Extinction risk of the world's freshwater mammals

Occurrences of Neuroptera and Raphidioptera in some regions in European Russia

Background

The document presents an extensive set of data on the occurrence of Neuroptera and Raphidioptera in some regions of European Russia. The results of our own research, as well as scientific collections, have been processed. The data were collected in 17 regions. In our own research, we used different ways to obtain information, which allowed us to collect extensive material for the dataset. This dataset provides valuable information about the biodiversity of Neuroptera and Raphidioptera, the abundance of each taxon collected and the time of taxon collections.

New information

Our dataset contains up-to-date information on the occurrence of Neuroptera and Raphidioptera in the Volga River and Don River Basins located in the Russian Plain of European Russia (17 regions of European Russia). The dataset consists of 4,826 occurrence records. All of them are georeferenced (17,373 individuals were studied). A total of 83 species of Neuroptera (8 families, 36 genera) and four species of Raphidioptera (2 families, 4 genera) were recorded within the investigated area.

Low but highly geographically structured genomic diversity of East Asian Eurasian otters and its conservation implications

Populations of Eurasian otters Lutra lutra, one of the most widely distributed apex predators in Eurasia, have been depleted mainly since the 1950s. However, a lack of information about their genomic diversity and how they are organized geographically in East Asia severely impedes our ability to monitor and conserve them in particular management units. Here, we re-sequenced and analyzed 20 otter genomes spanning continental East Asia, including a population at Kinmen, a small island off the Fujian coast, China. The otters form three genetic clusters (one of L. l. lutra in the north and two of L. l. chinensis in the south), which have diverged in the Holocene. These three clusters should be recognized as three conservation management units to monitor and manage independently. The heterozygosity of the East Asian otters is as low as that of the threatened carnivores sequenced. Historical effective population size trajectories inferred from genomic variations suggest that their low genomic diversity could be partially attributed to changes in the climate since the mid-Pleistocene and anthropogenic intervention since the Holocene. However, no evidence of genetic erosion, mutation load, or high level of inbreeding was detected in the presumably isolated Kinmen Island population. Any future in situ conservation efforts should consider this information for the conservation management units.