Two new species of Hippolyte from the Tropical Central and East Atlantic (Crustacea, Decapoda, Caridea)

Two new species of the caridean shrimp genus Hippolyte Leach, 1814 [in Leach, 1813-14] are described from the Tropical Central and East Atlantic. Hippolyte cedrici sp. nov., from Príncipe and São Tomé, can be distinguished from both the related H. holthuisi Zariquey Álvarez, 1953 and H. varians Leach, 1814 on the basis of rostral dentition, as well as meristics of the ambulatory pereiopods. Hippolyte karenae sp. nov., from St. Helena, is morphologically similar to H. coerulescens (Fabricius, 1775) and H. obliquimanus Dana, 1852, by having a well-developed tooth on the outer angle of the first peduncular article of the antennula. It differs from these species, amongst other characters, primarily in the armature of the ambulatory dactyli. Specimens were collected from hydrozoan, antipatharian and alcyonarian cnidarians

First record of a pontoniine shrimp (Caridea, Palaemonidae) in association with a boring bivalve of the genus Spengleria (Bivalvia, Euheterodonta, Gastrochaenidae)

During fieldwork in Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia, in 2007, a pontoniine shrimp, most likely belonging to the genus Anchistus, was collected from a coral boring bivalve of the genus Spengleria. This is the first record of a pontoniine shrimp living in association with a boring bivalve. As it probably concerns a juvenile shrimp, its identity remains unclear. Its affinities with the Indo-West Pacific mollusc-associated genera and with congenerics are discussed

First record of a pontoniine shrimp (Caridea, Palaemonidae) in association with a boring bivalve of the genus Spengleria (Bivalvia, Euheterodonta, Gastrochaenidae)

During fieldwork in Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia, in 2007, a pontoniine shrimp, most likely belonging to the genus Anchistus, was collected from a coral boring bivalve of the genus Spengleria. This is the first record of a pontoniine shrimp living in association with a boring bivalve. As it probably concerns a juvenile shrimp, its identity remains unclear. Its affinities with the Indo-West Pacific mollusc-associated genera and with congenerics are discussed

The mushroom coral as a habitat

The evolution of symbiotic relationships involving reef corals has had much impact on tropical marine biodiversity. Because of their endosymbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) corals can grow fast in tropical shallow seas where they form reefs that supply food, substrate and shelter for other organisms. Many coral symbionts are host-specific, depending on particular coral species for their existence. Some of these animals have become popular objects for underwater photographers and aquarists, whereas others are hardly noticed or considered pests. Loss of a single coral host species also leads to the disappearance of some of its associated fauna. In the present study we show which mushroom corals (Scleractinia: Fungiidae) are known to act as hosts for other organisms, such as acoel flatworms, copepods, barnacles, gall crabs, pontoniine shrimps, mytilid bivalves, epitoniid snails, coralliophilid snails, fish and certain types of zooxanthellae. Several of these associated organisms appear to be host-specific whereas other species are generalists and not even necessarily restricted to fungiid hosts. Heliofungia actiniformis is one of the most hospitable coral species known with a recorded associated fauna consisting of at least 23 species. The availability of a phylogeny reconstruction of the Fungiidae enables comparisons of closely related species of mushroom corals regarding their associated fauna. Application of a phylogenetic ecological analysis indicates that the presence or absence of associated organisms is evolutionarily derived or habitat-induced. Some associations appear to be restricted to certain evolutionary lineages within the Fungiidae, whereas the absence of associated species may be determined by ecomorphological traits of the host corals, such as coral dimensions (coral diameter and thickness) and polyp shape (tentacle size)

Observations on the symbiotic relationship between the caridean shrimp Odontonia sibogae (Bruce, 1972) and its ascidian host Herdmania momus (Savigny, 1816)

Symbiotic relationships between shrimps and other invertebrates are a very common phenomenon in tropical environments. Although the caridean shrimp-ascidian association has been known for many years, the nature of this relationship is still unclear. The current study investigated the association between the caridean shrimp Odontonia sibogae (Bruce, 1972) and solitary ascidians. A combination of field work conducted along the Red Sea coast of Israel and laboratory experiments, conducted during 2015–2016, revealed a clear preference of the shrimps for the ascidian species Herdmania momus (Savigny, 1816), with a low survival ability of the shrimp outside their host's body. The shrimps usually inhabit their host as pairs of male and female or pair of females, but never as pairs of males. Out of the 53 studied females, 51% were observed to bear between 156–1,146 embryos, throughout the course of the year. As these ascidian hosts are known to create large aggregates, we suggest that males may possibly wander among the ascidians occupied by females in order to increase their reproductive success. To date, this is the first study to record the shrimp Dactylonia ascidicola (Borradaile, 1898) inhabiting the ascidian H. momus; and the first study to investigate in depth the ascidian-shrimp association in the Red Sea. It thus provides a platform for future research into the physiological and behavioral adaptations required for such a unique association.</div

Towards a Digital Infrastructure for Illustrated Handwritten Archives

Large and important parts of cultural heritage are stored in archives that are difficult to access, even after digitization. Documents and notes are written in hard-to-read historical handwriting and are often interspersed with illustrations. Such collections are weakly structured and largely inaccessible to a wider public and scholars. Traditionally, humanities researchers treat text and images separately. This separation extends to traditional handwriting recognition systems. Many of them use a segmentation free OCR approach which only allows the resolution of homogenous manuscripts in terms of layout, style and linguistic content. This is in contrast to our infrastructure which aims to resolve heterogeneous handwritten manuscript pages in which different scripts and images are narrowly intertwined. Authors in our use case, a 17,000 page account of exploration of the Indonesian Archipelago between 1820–1850 (“Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlands-Indië”) tried to follow a semantic way to record their knowledge and observations, however, this discipline does not exist in the handwriting script. The use of different languages, such as German, Latin, Dutch, Malay, Greek, and French makes interpretation more challenging. Our infrastructure takes the state-of-the-art word retrieval system MONK as starting point. Owing to its visual approach, MONK can handle the diversity of material we encounter in our use case and many other historical collections: text, drawings and images. By combining text and image recognition, we significantly transcend beyond the state-of-the art, and provide meaningful additions to integrated manuscript recognition. This paper describes the infrastructure and presents early results. Keywords: Deep learning · Digital heritage · Natural history Biodiversity heritag