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As a preliminary step towards a more intensive research on the diversity of macromycetes in Greece, an updated check-list of the Greek mycoflora is presented together with information on the host-substrates and geographic occurrence. The data originated from a thorough literature search and the authors' field observations. In total, 58 families, 214 genera and 811 species of fungi are recorded belonging to Basidiomycetes. The systematics and nomenclature of the relative bibliography have been updated and suitably revised. The large gaps in our knowledge on the existence and distribution of higher fungi in Greece are emphasized.
Es wird das isolierte Vorkommen einer Acalles micros-Population in einem Buchenwald des Niederbergischen Landes ("Vogelsangbachtal": Deutschland / Kreis Mettmann, NRW) beschrieben. Die Nordgrenze dieser vor allem aus dem nördlichen Mittelmeeraum bekannten, wärmeliebenden Art lag bisher 300 km weiter südlich (Rheinland-Pfalz, Taben-Rodt). Neben einer Differentialdiagnose der Arten Acalles micros, Acalles lemur und Acalles commutatus werden alle Funddaten und eine westpaläarktische Verbreitungskarte von Acalles micros vorgestellt. [Fig. 1] Das nördlichste, isolierte Reliktvorkommen von Acalles micros, das aufgrund der Nähe zum Rhein "fluvial" und wahrscheinlich "postglazial" (warmzeitlich) entstanden ist, war ursprünglich zweifellos bedeutend größer. Vor allem infolge flächenintensiver Rodungen in historischer Zeit wurde der Lebensraum dieser Buchenwaldart erheblich eingeschränkt.
Our recent surveys of the herpetological diversity of the West African Togo Hills documented a total of 65 reptile and amphibian species, making Kyabobo National Park one of the most diverse sites surveyed in Ghana. We provide accounts for all species recorded along with photographs to aid in identification. We recorded 26 amphibians, including six new records for Kyabobo N. P., one of which is a record for the Togo Hills. Our collection of reptile species (22 lizards, 16 snakes, and one crocodile) also provides new records and range extensions for Kyabobo N. P., such as the first observation of the dwarf crocodile, Osteolaemus tetraspis. Amphibian species still lacking from our surveys in the Togo Hills include several species that are adapted to fast running water or large closed forests, like the Togo toad, Bufo togoensis and the slippery frog, Conraua derooi. Appropriate habitat for such species still remains in Kyabobo, highlighting the need for additional survey work. We draw attention to the importance of conserving forest stream habitats, which will in turn help ensure the persistence of forest-restricted species. We also highlight those species that may prove most useful for evolutionary studies of West African rain forest biogeography.
Mittelasien (Kasachstan, Kirgistan, Tadschikistan, Turkmenistan, Usbekistan) ist neben dem Mediterranraum das bedeutendste paläarkische Bienen-Diversitätszentrum (MICHENER 1979). POPOV (1957) schätzt für den Raum 1.200 Arten aus 70 Gattungen, die Gesamtzahl dürfte jedoch bei über 2.000 Arten liegen. Über die innere biogeographische Gliederung der Region und die Lage von Endemiezentren ist bei den Bienen jedoch kaum etwas bekannt (POPOV 1958, MARIKOVSKAYA 1999). Am Beispiel der Seidenbienengattung Colletes, die hier aufgrund ihres Artenreichtums sowie des breiten Spektrums besiedelter Lebensraumtypen und Klimagebiete repräsentativ für andere Bienengruppen behandelt wird, werden Verbreitungsbilder analysiert und Endemiezentren identifiziert. Faunistisches und biogeographisches Arbeiten in Mittelasien ist bis heute ein aufwändiges Unternehmen. Die Größe des Raumes – mit 4 Mio. km² fast halb so groß wie Europa –, die in vielen Regionen unterentwickelte Infrastruktur sowie die in vergangenen und gegenwärtigen bürokratischen Hemmnissen begründete schwierige Zugänglichkeit vieler Gebiete ist ursächlich für den unzureichenden Bearbeitungsstand vieler Taxa. Durch uneinheitliche Transliteration, Schreibfehler bei der Etikettierung und Umbenennung von Orten ist die Identifikation von Fundorten häufig schwierig und in einigen Fällen selbst unter Zuhilfenahme historischen Kartenmaterials unmöglich. Die begrenzte Verfügbarkeit lokalfaunistischer Literatur in deutschen Bibliotheken und die Sprachbarriere bei der Nutzung kyrillisch geschriebener Arbeiten sind ein weiteres Hindernis. Aufgrund dieser Schwierigkeiten und dem daraus resultierenden niedrigen Erfassungsgrad in weiten Teilen Mittelasien haben die hier vorgelegten Ergebnisse vorläufigen Charakter.
The bee fauna of Taiwan was studied intensively in the first half of last century and was based in large parts on the extensive material collected by Hans Sauter between 1902 and 1914. Subsequent studies on bees of Taiwan have only been sporadic. Within a cooperation between the above mentioned institutions the bee fauna was reinvestigated. It was shown how insufficiently the bee fauna of Taiwan had been investigated so far, in particular, the higher mountain regions. Now about 150 species of bees, belonging to 32 different genera, are known from Taiwan, ten of which have been described or recognized as new for science by the recent cooperation.
Taxonomic, systematic, and biogeography knowledge on the Palaearctic species of Pristaulacus Kieffer 1900 is summarized. Twenty-one valid species are recognized. The most important morphological characters taken into consideration are: shape, cuticular sculpture, and pubescence of head; index length/width of antennomeres; shape, sculpture and cuticular processes of mesosoma, especially of pronotum and mesonotum; number and shape of teeth on claw; shape and sculpture of metasoma; ovipositor length compared with wing and antenna length; and colour pattern (e.g., the dark spots on fore wing, and the colour of hind tarsus). Several characters of the genital capsule of the male were proved to be very useful for species identification, e.g., the shape of the paramere, volsella, cuspis, and digitus. Based on analysis of twenty-five morphological characters, eight species groups are recognized. The critical revision of the chorological data, including many new records, introduced relevant changes of the geographical distribution pattern of most species. Twelve species are restricted to the western part of the Palaearctic Region and eight species are restricted to its eastern part; only one species, P. gibbator, has a wider distribution, including both western and eastern parts of the Palaearctics.
The biogeographic significance of Diplopoda is substantiated by 50 maps documenting indigenous occurrences of the 16 orders, the three Spirostreptida s. l. suborders – Cambalidea, Epinannolenidea, Spirostreptidea – and all higher taxa including Diplopoda itself. The class is indigenous to all continents except Antarctica and islands/archipelagos in all temperate and tropical seas and oceans except the Arctic; it ranges from Kodiak Island and the northern Alaskan Panhandle, United States (USA), southern Hudson Bay, Canada, and near or north of the Arctic Circle in Iceland, continental Scandinavia, and Siberia to southern “mainland” Argentina, the southern tips of Africa and Tasmania, and Campbell Island, subantarctic New Zealand. The vast, global distribution is interrupted by sizeable, poorly- or unsampled areas including the Great Basin, USA; the Atacama Desert region of Chile and neighboring countries; southern South American islands; the central Kalahari and Sahara deserts; the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, and all of north-central and western China; from north of the Caspian Sea, Russia, to central Kazakhstan; and the “Outback” of central Australia. Five Arabian countries lack both samples and published records of indigenous diplopods – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates – as do Turks and Caicos, in the New World, and Mauritania and possibly Egypt, Africa. New records, including the first for Chilognatha from Botswana and the first specific localities from Northern Territory, Australia, are cited in the Appendix. Increased emphasis on mappings in taxonomic research is warranted along with investigations of insular “species swarms” that constitute a microcosm of the early evolution of the class. The largest “species swarm” in the Diplopoda is Diplopoda itself!
Three different male and female super-specific types are distinguished according to variations in the morphology of the bulb and spermathecae within the genus Nemesia Audouin, 1826. Plotting the distributions of these sexual types on a map of the Mediterranean indicates the existence of geography-related sub-generic diversity in which the Nemesia fauna of the eastern Mediterranean differs markedly from that of the western Mediterranean. While the eastern Mediterranean Nemesia fauna is highly homogeneous, the fauna of the western Mediterranean is very diverse. The eastern and western Nemesia faunae appear to overlap in the central Mediterranean. Efforts to relate the specific bulb types to the particular types of spermathecae described here were only partly successful.
The genus Dadagulella gen. nov. is described to include 16 species of small, dentate, ovateacuminate Afrotropical snails. An identification key is provided and biogeography, anatomy and systematics are discussed. The type species is the Kenyan D. radius (Preston, 1910) comb. nov., whose name has informally been used for part of the group in the past. Substantial intraspecific variation occurs in three species: D. radius itself, D. browni (van Bruggen, 1969) comb. nov. and D. minuscula (Morelet, 1877) comb. nov. (= Ennea fi scheriana Morelet, 1881) (non Gulella minuscula Emberton & Pearce, 2000) . We recognise subspecies within each of these: D.radius radius (Preston, 1910) comb. nov., D. r. calva (Connolly, 1922) comb. et stat. nov., D. browni browni (van Bruggen, 1969) comb. nov., D. b. mafi ensis subsp. nov., D. b. semulikiensis subsp. nov., D. minuscula minuscula (Morelet, 1877) comb. nov., D. m. mahorana subsp. nov. Six new Tanzanian species are described: D. cresswelli sp. nov., D. delta sp. nov., D. ecclesiola sp. nov., D. frontierarum sp. nov., D. minareta sp. nov., and D. pembensis sp. nov. The genus includes seven other previously described species: D. cuspidata (Verdcourt, 1962) comb. nov.; D. rondoensis (Verdcourt, 1994) comb. nov.; D. conoidea (Verdcourt, 1996) comb. nov.; D. selene (van Bruggen & Van Goethem, 1999) comb. nov.; D. meredithae (van Bruggen, 2000) comb. nov.; D. nictitans (Rowson & Lange, 2007) comb. nov.; and D. delgada (Muratov, 2010) comb. nov.
The study of the Portuguese marine ichthyofauna has a long historical tradition, rooted back in the 18th Century. Here we present an annotated checklist of the marine fishes from Portuguese waters, including the area encompassed by the proposed extension of the Portuguese continental shelf and the Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ). The list is based on historical literature records and taxon occurrence data obtained from natural history collections, together with new revisions and occurrences. It comprises a total of 1191 species, distributed among 3 superclasses, 4 classes, 42 orders, 212 families and 617 genera. If considering only the EEZ and present territorial waters, this list represents an increase of 230 species (27.8%) and of 238 species (29.0%), when compared to the information available in FishBase (2012) and in the last checklist of marine and estuarine fishes of Portugal (1993), respectively. The order Perciformes shows the highest diversity, with 54 families, 162 genera and 299 species. Stomiidae (80 species), Myctophidae (71 species) and Macrouridae (37 species) are the richest families. From the listed species, 734 are present off mainland Portugal, 857 off the Azores and 766 off Madeira. Within the limits of the examined area, three species are reported for the first time in mainland Portugal and twenty-nine records are identified as doubtful. A total of 133 species have been recorded from the extended Portuguese continental shelf (2 off mainland Portugal, 117 off the Azores and 14 off Madeira), two of which are common to the Azores and Madeira extensions. Biogeographically, the Atlantic group is the most important (548 species – 46.01%), followed by the Lusitanian group (256 species – 21.49%), the African group (71 species – 5.96%), the Boreal group (34 species – 2.85%), the Mediterranean group (31 species – 2.60%), the Macaronesian group (21 species – 1.76%), the Atlantic/African group (19 species – 1.60%) and the Mediterranean/African and the Arctic groups, each with only 1 species (0.08%). Regarding the preferences for vertical habitat, the demersal fishes are the most important group (305 species – 25.61%), followed by the mesopelagic group (228 species – 19.14%), the bathypelagic group (164 species – 13.77%), the benthopelagic group (147 species – 12.34%), the bathydemersal group (115 species – 9.66%), the reef-associated group (88 species – 7.39%), the pelagic group (74 species – 6.21%), the epipelagic group (58 species – 4.87%) and 1 species (0.08%) of the benthic group. The oceanic habitat is the best represented group comprising 446 species (37.45%), followed by the shelf group (199 species – 16.71%), the slope group (164 species – 13.77%), the inner shelf group (89 species – 7.47%), the coastal group (70 species – 5.88%), the outer shelf group (29 species – 2.43%) and the oceanic/shelf group (7 species – 0.59%).