The New World Aesalinae, with notes on the North American lucanid subfamilies (Coleoptera, Lucanidae)

1974 ◽  
Vol 52 (12) ◽  
pp. 1505-1510 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. F. Howden ◽  
J. F. Lawrence

The North American Lucanidae are divided into four subfamilies: Aesalinae, Syndesinae, Nicaginae, and Lucaninae, and a key is presented to the subfamilies, tribes, and genera. Subfamily characters are briefly described with a more detailed account of the Aesalinae, including Aesalus Fabricius and Lucanobium squamosum n. gen., n. sp., from Venezuela.

Zootaxa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4374 (2) ◽  
pp. 189 ◽  
Author(s):  
RODRIGO MONJARAZ-RUEDAS ◽  
OSCAR F. FRANCKE

The North American genus Stenochrus is represented by 22 species distributed mainly in Mexico, Central America and the U.S.A.; the genus was erected originally to place the species Stenochrus portoricensis and was characterized by the presence of lateral lobes reduced on female spermathecae, male flagellum without important dorsal relief, pedipalps without distinctive armature and without posterodorsal process on segment XII. Here we describe five new species from the Mexican state of Oaxaca; we discuss the presence of dimorphic males in the genus. With this contribution the genus Stenochrus reaches 27 species, becoming the second most diverse genus of schizomids in the New World. 


Author(s):  
Alan Graham

An aspect of plant distribution that has intrigued biogeographers for over 200 years is the occurrence of similar biotas in widely separated regions. The North American flora has affinities with several such areas: the Mediterranean, the dry regions of South America, eastern Asia, and eastern Mexico. The origin of some patterns is relatively clear, while for others hypotheses are just now being formulated. During times when the dogma of permanence of continents and ocean basins held sway, explanations for these disjunctions required imaginative thinking that often bordered on the bizarre. The pendulum or schwingpolen hypothesis was offered to explain the perceived bipolar distribution of several taxa (Gnetum, Magnolia, Pinus section Taeda; Simroth, 1914). By this view, the Earth swings in space like a pendulum, creating regular fluctuations in environments and often causing the symmetrical placement of taxa at two points on opposite sides of the Earth. Other disjunctions were explained by casually placing geophysically impossible land bridges at any point in time between any two sites where the presence of similar communities seemed to call for land connections (see review in Simpson, 1943). The presence of teeth of Hipparion, an ungulate related to the horse, in Europe and South Carolina-Florida prompted French geologist Leonce Joleaud to propose a land bridge extending from Florida through the Antilles to North Africa and Spain. Subsequently, to accommodate eight new passengers, it was broadened to encompass the entire region from Maryland and Brazil across to France and Morocco and its life was prolonged to include virtually all of the Tertiary. With the later discovery that there were periodicities in similarity between Old World and New World Cenozoic faunas, the continents were envisioned as moving back and forth like an accordion. George Gaylord Simpson, who favored the North Atlantic land bridge to connect North America and Europe, was beside himself with these theories and characterized Joelaud’s as “the climax of all drift theories.” The bridge became well established in the literature even though it never existed in the Atlantic Ocean (Marvin, 1973). Udvardy (1969) plotted all the Cretaceous and Tertiary land bridges postulated for the South Pacific up to 1913.


1966 ◽  
Vol 44 (7) ◽  
pp. 899-928 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecily Joseph ◽  
Margaret Heimburger

The American species of Anemone L. (section Eriocephalus Hook. f. & Thoms.) with tuberous rootstocks were studied by biosystematic methods. Anemone caroliniana Walt., A. heterophylla Nutt. ex Torr. & Gray, A. tuberosa Rydb., and A. edwardsiana Tharp (tentatively) are recognized from North America and A. decapetala Ard., A. triternata Vahl, and A. cicutifolia Johnst. from South America. Karyotypes of the diploid species (2n = 16), A. heterophylla, A. tuberosa, A. decapetala, and A. triternata are described. They resemble the karyotype of A. caroliniana published earlier. Anemone edwardsiana and A. cicutifolia are also presumed diploid from stomatal and pollen grain studies. A new taxon (2n = 32), of undecided status, was obtained from Chile. North American plants included by authors in A. decapetala are here referred to A. heterophylla. The North and South American species appear to form two separate groups, the species of each continent being more closely related among themselves than to those of the other continent. Fewer stomata, larger chromosome size, and higher DNA content are characteristic of the North American species. Additional support for the separation of the two groups derives from limited meiotic studies which indicate a larger number of inversion differences in inter- than in intra-continental hybrids.


1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 648-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Punzo Waghorne

The proliferation of hindu temples now spread over the North American religious landscape appear at first glance to be part of a new process of globalization for Hinduism in an era of transnational religions. South India, long a bastion of temple culture, is simultaneously in the midst of a new boom in temple construction. The present resurgence of “Hinduism” in north India, steeped in ideology, nonetheless is written in terms of the alleged destruction of thousands of temples in north India by Muslim rulers and calls for their reconstruction. “My gods are crying,” writes one “angry” Hindu; “They are demanding restatement in all their original glory” (quoted in Bhattacharya 1991, 127).


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.


1967 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 639-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Grant ◽  
B. S. Sidhu

Leaves of 51 species and three varieties of Lotus (Leguminosae) were assessed quantitatively for hydrocyanic acid (HCN) reaction intensity and the data correlated with basic chromosome number and geographic distribution. The presence of HCN was determined from 0.05 grams of fresh leaf samples by the picric acid – filter paper technique. A gradation of 10 different color reactions (−), (±), and (+1 to +8) was used to compare the HCN reaction for each species. On the basis of potassium cyanide equivalents, each gram of fresh leaf material was estimated to contain an amount of HCN which varied between the different plants and accessions from 0.5 mg to 750 mg. Most of the Old World species were positive for HCN, whereas the reverse was true for the North American species. This would favor the previous separation of the North American species into a separate genus Hosackia. All of the n = 7 species have a greater concentration of HCN than the n = 6 species in both the Old and New World. None of the n = 6 species in the New World reacted positively. Therefore, there was a reduction of HCN with evolutionary development. Two colchicine-induced tetraploids (4x = 24, 28) gave a lower HCN reaction than their diploid counterparts. Leaves of L. siliquosus (n = 7) reacted negatively to the HCN test; however, the cotyledons gave a highly positive reaction supporting the retention of the generic name Tetragonolobus (T. siliquosus (L.) Roth.) for this species. Chromosome number determinations are reported for the first time for L. holosericeus Webb and Berth. (2n = 14), L. mascaensis Buchard (2n = 28), L. nevadensis Greene (2n = 14), L. helleri Britton (2n = 14), and L. oblongifolius var. nevadensis (Gray) Munz (2n = 14).


Genome ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 857-873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iya I Kiknadze ◽  
Malcolm G Butler ◽  
Veronica V Golygina ◽  
Jon Martin ◽  
Wolfgang F Wülker ◽  
...  

Analysis of banding sequences of polytene chromosomes in Palearctic (Russian) and Nearctic (North American) Chironomus entis shows strong karyotype divergence between populations on the two continents. Four out of seven chromosomal arms in the North American C. entis karyotype are characterized by sequences found only in the Nearctic. In total, 44 banding sequences are now known for this species across the Holarctic, including 22 exclusively Palearctic, 6 Holarctic, and 16 exclusively Nearctic sequences. The degree of cytogenetic differentiation between Palearctic and Nearctic C. entis populations is an order of magnitude greater than differentiation among populations within either continent, but is only one third as great as the cytogenetic distance between the sibling species C. entis and C. plumosus. C. entis is the only sibling species of C. plumosus uncovered during cytological identification of Chironomus species from more than 50 North American lakes, indicating that the plumosus sibling-species group is much smaller in the Nearctic than in the Palearctic, where a dozen sibling species are known. Cytogenetic distance values calculated between Nearctic and Palearctic representatives of both C. entis and its sibling species C. plumosus are similar, but result from different patterns of karyotype divergence. New World C. entis is distinguished from Old World populations by the 16 uniquely Nearctic sequences, four of which occur in the homozygous state. In contrast, North American C. plumosus has fewer uniquely Nearctic sequences, and only one that occurs as a homozygote. However, four chromosomal arms in C. plumosus that are polymorphic in the Palearctic show fixation, or near fixation, of Holarctic sequences in the Nearctic C. plumosus karyotype. Thus, both the fixation of Holarctic sequences, and the occurrence or fixation of distinctly Nearctic sequences, contribute significantly to karyotype divergence. Patterns of karyotype divergence in Palearctic and Nearctic populations of different Holarctic chironomid species are discussed relative to intercontinental cytogenetic differentiation in other dipterans.Key words: karyotype, inversion polymorphism, cytogenetic divergence, Chironomus.


2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Järvinen

In 1916 the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) took the Ballets Russes out of war-torn Europe for a tour across the North American continent. The tour was scheduled to run from January to April 1916, with short seasons in New York at the beginning and the end. As it turned out, the company returned for a second tour that ran from late September to January 1917, during which time, however, Diaghilev's former lover and principal star dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky (1889–1950), replaced him as director.In this article I discuss the cultural differences at the heart of the Ballets Russes' failure to conquer America in 1916–1917, and why that failure had to be edited out of history. Specifically, I look at three aspects of the publicity and critical reception: elitism, patriotism, and modernism. The publicists of the company both misunderstood and underestimated their audience, but in dance research, their prejudices have been taken for granted. The “eye-witness accounts” of Diaghilev's employees and the histories of the company written in the first half of the twentieth century have largely gone unquestioned since, but contemporary primary sources of the North American tours tell a different story. By contrasting the first tour with the second, which received less publicity and better reviews, I emphasize the practical experience of touring in the New World and how differently American critics evaluated the achievements of the two Russian directors of the company—Diaghilev (for the first tour) and Nijinsky (for the second).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document