Land Birds

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin L. Cody ◽  
Enriqueta Velarde
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Gulf Of California ◽  
Field Work ◽  
New Subspecies ◽  
Island Populations ◽  
Species Lists ◽  
Desert Regions ◽  
Arid Desert

Very few of the early scientific explorers in the Gulf of California had much to say about the land birds. There might be two reasons for this: first, the land birds in arid, desert regions are sparse and in general unbecoming, and second, the species encountered are by and large those seen in the much more accessible regions of southwestern North America. Chapter 1 introduced János Xántus, who is recognized as the pioneer ornithologist (or at least bird collector) in the cape area of Lower California, whose contributions (e.g., 1859, in which the first description of the Gray Thrasher, Toxostoma cinereum, was published) are appropriately commemorated in the Xantus Hummingbird, the most spectacular endemic on the peninsula. Lawrence (1860) first described the species as Amazilia xantusi (thence Hylocharis xantusii, and now Basilinna xantusii), and P. L. Sclater announced the discovery to Ibis readers in the same year. By the end of the nineteenth century, several ornithologists had collected in the southern peninsula and reported their findings (e.g., Baird 1870; Belding 1883; Bryant 1889; Ridgway 1896), but very little of this work referred to the islands in the gulf. Brewster’s (1902) report on the cape region avifauna was the most comprehensive of the earlier studies. Serious attention was first paid to the gulf island birds by Maillard (1923) and Townsend (1923), and the latter’s 1911 island-hopping trip in the Albatross served as a model for many similar expeditions later. The first distributional synthesis of their work, and especially that of Nelson (1921), Lamb (e.g., 1924), and Thayer (e.g., 1907), was published by Joseph Grinnell in 1928 in a monograph that is still the standard reference for the peninsula and gulf area. The last 50 years have seen little progress beyond the accumulation of further distributional records and the description of new subspecies (e.g., van Rossem 1929, 1932; Banks 1963a,b,c, 1964, 1969). The island birds remain rather poorly known; even species lists are likely to be incomplete, and ecological studies of the island populations have scarcely begun. In this chapter we report on the results largely of our own field work.

The Identification and Study of Indian Shell Middens in Eastern North America: 1643–1861

1986 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew L. Christenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
North America ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Shell Midden ◽  
Shell Middens ◽  
Work Done

Although the interest in shell middens in North America is often traced to reports of the discoveries in Danish kjoekkenmoeddings in the mid-nineteenth century, extensive shell midden studies were already occurring on the East Coast by that time. This article reviews selected examples of this early work done by geologists and naturalists, which served as a foundation for shell midden studies by archaeologists after the Civil War.

The Challenge of Mass Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Mass Democracy

Chapter 1 analyzes Schmitt’s assessment of democratic movements in Weimar and the gravity of their effects on the state and constitution. It emphasizes that the focus of Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar was mass democracy rather than liberalism. Schmitt warned that the combination of mass democracy, the interpenetration of state and society, and the emergence of total movements opposed to liberal democracy, namely the Nazis and the Communists, were destabilizing the Weimar state and constitution. Weimar, Schmitt argued, had been designed according to nineteenth century principles of legitimacy and understandings of the people. Under the pressure of mass democracy, the state was buckling and cannibalizing itself and its constitution. Despite this, Schmitt argued, Weimar jurists’ theoretical commitments left them largely unable to recognize the scope of what was occurring. Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar democracy was intended to raise awareness of how parliamentary democracy could be turned against the state and constitution.

The Modernity of Kinship

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Hummer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Building Block ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Development ◽  
European Studies ◽  
The West ◽  
Elemental Form

Chapter 1 explores the modern values that have animated kinship studies since their emergence in the nineteenth century. It examines the sudden invention of kinship by Johann Bachofen, Henry Maine, John Ferguson McLennan, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, and Lewis Henry Morgan in the 1860s, and the internal and external developments in the West that prompted their discoveries: revolutionary agitation, the engagement with “primitives” around the globe, industrialization and the disintegration of old solidarities, and intellectual revolutions in the study of prehistory, especially Indo-European studies and Darwinian evolution. Social theorists transformed kinship into an elemental form of human sociality and evolutionary development, and a building block of the emerging liberal order as the West coped with the ontological sea change wrought by the desacralization and industrialization of society.

Who Was This Man?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Kachun
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Broad Context ◽  
Military Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter 1 introduces the broad context of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world in which Crispus Attucks lived, describes the events of the Boston Massacre, and assesses what we know about Attucks’s life. It also addresses some of the most widely known speculations and unsupported stories about Attucks’s life, experiences, and family. Much of what is assumed about Attucks today is drawn from a fictionalized juvenile biography from 1965, which was based largely on research in nineteenth-century sources. Attucks’s characterization as an unsavory outsider and a threat to the social order emerged during the soldiers’ trial. Subsequently, American Revolutionaries in Boston began the construction of a heroic Attucks as they used the memory of the massacre and all its victims to serve their own political agendas during the Revolution by portraying the victims as respectable, innocent citizens struck down by a tyrannical military power.

A desert songbird with no confamilials in the Western Hemisphere (Verdin, Auriparus flaviceps) investigates divergent conspecific songs

The Auk ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma I Greig ◽  
Eva Kinnebrew ◽  
Max L Witynski ◽  
Eric C Larsen
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Geographic Variation ◽  
Playback Experiment ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Monotypic Genus ◽  
Vocal Responses ◽  
Song Variation ◽  
Desert Regions ◽  
Close Relatives

Abstract Most birds that show geographic variation in their songs discriminate between local and foreign songs, which may help them avoid unnecessary conflicts with vagrant individuals or similar-sounding congeners. However, some species respond equally to foreign and local songs, which may be useful if foreign individuals present territorial threats or if there are no sympatric congeners to avoid. Species without sympatric congeners are not commonly tested in playback studies, but they offer an opportunity to see how song variation and recognition unfolds when the pressure to avoid similar congeners is absent. Here, we use Verdins (Auriparus flaviceps), a monotypic genus of songbird with no confamilials in North America, to explore song variation and recognition in a species living without close relatives. We assessed geographic variation in song across the Verdin range and conducted a playback experiment using exemplars from 2 acoustically divergent and geographically distant regions as treatments. We found significant geographic variation in song that mapped well onto ecologically distinct desert regions. We found that Verdins had stronger vocal responses to local-sounding songs, but had equal movement responses to local-sounding and foreign songs. These results are similar to results found in other species without sympatric congeners and provide an example of a species that investigates acoustically divergent conspecific songs, despite recognizing salient differences in those songs.

A REVISION OF THE SYSTEMATICS OF ACALYMMA SENSU STRICTO BARBER (COLEOPTERA: CHRYSOMELIDAE) FROM NORTH AMERICA INCLUDING MEXICO

1980 ◽  
Vol 112 (S112) ◽  
pp. 1-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.D. Munroe ◽  
Ray F. Smith
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
North America ◽  
Male Genitalia ◽  
Sensu Stricto ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Subspecies ◽  
Distribution Maps ◽  
Species Groups

AbstractThe systematics of Acalymma sensu stricto of North America including Mexico are revised. Acalymma sensu stricto is defined and distinguished from the other species groups of Acalymma. Sixteen species are discussed including four new species: A. blomorum, A. palomarense, A. invenustum, and A. luridifrons all from Mexico. Three new subspecies of A. blandulum (LeConte) are described: blandulum (LeConte) new status, nigriventre, and yucatanense. Acalymma coruscum costaricense Bechyné is placed as a synonym of A. innubum (Fabricius). Keys are presented to all species and subspecies. Habitus and male genitalia drawings are given for all species and distribution maps are given where appropriate.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document