scholarly journals The Eomyidae in Asia: Biogeography, diversity and dispersals

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
Yuri Kimura ◽  
Isaac Casanovas-Vilar ◽  
Olivier Maridet ◽  
Daniela C. Kalthoff ◽  
Thomas Mörs ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Genus Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Endemic Genera ◽  
Ecological Shifts ◽  
Dispersal Events

In Asia, the first find of an eomyid rodent was reported almost one century after the first studies of the family Eomyidae in North America and Europe. Since then, eomyid rodents have been increasingly found in Asia particularly over the past two decades. Here, we review the Asian record of this family at the genus level. Currently, 22 species within 14 genera were reported from Asia, including seven endemic genera and rare materials of apeomyine eomyids. Eomyids emphasize the palaeogeographic importance of Asia in considering intercontinental dispersal events of small mammals. With newly compiled data for Asian eomyids, we also compare genus-level diversity trends through time among North America, Europe, and Asia. Despite data standardizations limited with respect to potential biases in the fossil record, we found that the Asian eomyid diversity closely follows ecological shifts induced by climate changes. In general, Asian eomyid genera disappeared earlier than their European counterparts. We suggest that this pattern is not dictated by differences in the quality of the fossil record and is related to the expansion of drier habitats over large areas of Asia.

scholarly journals Fossil-calibrated molecular phylogeny of atlantid heteropods (Gastropoda, Pterotracheoidea)

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Wall-Palmer ◽  
Arie W. Janssen ◽  
Erica Goetze ◽  
Le Qin Choo ◽  
Lisette Mekkes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Rapid Diversification ◽  
Maximum Likelihood Phylogeny ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Ribosomal Rrna

Abstract Background The aragonite shelled, planktonic gastropod family Atlantidae (shelled heteropods) is likely to be one of the first groups to be impacted by imminent ocean changes, including ocean warming and ocean acidification. With a fossil record spanning at least 100 Ma, atlantids have experienced and survived global-scale ocean changes and extinction events in the past. However, the diversification patterns and tempo of evolution in this family are largely unknown. Results Based on a concatenated maximum likelihood phylogeny of three genes (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 mitochondrial DNA, 28S and 18S ribosomal rRNA) we show that the three extant genera of the family Atlantidae, Atlanta, Protatlanta and Oxygyrus, form monophyletic groups. The genus Atlanta is split into two groups, one exhibiting smaller, well ornamented shells, and the other having larger, less ornamented shells. The fossil record, in combination with a fossil-calibrated phylogeny, suggests that large scale atlantid extinction was accompanied by considerable and rapid diversification over the last 25 Ma, potentially driven by vicariance events. Conclusions Now confronted with a rapidly changing modern ocean, the ability of atlantids to survive past global change crises gives some optimism that they may be able to persist through the Anthropocene.

Nutlet Morphology and the Use of SEMs to Determine Characteristics for Identification of Species in the Genus Cryptantha Lehm. ex G. Don Section Oreocarya (E. Greene) Payson

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 34-35
Author(s):  
Willow B. Murphy ◽  
Walter A. Kelley ◽  
Richard C. Dujay
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Flower Morphology ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Morphological Variations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Specific Differentiation ◽  
The Family ◽  
Identification Of Species ◽  
Vegetative Characters

The genus Cryptantha Lehm ex G. Don section Oreocarya (E. Greene) Payson of the family Boraginaceae presents some problems to botanists, both professional and amateur, in the keying and identification of species. The genus contains approximately 150 species, the section about 60 perennial and biennial herbs located generally in western North America. Identification has presented some taxonomic difficulty due to the variability and lack of distinctive vegetative characters. Botanists have turned to the nutlet (fruit) and flower morphology to aid in identification for precise specific differentiation. In the past, 10X magnification and a decent botanical illustrator were required to provide the illustrations necessary to assist in this identification. We are in the process of collecting micrographs of nutlets (dorsal, sagital, and ventral views) and developing a webpage containing these micrographs along with descriptions of their morphological variations.

scholarly journals Climbing since the early Miocene: The fossil record of Paullinieae (Sapindaceae)

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0248369
Author(s):  
Nathan A. Jud ◽  
Sarah E. Allen ◽  
Chris W. Nelson ◽  
Carolina L. Bastos ◽  
Joyce G. Chery
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Panama Canal ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Crown Group ◽  
Fossil Leaves ◽  
The Family ◽  
Cambial Variant ◽  
The Tropics

Paullinieae are a diverse group of tropical and subtropical climbing plants that belong to the soapberry family (Sapindaceae). The six genera in this tribe make up approximately one-quarter of the species in the family, but a sparse fossil record limits our understanding of their diversification. Here, we provide the first description of anatomically preserved fossils of Paullinieae and we re-evaluate other macrofossils that have been attributed to the tribe. We identified permineralized fossil roots in collections from the lower Miocene Cucaracha Formation where it was exposed along the Culebra Cut of the Panama Canal. We prepared the fossils using the cellulose acetate peel technique and compared the anatomy with that of extant Paullinieae. The fossil roots preserve a combination of characters found only in Paullinieae, including peripheral secondary vascular strands, vessel dimorphism, alternate intervessel pitting with coalescent apertures, heterocellular rays, and axial parenchyma strands of 2–4 cells, often with prismatic crystals. We also searched the paleontological literature for other occurrences of the tribe. We re-evaluated leaf fossils from western North America that have been assigned to extant genera in the tribe by comparing their morphology to herbarium specimens and cleared leaves. The fossil leaves that were assigned to Cardiospermum and Serjania from the Paleogene of western North America are likely Sapindaceae; however, they lack diagnostic characters necessary for inclusion in Paullinieae and should be excluded from those genera. Therefore, the fossils described here as Ampelorhiza heteroxylon gen. et sp. nov. are the oldest macrofossil evidence of Paullinieae. They provide direct evidence of the development of a vascular cambial variant associated with the climbing habit in Sapindaceae and provide strong evidence of the diversification of crown-group Paullinieae in the tropics by 18.5–19 million years ago.

scholarly journals Redescription of Arundel formation Ornithomimosaur material and a reinterpretation of Nedcolbertia justinhofmanni as an “Ostrich Dinosaur”: Biogeographic implications

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chase Doran Brownstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Early Cretaceous ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
New Taxon ◽  
Western North America ◽  
The Past

The fossil record of dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous of eastern North America is scant, and only a few sediments to the east of the continent are fossiliferous. Among them is the Arundel Formation of the east coast of the United States, which has produced among the best dinosaur faunas known from the Early Cretaceous of eastern North America. The diverse dinosaur fauna of this formation has been thoroughly discussed previously, but few of the dinosaur species originally described from the Arundel are still regarded as valid genera. Much of the Arundel material is in need of review and redescription. Among the fossils of dinosaurs from this formation are those referred to ornithomimosaurs. Here, I redescribe ornithomimosaur remains from the Arundel Formation which may warrant the naming of a new taxon of dinosaur. These remains provide key information on the theropods of the Early Cretaceous of Eastern North America. The description of the Arundel material herein along with recent discoveries of basal ornithomimosaurs in the past 15 years has allowed for comparisons with the coelurosaur Nedcolbertia justinhofmanni, suggesting the latter animal was a basal ornithomimosaurian dinosaur rather than a “generalized” coelurosaur. Comparisons between the Arundel ornithomimosaur and similar southeast Asian ornithomimosaurian material as well as ornithomimosaur remains from western North America suggest that a lineage of ornithomimosaurs with a metatarsal condition intermediate between that of basal and derived ornithomimosaurs was present through southeast Asia into North America, in turn suggesting that such animals coexisted with genera having a more primitive metatarsal morphology as seen in N. justinhofmanni.

The completeness of the continental fossil record and its impact on patterns of diversification

Paleobiology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila Kalmar ◽  
David J. Currie
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Quantitative Assessment ◽  
Marine Organisms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Clastic Sediment ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Level ◽  
Marine Realm ◽  
Extinction Events

Did organisms diversify in different ways on land and in the marine realm over the Phanerozoic, or do the different diversification curves of continental and marine organisms reflect primarily methodological artifacts? To answer this question, a quantitative assessment of the completeness of the global continental fossil record is indispensable. We used comparisons between continental and marine fossil diversity and between past and present-day patterns of continental diversity to assess the absolute and relative completeness of the continental fossil record. Collector's curves of the number of described families over the past 200 years suggest that the global continental fossil record, and even that of European and North American tetrapods, is still highly incomplete. Nevertheless, relative proportions of major continental and marine taxa, patterns of tetrapod endemism, and familial durations suggest that the family-level continental fossil record is reasonably representative. We found that, although continental fossil richness is correlated with the amount of terrestrial clastic sediment available for sampling, the exponential diversification curve of continental metazoans is unlikely to be an artifact of this rock bias. Diversification of the continental fauna appears to have been essentially exponential since the Devonian, with little evidence of major extinction events.

scholarly journals Complete Genome Sequence and Biological Characterization of Moroccan pepper virus (MPV) and Reclassification of Lettuce necrotic stunt virus as MPV

2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (5) ◽  
pp. 501-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Wintermantel ◽  
Laura L. Hladky
Keyword(s):  
Sequence Analysis ◽  
North America ◽  
Coat Proteins ◽  
Biological Characterization ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Full Length Clone

Moroccan pepper virus (MPV) and Lettuce necrotic stunt virus (LNSV) have been steadily increasing in prevalence in central Asia and western North America, respectively, over the past decade. Recent sequence analysis of LNSV demonstrated a close relationship between the coat proteins of LNSV and MPV. To determine the full extent of the relationship between LNSV and MPV, the genomes of three MPV isolates were sequenced and compared with that of LNSV. Sequence analysis demonstrated that genomic nucleotide sequences as well as virus-encoded proteins of the three MPV isolates and LNSV shared 97% or greater identity. A full-length clone of a California LNSV isolate was developed and virus derived from infectious transcripts was used to evaluate host plant reactions under controlled conditions. Symptoms of LNSV matched those described previously for MPV on most of a select series of host plants, although some differences were observed. Collectively, these molecular and biological results demonstrate that LNSV should be classified as MPV within the family Tombusviridae, genus Tombusvirus, and confirm the presence of MPV in North America.

scholarly journals A probe into the different fates of locust swarms in the plains of North America and East Asia

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 11179-11200
Author(s):  
G. Yu ◽  
D. Johnson ◽  
X. Ke ◽  
Y. Li
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
North America ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Climate Extremes ◽  
Climate Extreme ◽  
The Past ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Chemical Pesticides

Abstract. Locust swarms had periodically raged in both North American Plains (NAP) and East Asian Plains (EAP) before 1880 AD. After this period, the locust outbreaks almost never recurred in NAP but have continued to occur in EAP. Since large quantities of pesticides were used in the major agriculture regions of NAP in the late 1870s; this has been suggested as a possible major cause of the disappearing of locust outbreaks. Extensive applications of more effective chemical pesticides were also used in the granary regions of EAP in the 1950s in an effort to kill the pests at a much higher intensity. However, locust swarms came back again in many areas of China in the 1960s. Therefore, NAP locust extinction still remains a puzzle. Frequent locust outbreaks in EAP over the past 130 yr may offer clues to probe key control elements in the disappearing of locust outbreaks in NAP. This paper analyzes the climate extremes and monthly temperature-precipitation combines of NAP and EAP, and found the differences in their frequencies of these climate combines caused different locust fates in the two regions: restrained the locust outbreak in NAP but induced such events in EAP. Validation shows that severer EAP locust outbreak years were coincided with the climate extreme combines years. Thus we suggest that climate changes in frequency, extremes and trends can explain why the fate of the locust plague in EAP was different from that in NAP. The study also points out that, under the present global warming, cautions should be taken to make sure the pest hazard being nipped in the-bud.

scholarly journals Fossil-calibrated molecular phylogeny of atlantid heteropods (Gastropoda, Pterotracheoidea)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Wall-Palmer ◽  
Arie W Janssen ◽  
Erica Goetze ◽  
Le Qin Choo ◽  
Lisette Mekkes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Rapid Diversification ◽  
Maximum Likelihood Phylogeny ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Ribosomal Rrna

Abstract Background: The aragonite shelled, planktonic gastropod family Atlantidae (shelled heteropods) is likely to be one of the first groups to be impacted by imminent ocean changes, including ocean warming and ocean acidification. With a fossil record spanning at least 100 Million years (Ma), atlantids have experienced and survived global-scale ocean changes and extinction events in the past. However, the diversification patterns and tempo of evolution in this family are largely unknown. Results: Based on a concatenated maximum likelihood phylogeny of three genes (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 mitochondrial DNA, 28S and 18S ribosomal rRNA) we show that the three extant genera of the family Atlantidae, Atlanta, Protatlanta and Oxygyrus, form monophyletic groups. The genus Atlanta is split into two groups, one exhibiting smaller, well ornamented shells, and the other having larger, less ornamented shells. The fossil record, in combination with a fossil-calibrated phylogeny, suggests that large scale atlantid extinction was accompanied by considerable and rapid diversification over the last 25 Ma, potentially driven by vicariance events. Conclusions: Now confronted with a rapidly changing modern ocean, the ability of atlantids to survive past global change crises gives some optimism that they may be able to persist through the Anthropocene.

A diverse new assemblage of green lacewings (Insecta, Neuroptera, Chrysopidae) from the early Eocene Okanagan Highlands, western North America

2013 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir N. Makarkin ◽  
S. Bruce Archibald
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Species ◽  
Early Eocene ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Fossil Species ◽  
Green Lacewings ◽  
The Family ◽  
Okanagan Highlands ◽  
First Time

The early Eocene green lacewings (Neuroptera, Chrysopidae) of the Okanagan Highlands deposits of McAbee, and Driftwood Canyon, British Columbia (Canada) and Republic, Washington (U.S.A.) are treated in detail for the first time. At least six genera are present, one unnamed, three new, with at least 10 new species, six named:Protochrysa fuscobasalisn. sp. (McAbee) (Limaiinae, the youngest known record of the subfamily),Okanaganochrysa coltsunaen. gen. n. sp. (McAbee),Adamsochrysa asperan. gen. n. sp. (McAbee),A. wilsonin. gen. n. sp. (Republic),Archaeochrysa profractan. sp. (McAbee), andPseudochrysopa harveyin. gen. n. sp. (Driftwood Canyon) (all Nothochrysinae, the latter provisionally). The four unnamed species include one assigned toPseudochrysopa, two likely belonging toAdamsochrysa, and one of an unknown nothochrysine genus. Microtholi are detected on the abdominal sclerites ofAdamsochrysa wilsoni, and the spermatheca and spermathecal duct in the abdomen ofPseudochrysopa harveyi, the first reported occurrences of these preserved in fossil Chrysopidae. Structures were detected on the apical wing margins of some species that appear similar to trichosors, which are unknown in Chrysopidae, but are present in some other neuropteran families. This is the richest described assemblage of the family anywhere in the fossil record. Okanagan chrysopids were also morphologically and presumably ecologically diverse, including large species with rich venation and well as those with simplified venation and the smallest known fossil species. This is the oldest reported occurrence of the family in North America.

Distinguishing Agromyzidae (Diptera) Leaf Mines in the Fossil Record: New Taxa from the Paleogene of North America and Germany and Their Evolutionary Implications

2010 ◽  
Vol 84 (5) ◽  
pp. 935-954 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac S. Winkler ◽  
Conrad C. Labandeira ◽  
Torsten Wappler ◽  
Peter Wilf
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Host Plant ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Middle Eocene ◽  
Phytophagous Insects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Plant Associations ◽  
Leaf Mining ◽  
Early Paleocene ◽  
History Of

Fossilized leaf mines and other traces of phytophagous insects provide a unique window into ecological and evolutionary associations of the past. Leaf-mining flies (Diptera: Agromyzidae) are an important component of the recent leaf-mining fauna, but their fossil record is sparse compared to other mining insect lineages; many putative agromyzid body fossils and traces are dubiously assigned. Agromyzid leaf mines often can be distinguished from those of other insects by the presence of an intermittent, fluidized frass trail that may alternate between the sides of the mine. Here, we describe two new Paleogene leaf mine fossils, Phytomyzites biliapchaensis Winkler, Labandeira and Wilf n. sp. from the early Paleocene of southeastern Montana, USA, occurring in leaves of Platanus raynoldsii (Platanaceae); and Phytomyzites schaarschmidti Wappler n. sp., from the middle Eocene of Messel, Germany, occurring in leaves of Toddalia ovata (Rutaceae). These fossils both exhibit frass trails indicative of an agromyzid origin, and P. biliapchaensis also exhibits associated stereotypical marks identical to damage caused by feeding punctures of extant adult female Agromyzidae prior to oviposition. Phytomyzites biliapchaensis represents the earliest confirmed record of Agromyzidae, and one of the earliest records for the large dipteran clade Schizophora. Plant hosts of both species belong to genera that are no longer hosts of leaf-mining Agromyzidae, suggesting a complex and dynamic history of early host-plant associations and, for the early Paleocene example, an evolutionary, possibly opportunistic colonization in the midst of the ecological chaos following the end-Cretaceous event in North America.

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