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Fulltext Craspedotropis gretathunbergae, a new species of Cyclophoridae (Gastropoda: Caenogastropoda), discovered and described on a field course to Kuala Belalong rainforest, Brunei

Schilthuizen M, Lim JP, van Peursen ADP, Alfano M, Jenging AB, Cicuzza D, et al.

Biodivers Data J, 2020;8:e47484.
PMID: 32132859 DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.8.e47484

Background: Terrestrial Caenogastropoda form an important but threatened component of the Borneo tropical rainforest malacofauna, where the group is nearly as rich in species as the Stylommatophora. They are, however, more sensitive to drought, temperature extremes and forest degradation.
New information: On a field course at Kuala Belalong Field Studies Centre in Brunei Darussalam (Borneo), a new caenogastropod species, belonging to the genus Craspedotropis, was discovered by the course participants. The participants decided to name the species Craspedotropis gretathunbergae n. sp., in honour of the climate change activist Greta Thunberg, as caenogastropod land snails, such as this species, are likely to suffer because of climate change.
Evolution of endemism on a young tropical mountain

Merckx VS, Hendriks KP, Beentjes KK, Mennes CB, Becking LE, Peijnenburg KT, et al.

Nature, 2015 Aug 20;524(7565):347-50.
PMID: 26266979 DOI: 10.1038/nature14949

Tropical mountains are hot spots of biodiversity and endemism, but the evolutionary origins of their unique biotas are poorly understood. In varying degrees, local and regional extinction, long-distance colonization, and local recruitment may all contribute to the exceptional character of these communities. Also, it is debated whether mountain endemics mostly originate from local lowland taxa, or from lineages that reach the mountain by long-range dispersal from cool localities elsewhere. Here we investigate the evolutionary routes to endemism by sampling an entire tropical mountain biota on the 4,095-metre-high Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, East Malaysia. We discover that most of its unique biodiversity is younger than the mountain itself (6 million years), and comprises a mix of immigrant pre-adapted lineages and descendants from local lowland ancestors, although substantial shifts from lower to higher vegetation zones in this latter group were rare. These insights could improve forecasts of the likelihood of extinction and 'evolutionary rescue' in montane biodiversity hot spots under climate change scenarios.

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