scholarly journals Reclassification, Phylogeny and Zoogeography of the Australian Species of Cicindela (Coleoptera : Cicindelidae)

1979 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 479 ◽  
Author(s):  
R Freitag

Australian components of the subfamilies Collyrinae and Cicindelinae, tribes Collyrini, Megacephalini and Cicindelini, and genera Tricondyla Latreille, Megacephala Latreille, Distipsidera Westwood, Rhysopleura Sloane, Nickerlea W. Horn, and Cicindela Linne are distinguished in a key. For each of the first five genera, numbers of Australian species, geographical distributions, and habitats of the adults are described. Diagnostic characteristics are provided for the genus Cicindela Linne. Twenty-nine Australian species are arranged in seven species-groups as follows: the iosceles group, six species; the nigrina group, two species: the carnarvona, group (=subgenus Grandopronotalia W. Horn, genus Prothyma), one species, C. carnarvona, sp. et comb. nov.; the tetragramma group, seven species, including C. levitetragramma, sp. nov. (type locality, Western Australia, Port Hedland); the ypsilon group, four species; the igneicollis group, five species, including C. gairdneri, sp. nov. (type locality, South Australia, Lake Gairdner, south-west gulf); the semicincta group, four species, including C. parasemicincta, sp. nov. (type locality, South Australia, Wobna Mound Spring about 8km south-east of Coward Spring). Placement of the iosceles and carnarvona groups is discussed. A key is provided for all species and five subspecies. Species-groups, species, and subspecies are revised, described and illustrated, and the ranges of species indicated by maps. A history of the Australian species of Cicindela is derived, which comprises a reconstructed phylogeny, based on adult characteristics, and zoogeography based on patterns of geographical distributions of species-groups, ecological requirements, vicariance relations of sister groups, and climatic events of the past. It is concluded that five species-groups are endemic to Australia. Their origins are unknown, though geographical distributions indicate that four (iosceles, nigrina, tetragramma, carnarvona) are relicts of extinct Oriental lineages, and one (igneicollis) is relict of a south ancient lineage. Two species-groups (ypsilon, semicincta) are southernmost extensions of extant Oriental groups. Zoogeographical evidence suggests that most founding stocks invaded northern Australia through New Guinea during the Tertiary and Pleistocene, and speciation in the Pleistocene has been generated in the north-east by periodic retreats and invasions of the sea in the Gulf of Carpentaria during glacial and interglacial phases.

Antiquity ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 50 (200) ◽  
pp. 216-222
Author(s):  
Beatrice De Cardi

Ras a1 Khaimah is the most northerly of the seven states comprising the United Arab Emirates and its Ruler, H. H. Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammad al-Qasimi, is keenly interested in the history of the state and its people. Survey carried out there jointly with Dr D. B. Doe in 1968 had focused attention on the site of JuIfar which lies just north of the present town of Ras a1 Khaimah (de Cardi, 1971, 230-2). Julfar was in existence in Abbasid times and its importance as an entrep6t during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-the Portuguese Period-is reflected by the quantity and variety of imported wares to be found among the ruins of the city. Most of the sites discovered during the survey dated from that period but a group of cairns near Ghalilah and some long gabled graves in the Shimal area to the north-east of the date-groves behind Ras a1 Khaimah (map, FIG. I) clearly represented a more distant past.


Botany ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 88 (7) ◽  
pp. 639-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary W. Saunders ◽  
Brian McDonald

The DNA barcode (COI-5P) was used to investigate cryptic diversity among Rhodymenia spp. in southern Australia. Whereas eight species are currently recognized, we uncovered ca. 20 genetic species groups, phylogenetically assigned to four genera in two families. Procumbent specimens with molecular and anatomical signatures of the Fryeellaceae are assigned to Pseudohalopeltis tasmanensis gen. et sp. nov. Collections from Lord Howe Island recorded in the field as Rhodymenia / Fauchea sp. are assigned to the poorly known genus Microphyllum as Microphyllum robustum sp. nov. A cluster of species with distinct molecular and anatomical attributes is included in a resurrected Halopeltis J.G. Agardh, including Halopeltis australis (J. Agardh) comb. nov. (type species); Halopeltis austrina (Womersley) comb. nov.; Halopeltis cuneata (Harvey) comb. nov. [including Rhodymenia halymenioides (J. Agardh) Womersley]; Halopeltis gracilis sp. nov.; Halopeltis prostrata sp. nov.; and Halopeltis verrucosa (Womersley) comb. nov. Four additional species of Halopeltis from Lord Howe Island (LH1, LH2), Tasmania (TAS), and Western Australia are not characterized further. For Rhodymenia sensu stricto, similar levels of cryptic diversity were noted. Samples tentatively field-identified as “ Rhodymenia sonderi ,” but having affiliations to Rhodymenia rather than Halopeltis, are referred to Rhodymenia novahollandica sp. nov. Collections field-identified as R. obtusa are genetically distinct from that species and are assigned to Rhodymenia wilsonis (Sonder) comb. nov. Two highly divergent species currently identified as Rhodymenia leptophylla (LH from Lord Howe Island; TAS from Tasmania), as well as two additional cryptic previously unnamed taxa from South Australia (SA) and Victoria (VIC), are not characterized further.


Archaeologia ◽  
1779 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 95-97
Author(s):  
Pegge

Rudston, a village in the East-Riding of Yorkshire, on the Wolds, near Burlington, is thus noticed in bishop Gibson's edition of Camden, col. 901. “More inward into the “land, is Ruston, where, in the church-yard, is a kind of “pyramidal stone of great height. Whether the name of the “town may not have some relation to it, can be known only “from the private history of the place; but if the stone bear “any resemblance to a cross, rod in Saxon doth imply so much.” This cross, as the bishop calls it, and I think not improperly, is a very curious monument; and, no doubt, of very remote antiquity. I am not aware that it has ever been engraved, and therefore I here present the Society with an accurate drawing* of it, which I received A. 1769, from the friendly hand of Mr. Willan, whose account I shall take the liberty to subjoin. “This stone stands about four yards from the North East “corner of Rudston church, which is situated on a high hill. “Its depth under ground equal to its height above, as appeared “from an experiment made by the late Sir William Strickland. “All the four sides are a little convex, and the whole covered “with moss. No tradition in this country of any authorrity, either concerning the time, manner, or occasion of its “erection.”


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pranab Jyoti Sarma

This paper carries out a critical review of the trends of historical writings in Assam. The historiographical study reveals that the beginning of the historical phase was, in fact, late in the North East region. Moreover, in many of these historical writings, the importance of the local histories of the communities of the region was ignored. The author highlights the fact that a pan-Indian history for the region may not be authentic enough to understand the cultural dynamics of the complex society of the Northeast. The author also focuses on corroborating ‘proper’ historical source material for reconstructing the history of the region rather than deriving inferences from mythology and legends. However, the importance of recent trends in historiography such as selective utilisation of oral traditions, folklores and memory studies has been emphasised. An alternative and more precise periodisation of the historical phase has been provided which does not, however, project any clear marker between periods and eras but emphasises on slow and steady transformations. Importance of archaeological sources and material evidence has been kept in mind while deriving periodical divisions. Relooking at the history of the Koches, Kacharis has been emphasised.


1757 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 645-648

I went to make my observation upon the natural history of the sea; and when I arrived at a place called the Cauldrons of Lance Caraibe, near Lancebertrand, a part of the island of Grande Terre Guadaloupe, in which place the coast runs north-east and south-west, the sea being much agitated that day flowed from the north-west.


Author(s):  
D. H. Cushing

This paper is an account of the development of the International Fisheries Commissions. Excluded are the commissions under the aegis of FAO: an earlier group, for example the Indo-Pacific Fisheries Commission, are only advisory, and later ones, like the Atlantic Tuna Commission, have not been in existence for long enough to discern characteristics in their activity. The activities of the Russo-Japanese commissions in the north-west Pacific are also excluded, because their actions do not have great influence on the older commissions or upon the newer ones established in the last five years or so. Although the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea has now only an advisory function in the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, during its earlier history before World War II it was always able to act through the Danish Foreign Office. But a much more important point is that the International Council played a historically dominant part in the early development of many of the commissions, except of course those which originated in the north-east Pacific.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 150635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanesa L. De Pietri ◽  
R. Paul Scofield ◽  
Nikita Zelenkov ◽  
Walter E. Boles ◽  
Trevor H. Worthy

Presbyornithids were the dominant birds in Palaeogene lacustrine assemblages, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, but are thought to have disappeared worldwide by the mid-Eocene. Now classified within Anseriformes (screamers, ducks, swans and geese), their relationships have long been obscured by their strange wader-like skeletal morphology. Reassessment of the late Oligocene South Australian material attributed to Wilaru tedfordi , long considered to be of a stone-curlew (Burhinidae, Charadriiformes), reveals that this taxon represents the first record of a presbyornithid in Australia. We also describe the larger Wilaru prideauxi sp. nov. from the early Miocene of South Australia, showing that presbyornithids survived in Australia at least until ca 22 Ma. Unlike on other continents, where presbyornithids were replaced by aquatic crown-group anatids (ducks, swans and geese), species of Wilaru lived alongside these waterfowl in Australia. The morphology of the tarsometatarsus of these species indicates that, contrary to other presbyornithids, they were predominantly terrestrial birds, which probably contributed to their long-term survival in Australia. The morphological similarity between species of Wilaru and the Eocene South American presbyornithid Telmabates antiquus supports our hypothesis of a Gondwanan radiation during the evolutionary history of the Presbyornithidae. Teviornis gobiensis from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia is here also reassessed and confirmed as a presbyornithid. These findings underscore the temporal continuance of Australia’s vertebrates and provide a new context in which the phylogeny and evolutionary history of presbyornithids can be examined.


1887 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Paton

Mr. Newton in his History of Discoveries, p. 583, gives the following account of an excursion to the peninsula which lies to the west of Budrum (Halikarnassus) where he was then excavating:—We next proceeded to examine the hill with the level top. This hill is called Assarlik.Ascending from this gateway we passed several other lines of ancient walls, and on gaining the summit of the hill found a platform artificially levelled. There are not many traces of walls here. The sides of the hill are so steep on the north and east that they do not require walls. The platform terminates on the north-east in a rock rising vertically for many hundred feet from the valley below. The top of the rock is cut into beds to receive a tower. The view from this platform is magnificent.[After brief mention of several tombs passed in the way down, Mr. Newton proceeds:]The acropolis which anciently crowned the rock at Assarlik must have overlooked a great part of the peninsula and commanded the road from Halicarnassus to Myndus and Termera. From the number of tombs here, and their archaic character, it may be inferred that this was a fortress of some importance in very early times.


Author(s):  
P. A. Tyler ◽  
D. S. M. Billett ◽  
J. D. Gage

Examination of the reproductive biology of the abyssal seastar Dytaster grandis taken at different times of the year in the NE Atlantic suggests seasonal reproduction that is related to the seasonal pulse of phytodetritus to the deep-sea floor. Although this seastar is an omnivore, the availability of this labile organic material may fuel vitellogenesis during the summer and autumn months. The egg size suggests planktotrophic larval development. Spawning occurs in the early part of each year to allow the zygote to develop into a feeding larva to coincide with the downward flux of phytodetritus. Thus the flux of detritus may constitute an environmental forcing pressure at least at two points in the life history of D. grandis.


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