A new species of “rooster coomb”, Euploca decorticans (Heliotropiaceae), from the highlands of the state of Goiás, Brazil

Euploca decorticans, is here described and illustrated as a new species from a heretofore poorly collected mountain area in Goiás state, Brazil. It is most morphologically similar to E. salicoides, one of the most widely distributed taxa of the genus in Brazil but differs from that species in several features related to habit (height and growth aspect), leaves (shape, trichome types, and venation pattern), flowers (size, corolla shape, length, color), inflorescence (length), fruits (diameter and trichome types) and nutlets (shapes), among other features. We include a distribution map besides photos and drawings of the new species, and we also discuss its conservation status.

Ingensalinae subfam. nov. (Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha: Fulgoroidea: Inoderbidae), a new planthopper subfamily from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber from Myanmar

The second genus and species of recently established planthopper family Inoderbidae, Ingensala xiai gen. et sp. nov., is described based on a well-preserved specimen from mid-Cretaceous Kachin (Burmese) amber, and it can be definitely attributed to Inoderbidae mainly based on its head structure, pronotum, and mesonotum without median and lateral carinae and tegmen venation. Ingensala gen. nov. is superficially similar to Eofulgoridium regarding its venation pattern, rather than to the Inoderbidae type genus Inoderbe, and further confirmed that Inoderbidae might descend from the Jurassic planthopper family Fulgoridiidae. The early fork of CuA and the stem CuA bearing many branches also can be found in Jurassic Qiyangiricaniidae and Eocene Weiwoboidae. Ingensala gen. nov. also superficially resembles some Tropiduchidae: Tropiduchinae. The new genus differs from the type genus Inoderbe to a large extent according to its wide head, frons without fastigium, antennae not so elongate, the tectiform condition of wings' position in repose, large, broad and translucent tegmen, triangular basal cell, single CuA1, legs covered with short setae, and the lack of filamentous wax on body. Therefore, two new subfamilies (Inoderbinae stat. nov. and Ingensalinae subfam. nov.) are established for these two genera respectively. The diversification in planthoppers could be the result of pressure of environmental changes during the mid-Cretaceous, and Inoderbidae provides more information for us to understand the Cretaceous stage of Fulgoroidea evolution and diversification.

Venation studies of some species in the genus Ficus Linn. in Southwestern Nigeria

The present study investigates the venation of ten species of the genus Ficus collected from Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife (latitude 7° 31' 14.7612'' N and longitude 4° 31' 49.1340'' E) and the NACGRAB, Ibadan, Nigeria (latitude 7°23¢4²N and longitude 3°50¢31²E). The leaf venations of the species were carried out using standard methods. All photomicrographs of the features were taken with the aid of Amscope digital camera mounted on a celesterone binocular microscope. All data were subjected of analysis of variance using SAS software. The result revealed the Leaf venation pattern based on areole shape, length and width, veinlets ending and trichomes. The leaf venation patterns of the species show that they are significant in identifying and delimiting studied species within the genus with respect to qualitative and quantitative data. Species specific variation were recorded for the venation patterns as areole shape, length and width, veinlets ending and trichomes and these features are either genetically fixed or as a result of environmental extremes. Presence of cystolith cells, trichomes and no veinlets ending is diagnostic of Ficus mucuso. The study concluded that venation patterns are therefore significant in delimitation of species in the genus Ficus and these characters can be employed as additional information in the existing taxonomical keys of the genus.

Phylogenetic Relationships of Tovomita (Clusiaceae): Carpel Number and Geographic Distribution Speak Louder than Venation Pattern

Abstract—Tovomita is a Neotropical clade of Clusiaceae that includes 52 species widely distributed throughout the Amazon, Atlantic, Antilles, and Chocoan/southern Mesoamerican rainforests. Species-level relationships within Tovomita remain largely unexplored, thus hindering our understanding of their biogeography and the evolution of key morphological characters in the genus. Here, we inferred a plastid genome phylogeny containing 18 Tovomita species using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference approaches. Our results indicate that current infrageneric classification of Tovomita, which relies largely on leaf venation, does not reflect phylogenetic relationships. Instead, we identify carpel number as a more reliable morphological trait for infrageneric classification: clades within Tovomita tend to include species that possess either four or five (or more) carpels. Moreover, groups of species within Tovomita tend to exhibit a high degree of geographic endemicity corresponding to their clade affiliation: species within these clades are restricted to either Amazon or Atlantic forests. The well supported clade of Atlantic forest inhabitants we identify is sister to a clade of mostly Amazonian species that also includes Amazon and Atlantic forest disjunct species, which are more closely related to Amazonian than to other Atlantic forest species. These findings represent a first important step in elucidating morphological evolution and biogeography in this widespread genus of neotropical rainforest trees and shrubs.

Expansion of the fern genus Lecanopteris to encompass some species previously included in Microsorum and Colysis (Polypodiaceae)

The fern genus Microsorum is not monophyletic, with previous phylogenetic analyses finding three lineages to group not with the type species, but to form a grade related to the 13 species of Lecanopteris. These three lineages have recently been recognised as separate genera: Bosmania, Dendroconche, and Zealandia. Here, we explore the morphological characterisation of Lecanopteris and these other three lecanopteroid genera. While the traditional circumscription of Lecanopteris has seemed sacrosanct, its defining morphological character states of rhizome cavities and ant brooding associations occur in other lecanopteroid ferns and elsewhere in the Polypodiaceae. Instead, we suggest that the morphological characterisation of an expanded Lecanopteris including the Dendroconche and Zealandia lineages is just as good, if not better, with the pertinent character states being the absence of sclerenchyma strands in the rhizome and at least some fronds having Nooteboom’s type 5 venation pattern. This wider circumscription is also better able to accommodate phylogenetic uncertainty, and it means that groups of species traditionally placed together in a single genus are not distributed across different genera. General users familiar with the narrower circumscription of Lecanopteris will not be significantly disrupted, because there is little geographic overlap with the lineages added to the genus. Consequently, we make new combinations in Lecanopteris for 11 species and one subspecies.

Increase in Absolute Leaf Water Content Tends to Keep Pace with That of Leaf Dry Mass—Evidence from Bamboo Plants

Leaves, as the most important photosynthetic organ of plants, are intimately associated with plant function and adaptation to environmental changes. The scaling relationship of the leaf dry mass (or the fresh mass) vs. leaf surface area has been referred to as “diminishing returns”, suggesting that the leaf area fails to increase in proportion to leaf dry mass (or fresh mass). However, previous studies used materials across different families, and there is lack of studies testing whether leaf fresh mass is proportional to the leaf dry mass for the species in the same family, and examining the influence of the scaling of leaf dry mass vs. fresh mass on two kinds of diminishing returns based on leaf dry mass and fresh mass. Bamboo plants (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) are good materials for doing such a study, which have astonishingly similar leaf shapes across species. Bamboo leaves have a typical parallel venation pattern. In general, a parallel venation pattern tends to produce a more stable symmetrical leaf shape than the pinnate and palmate venation patterns. The symmetrical parallel veins enable leaves to more regularly hold water, which is more likely to result in a proportional relationship between the leaf dry mass and absolute water content, which consequently determines whether the scaling exponent of the leaf dry mass vs. area is significantly different from (or the same as) that of the leaf fresh mass vs. area. In the present study, we used the data of 101 bamboo species, cultivars, forms and varieties (referred to as 101 (bamboo) taxa below for convenience) to analyze the scaling relationships between the leaf dry mass and area, and between leaf fresh mass and area. We found that the confidence intervals of the scaling exponents of the leaf fresh mass vs. dry mass of 68 out of the 101 taxa included unity, which indicates that for most bamboo species (67.3%), the increase in leaf water mass keeps pace with that of leaf dry mass. There was a significant scaling relationship between either leaf dry mass or fresh mass, and the leaf surface area for each studied species. We found that there was no significant difference between the scaling exponent of the leaf dry mass vs. leaf area and that of the leaf fresh mass vs. leaf area when the leaf dry mass was proportional to the leaf fresh mass. The goodness of fit to the linearized scaling relationship of the leaf fresh mass vs. area was better than that of the leaf dry mass vs. area for each of the 101 bamboo taxa. In addition, there were significant differences in the normalized constants of the leaf dry mass vs. fresh mass among the taxa (i.e., the differences in leaf water content), which implies the difference in the adaptabilities to different environments across the taxa.

Fossil dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera) from the late Oligocene Fossil-Lagerstätte Enspel (Rhineland-Palatinate, SW Germany)

Fossils of dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera), three larvae and one isolated hind wing, are described from the late Oligocene crater lake of Enspel (Westerwald, Germany). The larvae are interpreted to belong to one species, although representing three different ontogenetic stages. Comparison to extant taxa shows that the larvae are to be assigned to the clubtails (Gomphidae), namely to the genera Gomphidia or Ictinogomphus, or, more unlikely, Diastatomma in the subfamily Lindeniinae, and thus constitute the first record of larvae of this subfamily in the Oligocene. The venation pattern of the hind wing clearly shows that it belongs to a species in the family Macromiidae and thus constitutes the oldest record of this family.

Three-dimensional wing structure attenuates aerodynamic efficiency in flapping fly wings

The aerial performance of flying insects ultimately depends on how flapping wings interact with the surrounding air. It has previously been suggested that the wing's three-dimensional camber and corrugation help to stiffen the wing against aerodynamic and inertial loading during flapping motion. Their contribution to aerodynamic force production, however, is under debate. Here, we investigated the potential benefit of three-dimensional wing shape in three different-sized species of flies using models of micro-computed tomography-scanned natural wings and models in which we removed either the wing's camber, corrugation, or both properties. Forces and aerodynamic power requirements during root flapping were derived from three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics modelling. Our data show that three-dimensional camber has no benefit for lift production and attenuates Rankine–Froude flight efficiency by up to approximately 12% compared to a flat wing. Moreover, we did not find evidence for lift-enhancing trapped vortices in corrugation valleys at Reynolds numbers between 137 and 1623. We found, however, that in all tested insect species, aerodynamic pressure distribution during flapping is closely aligned to the wing's venation pattern. Altogether, our study strongly supports the assumption that the wing's three-dimensional structure provides mechanical support against external forces rather than improving lift or saving energetic costs associated with active wing flapping.