An official website of the United States government
Zamia orinoquiensis Calonje, Betancur & A.Lindstr., a new species from the western Orinoquía region of Colombia is described and illustrated. The species is segregated from and compared to Z. muricata Willd., the latter which is morphologically recharacterized, illustrated, and recircumscribed to include populations from tropical dry forest and tropical moist forests in the Lara-Falcón Formation and the Cordillera de la Costa natural regions of Venezuela, as well as the Serranía de Macuira in La Guajira, Colombia. Zamia orinoquiensis is morphologically distinguished from Z. muricata by its leaves bearing fewer, coriaceous (vs. papyraceous) leaflets, eophylls with 2 (vs. 4) leaflets, pollen strobili that are brown to reddish brown (vs. cream to tan) with larger microsporophylls bearing more numerous microsporangia, and ovulate strobili that are dark brown to black (vs. dark olive green to olive brown) at maturity.
more »
« less
From Colombia to Lesbos: Experiences with Bee Research and Island Life
Born and raised in a remote region of Colombia, a South American country dominated by lush tropical rainforests and FARC guerrillas (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), I never imagined spending my summers in Greece amongst picturesque olive groves and tourists, much less conducting research on one of its islands. Since 2013, I have had the opportunity to spend eight weeks every summer on the island of Lesbos, the third largest island in the Aegean Sea. However, this island is not just like the other Greek islands we all see on television and pamphlets in tourist agencies; it offers more than the lovely white houses with blue accents tightly packed on a foothill facing a turquoise sea. The research experiences on this island are also not comparable with any of those I have had in other international locations. Lesbos is only about two times the surface area of New York City but is biologically highly diverse. This volcanic island is situated only 9 km from the Turkish coast and has multiple natural ecosystems and agroecosystems including wetlands, chestnut and oak forests, and olive groves. Due to its vicinity to the Asian continent, it supports species of animals and plants from both the Mediterranean region and Asia. In the spring and fall, flocks of migrant birds from Africa are captured by the lenses of photographers and amateur birdwatchers who move like ants throughout the island. More than 20 million years ago, several species of trees covered parts of Lesbos, but today, only their petrified forms remain as evidence of this ancient diversity.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1950805
- PAR ID:
- 10521827
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Entomologist
- Volume:
- 69
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1046-2821
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 38 to 39
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
I describe four new species of Gehyra from New Guinea and immediately adjacent islands. Two of these are giant species that have long been misassigned to either G. vorax or G. membranacruralis; the other two were previously referred to G. oceanica. Each of the new species has a very circumscribed geographic distribution, with one being known from only a single island, a second from a small portion of southeastern New Guinea and immediately adjacent islands, a third from a small archipelago, and the fourth from foothill forest along the northern versant of eastern New Guinea. Three of these species are found only in the Milne Bay Region of southeastern Papua New Guinea, a region previously identified as having a globally high density of narrow-range endemic reptile and amphibian species. These species provide further extension of that pattern by increasing the number of known endemic herpetofaunal species from that small region to 165. Variation in subcaudal shape is taxonomically useful in Gehyra, but its character-state coding must rely on original tails because aberrant development of subcaudals in some regenerated tails could lead to mischaracterization of this feature.more » « less
-
We evaluated annual and regional variation in the dietary niche of Pygoscelis penguins including the sea ice-obligate Adélie penguin ( Pygoscelis adeliae ), and sea ice-intolerant chinstrap ( Pygoscelis antarcticus ) and gentoo ( Pygoscelis papua ) penguins, three species that nest throughout the western Antarctic Peninsula (AP) to test the sea ice trophic interaction hypothesis , which posits that penguin breeding populations with divergent trends, i.e., declining or increasing, are reliant on differing food webs. Our study relies on values of naturally occurring carbon ( 13 C/ 12 C, δ 13 C) and nitrogen ( 15 N/ 14 N, δ 15 N) stable isotopes as integrated proxies of penguin food webs measured over three years at three different breeding colonies. At Anvers Island in the north, where reductions in sea ice and changes in breeding population trends among sympatric sea ice-obligate (Adélie) and sea ice-intolerant (chinstrap and gentoo) penguins have been most notable, our analyses show that all three species of Pygoscelis penguins became more similar isotopically over the reproductive period. By late chick-rearing at Anvers Island, crèched chicks at 5-weeks-old for all species occupied similar trophic positions. Isotopic mixing models indicated that the proportions of prey provisioned by adult penguins to 5-week-old chicks at Anvers Island were generally similar across species within years, consisting primarily of Antarctic krill ( Euphausia superba ). Crèched Adélie chicks had higher δ 13 C and δ 15 N values at Avian and Charcot Islands, southern breeding colonies where sea ice is more prominent and populations of Adélie penguins have increased or remain stable. Trophic position increased with latitude, while the proportions of prey provisioned by Adélie penguin adults to chicks at southern breeding colonies included species typical of high Antarctic marine food webs, especially crystal krill ( Euphausia crystallorophias ). A Bayesian metric for dietary niche width, standard ellipse area (SEA-B), indicated that Pygoscelis penguins with greater population changes in the north had more variability in dietary niche width than stable populations further south. Our results lend insight on marine food web drivers of Pygoscelis penguin reproduction at the regional scale and question the long-standing paradigm that Antarctic krill are the only food web component critical to penguin reproductive survival in this region of the Southern Ocean.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Naturally formed forest patches known as tree islands are found within lower-statured wetland matrices throughout the world, where they contrast sharply with the surrounding vegetation. In some coastal wetlands they are embedded in former freshwater marshes that are currently exposed to saltwater intrusion and mangrove encroachment associated with accelerating sea-level rise. In this study we resurveyed tree composition and determined environmental conditions in tree islands of the coastal Florida Everglades that had been examined two decades earlier. We asked whether tree islands in this coastal transition zone were differentiated geomorphologically as well as compositionally, and whether favorable geomorphology enabled coastal forest type(s) to maintain their compositional integrity against rising seas. Patterns of variation in geomorphology and soils among forest types were evident, but were dwarfed by differences between forest and adjacent wetlands. Tree island surfaces were elevated by 12–44 cm, and 210Pb analyses indicated that their current rates of vertical accretion were more rapid than those of surrounding ecosystems. Tree island soils were deeper and more phosphorus-rich than in the adjoining matrix. Salinity decreased interiorward in both tree island and marsh, but porewater was fresher in forest than marsh in Mixed Swamp Forest, midway along the coastal gradient where tropical hardwoods were most abundant. Little decrease in the abundance of tropical hardwood species nor increase in halophytes was observed during the study period. Our data suggest that geomorphological differences between organic tree island and marl marsh, perhaps driven by groundwater upwelling through more transmissive tree island soils, contributed to the forests’ compositional stability, though this stasis may be short-lived despite management efforts.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Acanthemblemaria aceroi new species is described from the upwelling region of the Caribbean coasts of Venezuela and Colombia. It differs from its closest relative, Acanthemblemaria rivasi Stephens, 1970, known from Panama and Costa Rica, in the posterior extent of the infraorbitals, details of head spination, and unique COI sequences. The description of Acanthemblemaria johnsonsi Almany & Baldwin, 1996, heretofore known only from Tobago, is expanded based on specimens from islands offshore of eastern Venezuela.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/ae/tmad021
