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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak started in late 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China, and quickly spread to the surrounding regions and neighboring countries. A novel coronavirus, the so-called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was found to be responsible for this outbreak potentially originating from pangolins. In China, the outbreak lasted for 1 month until it seemed to be controlled after affecting over 81,000 individuals and causing deaths in over 4200 patients. Subsequently, and after affecting over 118,000 individuals and causing over 4200 deaths, the condition was officially announced as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). In the meantime, the epidemic curve took a downtrend in China, the original epicenter of the pandemic, but started to rise in other countries with a steep slope. Among over 215 affected countries, the USA, European countries (Italy, Germany, Spain, France, the UK), Iran, and South Korea had the highest frequencies in the matters of infected patients and deaths. Importantly, different countries took different policies when encountered with an outbreak, especially in the matter of accuracy of the report and timing of the action. A part of the delays in reporting was expected, including the lag in the chain of reporting, the shortcomings of tests, missed patients, and inadequate testing facilities. However, there were also political and nontechnical reasons that caused the reporting to be inaccurate. Surveillance seems to be less of a reason for the observed in poor management, and it mostly originated from human decision-making failures and political issues. Besides, the culture of populations and their trust in their governments played an important role on how they reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic and acquired policies. Finally, the characteristics of the world today indicate the danger of probable upcoming outbreaks, and policymakers should utilize the existing opportunities, particularly the advancements in technology and media, to prevent or adequately manage them.

The potentially important role of northern microrefugia during postglacial dispersal is challenging the view of southern Europe as a refuge and source area of European biota. In groundwaters, large geographic ranges of presumably good dispersers are increasingly suspected to consist of assemblages of cryptic species with narrow ranges. Moreover, a large species range, even when confirmed by molecular evidence, tells us little about the spatiotemporal dynamics of dispersal. Here, we used phylogenetic inferences, species delineation methods and Bayesian phylogeographic diffusion models to test for the likelihood of postglacial colonization from distant refugia among five morphospecies of Proasellus (Isopoda, Asellidae). All morphospecies except one were monophyletic, but they comprised a total of 15-17 cryptic species. Three cryptic species retained ranges that spanned a distance >650 km, similar to that of the nominal morphospecies. Bayesian diffusion models based on mitochondrial markers revealed considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in dispersal rates, suggesting that short-time dispersal windows were instrumental in shaping species ranges. Only one species was found to experience a recent, presumably postglacial, range expansion. The Jura and Alpine foothills probably played a major role in maintaining diversity within Proasellus in northern regions by acting both as diversification hotspots and Pleistocene refugia. Gaining insight into the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of dispersal rates revealed contrasting colonization dynamics among species that were not consistent with a global postglacial colonization of Europe from distant refugia., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

A key challenge for biologists is to document and explain global patterns of diversification in a wide range of environments. Here, we explore patterns of continental-scale diversification in a groundwater species-rich clade, the superfamily Aselloidea (Pancrustacea: Isopoda). Our analyses supported a constant diversification rate during most of the course of Aselloidea evolution, until 4-15 Ma when diversification rates started to decrease. This constant accumulation of lineages challenges the view that groundwater species diversification in temperate regions might have been primarily driven by major changes in physical environment leading to the extinction of surface populations and subsequent synchronous isolation of multiple groundwater populations. Rather than acting synchronously over broad geographic regions, factors causing extinction of surface populations and subsequent reproductive isolation of groundwater populations may act in a local and asynchronous manner, thereby resulting in a constant speciation rate over time. Our phylogeny also revealed several cases of parapatric distributions among closely related surface-water and groundwater species suggesting that species diversification could also arise from a process of disruptive selection along the surface-subterranean environmental gradient. Our results call for re-evaluating the spatial scale and timing of factors causing diversification events in groundwater.