A NEW SUBSPECIES OF SENECIO MOHAVENSIS (COMPOSITAE) REVEALS OLD–NEW WORLD SPECIES DISJUNCTION

2001 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. COLEMAN ◽  
D. G. FORBES ◽  
R. J. ABBOTT

Examination of morphology, ploidy and interfertility in the two subspecies of the Old World Senecio flavus (Decne.) Sch. Bip. (Compositae) and the closely related New World S. mohavensis A. Gray does not support the subspecific taxonomy of S. flavus. On the basis of our results S. flavus subsp. breviflorus Kadereit is transferred to S. mohavensis as a new subspecies: S. mohavensis subsp. breviflorus (Kadereit) M. Coleman comb. nov. The new subspecies has a distribution that includes Arabia, the Middle East, Sinai, Iran, Afghanistan, Djibouti, and the Thar Desert of Pakistan. The type subspecies of S. mohavensis occurs in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts of North America, providing an unusual disjunct distribution at the species level. Separation from S. flavus is based upon differences in morphology and chromosome number. Senecio flavus is diploid (2n = 20), while both subspecies of S. mohavensis are tetraploid (2n = 40). Further support for the new taxonomic treatment is provided by the results of controlled crosses. No artificial hybrids have been generated from crosses made between the previously recognized subspecies of S. flavus, while crosses between the newly recognized subspecies of S. mohavensis have produced fertile hybrids. The fertility of the hybrids is significantly lower than the parental taxa (P<0.001), indicating partial genetic divergence since isolation. Previous studies of isozyme and cpDNA variation in all three taxa also support the new treatment. The similarity of the S. mohavensis subspecies suggests a relatively recent separation, although the amount of genetic divergence does not support a post-Colombian introduction. Given that land bridges to North America via Beringia and the North Atlantic last existed in the Oligocene, long-distance dispersal seems the most likely explanation. Natural dispersal to rather than from the New World is supported, but whether this took place in an easterly or westerly direction is unclear. The evolution of S. mohavensis remains equivocal.

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-105
Author(s):  
Jay C. Martin

Boxy and with ‘unseaworthy form’, the sailing scow was not the most aesthetically pleasing of watercraft. Yet the durable hull design based upon European predecessors found a new home in North America where it proliferated on the Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific and Great Lakes coasts because of its practicality for largely unimproved waterways. Scows were widely used on the Great Lakes in the nineteenth century, moving beyond shallow waters and gaining a reputation for reliability in long-distance trade. Late in the century, the technology arrived in New Zealand, where it prospered in a niche market that combined open water voyages and shallow river, port, or beach loading and unloading. The Great Lakes scows presented an alternative for entry into ship ownership on the North American frontier. The development of the New Zealand scow confirmed these findings comparatively in an international context during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells ◽  
Naoise Mac Sweeney

Iron Age Europe, once studied as a relatively closed, coherent continent, is being seen increasingly as a dynamic part of the much larger, interconnected world. Interactions, direct and indirect, with communities in Asia, Africa, and, by the end of the first millennium AD, North America, had significant effects on the peoples of Iron Age Europe. In the Near East and Egypt, and much later in the North Atlantic, the interactions can be linked directly to historically documented peoples and their rulers, while in temperate Europe the evidence is exclusively archaeological until the very end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The evidence attests to often long-distance interactions and their effects in regard to the movement of peoples, and the introduction into Europe of raw materials, crafted objects, styles, motifs, and cultural practices, as well as the ideas that accompanied them.


2002 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn H. Gamble

Advanced maritime technology associated with long-distance exchange and intensified resource acquisition has been linked to the development of stratification and greater sociopolitical complexity in the Pacific Rim region. One such example is the emergence of hereditary chiefs among the Chumash Indians of southern California. Plank boats owned by an elite group of wealthy individuals and chiefs were an integral part of an elaborate economic system that was based on maritime exchange. An artifact assemblage associated with the construction, maintenance, and use of this watercraft was identified and analyzed. It included wooden planks, asphaltum plugs, asphaltum caulking, and chipped stone drills. Radiocarbon dates and other relative-dating techniques provide strong evidence that the plank canoe originated at least 1,300 years ago in southern California. This represents the earliest use of this type of watercraft in North America and probably in the New World. The timing of this innovation provides evidence that sociopolitical complexity developed in the region at least 500 years earlier than previously proposed.


mBio ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin P. Drees ◽  
Jeffrey M. Lorch ◽  
Sebastien J. Puechmaille ◽  
Katy L. Parise ◽  
Gudrun Wibbelt ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Globalization has facilitated the worldwide movement and introduction of pathogens, but epizoological reconstructions of these invasions are often hindered by limited sampling and insufficient genetic resolution among isolates. Pseudogymnoascus destructans , a fungal pathogen causing the epizootic of white-nose syndrome in North American bats, has exhibited few genetic polymorphisms in previous studies, presenting challenges for both epizoological tracking of the spread of this fungus and for determining its evolutionary history. We used single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from whole-genome sequencing and microsatellites to construct high-resolution phylogenies of P. destructans . Shallow genetic diversity and the lack of geographic structuring among North American isolates support a recent introduction followed by expansion via clonal reproduction across the epizootic zone. Moreover, the genetic relationships of isolates within North America suggest widespread mixing and long-distance movement of the fungus. Genetic diversity among isolates of P. destructans from Europe was substantially higher than in those from North America. However, genetic distance between the North American isolates and any given European isolate was similar to the distance between the individual European isolates. In contrast, the isolates we examined from Asia were highly divergent from both European and North American isolates. Although the definitive source for introduction of the North American population has not been conclusively identified, our data support the origin of the North American invasion by P. destructans from Europe rather than Asia. IMPORTANCE This phylogenetic study of the bat white-nose syndrome agent, P. destructans , uses genomics to elucidate evolutionary relationships among populations of the fungal pathogen to understand the epizoology of this biological invasion. We analyze hypervariable and abundant genetic characters (microsatellites and genomic SNPs, respectively) to reveal previously uncharacterized diversity among populations of the pathogen from North America and Eurasia. We present new evidence supporting recent introduction of the fungus to North America from a diverse Eurasian population, with limited increase in genetic variation in North America since that introduction.


The taxon Chydorus faviformis , described by Birge from North America in 1893, has been considered to occur also in Asia, Australia, and South America. However, careful study of populations from these regions has revealed that all represent different species, none of which is closely related to C. faviformis . The taxa described here are C. obscurirostris and C. opacus from Australia, C. obscurirostris tasekberae from Malaysia, C. sinensis from China, C.angustirostris from India, and C. parvireticulatus from South America. The taxon in Malaysia differs somewhat from the corresponding taxon in Australia, but cannot be characterized more closely until males and ephippial females become available. The taxa differ among themselves in number of meshes on the shell of parthenogenetic females, surface patterning within the meshes, shape of the rostrum and height of the mesh walls along the edge and near the tip of the rostrum, stoutness and length of the major seta on the inner distal lobe of trunklimb I, shape of the labral plate, and shape and armament of the postabdomen. Ephippial females all have a single resting egg. They differ in the extent of secondary thickenings of the surface network within the shell meshes and in the amount of pigment deposited in the region of the egg locule. Males are most important for separating the taxa, indicating how necessary they are for working out evolutionary similarities and differences. Unfortunately no males of the taxa from Malaysia, India, and South America have been available. For the others, C.faviformis sens. str. is unique in that it is the only taxon in which the male loses its honeycomb (that is, the raised walls of the meshes) on reaching maturity. It also has a sharp pre-anal angle and a marked narrowing of the postabdomen distad from here, which is the pattern typical of species in the Chydorus sphaericus complex. None of the other faviformis -like species share this characteristic. Because of the marked differences in morphology and in geographical distribution of the species in North America and in South America, it is certain that even during the glacial ages, when the northern C. faviformis would have been displaced farthest southward, there was no exchange of either taxon to the other continent. The taxon from Manáos, Brazil listed as C.faviformis in the Birge collection is the C. parvireticulatus reported from much farther south in Brazil and Argentina. In Australia and Asia, except for the uncertain distinctness of the taxon in Malaysia, all the other taxa are markedly separate from each other and hence give no evidence for transfer, as by resting eggs, between continents or even from one region to another on the same continent. All the taxa have been stable in their geographical occurrence for very long periods of time. In addition to the faviformis -like taxa present as distinct species in different regions or on different continents, there are many other species groups of chydorids that have different member species on each continent. One possible explanation of this similarity in gross morphology without any long-distance dispersal of resting eggs to accomplish it is that the various protospecies (corresponding to the species groups) had largely evolved before the original land mass broke up into the present continents and subcontinents. As the distances between the continents increased, the salt-water gaps would come to be impassable barriers to dispersal. Evolution of the isolates would then yield new species, all retaining m any of the features of the protospecies. Each such group from a single protospecies would form the species groups we are now just beginning to recognize.


Moreana ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (Number 171- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne-Henriette Louis

Friends and exile in North America in the 17th century. Quakers (or Friends) like to consider Adam’s fall as an exile from divine nature towards animal nature, and the quest for “ Inner Light” as a reverse exile, a return to divine nature. Their “theologian”, Robert Barclay, explained this in a very clear way in his Apology of the true Christian divinity, as the fame is held forth, and preached, by the people called, in scorn, Quakers, published in 1675. The missionary zeal of Friends at the beginning of their movement, led them to announce the good news of redemption in North America as soon as 1656, which brought persecution on them during three decades. Banishment, and even death penalty, were the kind of exile imposed upon Friends by Boston Puritans and by other settlers on the North American coast. Pennsylvania’s Holy Experiment launched by William Penn offered for several decades a space for creativity for the voluntary exile of Quakers and Mennonites who left Europe in quest of a spiritual New World. Officially ended in 1756, the Holy Experiment of Pennsylvania goes through an apparent exile from this date. But we can find its values in other places, at other times. Redemption belongs to a world which is not invisible, but unseen because of many people’s blindness.


1951 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. 156-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
George P. Holland

As the flea fauna of mammals of northern North America becomes better known, its very close affinity with that of temperate and northern Asia becomes more apparent. Many of the genera are holarctic and are associated with holarctic genera of mammals. In a few instances, the fleas of the Old World and the New World are so similar in morphological details and host association that they are regarded as subspecies. For example, Amphipsylla sibirica (Wagner), Malaraeus penicilliger (Grube), Megabothris calcarifer (Wagner), and Hoplopsyllus glacialis (Taschenberg) have representatives in both the nearctic and the palaearctic regions. To this list must now be added Catallagia dacenkoi Ioff, a parasite of Microtinae; this species was described originally (Ioff, 1940, pp. 216-217) from the Altai Mountains of central Russia, and a new subspecies has now been discovered in northern Canada and Alaska.


Phytotaxa ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 219 (3) ◽  
pp. 243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nawal Shrestha ◽  
Xian-Chun Zhang

The North American shining clubmoss, Huperzia lucidula, was originally thought to be endemic to North America. However it was reported from China by Ren Chang Ching in 1981, and hence was believed to have a disjunct distribution in North America and Asia. Since then, in all Chinese literature H. lucidula has been described as a disjunct taxon, although in North American literature it has nearly always only been reported from eastern North America. The studies on the Chinese taxon are at present insufficient to address this taxonomical and biogeographical disparity. In this study we have attempted to unravel this issue using integrative morphological and molecular analyses. Morphological study included a thorough examination of specimens from the entire distribution range of H. lucidula in the USA, Canada and China following field collections. Molecular study included Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian inference phylogenetical analyses of three chloroplast markers: the genes rbcL and matK and the psbA-trnH intergenic spacer. The results showed distinct morphological differences between the North American and Chinese taxa, sufficient to recognize them as separate species. The molecular results corroborated these findings and supported the separation of the two taxa. Based on our results, the Chinese taxon is neither a variant of H. lucidula nor sister to it and therefore the supposed disjunct distribution of H. lucidula is erroneous and a result of misidentification. The Chinese taxon that was firstly reported by Ching as H. lucidula var. asiatica has been elevated to the species rank and a new combination has been made.


1954 ◽  
Vol 86 (11) ◽  
pp. 502-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Wood

The genus Carphoborus is widely distributed in the Holarctic realm. It occurs from the northern limits of tree growth south in the Old World to India and northern Africa and in the New World to Baja California, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Florida.All of the North American species breed in the inner bark of coniferous trees of the genera Pinus, Picea, and Pseudotsuga. Branches that are being shaded out or are broken, but still hanging in the tree, are generally preferred for the construction of galleries. A few species have been reported from slash; however, they are usually not aggressive or abundant enough to survive in competition ivith other bark beetles normally found in slash. The economic importance of the genus is not great; the hahit of breeding in the unthrifty lower branches of coniferous trees contributes slightly toward accelerating the natural pruning of the trees and consequently aids in the production of a higher quality of timber.


1987 ◽  
Vol 61 (6) ◽  
pp. 1256-1268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Turner

African machairodont specimens previously referred to three species of Megantereon are considered to represent a single species in turn argued to be conspecific with the Eurasian species Megantereon cultridens (Cuvier). The area of origin of Megantereon remains unclear, but doubt is expressed about claims for an earliest appearance of the genus in North America. It is probable that the North American species M. hesperus is a junior synonym of M. cultridens.


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