanov and colleagues in 2011, and Lillig and colleagues in 2012. Based on this diagnostic morphology, the Kumisi specimen was confirmed as P. subdepressus, making it the first record of the species for Georgia. The voucher specimen is kept at Ilia State University under the catalogue identifier CaBOL-ID 1010376, ensuring that the claim can be independently verified by any future researcher.

Why does a small brown beetle warrant attention? Palorus subdepressus, sometimes known as the depressed flour beetle, is a secondary pest of stored products. Unlike primary pests that can breach intact grain kernels, secondary pests such as Palorus typically exploit grain that is already damaged, mouldy or otherwise compromised, feeding on broken kernels, flour and processed products in mills, storehouses and pantries. The species is thought to have originated in Africa, as proposed by Halstead in 1967, but its lifestyle in close association with human food stores has carried it around the world, and it is today considered cosmopolitan in distribution.

Within the Caucasus region, previous records of P. subdepressus came from Krasnodar Kray in Russia, reported by Abdurakhmanov and colleagues in 2011, and from Azerbaijan, listed by Lobl and Lobl in 2020. Given those neighbouring records, the species’ presence in Georgia was arguably expected, and the authors note that the discovery indicates P. subdepressus is probably more widespread in the South Caucasus than previously thought. The find neatly fills a geographic gap between the Russian and Azerbaijani records and suggests that the beetle has quietly established itself across the region, likely moving with grain and other stored goods along trade and transport routes.

The authors emphasize that additional studies are needed to determine the full extent of the species’ distribution in the region and, importantly, the potential risks it could pose to the local economy. For a country with significant agricultural production and food-storage infrastructure, understanding where stored-product pests occur is a practical concern, not merely an academic one. The Kumisi record also underscores the value of targeted fieldwork and DNA-barcoding campaigns such as CaBOL: even a single specimen, carefully collected, preserved and photographed, can materially update scientific knowledge of a nation’s fauna and flag a pest species whose economic footprint in Georgia now deserves closer scrutiny.

Subject of Research: First record of the stored-product darkling beetle Palorus subdepressus in Georgia

Article Title: First record of Palorus subdepressus (Wollaston, 1864) ( Coleoptera : Tenebronidae ) from Georgia (Sakartvelo)

Article References: Japarashvili, S., Bulbulashvili, N., & Seropian, A. (2022). First record of Palorus subdepressus (Wollaston, 1864) (Coleoptera: Tenebronidae) from Georgia (Sakartvelo). Caucasiana, 1, 51-52. https://doi.org/10.3897/caucasiana.1.e83904

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/caucasiana.1.e83904

Keywords: Palorus subdepressus, Tenebrionidae, darkling beetles, Georgia, Caucasus, CaBOL, new record, stored-product pest, entomology, biodiversity, Kumisi, faunistics

The specimen was captured in July 2025 during a series of chiropteran surveys in southwestern Yunnan. Sweep netting at the eaves of the management station building within the Jinguang Temple Provincial Nature Reserve in Dali, at coordinates 25°11’55″N, 99°31’50″E and an elevation of roughly 2,500 metres, yielded one adult female, catalogued as GZHU 25209. Field protocols complied with Chinese law and live-animal handling followed American Society of Mammalogists guidelines. The voucher specimen, preserved in 75 percent ethanol, is now deposited at the South China Biodiversity Research Center at Guangzhou University. Adult status was confirmed by the degree of epiphyseal-diaphyseal fusion in the bones, a standard ageing method in bats.

Identifying the animal required an integrative approach combining morphology, morphometrics and genetics. The team took external measurements including body length, tail length, ear length, hind foot length, forearm length and tibia length, plus twelve craniodental dimensions measured with digital calipers accurate to 0.01 millimetres. The right wing was pinned flat, photographed perpendicular to the plane, and analysed with BAT-WINGAREA software to derive total wing area, wingspan and membrane areas, from which the three primary airfoil parameters were calculated. For the genetic component, total DNA was extracted and the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene, a 1,140-base-pair fragment widely used in bat systematics, was amplified and sequenced with specific primers.

The phylogenetic analysis aligned the new sequence with publicly available data from related genera including Pipistrellus, Vespertilio, Nyctalus and Falsistrellus, using Myotis chinensis as an outgroup. Maximum likelihood inference in IQ-TREE, with a TIM2+F+I substitution model and ultrafast bootstrap support estimated over 1,000 replicates, placed the Yunnan specimen firmly within a clade containing published sequences of Peters’s Pipistrelle from Luzon Island in the Philippines, with a bootstrap value of 100, the maximum possible. Pairwise genetic distances under the K2P model showed the new sample differed from Philippine H. petersi by only 0.10, whereas distances to other Hypsugo species ranged from 0.12 to 0.29. Notably, the Chinese sample formed the basal lineage relative to other conspecifics, hinting at an older, possibly ancestral population in the region.

Morphology told a consistent story. The bat is large for the genus, with a forearm length of 39.94 millimetres and a body mass of 7.5 grams. Its dorsal fur is long and woolly, dark chocolate-brown with lighter tips that give a frosted appearance, while the ventral fur is paler with brown tips. The wing membranes are blackish and hairless except for a small patch of pale-brown fur extending onto the ventral surface of the femur and the area around the anus, a hallmark of the species. The ears are dark, broad and rounded, the tragus short, broad and blunt, and the calcar bears a slight keel. The skull is long and narrow with slender zygomatic arches, well-developed occipital crests, and lower molars of the myotodont type, in which the talonid exceeds the trigonid in size, a diagnostic feature of Hypsugo that distinguishes it from Pipistrellus.

Multivariate statistics added a third line of evidence. Principal component analysis of six external measurements, supplemented with data from four other Chinese Hypsugo species, explained 69.6 percent of total variance in the first two components and separated five morphological groups, with the new specimen distinguished chiefly by its relatively long ears. A second PCA based on twelve craniodental measurements explained 72.1 percent of variance and clearly separated the Yunnan bat from all known Chinese Hypsugo, with condylobasal length and width across the upper canines driving the separation. Some measurements were slightly larger than previously published ranges, but the combined morphological, molecular and multivariate evidence left little doubt about the identification.

The taxonomic history of this bat is convoluted, which partly explains why it has been so easy to overlook. Described as Vespertilio petersi in 1899 from northern Sulawesi, the species was shuffled through the twentieth century between Pipistrellus and the genus Falsistrellus, erected in 1943 for Australian relatives. Hill and Harrison in 1987 even suggested that Asian Falsistrellus might be the eastern representative of Hypsugo. Only in 2018 did a comprehensive study integrating molecular, cranial, dental and multivariate evidence formally transfer the Asian members of Falsistrellus, including petersi, into Hypsugo, a revision now widely adopted. The genus Hypsugo itself comprises 22 species distributed across the southern Palaearctic, most of Africa and the Indomalayan region.

Because confirmed records of H. petersi remain so few, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies the species as Data Deficient, with critical gaps in knowledge about population trends, ecology and threats. The new record comes from southern Yunnan, adjacent to the Indo-China Peninsula biodiversity hotspot spanning Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. The complete absence of records across that vast peninsula suggests a significant distributional gap and indicates that the species’ true geographic range is far less understood than its scattered island records imply. Targeted surveys and molecular screening of museum specimens and field samples across the region are now needed to map where this bat actually occurs.

Wing morphology offers clues to how the species lives. With high wing loading of about 16.77 newtons per square metre, an average aspect ratio of about 6.87 and a low tip-shape index, H. petersi is built for moderately fast flight with limited maneuverability, suited to foraging along semi-open corridors such as forest edges and gaps. This matches the field observation of the individual roosting in a building crevice surrounded by tall, dense coniferous forest at 2,539 metres elevation, and it aligns with earlier accounts of the species being caught in mossy and pine forests at high elevations in the Philippines and roosting under house eaves in Borneo and the Philippines. Remarkably, the Yunnan record extends the known altitudinal limit of the species upward by 400 metres.

To help future surveys, the researchers also published the first comprehensive identification key to all seven Hypsugo species now known from China, in both English and Chinese. Previous guides covered only three species, and the transfer of Asian Falsistrellus species to Hypsugo in 2018 had left the Chinese fauna without an up-to-date diagnostic tool. The key relies on forearm length, fur coloration on the femur and perianal region, dental characters such as the position of the first upper premolar, and tragus shape. The authors caution that the presence of two large-bodied relatives, H. affinis and H. mordax, remains unverified in China and flag them as requiring confirmation. The discovery underscores that bat diversity in China is still incompletely documented and that integrative taxonomy, combining genetics, morphology and morphometrics, remains essential for uncovering it.

Subject of Research: First record of the bat Hypsugo petersi in China based on morphological and genetic evidence

Article Title: First record of the Peters’s Pipistrelle Hypsugo petersi ( Chiroptera , Vespertilionidae ) from China and an updated identification key to Chinese Hypsugo

Article References: Guo, Y., Chen, K.-H., Fan, X.-D., Xue, L.-Y., Yang, H.-H., Xiao, Y.-J., Wang, X.-Y., Wu, Y., Yue, Y., & Yu, W.-H. (2026). First record of the Peters’s Pipistrelle Hypsugo petersi (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) from China and an updated identification key to Chinese Hypsugo. ZooKeys, 1290, 171-184. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1290.186733

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1290.186733

Keywords: Hypsugo petersi, bats, Chiroptera, Yunnan, China, new record, cytochrome b, phylogenetics, morphometrics, conservation, ZooKeys, taxonomy

The two fish, a male and a female measuring 32.7 and 41.9 millimeters in standard length, were scooped up with a hand net at Wimi Port in Namwon-eup, Seogwipo-si, on the southern coast of Jeju Island. The collection happened at low tide, when the water over the sandy and muddy bottom was only 30 to 40 centimeters deep. Such shallow estuarine habitats are exactly where small sand gobies thrive, but they are also easy to overlook, which may partly explain why this species escaped detection in Korea for so long.

Identifying the specimens required a careful comparison of fin rays, scales, and sensory pores. The Jeju fish show six flexible rays followed by one spine in the first dorsal fin and eight soft rays in the second dorsal fin, a formula written as VI–I, 8. The anal fin carries a single spine and eight rays, and the area ahead of the dorsal fin bears at most a single scale, with counts of zero to one predorsal scales. Each of these characters separates F. reichei from F. gymnauchen, which has nine soft rays in both the second dorsal and anal fins and zero to seven predorsal scales.

Coloration provided additional confirmation. The Jeju specimens carry five black blotches along each side of the body, with the last blotch sitting at the base of the tail fin. Crucially, that caudal spot is undivided and rounded, whereas in F. gymnauchen the corresponding spot splits into two branches toward the rear. The male also shows a black spot near the center of the first dorsal fin, positioned away from the fin base, with a yellow band immediately above it, and transverse yellow stripes across the abdomen. Those male-only features are considered diagnostic of F. reichei and inspired the newly proposed Korean common name, Hwang-jul-nal-gae-mang-duk, which references the yellow stripes on the male’s flanks and fins.

The researchers also mapped the cephalic sensory canal pores, a system of tiny openings on the head that goby taxonomists use much like fingerprints. The anterior oculoscapular canal of the Jeju fish contains pores B′, C, D, E, F, G, and H′, with C and D each present as single pores, while the posterior oculoscapular canal carries K′ and L′ and the preopercular canal carries M′, N, and O′. Meristic counts such as 16 pectoral-fin rays, 29 to 30 longitudinal scale rows, and seven to nine transverse scale rows all fall within the ranges reported for F. reichei in Japan and Iran, reinforcing the identification.

What makes the record scientifically striking is the species’ known distribution. Favonigobius reichei is a euryhaline goby, tolerant of a wide range of salinities, and its range stretches across the tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific: from east and southern Africa, the Red Sea, Madagascar, the Seychelles, and Mauritius, through India, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Palau, and Hong Kong, to northern Australia, New Guinea, New Caledonia, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu, and the Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan. Jeju-do Island, sitting at roughly 33 degrees north latitude, lies at the northern edge of the East China Sea, well beyond the previously documented northern limit of the species.

Jeju Island has a reputation for producing range extensions of this kind. The island sits where warm currents of the Kuroshio system brush the continental shelf, and its intertidal flats and estuaries can harbor tropical and subtropical species that ride the currents northward as larvae or juveniles. Climate-driven warming of regional seas has been linked to poleward shifts in the distributions of many coastal fishes, and each new record from Jeju adds a data point to the growing picture of Indo-Pacific faunas edging into temperate waters. Whether F. reichei has established a resident breeding population on Jeju or represents occasional arrivals remains unknown, and the authors note that further surveys will be needed to resolve the question.

The specimens, fixed in 10 percent formalin and preserved in 70 percent ethanol, are deposited in the Ichthyology Laboratory at Kunsan National University under voucher numbers AREIS-0009 and AREIS-0010. Counting and measurement methods followed standard ichthyological protocols, with morphometric characters expressed as percentages of standard length. Head length measured 27.2 to 27.5 percent of standard length, the eye diameter 6.7 to 7.3 percent, and the caudal peduncle length 23.9 to 24.3 percent, values consistent with published descriptions of the species from Japanese and Iranian material.

The genus Favonigobius itself carries some taxonomic baggage. Established by Whitley in 1930 with Gobius lateralis as the type species, the genus lacked a proper description at the time of its creation. Gill and Miller later redescribed the genus and, based on osteological and morphological differences, erected the genus Papillogobius, into which several former Favonigobius species were reclassified. Subsequent researchers have disagreed over whether the two genera should be recognized separately, with some phylogenetic analyses criticized for leaning heavily on cephalic sensory characters that may introduce bias. The authors of the present study tentatively adopted Favonigobius, the usage common in Korea, to avoid confusion, while acknowledging that a future review of the genus is necessary.

With nine valid species worldwide, Favonigobius is a modest genus by goby standards, but its members are ecologically interesting as small benthic residents of sandy and muddy shallows, where they feed on tiny invertebrates and serve as prey for larger fish and wading birds. The recognition of F. reichei in Korea brings the country’s gobiid fauna one species richer and highlights how much remains to be learned about fish diversity in intertidal habitats, even in well-studied coastal regions. For now, the yellow-striped sand goby of Jeju stands as a reminder that a careful sweep of a hand net across a shallow estuary can still rewrite the map of where life is found.

Subject of Research: First Korean record of the Indo-Pacific tropical sand goby Favonigobius reichei from Jeju-do Island

Article Title: New distributional record of the Indo-Pacific tropical sand goby, Favonigobius reichei ( Actinopterygii , Gobiiformes , Gobiidae ), from Jeju-do Island, Korea

Article References: Kim, M.-S., Shin, Y.-S., & Kim, J.-G. (2025). New distributional record of the Indo-Pacific tropical sand goby, Favonigobius reichei (Actinopterygii, Gobiiformes, Gobiidae), from Jeju-do Island, Korea. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, 55, 363-367. https://doi.org/10.3897/aiep.55.150774

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/aiep.55.150774

Keywords: Favonigobius reichei, goby, Jeju Island, Korea, new record, biogeography, ichthyology, marine biodiversity, Gobiidae, range extension, distributional, record

The animal was no small catch. Measuring 2318 millimeters in total length, the single individual was taken with a stow net at a station off Heuksan-myeon and handed to researchers by the Korea Fisheries Resources Agency. After five days of fixation in 5% formalin and permanent preservation in 70% ethanol, the specimen was deposited at the National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea under catalog number MABIK PI00060540, where it now serves as the physical voucher anchoring the first verified record of the species in the country.

Moray eels are among the most recognizable predators of tropical and subtropical reefs, a family currently comprising 16 genera and 223 species worldwide. They are set apart from other eels by relatively small gill openings, the complete absence of pectoral fins, and formidable jaws bristling with strong teeth. Korea, sitting at the temperate northern edge of the family’s range, has previously recorded only 10 species from 4 genera, most of them in the speciose genus Gymnothorax. The genus Strophidon, to which the new arrival belongs, was represented by just two Korean species before this study.

Strophidon is a genus of extremes. Its members carry extremely elongated bodies in which the body depth fits 21 to 81 times into the total length, tails roughly twice as long as the trunk, and eyes pushed well forward on the snout. A distinctive median serrated line runs along the body, and the jaws bear teeth arranged in two rows, an arrangement that separates the genus from all other muraenids. Five species are currently recognized worldwide, and Strophidon tetraporus was described as new to science only in 2020, during a taxonomic revision that split the once-catch-all slender giant morays into cleaner species boundaries.

Identifying the Korean specimen demanded careful counting. Using digital Vernier calipers accurate to 0.1 millimeters, X-ray radiography for the skeleton, and a stereomicroscope for the sensory pores, the team assembled a full morphometric profile. The result: 195 total vertebrae, split into 8 predorsal and 79 preanal, a dorsal fin of 498 rays, and an anal fin of 339 rays, both continuous with the caudal fin. The head carried three supraorbital pores, four infraorbital pores, six preoperculo-mandibular pores, and four branchial pores, and it was the presence of that distinct fourth infraorbital pore, the trait that gives the species its name, that stood out as the decisive diagnostic character.

Every count landed squarely within the ranges documented for the type specimens. Proportional measurements told the same story: the head length fit 9.8 times into the total length, the snout 3.0 times into the head length, the eye diameter 23.8 times into the head length, and the body depth at the gill opening 22.4 times into the total length. In preservation, the eel showed a uniformly dark brown dorsal surface fading to lighter brown on the ventral side, with fin membranes matching the adjacent body color and darkening toward their margins. Taken together, the meristic, morphometric, and coloration evidence converged on a single identification.

To seal the case, the researchers turned to the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene, the workhorse of animal DNA barcoding. A 667-base-pair fragment was amplified from muscle tissue using universal fish primers, sequenced on an ABI 3730xl, and compared against reference sequences from the holotype and paratypes of Strophidon tetraporus as well as specimens from Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The Korean eel clustered with these conspecific individuals in a monophyletic clade, and pairwise genetic distances computed under the Kimura 2-parameter model showed a divergence of only 0.02 to 0.03 percentage points from the type material, an extraordinarily tight match.

The contrast with its closest relatives could not have been sharper. Against Strophidon ui, the Korean specimen diverged by 11.2 to 11.6 percentage points; against Strophidon sathete by 11.4 to 11.6 points; and against Strophidon dorsalis by 12.5 to 12.7 points, with a mean interspecific distance of 11 percentage points across the genus. A neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree built with 1000 bootstrap replications placed the Korean eel firmly inside the tetraporus clade, with the outgroup Gymnothorax prionodon rooting the analysis. Morphology and molecules, in other words, agreed completely.

The biogeographic implications are what make this record genuinely newsworthy. Strophidon tetraporus lives on sandy bottoms across the western Pacific, with confirmed records from Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and southern Japan, where it was known to spawn in the South China Sea. Its southernmost limit sat at Nusa Tenggara Barat in Indonesia, and its northernmost at southern Japan. The Heuksan-do specimen now extends that distribution to its highest recorded latitude, deep into the southern Yellow Sea and well beyond the warm refuges the species was thought to occupy.

Why a tropical-leaning eel should appear this far north remains an open question, and the authors of the study frame the find as a new insight into the dispersal ecology and biogeographic range limits of this large muraenid. Whether the individual was a stray carried north by currents, a sign of a gradually shifting range in a warming ocean, or simply a species overlooked by Korean surveys until now, only further sampling can tell. What the record does establish is that Korea’s marine fauna is still being charted, and that a nearly 2.3-meter predator can slip through the nets of science in one of the world’s most intensively fished seas until a single stow net off a small island island finally reveals it.

Subject of Research: First confirmed record of the moray eel Strophidon tetraporus in Korean waters

Article Title: First record of the four-pore slender giant moray, Strophidon tetraporus ( Actinopterygii , Anguilliformes , Muraenidae ), from Sinan, Korea

Article References: Sohn, M.-S., Kwun, H.-J., & Kim, J.-K. (2025). First record of the four-pore slender giant moray, Strophidon tetraporus (Actinopterygii, Anguilliformes, Muraenidae), from Sinan, Korea. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, 55, 413-417. https://doi.org/10.3897/aiep.55.174404

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/aiep.55.174404

Keywords: moray eel, Strophidon tetraporus, Korea, new record, DNA barcoding, COI gene, marine biodiversity, Yellow Sea, biogeography, ichthyology, First, record