The first observations of myrmecophilous ant cricket Myrmecophilus acervorum (Panzer, 1799) and the family Myrmecophilidae from Latvia are presented. The observations were made in two locations subject to flooding in springtime. Adult and juvenile female individuals were observed. The discussed records appear to be the northernmost known distribution limit of this species.

Gregarious behaviours in modern and fossil arthropods are commonly associated with defensive strategies, mass moulting and synchronous reproduction. Such behaviour is scarcely documented in the crustacean fossil record. Identifying clusters in extinct Pancrustacea is, therefore, important for understanding the evolutionary history and origin of crustacean gregariousness. Cyclida, an order of extinct, enigmatic pancrustaceans that have been subject to limited palaeoecological examination, represents an ideal group for testing the presence of gregarious behaviour. Here, we report a cluster of 50 <jats:italic>Schramine montanaensis</jats:italic> individuals from the Serpukhovian-aged Bear Gulch Limestone of Montana, USA, expanding the exceptionally rare record of cyclidan aggregations. The presence of articulated specimens with appendages and possible gill preservation supports the interpretation of carcasses that were preserved during a rapid burial event. We propose that this cluster records either a mass moulting event or clustering for shelter, representing one of the oldest records of crustacean gregariousness. These findings provide important insights into cyclidan life modes and ecological interactions in Carboniferous marine environments.

Adaptive sampling is a method of software-controlled enrichment unique to nanopore sequencing platforms. To test its potential for enrichment of rarer species within metagenomic samples, we create a synthetic mock community and construct sequencing libraries with a range of mean read lengths. Enrichment is up to 13.87-fold for the least abundant species in the longest read length library; factoring in reduced yields from rejecting molecules the calculated efficiency raises this to 4.93-fold. Finally, we introduce a mathematical model of enrichment based on molecule length and relative abundance, whose predictions correlate strongly with mock and complex real-world microbial communities.

While DNA barcoding methods are an increasingly important tool in biological conservation, the resource requirements of constructing reference libraries frequently reduce their efficacy. One efficient way of sourcing taxonomically validated DNA for reference libraries is to use museum collections. However, DNA degradation intrinsic to historical museum specimens can, if not addressed in the wet lab, lead to low quality data generation and severely limit scientific output. Several DNA extraction and library build methods that are designed to work with degraded DNA have been developed, although the ability to implement these methods at scale and at low cost has yet to be formally addressed. Here, the performance of widely used DNA extraction and library build methods are compared using museum specimens. We find that while our selected DNA extraction methods do not significantly differ in DNA yield, the Santa Cruz Reaction (SCR) library build method is not only the most effective at retrieving degraded DNA from museum specimens but also easily implemented at high throughput for low cost. Results highlight the importance of lab protocol on data yield. An optimised “sample to sequencing” high-throughput protocol which incorporates SCR is included to allow for easy uptake by the wider scientific community.

The geographical itineraries of Thomas Drummond’s two separate expeditions to Canada (1825–1827) and the United States of America (1831–1835) are used to provide historical context for the specimens collected and their localities. The coordinates for these locations are estimated and their geographical positions mapped. The difficulties of resolving various problems with historical specimens are explored and several examples are provided, including the contentious origin and identification of a southeastern myotis, Myotis austroriparius (Rhoads, 1897) (NHMUK 1837.4.8.127). Information about type specimens is discussed and the geographical position of several type localities of rodents and a mustelid in the Rocky Mountains and a lagomorph in the USA are refined.

In this work, we report the results of the in situ application of micro‐Raman spectroscopy to the analysis of two historic painted objects: a 15th‐century illuminated manuscript and a late 16th‐century portrait miniature. Both objects were unexpectedly found to contain calomel (Hg<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>Cl<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>), intentionally used as a white pigment. Calomel was a widespread and popular medicine until it fell out of use at the end of the 19th century due to its toxicity, and a material called ‘mercury white’ is referred to in 16th‐century technical literature on painting. However, although calomel has been recognised in the past as a degradation product of cinnabar in both wall and easel paintings, its deliberate use as a pigment on cultural heritage objects has only been documented recently in white areas painted on 17th‐century South American objects. The present study describes the first ever verified use of calomel as a white pigment on European works of art, both of which predate its documented use in South America.

A previous preliminary study of 15th-century Venetian manuscript fragments by the Master of the Murano Gradual identified the presence of cobalt in many ultramarine blue areas, suggesting the presence of smalt. This would represent an early use of this glassy pigment in Venetian illuminated manuscripts. Whereas sampling has been used to identify smalt in 15th century paintings, only non-invasive methods can be used on manuscripts due to their small size and fragile nature. Here we investigated four non-invasive analysis techniques to identify small amounts of smalt in the presence of ultramarine, including single-point and scanning XRF spectroscopy, UV–vis-NIR-SWIR reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), Raman spectroscopy, and external reflection FT-IR spectroscopy. This was done by studying paint mock-ups of ultramarine and smalt mixtures with and without the presence of a white pigment on parchment. The results showed molecular spectroscopy techniques (reflectance, Raman, and FTIR) require at least ~ 30–40% smalt by percent mass when in the presence of ultramarine in order to detect its presence, whereas elemental XRF spectroscopy can detect cobalt (and thus infer the presence of smalt) at the ~ 1% level. To further explore the inference of smalt by XRF, additional XRF analysis was conducted to specifically look for elements associated with cobalt minerals (i.e. nickel, arsenic, bismuth, etc.). High spatial resolution XRF scanning (60–100 μm X-ray spot size) was used to look for cobalt in smalt particles which are typically larger than those of ultramarine. These two XRF analysis approaches worked well with the mock-up paint samples, and were subsequently applied to the manuscripts for which molecular spectroscopy methods yielded no unambiguous evidence for smalt. The data underscore the challenges of conclusively identifying smalt in complex paint systems when samples are not available, but do suggest that the Master of the Murano illuminated manuscript fragments contain smalt, but perhaps not in a form or amount researchers are used to seeing in paintings.

The fossil record of the Palaeozoic echinoderm class Soluta suggests they originated in the Miaolingian (middle Cambrian) of Laurentia as permanently attached suspension feeders, demonstrating a stepwise shift towards vagility in successive strata. Here, we report a new specimen of Pahvanticystis cf. utahensis associated with three putative juveniles interpreted as belonging to the same species. We interpret this as evidence of facultative attachment in juveniles of Pahvanticystis, which had not previously been reported in this taxon, but is known in the earlier genus Castericystis. Our findings indicate that attachment as a juvenile was more widespread in solutans than previously thought.

Objectives This research examines whether the distribution of trabecular bone in the proximal capitates of extant hominids, as well as several fossil hominin taxa, is associated with the oblique path of the midcarpal joint known as the dart‐thrower's motion (DTM). Materials and Methods We analyzed proximal capitates from extant (<jats:italic>Pongo n</jats:italic> = 12; <jats:italic>Gorilla n</jats:italic> = 11; <jats:italic>Pan n</jats:italic> = 10; fossil and recent <jats:italic>Homo sapiens n</jats:italic> = 29) and extinct (<jats:italic>Australopithecus sediba n</jats:italic> = 2; <jats:italic>Homo naledi n</jats:italic> = 1<jats:italic>; Homo floresiensis n</jats:italic> = 2; Neandertals <jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = 3) hominids using a new canonical holistic morphometric analysis, which quantifies and visualizes the distribution of trabecular bone using relative bone volume as a fraction of total volume (rBV/TV). Results Homo sapiens and Neandertals had a continuous band of high rBV/TV that extended across the scaphoid, lunate, and hamate subarticular regions, but other fossil hominins and extant great apes did not. <jats:italic>A. sediba</jats:italic> expressed a distinct combination of human‐like and <jats:italic>Pan</jats:italic>‐like rBV/TV distribution. Both <jats:italic>H. floresiensis</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>H. naledi</jats:italic> had high rBV/TV on the ulnar‐side of the capitate but low rBV/TV on the radial‐side. Conclusion The proximal capitates of <jats:italic>H. sapiens</jats:italic> and Neandertals share a distinctive distribution of trabecular bone that suggests that these two species of <jats:italic>Homo</jats:italic> regularly load(ed) their midcarpal joints along the full extent of the oblique path of the DTM. The observed pattern in <jats:italic>A. sediba</jats:italic> suggests that human‐like stress at the capito‐scaphoid articular surface was combined with <jats:italic>Pan</jats:italic>‐like wrist postures, whereas the patterns in <jats:italic>H. floresiensis</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>H. naledi</jats:italic> suggest their midcarpal joints were loaded differently from that of <jats:italic>H. sapiens</jats:italic> and Neandertals.

An enduring question in evolutionary biology concerns the degree to which episodes of convergent trait evolution depend on the same genetic programs, particularly over long timescales. In this work, we genetically dissected repeated origins and losses of prickles—sharp epidermal projections—that convergently evolved in numerous plant lineages. Mutations in a cytokinin hormone biosynthetic gene caused at least 16 independent losses of prickles in eggplants and wild relatives in the genus <jats:italic>Solanum</jats:italic> . Homologs underlie prickle formation across angiosperms that collectively diverged more than 150 million years ago, including rice and roses. By developing new <jats:italic>Solanum</jats:italic> genetic systems, we leveraged this discovery to eliminate prickles in a wild species and an indigenously foraged berry. Our findings implicate a shared hormone activation genetic program underlying evolutionarily widespread and recurrent instances of plant morphological innovation.