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The Horizon 2020 project EOSC-Life brings together the 13 Life Science ‘ESFRI’ research infrastructures to create an open, digital and collaborative space for biological and medical research. Sharing sensitive data is a specific challenge within EOSC-Life. For that reason, a toolbox is being developed, providing information to researchers who wish to share and/or use sensitive data in a cloud environment in general, and the European Open Science Cloud in particular. The sensitivity of the data may arise from its personal nature but can also be caused by intellectual property considerations, biohazard concerns, or the Nagoya protocol. The toolbox will not create new content, instead, it will allow researchers to find existing resources that are relevant for sharing sensitive data across all participating research infrastructures (F in FAIR). The toolbox will provide links to recommendations, procedures, and best practices, as well as to software (tools) to support data sharing and reuse. It will be based upon a tagging (categorisation) system, allowing consistent labelling and categorisation of resources. The current design document provides an outline for the anticipated toolbox, as well as its basic principles regarding content and sustainability.

International audience; Present study is focused on the satellite image processing by means of SAGA GIS. The objective of the study is assessment and analysis of the core urban areas and its spatial distribution in the limits of the city and suburbs. The study area includes Yaoundé and its surroundings, Republic of Cameroon. The methodology includes Object Based Image Segmentation (OBIS) approach by SAGA GIS. The paper presents a methodologically structured workflow used in SAGA GIS for segmentation of the Sentinel-2A image. The segmentation techniques includes adjusting technical parameters, performing neighborhood approach and post-processing procedures (unsupervised classification, number of clusters). The OBIS model and SAGA GIS were used as main methods and machine learning techniques for image segmentation. Data include Sentinel-2A satellite image with high resolution (10 m). The image was analyzed by two approaches of cell neighborhood analysis: Moore and Neumann. The results showed following numerical parameters of the computed area: the perimeter of 1,060,560 km and an area estimated for the Yaoundé city 191,745,000 km 2. The Neumann approach demonstrated better results for image clustering. The results presented automatically detected and separated segments of the city areas and other land cover types (savannah, forests, mountains). The spectral reflectance of various land cover types on a satellite image enables to group pixels of the image into classes using segmentation technique which has an important impact on the conceptual methodology of the urban mapping. The results of the image segmentation show the average values of the Neumann approach more correct in urban area than Moore approach. The accuracy assessment demonstrated 74.63% for the core urban area by using the Neumann method. The applicability of SAGA GIS for automated methods of image processing using machine learning algorithm of OBIS is presented and the advantages are discussed. The study demonstrated the effectiveness of the high-resolution Sentinel-2A for socioeconomic studies, exemplified by urban mapping where remote sensing data serve as reliable sources of geoinformation. The advantages of the OBIS are discussed with detailed explanation of the SAGA GIS workflow.

Pre-copulatory female mate choice based on male ultraviolet (UV) coloration has been demonstrated in several vertebrate species; however, post-copulatory mechanisms have been largely overlooked. Here, we investigated female mate preference based on male UV coloration in the common lizard Zootoca vivipara, in which males display conspicuous UV coloration on their throat. During two successive years, we staged sequential mating trials between females and four different males with UV-reduced or control belly and throat coloration. We recorded pre-copulatory female behaviour, copulation behaviour and assigned paternity to all offspring. Females were more aggressive towards UV-reduced males and, during the second year, UV-reduced males had a lower probability of siring at least one egg (fertilization success) during the last mating trials. However, in the second year, copulation was shorter with control males. Altogether, our results suggest that females exert subtle pre-copulatory mate preference based on male UV ornaments and, conditional on the study year and female mating history, some degree of post-copulatory preference for UV-control males leading to differential male fertilization success. This study suggests that UV-based female mate choice may be more widespread than previously thought in vertebrates, and emphasizes the importance of using a study design well adapted to the species reproductive behaviour.

Seifert, Bernhard, D'Eustacchio, Dario, Kaufmann, Bernard, Centorame, Massimiliano, Lorite, Pedro, Modica, Maria Vittoria (2017): Four species within the supercolonial ants of the Tapinoma nigerrimum complex revealed by integrative taxonomy (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). 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International audience; We present an updated checklist of the ladybird beetle fauna of New Caledonia. Fifty species have been tracked from literature and collections, but six should be removed from the list as they represent false records, invalid or unestablished species: Coccinella boletifera Fauvel, Harmonia conformis (Boisduval), Menochilus duodecimpunctatus (Fauvel), Micraspis lineola (Fabricius), Orcus australasiae Boisduval, and Curinus coeruleus (Mulsant). After our investigations, the current described ladybird beetle fauna totals 44 named species, belonging to 18 valid genera. The endemism rate is 47.7% (21 species), with one endemic subgenus, Scymnus (Caledonus). Based on comparisons of the coccinellid faunas of surrounding regions, the New Caledonian fauna has affinities with Australia and Papua New Guinea more than with the rest of the Pacific area. At least 19 species (43.2%) seem to have been introduced by human activities (either deliberately or accidentally).

International audience; Among the two most widely distributed duiker species, Philantomba monticola (Thunberg, 1789) and Philantomba maxwelli (C.H. Smith, 1827), the latter shows geographic variation in pelage color and body size. This issue was not investigated in detail so far, especially in the eastern region of its distribution area, notably due to the lack of material from the Dahomey Gap. We undertook a species-level revision of Philantomba in West Africa, notably including a series of specimens collected in Togo, Benin and Nigeria. Using morphological measurements (craniometry) and genetic data (two mitochondrial and three nuclear markers), we describe a new duiker species occurring in the Dahomey Gap (Togo, Benin) and the Niger delta, Philantomba walteri sp. nov. This discovery highlights the importance of the Dahomey Gap for the evolutionary history of the West African forest faunas. It also has conservation implications given that the new species is one of the main targets of the local bushmeat trade.

International audience; Taxonomy is undoubtedly complementary to other fields in biology such as ecology, and both ecologists and taxonomists increasingly acknowledge that they can profit from phylogenetic ecology or ecological phylogeny, respectively. However, such mutual relations between these disciplines are constrained by traditional focuses on different operational scales: taxonomists are more familiar with large scales (e.g., global, continental, many species of a given clade), whereas ecologists are more familiar with small scales (regional, ecosystems, habitats, few species of a given clade). To foster mutually fruitful, 2-way exchanges between taxonomy and ecology at such smaller scales requires assessments of the small-scale performance of taxonomic practices so far used at larger scales. Such assessments are the objective of this study. To combine quantified ecology and phylogeny at the smaller scale, we designed a research project using 9 species of Hydropsyche (Trichoptera) from the Loire River (i.e., we focus on the regional scale). Here, we tried to unravel the phylogenetic relationships of this regional set of species using (1) many different characters (molecular and morphological characters of larvae and adults), (2) taxonomic congruence instead of total evidence (as the former provides more opportunities for future research on links between different data sets), and (3) an explicit data matrix and analysis methods that are commonly recommended for phylogenetic studies (e. g., maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, bootstrapping), and we also included traditional, parsimonious, phylogenetic reasoning. Combining these elements, we obtained the following information for the regional Hydropsyche representatives from the Loire: (1) phylogenetic clusters of the species, (2) phylogenetic distances among the species, and (3) phylogenetic polarities of characters (plesio- to apomorphies) in the species tree. For our future ecological studies, this will enable (1) establishment of priorities in species selections for experimental approaches, (2) establishment of relationships between ecological and phylogenetic distances, and (3) interpretation of ecological response gradients across the species in the context of evolutionary processes such as adaptation, niche conservatism, or fitness. These future ecological studies will provide elements that in turn should be useful for taxonomists wishing to include small-scale ecological data into their analyses.