Monograph

July 23, 2019 / Leave a comment

In September 2019, the first monograph on amphipods of Switzerland was released (Fauna Helvetica 32 – Amphipoda). This PDF gives a first insight into different parts of the book. You may order the book using the webshop of info fauna.

The book is published by the Swiss Center for the Cartography of the fauna (CSCF) and the Swiss Entomological Society (SEG). The monograph contains an comprehensive overview about the amphipods of Switzerland, their ecology and their faunistics. It further includes a trilingual species identification key (DE, FR, EN), which is suitable for beginners and experts, and which covers all species of Switzerland and adjacent biogeographic regions. The detailed texts for all 40 species are illustrated, with distribution maps and numerous drawings and photographs. Additionally, the book covers a few species that are hitherto not reported from Switzerland but to be expected in the near future. The wide distribution of amphipods renders them suitable indicator taxa and this book provides the knowledge base needed for future studies, ranging from fundamental research to applied works. We hope that the monograph will meet with wide interest.

Biodiversity increases and decreases ecosystem stability

December 11, 2018 / Leave a comment

Experiments have shown that biodiversity may increase or decrease ecosystem stability. As part of a collaboration between Owen Petchey’s lab at University of Zurich and Florian Altermatt’s lab at Eawag, we performed a large experiment that showed that species richness can simultaneously increase and decrease ecological stability. This highlighed that one should consider multiple stability components and that this could provide new insights. The study was recently published in Nature (read article here) and I am proud to be part of this fruitful project. The story behind the paper can be read in this blog post by Frank Pennekamp.

Two new Niphargus species

May 29, 2018 / Leave a comment

With our new publication in ZooKeys, the number of amphipod species from Switzerland has risen again. The paper contains two new species (Niphargus luchoffmanni sp. n. and Niphargus tonywhitteni sp. n.), with drawings and descriptions. Additionally, the paper provides a DELTA (DEscription Language for TAxonomy) file and BOLD barcodes, allowing everyone the identification of niphargids based on various morphological and molecular characters.

Two new Niphargus species from Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

Both species are geographically restricted (Austria, Germany, Switzerland), with one (N. luchoffmanni) being endemic to the Swiss alps. The species were named after Hans Lukas “Luc” Hoffmann (1923–2016), naturalist and ecologists, founder of the MAVA foundation and co-founder of the World Wild Fund for NAture (WWF), and after Tony Whitten (1953–2017), who devoted his life to nature conservation including conserving life in caves, also being a co-chair of the Cave Invertebrate Specialist Group at IUCN.

With this publication, the next step towards the monography about Swiss amphipods is done. The book should be available by the end of the year via CSCF. This homepage will keep you updated. Or contact me if you want to be informed about the release of the Fauna Helvetica monograph.

Amphipod diversity in fluvial networks

February 7, 2018 / Leave a comment

Amphipod Richness Rhine — Amphipod species richness in the river Rhine drainage basin of Switzerland. Local species richness
along the fluvial network is depicted as a heatmap, with streams and underlying catchments colorized with
respect to the observed catchment-level species richness (Figure from Ecosphere 9(2): e02102)

In the recently published open-access article in Ecosphere we studied the influence of fluvial network topology on different measures of amphipod diversity. The scientific novelty is the distinction between native and non-native species within a single taxonomic group in a large and natural system. The study covers the 27,882-km² drainage basin of the river Rhine in Switzerland and is based on a graph theory approach.

Patterns of native and non-native species in fluvial networks

As hypothesized, species richness increased along the network from headwaters to the outlet nodes. But native and non-native amphipod showed different patterns, with headwaters being refugia for native species and more downstream nodes being hotspots of biological invasions. Additionally, results from species turnover indicated a much lower dispersal limitation for non-native species. The amphipod community structure closely mirrored the topological modularity of the network.

Implications for conservation ecology

Our results highlight that connectivity plays an important role in community formation, also on a larger scale. Rivers and streams are essential in explaining biological invasions.

A Niphargus hotspot in Switzerland

December 16, 2016 / Leave a comment

Three new species described

Our most recent paper in Systematics and Biodiversity reveals three new and endemic species of Niphargus in Switzerland. We describe them from the Hölloch cave system in central Switzerland, with no further findings known so far. The paper updates the current knowledge of amphipoda in Switzerland, specifically for the genus of Niphargus.

A fruitful collaboration

Thanks to the collaboration with the caving society of the Hölloch we could retrieve the exciting samples. It was also them who provided the names given to the new species. Without their knowledge about the gigantic cave system we would not have been able to publish these results.