scholarly journals Large ants are not easy – the taxonomy of Dinoponera Roger (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae)

2021 ◽  
Vol 784 ◽  
pp. 1-66
Author(s):  
Amanda Martins Dias ◽  
John Edwin Lattke
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Intraspecific Variation ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
Species Distributions ◽  
Nominal Species ◽  
Guiana Shield ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Discrete Variation ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Male Morphology

The taxonomy of the giant ants of the genus Dinoponera is revised based on female and male morphology. Eight species are recognized. Dinoponera nicinha sp. nov., from Amazonas and Rondônia, Brazil, is described and D. grandis (Guérin-Méneville, 1838) is revived. The species D. australis Emery, 1901 and D. snellingi Lenhart, Dash & Mackay, 2013, plus the subspecies D. australis bucki Borgmeier, 1937 and D. australis nigricolor Borgmeier, 1937 are synonymized under D. grandis sp. rev. An unnamed and unidentified male is reported. In general, male morphology has greater and more discrete variation than in females, but they are scarce in museum collections. Species distributions are updated and illustrated, the genus ranging from southern Colombia to northern Argentina, with no reliable records from the Guiana Shield and all nominal species occurring in Brazil.  Intraspecific variation and natural history are discussed. New illustrated identification keys are provided for both sexes. Future studies should address the collection of fresh specimens for molecular work and to assess the conservation status of several species and populations.

Sexual dimorphism, deformations, and epibionts of Phrynops tuberosus (Testudines, Chelidae)

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 311-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Fabrício Mota Rodrigues ◽  
José Roberto Feitosa Silva
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Dimorphism ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Tail Length ◽  
Condition Index ◽  
Head Width ◽  
Body Condition Index ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
One Year ◽  
Effective Conservation

Studies focusing on the natural history of species are essential for developing effective conservation measures and evaluating ecological hypotheses. To this end, we describe natural history data of the Cotinga River toadhead turtle, Phrynops tuberosus, in the Banabuiú River in Ceará, Brazil, and evaluated sexual dimorphism, epibionts, and mutilation effects. We hand-captured 134 individuals by snorkeling, over a period of one year, resulting in the capture of 94 males, 24 females, and 16 juveniles. Females had larger head width and body mass than males, while males had longer tail length. One quarter of the turtles captured had some sort of injury or deformation, most common injuries being missing claws, mutilations, and shell deformations. We found no difference in body condition index between mutilated and non-mutilated animals. Mollusks, insects, and leeches were found as epibionts on P. tuberosus and most of the captured turtles had extensive algal cover. Future studies should focus on understanding the effect of mutilations on animal fitness and reproductive success.

The Wryneck

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Gorman
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Head And Neck ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
Insect Prey ◽  
Citizen Scientist ◽  
Cultural Symbolism

This book details the natural history and cultural symbolism of a most unusual woodpecker – a species that neither excavates nest holes in trees, nor bores into wood to find insect prey. The elusive Wryneck is best renowned for performing a twisting, writhing head and neck display when threatened, but this ground-breaking study reveals many more secrets of its behaviour and evolution. Detailed information is presented on the species' origins, taxonomy, anatomy, appearance, moult, calls, distribution, conservation status, habitats, movements, breeding, diet and relationships, along with a chapter on its closest relative, the Red-throated Wryneck. The text is richly illustrated throughout with high quality photographs as well as sound spectrograms. This all-encompassing and engaging account has been written for a wide audience, whether professional ornithologist, citizen scientist, amateur birder, woodpecker aficionado and simply someone who wishes to learn more about this curious and remarkable bird.

scholarly journals Marine ichthyofauna of Santa Catarina Island, Southern Brazil: checklist with comments on the species

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisela Costa Ribeiro ◽  
André Pereira Cattani ◽  
Mauricio Hostim-Silva ◽  
Leandro Clezar ◽  
Ana Carolina dos Passos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Conservation Status ◽  
Species Distributions ◽  
Marine Fishes ◽  
Brazilian Coast ◽  
Coastal Environments ◽  
Southern Brazil ◽  
Santa Catarina ◽  
Western Atlantic ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Brazilian Province

Abstract: This study aimed to present a checklist of marine fishes from coastal environments of the Island of Santa Catarina, including comments on the zoogeographic affinities, conservation status of each species, and functional groups. A total of 169 fish species belonging to 30 orders and 58 families were recorded. The most speciose families were Sciaenidae, Carangidae and, Engraulidae, representing 26,62% of the recorded species. Anchoa was the richest genus, followed by Sphoeroides and Cynoscion. Most of the species have their distribution limited to the western Atlantic, and two groups of fish were distinguished according to the species distributions: 1) species occurring in the Caribbean and in the Brazilian Province; and 2) Transatlantic species. Thirteen species are critically threatened, 10 are overexploited on the Brazilian coast, and 2 are threatened by extinction. Most of the species are either marine stragglers or marine migrants, and most of them are zoobenthivores, piscivores, or both.

scholarly journals The genus Pelophylax (Amphibia, Ranidae) in Pakistan: museum collections and possible distribution

Herpetozoa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 141-147
Author(s):  
Daniel Jablonski ◽  
Addison Wynn ◽  
Rafaqat Masroor ◽  
Theodore Papenfuss ◽  
Spartak N. Litvinchuk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ◽  
Field Investigations ◽  
The Family ◽  
Kabul River

We provide the first comprehensive data on the questionable distribution of the genus Pelophylax and the family Ranidae from Pakistan. Based on a literature review and two specimens of the genus from Tasp, Panjgur District in Pakistani Balochistan (USNM 26194–95), stored in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, USA, we discuss the possible occurrence and affiliation of these frogs in the context of Central Asia. Our comparison shows that the nearest records of Pelophylax in relation to the Tasp specimens are reported from more than 280 km (air-line) away in Iran and Afghanistan, which are currently separated by hot and mostly desert environments. We suggest that possible surviving populations of this genus may still be present in Balochistan (Rakhshan River) or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Kabul River) Provinces of Pakistan. This would, however, need further field investigations.

scholarly journals REDESCRIPTION OF Minervarya nicobariensis (STOLIZKA, 1870) (AMPHIBIA: DICROGLOSSIDAE) WITH A NEOTYPE DESIGNATION

2020 ◽  
pp. 205-209
Author(s):  
S.R. Chandramouli ◽  
K.V. Devi Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
Breeding Biology ◽  
Larval Morphology ◽  
Frog Species ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
Insular Endemic

The poorly-known, insular endemic frog species, Minervarya nicobariensis (Stoliczka, 1870) is re-described based on new material from the Nicobar Archipelago. A neotype is designated as its holotype had been lost. Novel data on biology, ecology, distribution and natural history of this poorly known species are provided. Breeding biology and larval morphology are described in detail. Potential threats to the species are discussed and an assessment of its conservation status is attempted.

scholarly journals History of the publishing activity of the State Natural History Museum of the NAS of Ukraine

2019 ◽  
pp. 157-160
Author(s):  
O. Klymyshyn
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Publishing Activity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Collections

The publishing activity of the museum for the whole period of its existence is analyzed, starting from the first published in the museum by V. Didushitsky in 1880 and up to 2018 inclusive. Approximately this work is about 3.5 thousand publications, among which 84 monographs; 35 issues of the scientific miscellany "Proceedings of the State Natural History Museum"; 5 issues of the book series "Scientific Collections of the State Natural History Museum"; more than 50 catalogs of museum collections, thematic miscellanies, qualifiers, dictionaries and guides; about 2.2 thousand scientific articles; about 1 thousand materials and abstracts of reports of scientific conferences, as well as dozens of popular scientific articles, brochures and booklets.

scholarly journals On the identity of types of Roncus diocletiani Curcic, Dimitrijevic & Radja and Archaeoroncus tenuis (Hadzi) (Pseudoscorpiones, Neobisiidae) from Croatia

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 761-766
Author(s):  
B.P.M. Curcic ◽  
T. Radja ◽  
S.E. Makarov ◽  
R.N. Dimitrijevic ◽  
S.B. Curcic ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Nominal Species ◽  
History Museum

Five years ago, Curcic et al. (2008) described two new pseudoscorpions: Roncus diocletiani Curcic, Dimitrijevic and Radja (from Croatia) and R. orjensis Curcic, Dimitrijevic and Radja (from Montenegro). The pseudoscorpions studied were mounted on slides with gum-chloral medium. They are deposited in the collection of the Institute of Zoology, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia and in the collection of the Natural History Museum, 21000 Split, Croatia. It has been shown that only the male of R. diocletiani belongs to the nominal species, while the female of the same taxon belongs to Archaeoroncus tenuis (Hadzi). Therefore, the ?allotype male? of R. diocletiani is actually a holotype of this species, while the ?holotype? of R. diocletiani becomes a paratype of A. tenuis.

scholarly journals Addressing Uncertainties in Machine Learning Predictions of Conservation Status

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barnaby Walker ◽  
Tarciso Leão ◽  
Steven Bachman ◽  
Eve Lucas ◽  
Eimear Nic Lughadha
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Extinction Risk ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
Red List ◽  
Learning Models ◽  
Species Occurrence ◽  
Voucher Specimens ◽  
Machine Learning Models ◽  
Occurrence Records

Extinction risk assessments are increasingly important to many stakeholders (Bennun et al. 2017) but there remain large gaps in our knowledge about the status of many species. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN 2019, hereafter Red List) is the most comprehensive assessment of extinction risk. However, it includes assessments of just 7% of all vascular plants, while 18% of all assessed animals lack sufficient data to assign a conservation status. The wide availability of species occurrence information through digitised natural history collections and aggregators such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), coupled with machine learning methods, provides an opportunity to fill these gaps in our knowledge. Machine learning approaches have already been proposed to guide conservation assessment efforts (Nic Lughadha et al. 2018), assign a conservation status to species with insufficient data for a full assessment (Bland et al. 2014), and predict the number of threatened species across the world (Pelletier et al. 2018). The wide range in sources of species occurrence records can lead to data quality issues, such as missing, imprecise, or mistaken information. These data quality issues may be compounded in databases that aggregate information from multiple sources: many such records derive from field observations (78% for plant species in GBIF; Meyer et al. 2016) largely unsupported by voucher specimens that would allow confirmation or correction of their identification. Even where voucher specimens do exist, different taxonomic or geographic information can be held for a single collection event represented by duplicate specimens deposited in different natural history collections. Tools are available to help clean species occurrence data, but these cannot deal with problems like specimen misidentification, which previous work (Nic Lughadha et al. 2019) has shown to have a large impact on preliminary assessments of conservation status. Machine learning models based on species occurrence records have been reported to predict with high accuracy the conservation status of species. However, given the black-box nature of some of the better machine learning models, it is unclear how well these accuracies apply beyond the data on which the models were trained. Practices for training machine learning models differ between studies, but more interrogation of these models is required if we are to know how much to trust their predictions. To address these problems, we compare predictions made by a machine learning model when trained on specimen occurrence records that have benefitted from minimal or more thorough cleaning, with those based on records from an expert-curated database. We then explore different techniques to interrogate machine learning models and quantify the uncertainty in their predictions.

The Alloxysta (Hymenoptera: Figitidae: Charipinae) type material in the United States National Museum of Natural History and the Canadian National Collection of Insects

2013 ◽  
Vol 145 (6) ◽  
pp. 603-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mar Ferrer-Suay ◽  
Jesús Selfa ◽  
Juli Pujade-Villar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural History ◽  
District Of Columbia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Type Material ◽  
Valid Species ◽  
Nominal Species ◽  
National Museum ◽  
United States National Museum ◽  
Nomina Dubia

AbstractAlloxysta Förster, 1869 (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) type material of 19 nominal species deposited in the Canadian National Collection of Insects (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) and the United States National Museum of Natural History (Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America) were studied. Nine species are treated as valid: A. australiae (Ashmead, 1900), A. commensuratus Andrews, 1978, A. japonicus (Ashmead, 1904), A. lachni (Ashmead, 1885), A. longiventris Baker, 1896, A. minuscula Andrews, 1978, A. nothofagi Andrews, 1976, A. vandenboschi Andrews, 1978, and A. xanthopsis (Ashmead, 1896). The following synonymies are established: A. affinis (Baker, 1896) and A. quebeci Andrews, 1978 junior synonyms of A. castanea (Hartig, 1841); A. alaskensis Ashmead, 1902 and A. coniferensis Andrews, 1978 junior synonyms of A. macrophadna (Hartig, 1841); A. bicolor (Baker, 1896) and A. anthracina Andrews, 1978 junior synonyms of A. obscurata (Hartig, 1840); A. dicksoni Andrews, 1978 junior synonym of A. pilipennis (Hartig, 1840); and A. leguminosa (Weld, 1920), A. megourae (Ashmead, 1887), and A. rauchi Andrews, 1978 junior synonyms of A. brevis (Thomson, 1862). The type material of A. schlingeri Andrews, 1978 and A. halli Andrews, 1978 could not be found and we consider them as nomina dubia. Alloxysta vandenboschi Andrews is removed from synonymy with A. obscurata and considered a valid species. Comments on the type material are given. Complete redescriptions and images are presented for the valid species.

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