Identification of the Diadegma species (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae, Campopleginae) attacking the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae)

2000 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 375-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.A. Azidah ◽  
M.G. Fitton ◽  
D.L.J. Quicke

AbstractThe species of Diadegma that attack Plutella xylostella(Linnaeus) are revised. Following a morphometric study involving principal components and discriminant analyses, seven distinct morphospecies are recognized. One species is described as new: D. novaezealandiae from New Zealand. Diadegma mollipla(Holmgren) is the name for the species from sub-Saharan Africa and some Indian Ocean and South Atlantic islands. Diadegma varuna Gupta syn. nov. and D. niponicaKusigemati syn. nov. are both synonymized with D. fenestrale(Holmgren). Diadegma xylostellae Kusigemati is strongly presumed to be a synonym of D. semiclausum (Hellén). An illustrated identification key is provided and each species is described in a standard way.

Tempo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-481
Author(s):  
Malyn Newitt

Abstract: Portuguese creoles were instrumental in bringing sub-Saharan Africa into the intercontinental systems of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. In the Atlantic Islands a distinctive creole culture emerged, made up of Christian emigrants from Portugal, Jewish exiles and African slaves. These creole polities offered a base for coastal traders and became politically influential in Africa - in Angola creating their own mainland state. Connecting the African interior with the world economy was largely on African terms and the lack of technology transfer meant that the economic gap between Africa and the rest of the world inexorably widened. African slaves in Latin America adapted to a society already creolised, often through adroit forms of cultural appropriation and synthesis. In eastern Africa Portuguese worked within existing creolised Islamic networks but the passage of their Indiamen through the Atlantic created close links between the Indian Ocean and Atlantic commercial systems.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 679-701
Author(s):  
Igor Souza-Gonçalves ◽  
Cristiano Lopes-Andrade ◽  
Vivian Eliana Sandoval-Gómez ◽  
John Francis Lawrence

The genus Paratrichapus Scott, 1926 currently comprises four species, one described from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, one from Indonesia and two from New Zealand. Here, the first Australian species of Paratrichapus are described, as follows: P. australis sp. n., P. burwelli sp. n., P. christmasensis sp. n., P. metallonotum sp. n. and P. peckorum sp. n. Data on their geographic distribution and host fungi are provided, as well as an identification key.


F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris R. Kenyon ◽  
Jozefien Buyze ◽  
Ilan S. Schwartz

Background: It is unclear why HIV prevalence varies by nearly two orders of magnitude between regions within countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In this ecological study, we assess if HIV prevalence by region is associated with any of four markers of higher risk sexual behavior: lifetime number of partners, multiple partners in past year, higher risk sex (defined as sex with non-cohabiting, non-marital partners) and age at debut. Methods: We performed Pearson’s correlation between the 4 behavioral risk factors and HIV prevalence by region in 47 nationally representative surveys from 27 sub-Saharan African countries, separately by gender. In addition, principal components analysis was used to reduce the eight risk factors (four for each gender) to two principal components (PCs). Mixed effects linear regression was used to assess the relationship between the resulting two PCs and HIV prevalence after controlling for the prevalence of male circumcision. Results: HIV prevalence varied by a median 3.7 fold (IQR 2.9-7.9) between regions within countries. HIV prevalence was strongly associated with higher risk sex and, to a lesser extent, the other risk factors evaluated. Both PCs were strongly associated with HIV prevalence when assessed via linear regression. Conclusions: Differences in sexual behavior may underpin the large differences in HIV-prevalence between subpopulation within sub-Saharan African countries.


Zootaxa ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2455 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
CONNAL EARDLEY ◽  
ROSALIND URBAN

The purpose of this catalogue is to list the valid names, nomenclatorial history of, and published references to, the known bees of Sub-Saharan Africa and the western Indian Ocean islands, excluding the honey bee (Apis mellifera Linnaeus). An attempt has been made to include references to all publications on Afrotropical bees since Dalla Torre’s (1896) catalogue, up to and including 2009. All publications dealing with each species are listed under the name combination used. This catalogue includes 2755 valid species and 1133 references. Taxonomic changes, such as new name combinations, with correct latinization and gender, are included. The distribution by country, plants visited, hosts (for parasitic bee species) and parasites are recorded, as are the type’s gender, depository and country locality for each described species (valid and invalid). The following new combinations are included: Amegilla cincta conradsi (Strand), Evylaeus aeratus (Kirby), Evylaeus angustissimus (Cockerell), Evylaeus ankaratrense (Benoist), Evylaeus bellulus (Vachal), Evylaeus bianonis (Cockerell), Evylaeus burnupi (Cockerell), Evylaeus calviniellus (Cockerell), Evylaeus camphorellus (Cockerell), Evylaeus cardiurus (Cockerell), Evylaeus cephalinotus (Cockerell), Evylaeus cessulus (Cockerell), Evylaeus clavigerellus (Cockerell), Evylaeus coeruleodorsatus (Strand), Evylaeus coloratipes (Cockerell), Evylaeus constrictulus (Cockerell), Evylaeus cyaneodiscus (Cockerell), Evylaeus deceptus (Smith), Evylaeus diloloensis (Cockerell), Evylaeus diminutellus (Cockerell), Evylaeus discretulus (Cockerell), Evylaeus epichlorus (Cockerell), Evylaeus gastrophilinus (Cockerell), Evylaeus gendettensis (Cockerell), Evylaeus godmanae (Michener), Evylaeus hemicyaneum (Benoist), Evylaeus hirtulinus (Cockerell), Evylaeus kabetiellus (Cockerell), Evylaeus kampalensis (Cockerell), Evylaeus kasuloi (Cockerell), Evylaeus kowitensis (Cockerell), Evylaeus lactescens (Cockerell), Evylaeus lampronotus (Cameron), Evylaeus latibalteatus (Meade-Waldo), Evylaeus latior (Cockerell), Evylaeus leucophenax (Cockerell), Evylaeus morio (Fabricius), Evylaeus macilentus (Benoist), Evylaeus marshalli (Cockerell); Evylaeus matoporum (Cockerell), Evylaeus mediocre (Benoist), Evylaeus meruensis (Friese), Evylaeus meneliki (Friese), Evylaeus mesopolitus (Cockerell), Evylaeus microsellatus (Cockerell), Evylaeus mirifrons (Cockerell), Evylaeus natensis (Cockerell), Evylaeus nigritulinus (Cockerell), Evylaeus nitididorsatus. (Benoist), Evylaeus niveostictus (Cockerell), Evylaeus parvulinus (Cockerell), Evylaeus pastinimimus (Cockerell), Evylaeus percornutus (Cockerell), Evylaeus perihirtus (Cockerell), Evylaeus perileucus (Cockerell), Evylaeus pernitens (Cockerell), Evylaeus pilicornis (Friese), Evylaeus politescens (Cockerell), Evylaeus pulchripes (Cockerell), Evylaeus pulchritarsis (Cockerell), Evylaeus puzeyi (Cockerell), Evylaeus rubrocinctus (Cockerell), Evylaeus rufitarsellus (Cockerell), Evylaeus ruwenzicus (Cockerell), Evylaeus ruwenzoriellus (Cockerell), Evylaeus schubotzi (Strand), Evylaeus sellatiferus (Cockerell), Evylaeus semilucidus (Cockerell), Evylaeus sublautus (Cockerell), Evylaeus submetallicus (Benoist), Evylaeus tenuicornis (Cockerell), Evylaeus tenuivenis (Cockerell), Evylaeus thestis (Cameron), Evylaeus wilkinsoni (Cockerell), Evylaeus windhukensis (Friese), Heriades edentatus (Friese), Lasioglossum lukulense (Cockerell), Lasioglossum simulator (Cockerell), Lipotriches armatipes obscuripes (Friese), Lipotriches fumipennigera (Strand), and Megachile ambigua (Pasteels). One replacement name has been added: Hylaeus multifarius Eardley & Urban.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 2036-2045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chul Eddy Chung ◽  
V. Ramanathan

Abstract Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the equatorial Indian Ocean have warmed by about 0.6–0.8 K since the 1950s, accompanied by very little warming or even a slight cooling trend over the northern Indian Ocean (NIO). It is reported that this differential trend has resulted in a substantial weakening of the meridional SST gradient from the equatorial region to the South Asian coast during summer, to the extent that the gradient has nearly vanished recently. Based on simulations with the Community Climate Model Version 3 (CCM3), it is shown that the summertime weakening in the SST gradient weakens the monsoon circulation, resulting in less monsoon rainfall over India and excess rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa. The observed trend in SST is decomposed into a hypothetical uniform warming and a reduction in the meridional gradient. The uniform warming of the tropical Indian Ocean in the authors’ simulations increases the Indian summer monsoon rainfall by 1–2 mm day−1, which is opposed by a larger drying tendency due to the weakening of the SST gradient. The net effect is to decrease the Indian monsoon rainfall, while preventing the sub-Saharan region from becoming too dry. Published coupled ocean–atmosphere model simulations are used to describe the competing effects of the anthropogenic radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases and the anthropogenic South Asian aerosols on the observed SST gradient and the monsoon rainfall.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3-4.) ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
József Brauer-Benke

A general historical survey of African zither types cannot fail to highlight the disproportionalities brought about in the study of Africa by the essentialistic ideology of Afrocentrism. Thus the widely known videoclip of the 1987 hit Yé-ké-yé-ké by the late Mory Kante (d. 22nd May 2020), musician and composer of Guinean Mandinka origin has allowed millions to experience the kora harp lute with which he accompanied his song and popularized this instrument as well as the musical tradition of the West African griots, while the obviously related mvet harp zither is scarcely known today. This despite the fact that both the latter instrument type and its specialists, the mbomo mvet master singers, played a very similar role in the cultures of the Central African chiefdoms, as did the nanga bards playing the enanga trough zither in the East African kingdoms. Another important and interesting historical insight provided by a careful morphological and etymological analysis of African zither types and their terminology that takes comparative account of South and Southeast Asian data and ethnographic parallels concerns the possibility of borrowings. Thus stick and raft zither types may well have reached the eastern half of West Africa and the northeastern part of Central Africa – several centuries prior to the era of European geographical explorations – owing to population movements over the Red Sea. It seems therefore probable that the African stick bridges harp zithers (in fact a sui generis instrument type rather than a subtype of zithers) developed from South Asian stick zither types. On the other hand, tube zithers and box zithers – fretted-enhanced versions of the stick zither – certainly reached Africa because of the migration of Austronesian-speaking groups over the Indian Ocean, since their recent ethnographic analogies have survived in Southeast Asia as well. By contrast types of trough zither, confined to East Africa, must have developed in Africa from box zither types, which are based on similar techniques of making the strings tense. The hypothesis of African zither types having originated from beyond the Indian Ocean is further strengthened by the absence of these instruments in such regions of Sub-Saharan Africa as the Atlantic coast of West Africa as well as in Northeast, Southwest and South Africa. Thus the historical overview of African zither types also helps refute the erroneous idea that prior to the arrival of European explorers and colonizers the continent was isolated from the rest of the world. In fact seafaring peoples such as the Austronesians, Chinese, Indians, Arabs and Persians did continually reach it, bringing with them cultural artifacts, production techniques and agricultural products among other things, which would then spread over large distances along the trade routes over Africa.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 253-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Kuchár ◽  
Travis R. Glare ◽  
John G. Hampton ◽  
Ian A. Dickie ◽  
Mary C. Christey

Plutella xylostella (diamondback moth) is a prominent pest of brassicas which is now resistant to most insecticides. Despite years of research, the range of available products used in biological control of diamondback moth is still somewhat limited. We isolated putative endophytic fungi from New Zealand cabbage plants to search for unique biological control agents of diamondback moth larvae. The larvae were fed leaf discs from commercially grown cabbage covered in spores from endophytic fungal isolates to test the insecticidal properties of these fungi. Twenty of the 52 fungal isolates tested failed to kill any diamondback moth larvae. However, three isolates of Lecanicillium muscarium induced mortality greater than 80%. While these isolates have potential for use in biological control applications, further research into propagation, formulation, and method, rate and timing of application is needed.


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