The German Barcoding initiatives BFB and GBOL have generated a reference library of more than 16,000 metazoan species, which is now ready for applications concerning next generation molecular biodiversity assessments. To streamline the barcoding process, we have developed a meta-barcoding pipeline: We pre-sorted a single malaise trap sample (obtained during one week in August 2014, southern Germany) into 12 arthropod orders and extracted DNA from pooled individuals of each order separately, in order to facilitate DNA extraction and avoid time consuming single specimen selection. Aliquots of each ordinal-level DNA extract were combined to roughly simulate a DNA extract from a non-sorted malaise sample. Each DNA extract was amplified using four primer sets targeting the CO1-5’ fragment. The resulting PCR products (150-400bp) were sequenced separately on an Illumina Mi-SEQ platform, resulting in 1.5 million sequences and 5,500 clusters (coverage ≥10; CD-HIT-EST, 98%). Using a total of 120,000 DNA barcodes of identified, Central European Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, Diptera, and Lepidoptera downloaded from BOLD we established a reference sequence database for a local CUSTOM BLAST. This allowed us to identify 529 Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) from our sequence clusters derived from pooled Malaise trap samples. We introduce a scoring matrix based on the sequence match percentages of each amplicon in order to gain plausibility for each detected BIN, leading to 390 high score BINs in the sorted samples; whereas 268 of these high score BINs (69%) could be identified in the combined sample. The results indicate that a time consuming presorting process will yield approximately 30% more high score BINs compared to the non-sorted sample in our case. These promising results indicate that a fast, efficient and reliable analysis of next generation data from malaise trap samples can be achieved using this pipeline.

Precision and organization govern the cell cycle, ensuring normal proliferation. However, some cells may undergo abnormal cell divisions (neosis) or variations of mitotic cycles (endopolyploidy). Consequently, the formation of polyploid giant cancer cells (PGCCs), critical for tumor survival, resistance, and immortalization, can occur. Newly formed cells end up accessing numerous multicellular and unicellular programs that enable metastasis, drug resistance, tumor recurrence, and self-renewal or diverse clone formation. An integrative literature review was carried out, searching articles in several sites, including: PUBMED, NCBI-PMC, and Google Academic, published in English, indexed in referenced databases and without a publication time filter, but prioritizing articles from the last 3 years, to answer the following questions: (i) “What is the current knowledge about polyploidy in tumors?”; (ii) “What are the applications of computational studies for the understanding of cancer polyploidy?”; and (iii) “How do PGCCs contribute to tumorigenesis?”

SUMMARY: Amblyomma birmitumsp. nov. is formally described as a new record from 99 Ma old Burmese amber from Myanmar. This confirms the presence of the extant hard tick genusAmblyommaC.L. Koch, 1844 (Ixodida: Ixodidae) in the Late Cretaceous. This discovery is placed in its wider context and some reports of fossil hard ticks, such as aHyalommaC.L. Koch, 1844 in Eocene Baltic amber, are misidentifications. The genusAmblyommabelongs to the clade Metastriata, a group which probably also accommodates two extinct genera,CornupalpatumPoinar and Brown, 2003 andCompluriscutataPoinar and Buckley, 2008, also found in Burmese amber. All three fossils are thus only a little younger than published molecular divergence time estimates (ca. 124 ± 17 Ma) for the Metastriata lineage.Amblyommahas a largely Gondwanan distribution today. However, in some biogeographical scenarios, e.g. the Samafrica model, its predicted radiation time postdates the dissolution of the original Gondwana supercontinent raising questions about how its current distribution pattern was achieved.

The diversity of insects collected during entomological field courses at the University of West Papua (UNIPA), Indonesia, is studied using DNA barcoding tools. The results were compared with public data available for West Papua in the Barcode of Life Data System. During two training courses in 2013 and 2015, 1,052 specimens of insects were collected at eight sites near Manokwari in northern West Papua. The DNA sequences obtained from these specimens were assigned to 311 Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) and represent species in 27 families of Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera and Coleoptera. Of those BINs, 294 (95%) were new to West Papua. The study suggests that DNA barcoding applied to university courses achieves several goals, including capacity building and hands-on

Here we present a general collecting and preparation protocol for DNA barcoding of Lepidoptera as part of large-scale rapid biodiversity assessment projects, and a comparison with alternative preserving and vouchering methods. About 98% of the sequenced specimens processed using the present collecting and preparation protocol yielded sequences with more than 500 base pairs. The study is based on the first outcomes of the Indonesian Biodiversity Discovery and Information System (IndoBioSys). IndoBioSys is a German-Indonesian research project that is conducted by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and the Zoologische Staatssammlung München, in close cooperation with the Research Center for Biology – Indonesian Institute of Sciences (RCB-LIPI, Bogor).

Arthropods account for a large proportion of animal biomass and diversity in terrestrial systems, making them crucial organisms in our environments. However, still too little is known about the highly abundant and megadiverse groups that often make up the bulk of collected samples, especially in the tropics. With molecular identification techniques ever more evolving, analysis of arthropod communities has accelerated. In our study, which was conducted within the Global Malaise trap Program (GMP) framework, we operated two closely placed Malaise traps in Padang, Sumatra, for three months. We analyzed the samples by DNA barcoding and sequenced a total of more than 70,000 insect specimens. For sequence clustering, we applied three different delimitation techniques, namely RESL, ASAP, and SpeciesIdentifier, which gave similar results. Despite our (very) limited sampling in time and space, our efforts recovered more than 10,000 BINs, of which the majority are associated with “dark taxa”. Further analysis indicates a drastic undersampling of both sampling sites, meaning that the true arthropod diversity at our sampling sites is even higher. Regardless of the close proximity of both Malaise traps (< 360 m), we discovered significantly distinct communities.