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From Tyrannosaurus rex to Heteropoda davidbowie: scientific naming as a joyful and creative act. Tyrannosaurus rex. Homo sapiens. Heteropoda davidbowie. Behind each act of scientific naming is a story. In this entertaining and illuminating book, Michael Ohl considers scientific naming as a joyful and creative act. There are about 1.8 million discovered and named plant and animal species, and millions more still to be discovered. Naming is the necessary next step after discovery; it is through the naming of species that we perceive and understand nature. Ohl explains the process, with examples, anecdotes, and a wildly varied cast of characters. He describes the rules for scientific naming; th...
This study is the first revision in 35 years of the native Hawaiian sphecid wasps of the genus Ectemnius. The author provides an original key to species, diagnoses, descriptions, distributions, and illustrations along with a compilation of all known biological information for each species.
Centris (Paracentris) Cameron is one of the most specious and morphologically diverse subgenera of the bee genus Centris Fabricius. These two features, along with the lack of modern taxonomic revisions make this group one of the lineages with the greatest taxonomic problems within Centridini. Partial revisions of groups of species from North and South America have been published, but none comprehensively studying all species described. In this book are studied all species of Centris (Paracentris) for the first time, providing diagnoses and redescriptions of both sexes. The following twenty one species are described as new: C. aenigmatica sp. nov., C. agyniax sp. nov., C. areequipensis sp. no...
The ant genus Mystrium in the Malagasy region is revised and six new species are described from Madagascar and its surrounding islands. The discovery of the division of females into major and minor forms was the key to solving this omplicated taxonomic puzzle. We found that in some species of Mystrium, major or minor workers develop as reproductives. In Mystrium, morphological comparison among individuals from the same phenotype, not from their reproductive or functional role is important. Here we propose a new taxonomic framework for interesting and mysterious genus. All species are reclassified into three subgroups based on the reproductive function, and innovative pictorial keys to the species for all castes and sexes are developed. The associations between existing names and males are reexamined, and males of eight of the ten Malagasy species are described or redescribed.
First published in 1993, completely rewritten, this second edition includes a list of all 210 countries of the world and all of the islands, with comments on the existence of insect and spider collections, both public and private. These listings are arranged alphabetically by country, state/province, and city, with private collections listed under the public collection with which they are registered. Part II of the directory is an alphabetical list of the codes assigned to each of the collections described in Part I. This list is also cross-referenced to variations of the codes used in other works, which will eliminate any confusion over this duplication. This classic work provides a ready reference to all collections and is required by all insect and spider systematists.
This bibliography is a comprehensive compilation of the literature on ant systematics. Covering the period 1758 to 1995, it contains entries for approximately 8,000 publications on the taxonomy, evolution, and comparative biology of ants. Most of the literature citations have been carefully verified and precisely dated. An introductory chapter discusses the problems associated with dating a citation of taxonomic literature. A list of all serials cited (more than 1,300 titles) and their abbreviations accompanies the bibliography.