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We revise the genus Conostigmus Dahlbom 1858 occurring in Madagascar, based on data from more specimens than were examined for the latest world revision of the genus. Our results yield new information about intraspecific variability and the nature of the atypical latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) observed in Ceraphronoidea. We also investigate cellular processes that underlie body size polyphenism, by utilizing the correspondence between epidermal cells and scutes, polygonal units of leather-like microsculpture. Our results reveal that body size polyphenism in Megaspilidae is most likely related to cell number and not cell size variation, and that cell size differs between epithelial fields of the head and that of the mesosoma. Three species, Conostigmus ballescoracas Dessart, 1997, C. babaiax Dessart, 1996 and C. longulus Dessart, 1997, are redescribed. Females of C. longulus are described for the first time, as are nine new species: C. bucephalus Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., C. clavatus Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., C. fianarantsoaensis Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., C. lucidus Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., C. macrocupula, Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., C. madagascariensis Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., C. missyhazenae Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., C. pseudobabaiax Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov., and C. toliaraensis Mikó and Trietsch sp. nov. A fully illustrated identification key for Malagasy Conostigmus species and a Web Ontology Language (OWL) representation of the taxonomic treatment, including specimen data, nomenclature, and phenotype descriptions, in both natural and formal languages, are provided.

Georeferencing is the process of aligning a text description of a geographic location with a spatial location based on a geographic coordinate system. Training aids are commonly created around the georeferencing process to disseminate community standards and ideas, guide accurate georeferencing, inform users about new tools, and help users evaluate existing geospatial data. The Georeferencing for Research Use (GRU) workshop was implemented as a training aid that focused on the creation and research use of geospatial coordinates, and included both data researchers and data providers, to facilitate communication between the groups. The workshop included 23 participants with a wide background of expertise ranging from students (undergraduate and graduate), professors, researchers and educators, scientific data managers, natural history collections personnel, and spatial analyst specialists. The conversations and survey results from this workshop demonstrate that it is important to provide opportunities for biocollections data providers to interact directly with the researchers using the data they produce and vice versa.

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Aim: Biogeographical inference and assessments of species' threat status and trends depend on comprehensive information on the current geographical distribution of species. Even country-level presences remain poorly known for many insect species and consistent global overviews for those species are missing. Here we integrate information from literature checklists, point occurrences, and identify potential species range gaps to provide a database of country-level checklists of dragonfly and damselfly species and a useful baseline for global biogeographical assessment and for assessing remaining gaps in taxonomic and spatial knowledge.Location: Global. Taxon: Odonata (damselflies and dragonflies).Methods: Our database of checklist information contains country-level species distribution information from 491 literature sources, with a focus on checklist data from 1990 to 2021 to reflect the present taxonomic and country boundaries. Additionally, we apply a novel method to interpolate potential species-country combinations missing from the literature and point data by generating a list of species present in >50% of the surrounding countries.Results: Of the 6,322 globally recognized odonate species, taxonomically harmonized literature checklist records and quality-controlled point occurrence data address 6,076 and 4,170 species, respectively. Our compilation provides a total of 31,569 unique species-country combinations, with 23,239 uniquely provided by literature checklist and 2,031 point occurrence data, respectively.Main Conclusions: This odonate country checklist dataset provides a resource for scientists and conservation practitioners to examine questions related to baseline odonate species richness, distributions, regional conservation, and gaps in taxonomic and spatial data coverage. The combined literature and point occurrence country-level information provide the most comprehensive data available to date on the global distribution of Odonata. Our results show that checklist and point occurrences are concordant in well-studied regions and that literature data are of complementary value in tropical and species-rich countries.