One elephant may sustain 2 million dung beetles in East African savannason any given day.

In East African savannas, in the rainy season, an elephant dung bolus is usually transformed into a flat mat of dung residue within a few hours. We extracted the coprophilous beetles of a dung mat from a 1 kg bolus after a one-night exposure and counted 13,699 specimens, most of them aphodiine dung beetles. This is the largest number of dung beetles per kilogram of mammal dung ever counted. Given that an elephant produces an average of 160 kg of feces per day, we extrapolate that one adult elephant provides food for 2.12 million dung beetles on any given day. The elephant population in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem in central Kenya, an elephant-rich environment, can sustain, by sheer extrapolation, 14.3 billion dung beetles in an area of 55,000 km2, which translates to ca. 260,000 dung beetles/km2. The decline or extinction of elephants, at least in East African grasslands, may have a massive cascade effect on the populations of coprophagous beetles and the biota dependent on or gaining an advantage from them.

Grand challenges in entomology: Priorities for action in the coming decades.

Entomology is key to understanding terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems at a time of unprecedented anthropogenic environmental change and offers substantial untapped potential to benefit humanity in a variety of ways, from improving agricultural practices to managing vector-borne diseases and inspiring technological advances.We identified high priority challenges for entomology using an inclusive, open, and democratic four-stage prioritisation approach, conducted among the membership and affiliates (hereafter 'members') of the UK-based Royal Entomological Society (RES).A list of 710 challenges was gathered from 189 RES members. Thematic analysis was used to group suggestions, followed by an online vote to determine initial priorities, which were subsequently ranked during an online workshop involving 37 participants.The outcome was a set of 61 priority challenges within four groupings of related themes: (i) 'Fundamental Research' (themes: Taxonomy, 'Blue Skies' [defined as research ideas without immediate practical application], Methods and Techniques); (ii) 'Anthropogenic Impacts and Conservation' (themes: Anthropogenic Impacts, Conservation Options); (iii) 'Uses, Ecosystem Services and Disservices' (themes: Ecosystem Benefits, Technology and Resources [use of insects as a resource, or as inspiration], Pests); (iv) 'Collaboration, Engagement and Training' (themes: Knowledge Access, Training and Collaboration, Societal Engagement).Priority challenges encompass research questions, funding objectives, new technologies, and priorities for outreach and engagement. Examples include training taxonomists, establishing a global network of insect monitoring sites, understanding the extent of insect declines, exploring roles of cultivated insects in food supply chains, and connecting professional with amateur entomologists. Responses to different challenges could be led by amateur and professional entomologists, at all career stages.Overall, the challenges provide a diverse array of options to inspire and initiate entomological activities and reveal the potential of entomology to contribute to addressing global challenges related to human health and well-being, and environmental change.

Is it time to describe new species without diagnoses?A comment on Sharkey et al. (2021).

New methods in taxonomy and systematics can influence the overall practice of formally naming and describing biodiversity. DNA barcoding has been controversial since its emergence, but now, large scale species descriptions exclusively based on barcodes have created what can be called a 'new quality of performance. Its limitations are discussed from different perspectives: nomenclature, general pragmatism, and problems of DNA-based species delimitation in the light of the central aim of achieving a robust and stable nomenclature of organisms, essential for all applications of biodiversity research. This issue needs to be addressed to prevent restraining the progress of taxonomy and its ability to contribute to modern science.

Dung beetles.

Frank T. Krell and Allison R. Moon introduce dung beetles.

Global dung webs: high trophic generalism of dung beetles along the latitudinal diversity gradient.

At the global scale, species diversity is known to strongly increase towards the equator for most taxa. According to theory, a higher resource specificity of consumers facilitates the coexistence of a larger number of species and has been suggested as an explanation for the latitudinal diversity gradient. However, only few studies support the predicted increase in specialisation or even showed opposite results. Surprisingly, analyses for detritivores are still missing. Therefore, we performed an analysis on the degree of trophic specialisation of dung beetles. We summarised 45 studies, covering the resource preferences of a total of 994503 individuals, to calculate the dung specificity in each study region. Our results highlighted a significant (4.3-fold) increase in the diversity of beetles attracted to vertebrate dung towards the equator. However, their resource specificity was low, unrelated to diversity and revealed a highly generalistic use of dung resources that remained similar along the latitudinal gradient.

LepNet: The Lepidoptera of North America Network.

The Lepidoptera of North America Network, or LepNet, is a digitization effort recently launched to mobilize biodiversity data from 3 million specimens of butterflies and moths in United States natural history collections (http://www.lep-net.org/). LepNet was initially conceived as a North American effort but the project seeks collaborations with museums and other organizations worldwide. The overall goal is to transform Lepidoptera specimen data into readily available digital formats to foster global research in taxonomy, ecology and evolutionary biology.

A review and phylogeny of Scarabaeine dung beetle fossils (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), with the description of two Canthochilum species from Dominican amber.

Despite the increasing rate of systematic research on scarabaeine dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), their fossil record has remained largely unrevised. In this paper, we review all 33 named scarabaeine fossils and describe two new species from Dominican amber (Canthochilum alleni sp.n., Canthochilum philipsivieorum sp.n.). We provide a catalogue of all fossil Scarabaeinae and evaluate their assignment to this subfamily, based primarily on the original descriptions but also, where possible, by examining the type specimens. We suggest that only 21 fossil taxa can be reliably assigned to the Scarabaeinae, while the remaining 14 should be treated as doubtful Scarabaeinae. The doubtful scarabaeines include the two oldest dung beetle fossils known from the Cretaceous and we suggest excluding them from any assessments of the minimum age of scarabaeine dung beetles. The earliest reliably described scarabaeine fossil appears to be Lobateuchus parisii, known from Oise amber (France), which shifts the minimum age of the Scarabaeinae to the Eocene (53 Ma). We scored the best-preserved fossils, namely Lobateuchus and the two Canthochilum species described herein, into the character matrix used in a recent morphology-based study of dung beetles, and then inferred their phylogenetic relationships with Bayesian and parsimony methods. All analyses yielded consistent phylogenies where the two fossil Canthochilum are placed in a clade with the extant species of Canthochilum, and Lobateuchus is recovered in a clade with the extant genera Ateuchus and Aphengium. Additionally, we evaluated the distribution of dung beetle fossils in the light of current global dung beetle phylogenetic hypotheses, geological time and biogeography. The presence of only extant genera in the late Oligocene and all later records suggests that the main present-day dung beetle lineages had already been established by the late Oligocene-mid Miocene.

Timeless standards for species delimitation.

Recently a new species of bombyliid fly, Marleyimyia xylocopae, was described by Marshall & Evenhuis (2015) based on two photographs taken during fieldwork in the Republic of South Africa. This species has no preserved holotype. The paper generated some buzz, especially among dipterists, because in most cases photographs taken in the field provide insufficient information for properly diagnosing and documenting species of Diptera.

A new species of the endemic genus Hemicyrthus Reiche (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae) from New Caledonia, with a revised key.

Hemicyrthus blaffarti new species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae) from the Parc Provincial de la Rivière Bleue in southern New Caledonia is described. It differs from the most similar species, H. elongatus, by the completely and sharply margined pronotal base, the presence of elytral micropunctures, shorter apical setae of the mesotibiae and meta-tibiae, and a different shape of the parameres. For the first time, a sexually dimorphic character is described in this genus: the median emargination of the last sternite has a developed margin in males, but not in females. A revised key for all Hemicyrthus species is given. Hemicyrthus as a genus of short-range endemics, and its biogeographical relationships are briefly discussed.

The role of species traits in mediating functional recovery during matrix restoration.

Reversing anthropogenic impacts on habitat structure is frequently successful through restoration, but the mechanisms linking habitat change, community reassembly and recovery of ecosystem functioning remain unknown. We test for the influence of edge effects and matrix habitat restoration on the reassembly of dung beetle communities and consequent recovery of dung removal rates across tropical forest edges. Using path modelling, we disentangle the relative importance of community-weighted trait means and functional trait dispersion from total biomass effects on rates of dung removal. Community trait composition and biomass of dung beetle communities responded divergently to edge effects and matrix habitat restoration, yielding opposing effects on dung removal. However, functional dispersion--used in this study as a measure of niche complementarity--did not explain a significant amount of variation in dung removal rates across habitat edges. Instead, we demonstrate that the path to functional recovery of these altered ecosystems depends on the trait-mean composition of reassembling communities, over and above purely biomass-dependent processes that would be expected under neutral theory. These results suggest that any ability to manage functional recovery of ecosystems during habitat restoration will demand knowledge of species' roles in ecosystem processes.

The identity of Aphodius nodifrons Randall, 1838 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Aphodiinae) from Maine, United States of America, with designation of the lectotype and handwriting examples.

John Witt Randall's Coleoptera types have been assumed to be lost. In London and Harvard, we found two syntypes of Aphodius nodifrons Randall, 1838, coming from the collection of Thaddeus William Harris. We designated the lectotype and synonymised Randall's species with A. pedellus (De Geer, 1774).

Life history and description of larva and pupa of Platyphileurus felscheanus Ohaus, 1910, a scarabaeid feeding on bromeliad tissues in Brazil, to be excluded from Phileurini (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Dynastinae).

The third instar larvae and the pupae of Platyphileurus felscheanus Ohaus, 1910 (Phileurini), recently synonymized with Surutu jelineki Endrodi, 1975 (Cyclocephalini), are described and illustrated, and some life history information is given. The larvae were collected and reared in bromeliads in rain forests of Santa Catarina state in southern Brazil. The systematic position of this monotypic genus is reassessed at the tribe level by considering larval and adult morphological characters. Both character sets, being described and illustrated, suggest the placement of Platyphileurus in the tribe Oryctini.

Habitat differences in dung beetle assemblages in an African savanna-forest ecotone: implications for secondary seed dispersal.

The probability and pattern of secondary seed dispersal by dung beetles (Scarabaeinae) depend on their community structure and composition at the site of primary deposition, which, in turn, seem to be strongly determined by vegetation. Consequently, we expected pronounced differences in secondary seed dispersal between forest and savanna in the northern Ivory Coast, West Africa. We found 99 dung beetle species at experimentally exposed dung piles of the olive baboon (Papio anubis (Lesson, 1827)), an important primary seed disperser in West Africa. Seventy-six species belonged to the roller and tunneler guilds, which are relevant for secondary seed dispersal. Most species showed a clear habitat preference. Contrary to the Neotropics, species number and abundance were much higher in the savanna than in the forest. Rollers and tunnelers each accounted for approximately 50% of the individuals in the savanna, but in the forest rollers made up only 4%. Seeds deposited into the savanna by an omnivorous primary disperser generally have a higher overall probability of being more rapidly dispersed secondarily by dung beetles than seeds in the forest. Also, rollers disperse seeds over larger distances. In contrast to other studies, small rollers were active in dispersal of large seeds, which were seemingly mistaken for dung balls. Our results suggest that rollers can remove seeds from any plant dispersed in primate dung in this ecosystem.

Michajlowastasia nom. nov. for the parasitic euglenoid genus Parastasia Michajlow, 1972 (Euglenozoa: Euglenoidina: Astasiidae).

A new name, Michajlowastasia nom. nov., is introduced as a replacement name for the pre-occupied euglenoid genus name Parastasia Michajlow, 1972 (nec Westwood, 1841). Eighteen species-group names are referred to this new generic name.

Quinone mixture as attractant for necrophagous dung beetles specialized on dead millipedes.

2-Methyl-1,4-benzoquinone (toluquinone) and 2-methoxy-3-methyl-1,4-benzoquinone are the most common components of defensive secretions of juliform millipedes (Diplopoda: Juliformia). A natural and a synthetic millipede-defensive secretion composed of these two substances attract dung beetles of a few Onthophagus species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) that feed mainly on freshly dead millipedes. This olfactory mechanism and adaptation to the toxic effects of quinones enables them to be the first and exclusive users of this resource.