The project “Assessing the state of key habitats and developing recommendations for improving conservation measures for stone char, an endangered endemic of the Kamchatka River”, launched in 2021, reached a new level this spring. At the beginning of the new season, its participants - employees of the Kronotsky Reserve and the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution Problem of the Russian Academy of Sciences - assessed the research sites on a snowmobile. During the expedition, water and soil samples will be collected for the subsequent determination of the organic composition. This will allow us to trace the dynamics of the composition of water in known spawning grounds of the fish. The scientists also plan to determine the number of juveniles wintering in the spawning ground and assess the food supply available for fish during the snowy period. “Determining the wintering conditions, the number of juveniles, and the available food supply allows us to evaluate the efficiency of reproduction. It is probable that in natural conditions it is low, the main risk factors are sludge - loose small accumulations of a mixture of ice and snow, freezing of watercourses, lack of food resources. With low reproduction efficiency but high food supply, one of the potential protection measures could be artificial reproduction on the spawning grounds. In world practice, there is experience in restoring local populations of salmon fish by introducing additional caviar taken from spawners from nearby watercourses to natural spawning grounds,” explained Grigory Markevich, senior researcher at the Kronotsky State Reserve.   Part of the research is planned to be carried out in March in the upper reaches of the Kamchatka River using anti-avalanche equipment and modern means of communication. As a result of the project, new information about the biology, population structure, distribution of stone char has already been obtained, and places have been outlined that require close attention and further study. The project is implemented with the support of World Fund for Nature Russia.   Reference: Stone char (Salvenius kuznetsovi) is a large predatory fish that inhabits only the Kamchatka River with tributaries. It cannot be confused with other salmon fish because of its dark color with irregularly shaped spots. Over the past 40 years, the number of stone char has been constantly falling, which is probably due to habitat disturbance. In the 21st century, the species is in danger of extinction. Large spawning grounds have been preserved only in the tributaries of the Shchapin River in the Kronotsky Reserve, where logging has not been carried out. Previously, specialists from the Kronotsky Reserve came to the conclusion that the formation of stone char as a species occurred due to the transition of its ancestor, Dolly Varden trout (Salvenius malma), to reproduction in small watercourses in the spruce forest zone. In 2021, a previously unknown spawning ground was put on record. This find confirmed the high degree of isolation of rock char from Dolly Varden trout and the hypothesis of its confinement to the watercourses of the taiga zone.        

Photo by Svetlana Gorbatykh In December last year, employees of the Biological Resources Protection Service of the YNAO released 15 musk oxen into their natural habitat. Now scientists from the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS (IEE RAS) arrived on site. For the first time, three released animals were fitted with special collars with a GPS sensor. With their help, the movements of the musk oxen will be tracked, as well as the seasonal habitats of animals and their migration routes. "Tagging of animals for observation and study of them has been used for more than 100 years, this allows us to assess the characteristics of the migration of a tagged individual. This work is important because the study of musk oxen is one of the most important tasks in the conservation of unique animal species," said Candidate of Biological Sciences, Senior Researcher Taras Sipko, researcher at IEE RAS.   Photo by Svetlana Gorbatykh Specialists of the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS plan to continue studying the current state of the musk ox in the Ural region. The second phase of the study will begin in the summer-autumn period. The work includes genetic research and a total aerial survey of animals on the territory of the autonomous region and the adjacent mountainous part of the Komi Republic. Recall that at the end of 2021, the second release of musk oxen took place from the Gornokhadatinsky section of the Polar Urals Natural Park. In 2016, 65 individuals were released into the wild. Materials on the topic:   Север Пресс: "На ямальских овцебыков впервые надели спутниковые ошейники" ФАН: "Ученые на Ямале надели на овцебыков ошейники с GPS-датчиком" GoArctic: "Овцебыков на Полярном Урале окольцевали спутниковыми ошейниками"

Optical microscopy image of Chydorus sphaericus taken by Alexey Kotov Russian scientists have discovered that microscopic crustaceans of the genus Chydorus, common in fresh water bodies of southern Australia, arrived there from the Northern Hemisphere. Biologists associated such an amazing expansion of the range with bird migrations and human activities. The discovery forces us to rethink the scale of the "travel" of microscopic animals. The study was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) and published in the journal Water. The ranges of many species of animals and plants on Earth are quite dynamic. At the same time, when developing new territories, living organisms are included in food webs and, since native species may not withstand competition, they are able to modify local ecosystems. For invertebrates, in particular microscopic crustaceans, such an expansion of the range has become common due to the intensity of human economic activity, which unintentionally moves resting eggs over considerable distances. Scientists from the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), together with colleagues from foreign countries, studied cladocerans of the genus Chydorus and found that all their populations in Australia appeared as a result of a drift from the Northern Hemisphere. The scientists collected invertebrates from freshwater bodies of Australia with planktonic nets and preemptively identified them to species based on morphological traits such as body shape and size, length, shape and structure of various bristles. In the found representatives of the genus Chydorus, biologists analyzed the sequences of the mitochondrial COI gene. This piece of DNA is sometimes seen as a "barcode" for identifying an animal and assigning it to a particular genus. Based on differences in the sequence of nucleotides in different individuals, biologists have built a phylogenetic tree - a diagram that displays the relation between organisms. To determine whether these cladocerans were indeed brought to Australia from the Northern Hemisphere, scientists compared the genotypes of southern and northern populations, and also reconstructed the sequence of events in the history of this group. It is unequivocally shown that it originates in the Northern Hemisphere, and all its representatives from southern Australia appeared as a result of a drift through the equator. “Microscopic crustaceans are dispersed by the transfer of their resting eggs by wind, water currents, and also by waterfowl on their plumage and in the stomach. Recently, more and more cases of changes in their ranges are associated with human activity. This happened to several species of the genus Chydorus, which ended up in another hemisphere in unusual habitats. Such transcontinental transport occurred in two independent ways: by birds during their seasonal migrations and by humans as a result of the accidental transport of eggs when fish were settled in Australia for pond breeding. It is well known that microscopic crustaceans are excellent travelers, their eggs can easily withstand a long journey and retain their viability. However, the scale of this transfer is amazing, because we are talking about the fact that all populations of a very common crustacean in southern Australia turned out to be invaders from the north”, says Alexei Kotov, project manager under the RSF grant, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, chief researcher of the A. N. Severtsov IEE RAS. At the moment, it is not clear how much Australia's ecosystems have suffered from such "invasion". However, the mass introduction of microscopic animals from the Northern Hemisphere to this continent is fraught with serious consequences, which has already been demonstrated for larger animals: rabbits, dingoes, river carp and others. The case described in this paper emphasizes the importance of studying how even the smallest crustaceans affect the ecosystems of continental waters.

Observations of changes in the abundance of one group of insects tell very little about how other insect species behave, even in the same ecosystem. Different groups of insects may show similar trends in one location, but different trends in other locations. These are the results of a new meta-analysis of years of insect data from more than 900 localities around the world. The study, published in Biology Letters, was conducted by a team of researchers from the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Helmholtz Center for Ecological Research and the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS. It highlights the importance of monitoring multiple species simultaneously to provide guidelines for insect conservation policy. Insect declines became the subject of global debate in 2017 when scientists reported a loss of three-quarters of the biomass of flying insects from West German nature reserves in 30 years, showing a trend of general decrease in insect biomass around the world. Since then, many studies have appeared from around the world, often showing significant declines in numbers, giving rise to hundreds of popular papers on the problem of insect decline. Since 2018, a team of scientists led by iDiv has been maintaining and analyzing a database of studies from around the world that have tracked the abundance of different groups of insects over several years. This group is headed by Dr. Ruhl van Klink. “The fact that such recessions were happening right under our noses, but no one saw that this phenomenon was happening in many places, is quite alarming,” says van Klink. "It shows how important it is to look after the environment." But keeping track of the insects is difficult due to their small size and wide variety. Only in Germany there are at least 30,000 species of insects. Most monitoring programs study only one group of insects, but no one has investigated whether the condition of the studied group tells us anything about the welfare of other insects. In the new publication, van Klink and his colleagues wanted to know if changes in one group of insects could predict changes in other groups. For example, if the number of butterflies is declining, does this mean that the number of beetles, flies, and bees is also declining? When changes in one group of species can predict changes in other groups, they can be used as indicators, which would be useful because then all insect species would not need to be tracked. If so, it would give scientists and policymakers an easy way to use information about one group of insects to draw conclusions and recommendations about all insects. However, van Klink and colleagues found little evidence for indicator species in their analysis. The abundance of different species groups showed different trends. “Trends among beetles and butterflies were the most similar, often increasing or decreasing together, but even the correlation was pretty bad,” says van Klink. Overall, the results of this study highlight the fact that insects are not a homogeneous group of organisms, and not all of them show dramatic declines worldwide, as some headlines would lead us to believe. “Nature is not as simple as we would like,” adds van Klink. He continues: “Without a doubt, humans are having an unprecedented impact on the natural world around us, and our job is to find out exactly how, why, and where these changes occur, as well as for which insect species.” The scientists hope their work highlights the need to track and better understand changes in the abundance of a wide range of insect groups over time. We cannot simply observe one group of insects and assume that it is indicative of similar changes in all groups. We need to carefully observe more species. van Klink, R., Bowler, D. E., Gongalsky, K. B., Chase, J. M. (2022). Long-term abundance trends of insect taxa are only weakly correlated. biology letters. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0554 Photo caption: Different groups of insects, such as beetles and butterflies, may show similar abundance trends in one location but different trends in other locations. In the photo, a longhorn beetle (Leptura quadrifasciata) and a variegated wing (Araschnia levana). Photo: Oliver Thier

Russian scientists have developed a new set of primers for DNA identification of non-native fish species in the Volga-Kama basin. Using these primers, they traced the genetic variability in 31 fish species and compiled a reference library containing marker sequences of the region's invaders. Under natural conditions, the dispersal of animals is limited by their radius of individual activity, and for most species this radius is relatively small. Hydrobionts use waterways for settlement. Human activity strongly influences the movement of aquatic organisms, contributing to biological invasions. A team of scientists from the Institute of Inland Water Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Ecology and Evolution Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences have optimized a method for identifying alien fish species in the Volga and Kama rivers. Work published in Water. The Volga River was involved in a colossal hydro-construction program. There are nine large reservoirs on the Volga. Kama suffered less - there are only three large reservoirs on it. This is naturally reflected in the share of alien species: at present, the share of alien fish species in the Volga reservoirs ranges from 8% to 32%, for the Kama reservoirs it is 2–16%. Alien species can upset the balance of an ecosystem, so one of the key tasks in monitoring biological invasions is the rapid and accurate identification of the invader. DNA identification methods are best suited for solving this problem. For species identification of fish, DNA barcoding is used for a region of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase (COI) gene. This gene is conserved, which allows the use of universal primers for a large number of closely related species. However, the higher the universality, the lower the specificity, which is why the modeling of primers that target specific groups of animals is becoming increasingly popular. The authors of the new work went exactly along this path. They developed a set of primers to effectively identify invaders in the Volga-Kama basin. When developing, scientists relied on sequences uploaded to the NCBI GenBank database. The usual catch on the Volga is two pounds of perfect kilka! The authors of the article in Water magazine, Dmitry Karabanov and Dmitry Pavlov, are on a voyage on the research vessel “Akademik Topchiev” Source: biomolecula.ru For the COI locus, they proposed primers that provide more efficient amplification of both the standard fragment for DNA barcoding and the shorter mtDNA fragment. This allows the identification of fragmented and highly degraded samples, as well as working with the so-called natural DNA (eDNA) contained in water. However, working with only one locus can lead to errors. To improve identification accuracy, the scientists developed an additional set of primers targeting the mitochondrial large subunit (16S) and nuclear small subunit (18S) ribosomal DNA sequences. The primers were tested on samples of non-native fish caught in the Volga-Kama basin in the summer seasons of 2005–2020. There were 146 COI locus sequences, 77 16S locus sequences, and 91 18S locus sequences. Based on these sequences, scientists traced the genetic variation of 31 freshwater fish species. In addition, a reference library was formed containing sequences of almost all alien fish in the region, and the findings of several new species were also confirmed. As part of the study, the protocols for DNA extraction, PCR, and purification of the PCR product were also optimized. New versions of the protocols allow the use of the most common plastics, reagents and equipment. The cost of one sequence after optimization was less than $2. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and a grant from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. Karabanov D.P., et al. New Sets of Primers for DNA Identification of Non-Indigenous Fish Species in the Volga-Kama Basin (European Russia) // Water. 2022, Vol.14, no.3. P.437; DOI: 10.3390/w14030437 Photo 1 is directly from the linked article. In the photo, the star-shaped beetle Benthophilus stellatus is one of the most unusual species of fish in the Volga. Saratov reservoir. Photo by Dmitry Pavlov   Related materials Biomolecula.ru: Fishing for aliens: DNA barcoding helped identify invasive fish species in the Volga basin Scientific Russia: "Scientists have figured out how to accurately and quickly monitor the penetration of new fish species into water bodies"  

For fish from lakes of high latitudes, the formation of pairs of sympatric forms is characteristic, which separate the resources of the bottom and the water column. The fish begin to feed on pelagic plankton (its consumers) or benthic invertebrates, form a specific adaptive morphology, and disperse according to spawning sites (terms). As a result, reproductive isolation rapidly develops between sympatric forms, and inherited differences begin to accumulate. Similar pairs of nascent species have been found in abundance among salmon and whitefish from post-glacial lakes. Scientists from IEE RAS, together with colleagues from the Kronotsky State Reserve, VNIRO and M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University successfully conducted a study of salmon fish, divided into pelagic plankton-eating and demersal benthic-eating forms in Kronotsky Lake in Kamchatka. An article has been published on the topic that reveals the mechanism of this ecological divergence. It has been established that the causal relationship between the timing of the formation of plankton and benthos production peaks in a water body, the temperature-dependent rate of development of forms in spawning grounds, and the timing of downstream migration of juvenile forms from reproduction to feeding areas together determine the formation of two invariant ecological niches that ensure the effective action of disruptive selection in population system. Juveniles of the benthic form from warm-water spawning grounds enter the reservoir at the beginning of summer and are forced to specialize in feeding on benthic invertebrates, whose biomass peaks at the beginning of summer. Plankton-eating juveniles from cold-water spawning grounds will enter the reservoir later, when the benthos biomass falls, but there is a surge in the abundance of planktonic crustaceans. An analysis of the literature and own data available to the team of authors shows that with a high probability such a mechanism is universal for water bodies of northern latitudes. Original publication: Markevich G.N., Izvekova E.I., Anisimova L.A., Mugue N.S., Bonk T.V., Esin E.V. 2022. Annual temperatures and dynamics of food availability are associated with the pelagic-benthic diversification in a sympatric pair of salmonid fish. evolutionary biology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-022-09560-6  

Scientists of the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS (IEE RAS) and Moscow State University for the first time evaluated the role of arthropods falling from trees to the soil surface, finding out that they account for up to 7% of the flow of organic matter from the forest canopy. The data obtained will make it possible to better predict the stability of terrestrial ecosystems, the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science writes. The results of the study were published by the scientific journal Scientific Reports.  A significant part of the invertebrates living in the tree crowns, due to various reasons, falls on the soil surface. This phenomenon is called "arthropod rain". Fallen invertebrates are consumed by organisms living on the soil surface. Thus, the detrital, that is, located in the soil, the food web receives an additional source of energy. "According to the estimates obtained, in the forests of the temperate zone, up to 7% of the flow of organic matter from the forest canopy is "arthropod rain". And, apparently, this amount is enough to feed, for example, such a large group as spiders.<...> Thus, "arthropod rain" makes a significant contribution to maintaining the functional unity of soil food webs and maintains the diversity of soil inhabitants in forest ecosystems. As the authors of the work note, although the structure of soil communities has been studied for a long time, however, the contribution of invertebrates falling from crowns and the functional significance of this resource has not yet been estimated. In the new work, the researchers conducted an experiment in different types of forests at the biological station "Malinki" IEE RAS in the Moscow region. As a result, it was possible to estimate the magnitude of the flow and the functional significance of arthropods falling from the forest canopy onto the soil surface. And also find out that "arthropod rain" consists of two components: wingless arthropods and winged insects. Wingless (mites, hay-eaters, caterpillars, aphids, etc.) account for up to 30% of "arthropod rain" and are easily accessible to soil predators. Most winged insects are closely associated with soil food webs. They actively move within the forest canopy, thereby contributing to the horizontal movement of the resource. "We hope that the results of this study will help to assess the importance of the tree crown fauna, including its diversity, for the sustainable functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. In the future, this will allow us to build a model of trophic interaction between these tiers in forest ecosystems of different climatic zones," said Oksana Rozanova, one of the authors of the study, junior researcher at IEE RAS. This work was supported by RFBR project 18-34-00181. Rozanova, O.L., Tsurikov, S.M., Krivosheina, M.G., Tanasevitch A.V., Fedorenko D.N., Leonov V.D., Timokhov A.V., Tiunov A.V., Semenina E.E. The isotopic signature of the “arthropod rain” in a temperate forest. Scientific Reports 12, 321 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-03893-6 Rozanova O.L., Tsurikov S.M., Tiunov A.V., Semenina E.E. Arthropod rain in a temperate forest: Intensity and composition. Pedobiologia 75, 52-56 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedobi.2019.05.005   On the picture: The isotopic composition of the "arthropod rain" (green dots) differs significantly from the isotopic composition of soil invertebrates (brown triangles), reflecting the difference in the set of food resources.   Related materials: Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation: "Scientists have described for the first time the role of "rain" from arthropods in maintaining the ecological balance in forests"  Scientific Russia: "Scientists have for the first time described the role of "rain" from arthropods in maintaining the ecological balance in forests" 

  A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS supervises a project to collect information about the vegetation of the Arctic region in an accessible database (AVA) - https://avarus.space. The purpose of the archive is to unify and standardize data collected by geobotanists. The initiative has been approved by the Working Group on the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna and the International Arctic Science Committee. At present, the Arctic Vegetation Archive contains about 30,000 geobotanical descriptions. Work on the Archive continues, the data is constantly updated. The main part of the data is descriptions of the vegetation of Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia, stored in regional databases. The archive and its individual parts are available for download via the web interface. To get the full functionality of the site, registration is required - https://avarus.space/ru/instructions/ Previously published data can be downloaded directly from the site, unpublished data - on the author’s permission. Technical support is provided by the Department of Computer Engineering at MIEM HSE. The implementation was supported by the RFBR grant N 18-04-01010 A. In the photo: the Gulf of Ob Author of the photo: Ksenia Ermokhina, Ph.D., senior researcher, V.N. Sukachev laboratory of biogeocenology of IEE RAS

Under the chairmanship of the Governor of the Astrakhan region Igor Babushkin, the expert community discussed the topic of preserving the population of the unique antelope that lives in the local steppes - the saiga. The event was organized with the support of the service of nature management and environmental protection of the region. — Increasing the level of environmental well-being is one of the priority areas for the development of the Astrakhan region. Among the most important tasks is the conservation of natural resources, including the saiga population. It is gratifying that the number of these Red Book animals in our region has been increasing over the past few years,” said Igor Babushkin, opening the round table. He thanked LUKOIL for supporting the saiga conservation program in Kalmykia and the Astrakhan region. It is provided as part of an agreement between the oil company and the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation: LUKOIL will allocate 30.5 million rubles to preserve the population of the relic antelope until 2024. This year, at the expense of the oil company, in particular, conditions for watering will be improved - water intake wells in the Stepnoy reserve have been cleared. In addition, using unmanned aerial vehicles, scientists will be able to assess the size and structure of the saiga population. During the meeting, the director of the representative office of the World Fund for Nature Valery Shmunk said that at present the population of saiga in the North-Western Caspian region is estimated at 11 thousand heads (in 1997 it reached 650 thousand). According to the expert, the reasons for their decline are poaching, degradation of pastures, and desertification. — The main threat to saigas is still poaching. Thanks to the efforts of inspectors and round-the-clock protection, the territory of the Stepnoy reserve is free from poaching encroachments. We plan to increase the staff of the reserve's inspectors to ensure a three-shift work schedule, - said Sergey Smirnov, head of the service for nature management and environmental protection of the Astrakhan region. According to the director of "Stepnoy" Vladimir Kalmykov, in order to prevent an increase of the area of ​​open sands, the employees of the reserve are carrying out work to control the spread of the sands by planting juzgun bushes. In 2021, World Fund for Nature Russia installed high-tech equipment near one of the artesians of the reserve, from which saigas and other animals come to drink, high-tech equipment that allows them to observe everything in real time. State inspectors monitor saiga herds, including assessing the state of the population during the periods of rut and mass birth of young animals. The information collected is entered into a special database, the analysis of which is carried out by specialists from the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), helping to systematize and understand how effective the protection measures taken are. Photographer: Andrey Giljov 

Preparations for the opening of the Joint Russian-Ethiopian Center for Biological Research in Ethiopia began thanks to the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, but so far the project has not passed into the stage of practical implementation. This was announced at a meeting of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences by the Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Ecology of Aquatic Communities and Invasions of the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS Yuri Dgebuadze in the report “Russian biologists in Africa: the experience of the Russian-Ethiopian expedition of the RAS”. “The work has moved a little now, a package of documents has been prepared by the Academy, everything has been given to the ministry, but nothing has started yet, and funding has not been opened,” the head of the General Biology Section of the Biological Sciences Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences described the situation. He recalled that the idea of ​​organizing a new structure arose in 2017. It was assumed that the Joint Russian-Ethiopian Center for Biological Research (SRECBI) would be a new level of cooperation on the basis of the Joint Russian-Ethiopian Biological Expedition (JREBE), a long-term project of the Biological Sciences Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Ethiopia, which has been continuously operating for 35 years. The agreement on the work of the Expedition is periodically - usually every 5 years - renewed. “The situation became critical in 2017, when, by decision of the intergovernmental commission, which was in 2016, the Ethiopian side proposed to raise our research to a slightly different level and create a special center for the study of biology in this country. Then the crisis situation was resolved, a delegation headed by Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.V. Adrianov was sent, and it was found possible to extend this issue. But the issue was resolved in such a way that a joint Russian-Ethiopian center would be created. We have reported many times, the Academy of Sciences has written letters to all instances, we have reported at the Russia-Africa Public Forum 2018, which preceded the big Russia-Africa Summit. In addition, there were a lot of meetings at the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, but unfortunately, everything stood still until July 5, 2021, when there was an instruction from the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin to create such a center”, the academic explained the background of the issue. By the early 1980s, large-scale biological research outside the country (at that time the USSR) was carried out by the Academy of Sciences in Cuba, Mongolia, Vietnam and Peru. Their goal was to study biodiversity, lifestyle, evolution of living organisms, search for new genetic resources and biologically active substances, issues of biosafety and nature protection, and training of highly qualified national personnel. Africa remained outside the scope of academic biological research, and when such an idea was born, the Socialist Republic of Ethiopia was chosen for a number of reasons. Negotiations continued for three years, and in 1987 an agreement was signed on the creation of a Joint Soviet-Ethiopian Biological Expedition. Yuri Dgebuadze briefly spoke about the main results of the work of its participants over the past decades, in particular about the study of the evolution of aquatic organisms: “The process of evolution is continuing before our eyes, there are very few such points in the world and such points have been found. This is Lake Tana, where we have studied 15 morphotypes of different levels of genetic differences, which are intraspecific and are of great, fundamental interest.” Significant results were also obtained in the study of electric fish, aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates, and the naked mole rat used as a laboratory animal. “It turned out that this is not one species, it has a lot of genetic variability. Perhaps there are two types of them and we will have to find out which one people are studying here, including the aging process, in laboratories”. The academic also recalled that over the past 100 years, 20 of the most dangerous viral infections of humans and animals have emerged, and a significant number of these diseases originate in Africa. One of the most important results of the work of the Expedition is the discovery of new pathogenic viruses that are especially dangerous for human health, the reservoir of which are species of small mammals. Together with the Banding Center of the IEE RAS, the ways of spring migration of birds were studied: about 150 species living in Russia, which are potential carriers of diseases, winter in Africa. Dozens of new species of invertebrates previously unknown to science, including pests of agriculture, have been documented, and studies have been carried out on historical ecology in high-mountain caves. “We believe that the creation of the Joint Center for Biological Research requires all support possible,” Yuri Dgebuadze said in conclusion. Russian biologists in Africa: experience of the Russian-Ethiopian biological expedition.