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With 1,400 described species, Megaselia is one of the most species-rich genera in the animal kingdom, and at the same time one of the least studied. An important obstacle to taxonomic progress is the lack of knowledge concerning the phylogenetic structure within the genus. Classification of Megaselia at the level of subgenus is incomplete although Schmitz addressed several groups of species in a series of monographs published from 1956 to 1981. Another problem is the lack of molecular phylogenetic analyses to support morphology-based conclusions. As a contribution towards addressing these problems, we here circumscribe a previously unrecognized monophyletic lineage of Megaselia consisting of species similar to Megaselialucifrons. We base this taxonomic decision on morphological study of an extensive phorid material from Sweden, complemented by molecular analyses of select exemplars using two markers (COI and 28S). We name the clade the lucifrons species group, and show that it contains three distinct species. Our results also demonstrate that Megaseliasubnitida Lundbeck, 1920, previously treated as a synonym of Megaselialucifrons Schmitz, 1918, is a separate species, and we remove it from synonymy. The third species in the group was previously unknown; we describe it here as Megaseliaalbalucifrons sp. n.

Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level (up to the Urals, excluding the Caucasus region), and some additional information. The Fauna Europaea project covers about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies. This represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many users in science, government, industry, nature conservation and education. Hymenoptera is one of the four largest orders of insects, with about 130,000 described species. In the Fauna Europaea database, ‘Hymenoptera - Apocrita (excluding Ichneumonoidea)’ comprises 13 superfamilies, 52 families, 91 subfamilies, 38 tribes and 13,211 species. The paper includes a complete list of taxa dealt with, the number of species in each and the name of the specialist responsible for data acquisition. As a general conclusion about the European fauna of Hymenoptera, the best known countries in terms of recorded species are those from northwestern Europe, with the least known fauna probably in the more eastern and southeastern parts of Europe.

Hymenoptera exhibit an incredible diversity of phenotypes, the result of ~240 million years of evolution and the primary subject of more than 250 years of research. Here we describe the history, development, and utility of the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology (HAO) and its associated applications. These resourc- es are designed to facilitate accessible and extensible research on hymenopteran phenotypes. Outreach with the hymenopterist community is of utmost importance to the HAO project, and this paper is a direct response to questions that arose from project workshops. In a concerted attempt to surmount barriers of understanding, especially regarding the format, utility, and development of the HAO, we discuss the roles of homology, “preferred terms”, and “structural equivalency”. We also outline the use of Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) and posit that they are a key element necessary for increasing the objectivity and repeatability of science that references hymenopteran anatomy. Pragmatically, we detail a mechanism (the “URI table”) by which authors can use URIs to link their published text to the HAO, and we describe an associated tool (the “Analyzer”) to derive these tables. These tools, and others, are available through the HAO Portal website (http://portal.hymao.org). We conclude by discussing the future of the HAO with respect to digital publication, cross-taxon ontology alignment, the advent of semantic phenotypes, and community-based curation.

The DINA Consortium ( “ DI gital information system for NA tural history data”, https://dina-project.net, Fig. 1 ) was formed in order to provide a framework for like-minded large natural history collection-holding institutions to collaborate through a distributed Open Source development model to produce a flexible and sustainable collection management system. Target collections include zoological, botanical, mycological, geological and paleontological collections, living collections, biodiversity inventories, observation records, and molecular data. The DINA system is architected as a loosely-coupled set of several web-based modules. The conceptual basis for this modular ecosystem is a compilation of comprehensive guidelines for Web application programming interfaces (APIs) to guarantee the interoperability of its components. Thus, all DINA components can be modified or even replaced by other components without crashing the rest of the system as long as they are DINA compliant. Furthermore, the modularity enables the institutions to host only the components they need. DINA focuses on an Open Source software philosophy and on community-driven open development, so the contributors share their development resources and expertise outside of their own institutions. One of the overarching reasons to develop a new collection management system is the need to better model complex relationships between collection objects (typically specimens) involving their derivatives, preparations and storage. We will discuss enhancements made in the DINA data model to better represent these relationships and the influence it has on the management of these objects, and on the sharing of information. Technical detail of various components of the DINA system will be shown in other talks in this symposium followed by a discussion session.