The history of Ilex (Aquifoliaceae) with special reference to Australia: Evidence from pollen

1977 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 655 ◽  
Author(s):  
HA Martin

Ilex is cosmopolitan excluding the arid and arctic areas and consists of some 400 species. Australia has one species, Ilex arnhemensis, which is restricted to the north. The pollen of Ilex is very distinctive and fossil specimens can be related to it with certainty. There is an undescribed fossil species in the Turonian (earliest Upper Cretaceous) of south-eastern Australia, where Ilex predates the first appearance of Nothofagus. Ilexpollenites spp. are usually present from Maastrichtian (latest Upper Cretaceous) to late Miocene. Elsewhere in the world there are three other Cretaceous records and abundant Tertiary occurrences from every geographic region. Ilex was cosmopolitan throughout the Tertiary and it may have been world wide in the Upper Cretaceous also. Ilex grows as a tree or shrub and requires a relatively wet and equable climate (with perhaps a few exceptions). The seeds are dispersed by birds and the embryo undergoes continuous development until germination which may take from 2 to 8 years. Such strategies must be an asset for a wide distribution. Previous works on modern distributions and morphology have implicated south-eastern Asia as the place of origin of Ilex. The fossil record does not support this hypothesis although it is not sufficient to pinpoint its origin. At the time when Ilex evolved, more equable climates extended much further towards the poles than they do today. The south-east Asian region has had one of the most stable climates and is a refuge for ancient angiosperms, regardless of place of origin. No doubt the development of aridity in Australia has restricted Ilex to the north.

1982 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
FJ Odendaal ◽  
CM Bull

Ranidella signifera has a wide distribution in south-eastern Australia; R. riparia is endemic to the Flin- ders Ranges in South Australia. The ranges of the two species are largely allopatric, but they contact and overlap in a zone about 10 km wide, in the southern Flinders Ranges. The nature of the creeks changes across this zone. Immediately to the south and east, where only R. signifera is found, the creeks are slow-flowing and heavily vegetated, with mud or sand substrates. To the north and west the creeks are swift-flowing, and have rocky substrates and little vegetation; only R. riparia is found in these. In the sympatric overlap zone creeks are heterogeneous, with both habitat types represented. The close association between species and creek habitat is lost in populations not immediately adjacent to the overlap zone. This implies that each species can survive in both creek habitats but that R. riparia has a competitive advantage in swift, rocky creeks and R, signifera has an advantage in slow, vegetated creeks. This prevents either species from expanding its distribution beyond the narrow overlap area.


2021 ◽  
pp. 229-241
Author(s):  
Maciej Rak

The article has three goals. The first is to present the history of research on Polish dialectal phrasematics. In particular, attention was paid to the last five years, i.e. the period 2015–2020. The works in question were ordered according to the dialectological key, taking into account the following dialects: Greater Polish, Masovian, Silesian, Lesser Polish, and the North and South-Eastern dialects. The second goal is to indicate the methodologies that have so far been used to describe dialectal phrasematics. Initially, component analysis was used, which was part of the structuralist research trend, later (more or less from the late 1980s) the ethnolinguistic approach, especially the description of the linguistic picture of the world, began to dominate. The third goal of the article is to provide perspectives. The author once again (as he did it in his earlier works) postulates the preparation of a dictionary of Polish dialectal phrasematics.


Inner Asia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Elke Studer

AbstractThe article outlines the Mongolian influences on the biggest horse race festival in Nagchu prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).Since old times these horse races have been closely linked to the worship of the local mountain deity by the patrilineal nomadic clans of the South-Eastern Changthang, the North Tibetan plain. In the seventeenth century the West Mongol chieftain Güüshi Khan shaped the history of Tibet. To support his political claims, he enlarged the horse race festival's size and scale, and had his troops compete in the different horse race and archery competitions in Nagchu. Since then, the winners of the big race are celebrated side by side with the political achievements and claims of the central government in power.


1976 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 641 ◽  
Author(s):  
RM McDowall

The family Prototroctidae, the genus Prototroctes, and the two contained species-P. oxyrhynchus Gunther, 1870 (New Zealand) and P. maraena Gunther 1864 (south-eastern Australia and Tasmania) are described. P. oxyvhynchus is distinguished from P. maraena by much higher counts of lateral scale rows, vertebrae and gill rakers. What is known of the natural history of Prototroctes is reviewed. P. oxyvhynchus is extinct and P. maraena now rare; reasons for the decline of these species are discussed.


1985 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 1274-1285 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Trexler Jr.

The Cretaceous Methow Basin of north-central Washington is the southernmost of a series of Mesozoic successor basins in the Cordillera of western North America. The Albian–Campanian(?) Virginian Ridge Formation comprises three members, newly defined here, that gradationally interfinger with each other and grade laterally and upward into overlying strata. Detailed stratigraphic analysts of the Virginian Ridge Formation and of the intimately related parts of the Winthrop and Midnight Peak formations indicates that these units represent complexly interfingering facies derived from a variety of sources, both to the west and to the east of the basin and locally within the system. This study suggests a detailed model for the history of the Upper Cretaceous Methow Basin: generation of a restricted basin with a stable, roughly north–south-trending axis, filled by a stable, east-derived fluvial and deltaic system (Winthrop Formation) interfingering with a laterally amalgamated, west-derived northward and eastward transgressive fan-delta system (Virginian Ridge Formation). The sequence grades upward into, and finally is overwhelmed by, locally derived volcanics of the Midnight Peak Formation. Similar, and in part coeval, successor basin sequences throughout the North American Cordillera may have been generated in response to similar tectonic settings.


2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 937 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. D. Jackson ◽  
R. J. E. Wiltshire

The troubled taxonomic history of Stylidium graminifolium Sw. ex Willd. (syn. Candollea serrulata Labill.) is reviewed. The entity formerly known as S. graminifolium forms a complex consisting of three species. Stylidium graminifolium sens. str. is lectotypified on the basis of plants collected by Banks and Solander from Botany Bay NSW in 1770. This narrow-linear-leaved species is diploid (2n = 30) and is distributed widely on infertile soils in south-eastern continental Australia and Tasmania. Stylidium armeria Labill., on the basis of plants collected from southern Tasmania in the late 1790s, is a tetraploid (2n = 60), with leaves about two to three or four times wider than in S. graminifolium and more spathulate in shape. It has a strictly littoral habitat along the rough water coasts of Tasmania from Macquarie Heads to Tasman Peninsula, probably extending to the coasts of south-eastern Australia. Stylidium melastachys R.Br., on the basis of plants collected from the Kent Group in Bass Strait in 1803, is synonymous with S. armeria. A third species, S. dilatatum W.D.Jackson and R.J.E.Wiltshire, is described as new. It is morphologically similar to S. graminifolium but has linear leaves about two to three times as wide as S. graminifolium and is a tetraploid (2n = 60). It is widely distributed in Tasmania and in the cooler subalpine areas of south-eastern Australia but is confined to more fertile soils than the soils in which S. graminifolium is found.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (02) ◽  
pp. 2030005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kolja L. Kypke ◽  
William F. Langford

This article presents a bifurcation analysis of a simple Energy Balance Model (EBM) of the Earth’s climate, which suggests that topological change has occurred in the paleoclimate history of the Earth. In the theory of dynamical systems, two systems that are topologically equivalent have solutions with the same qualitative behavior. A change in the topological equivalence class, as parameters are varied, is called a bifurcation. Thus, a bifurcation demarcates a significant change in the behavior of the solutions of a dynamical system. If that system represents climate, then that topological change may represent an abrupt transformation of the climate, occurring even with a very small change in the forcing parameters. In this paper, the existence of a cusp bifurcation is proven in a climate EBM. The existence of this cusp bifurcation implies the co-existence of two distinct stable equilibrium climate states (bistability), as well as the existence of abrupt transitions between these two states (fold bifurcations) in the EBM. These transitions are dependent on the past history of the system (hysteresis). The two universal unfolding parameters for the cusp bifurcation have been determined as functions of the relevant physical parameters. These ideas lead to the proposal of a new explanation for the so-called warm equable climate problem of the mid-Cretaceous and early Eocene. The analysis presented here implies that the mid-Cretaceous and early Eocene climate systems are topologically equivalent to each other, but they are not topologically equivalent to the preindustrial modern climate. The transition from the warm, equable paleoclimate to today’s cooler nonequable climate occurs via fold (or saddle-node) bifurcations in the EBM, which correspond to the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) at the south pole and the Pliocene-Pleistocene Transition (PPT) at the north pole, in the paleoclimate record of Earth.


2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (8) ◽  
pp. 645 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. D. Li ◽  
Z. N. Nie ◽  
S. P. Boschma ◽  
B. S. Dear ◽  
G. M. Lodge ◽  
...  

The persistence and productivity of a diverse range of Medicago sativa germplasm including representatives of subspecies sativa, caerulea, falcata and varia were examined at 3 field sites in south-eastern Australia over 4 years. Sites were located at Tamworth, Barmedman and Hamilton, forming a 1200 km north–south transect with rainfall distribution varying from predominantly summer dominant in the north to winter dominant at the most southerly site. Several entries of subspecies varia and caerulea had herbage yields and persistence equivalent to that of M. sativa subspecies sativa cultivar Sceptre, a highly winter-active type that was used as a standard. The cultivar Cancreep, a cross of M. falcata and M. sativa, had a total yield over 3 years equivalent to 84–91% of Sceptre at the 2 sites where it was sown. Individual lines of subspecies varia demonstrated good persistence under grazing and were ranked 2nd and 6th out of 35 accessions for frequency in year 4 at Barmedman, the driest site, and 5th, 7th and 9th out of 33 accessions at Tamworth, the more summer-dominant rainfall site. Entries of subspecies falcata were among the least productive and persistent. The study indicated that germplasm from subspecies caerulea and varia offered hitherto unexploited potential for selection as persistent and drought-tolerant perennial legume alternatives to M. sativa for extensive low management grazing systems of south-eastern Australia.


2021 ◽  
pp. 321-344
Author(s):  
Eve Krakowski

The formation of the Islamic Middle East between the seventh and tenth centuries connected Jews living across a vast geographic region and encouraged them to organize themselves as members of a single diaspora community, even when they shared no recent place of origin. This chapter examines that shift, focusing especially on the rise, fall, and aftermath of a diaspora system centered on the ge’onim and other Jewish religious leaders in Baghdad and Jerusalem, which flourished among elite medieval Jews in the late Abbasid period and immediately after (from the later ninth to the twelfth centuries), profoundly affecting the history of Judaism even after the system’s demise.


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