Search results for "Arthropod"
showing 10 items of 308 documents
Revision of Afrotropical Dyscritobaeus Perkins, 1910 (Hymenoptera: Scelionidae)
2016
A revision of Afrotropical species of Dyscritobaeus Perkins is presented with re-description of the four known species ( D. bicolor O’Connor et Ashe, D. comitans Perkins, D. parvipennis (Dodd) and D. sulawensis Mineo, O’Connor et Ashe) and description of six new species ( D. antananarivensis Tortorici et Caleca sp. nov., D. flavus Tortorici et Caleca sp. nov. , D. kilimanjarensis Tortorici et Caleca sp. nov. , D. madagascarensis Tortorici et Caleca sp. nov. , D. ndokii Tortorici et Caleca sp. nov. and D. tanzaniensis Tortorici et Caleca sp. nov.). Dyscritobaeus cerosus is considered to be a junior synonym of D. comitans , D. hannibal is considered to be a junior synonym of D. sulawensis and…
Orthoptera (Insecta: Tettigonioidea, Pyrgomorphoidea, Acridoidea) of Kafa Biosphere Reserve, Bale Mountains National Park and other areas of conserva…
2016
An annotated checklist of 51 Orthoptera taxa (Tettigonioidea, Pyrgomorphoidea and Acridoidea) of Kafa Biosphere Reserve, Bale Mountains National Park and some additional sites in Ethiopia is presented. Ten species are newly recorded for the country. Four species are new to science: Peropyrrhicia attilioi n. sp., P. keffensis n. sp., P. semiensis n. sp. and Coryphosima danieli n. sp. The status of Peropyrrhicia cooperi Uvarov, 1934 and P. scotti Uvarov, 1934 is revised: both are considered valid species.
Do bank voles (Myodes glareolus) trapped in live and lethal traps show differences in tick burden?
2020
In studies assessing tick abundance, the use of live traps to capture and euthanize rodent hosts is a commonly used method to determine their burden. However, captive animals can experience debilitating or fatal capture stress as a result prior to collection. An alternative method is the use of lethal traps, but this can potentially lead to tick drop-off between the time of capture and collection. In this study, in order to determine whether subjecting animals to capture stress is inevitable, we tested the difference in sheep tick (Ixodes ricinus) larval burdens between bank voles (Myodes glareolus) captured alive and euthanized, and lethally trapped bank voles. During 2017 and 2018, 1318 b…
Effects of cuticle structure and crystalline wax coverage on the coloration in young and old males of Calopteryx splendens and Calopteryx virgo
2010
Male secondary sexual characters, such as color patterns, are often investigated at the macroscale level. However, micro- and nanoscale levels of morphological investigations may reveal functional features responsible for a particular coloration, thus providing more information, e.g., about the condition dependence of male sexual characters. The aim of this paper was to investigate cuticle color and its structure in males of two congeneric damselfly species, Calopteryx splendens and Calopteryx virgo, and reveal possible color changes with age. According to spectrometer measurements, C. splendens males were bluer and had a greater saturation of blue in their abdomen than C. virgo males, whic…
Honeybees produce millimolar concentrations of non-neuronal acetylcholine for breeding: possible adverse effects of neonicotinoids
2016
The worldwide use of neonicotinoid pesticides has caused concern on account of their involvement in the decline of bee populations, which are key pollinators in most ecosystems. Here we describe a role of non-neuronal acetylcholine (ACh) for breeding of Apis mellifera carnica and a so far unknown effect of neonicotinoids on non-target insects. Royal jelly or larval food are produced by the hypopharyngeal gland of nursing bees and contain unusually high ACh concentrations (4–8 mM). ACh is extremely well conserved in royal jelly or brood food because of the acidic pH of 4.0. This condition protects ACh from degradation thus ensuring delivery of intact ACh to larvae. Raising the pH to ≥5.5 and…
Trans-Reactivation: A New Epigenetic Phenomenon Underlying Transcriptional Reactivation of Silenced Genes
2015
In order to study the role played by cellular RNA pools produced by homologous genomic loci in defining the transcriptional state of a silenced gene, we tested the effect of non-functional alleles of the white gene in the presence of a functional copy of white, silenced by heterochromatin. We found that non-functional alleles of white, unable to produce a coding transcript, could reactivate in trans the expression of a wild type copy of the same gene silenced by heterochromatin. This new epigenetic phenomenon of transcriptional trans-reactivation is heritable, relies on the presence of homologous RNA’s and is affected by mutations in genes involved in post-transcriptional gene silencing. Ou…
Revision of the Shore-fly Genera Parahyadina Tonnoir and Malloch and New Zealand Hyadina Haliday (Diptera: Ephydridae).
2019
Two genera of the shore-fly tribe Hyadinini, Hyadina Haliday and Parahyadina Tonnoir & Malloch, are revised, and all species treated, save P. lacustris Tonnoir & Malloch, are described for the first time. The phylogenetic position of both genera within Hyadinini is presented along with confirming, morphological evidence. The New Zealand fauna of Hyadina is now limited to the single new species H. breva, and Parahyadina is expanded from being a monotypic genus based on P. lacustris to also include the following 9 endemic new species: P. angusta, P. atra, P. bifurcata, P. bulla, P. debilis, P. edmistoni, P. hennigi, P. irwini, and P. latistylis. For both genera, emphasis is given to s…
The genus Tuponia Reuter, 1875 in Romania, with two new synonymies (Heteroptera: Miridae)
2021
Based on recently collected material and on type specimens deposited in the collections of Muzeul de Istorie Naturală “Grigore Antipa”, Bucharest, Romania, and of the Zoologische Museum, Universität Hamburg, Germany, the following new synonymies are proposed: Tuponia (Chlorotuponia) prasina (Fieber, 1864) = Tuponia (Chlorotuponia) linnavuorii Wagner, 1961, syn. n.; Tuponia (Tuponia) montandoni Reuter, 1899 = Tuponia (Tuponia) macedonica Wagner, 1957, syn. n. Lectotype and paralectotype are designated for Tuponia (Tuponia) montandoni Reuter, 1899. Tuponia (Chlorotuponia) hippophaes (Fieber, 1861), Tuponia (Tuponia) arcufera Reuter, 1879 and Tuponia (Tuponia) elegans (Jakovlev, 1867) are reco…
Revision of the genus Prionotropis Fieber, 1853 (Orthoptera: Pamphagidae: Thrinchinae)
2015
The genus Prionotropis Fieber, 1853 is revised. It is distributed in scattered areas of the Mediterranean region from Turkey in the East to Spain in the West. Overall, seven species are listed, namely P. maculinervis (Stål, 1878) (Turkey; P. urfensis Ramme, 1933 is here considered its synonym), P. willemsorum n. sp. (Greece, Epirus; previously considered P. appula), P. appula (O.G. Costa, 1836) (South Italy), P. hystrix (Germar, 1817) (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, North-East Italy; P. hystrix sontiaca is here synonymized), P. rhodanica Uvarov, 1923 resurrected status (France, Crau, Rhone delta; here considered a valid species), P. azami Uvarov, 1923 n. status (France, Var regi…
Remarks on some interesting African Pamphagidae and Acrididae (Insecta: Orthoptera: Acridoidea).
2020
The author reports about the results of a study of Porthetinae (Pamphagidae) and other Acridoidea preserved in some European museums. The taxonomy of African Porthetinae is still poorly known; some genera were established on variable characters (e.g.: the number of the flagellum segments, the shape of the hind femora or the prosternal tubercle) and collections generally hold only few specimens of this group. These insects are characterized by a remarkable sexual dimorphism, the males generally are winged while females are apterous. Because many species were described only from one sex (sometimes the female sex), there are objective difficulties to identify them correctly. The following syno…