The modified mouthparts group is perhaps the largest of the four major Hawaiian Drosophila clades, yet has received relatively little taxonomic attention during the past 40 years. This study reviews unplaced species and the ceratostoma, freycinetiae, semifuscata, and setiger subgroups, with descriptions of 22 new species. We hope this work encourages greater study of the biology of this important group.
The 101 Mecyclothorax carabid beetle species of Tahiti, French Polynesia comprise a very diverse adaptive radiation. Given Tahiti?s surface area of only 1,045 km2, the island?s Mecyclothorax fauna represents the densest, most diverse radiation of species on Earth. Speciation of Tahitian Mecyclothorax has also occurred very rapidly, with closely-related species allopatrically distributed across geographic ranges defined by Tahiti?s incredibly complex geological topography. Such high levels of endemism are useful for conservation management, as continuing presence of these beetles in small areas of Tahitian forest can signify good health of the native biota in those areas. This taxonomic revision includes dichotomous keys and diagnostic photographs supporting identification of all 101 species, over one-quarter newly described in this publication. Each species treatment includes ecological and geographical information. This monograph illuminates an important component of Tahitian biodiversity in support of ongoing efforts to conserve Tahiti?s biological resources.
Molecular studies reveal highly ordered geographic patterns in plant and animal distributions. The tropics illustrate these patterns of community immobilism leading to allopatric differentiation, as well as other patterns of mobilism, range expansion, and overlap of taxa. Integrating Earth history and biogeography, Molecular Panbiogeography of the Tropics is an alternative view of distributional history in which groups are older than suggested by fossils and fossil-calibrated molecular clocks. The author discusses possible causes for the endemism of high-level taxa in tropical America and Madagascar, and overlapping clades in South America, Africa, and Asia. The book concludes with a critique of adaptation by selection, founded on biogeography and recent work in genetics.
Anyone wishing to tap the research potential of the hundreds of Drosophila species in addition to D.melanogaster will finally have a single comprehensive resource for identifying, rearing and using this diverse group of insects. This is the only group of higher eukaryotes for which the genomes of 12 species have been sequenced.The fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster continues to be one of the greatest sources of information regarding the principles of heredity that apply to all animals, including humans. In reality, however, over a thousand different species of Drosophila exist, each with the potential to make their own unique contributions to the rapidly changing fields of genetics and evolution. This book, by providing basic information on how to identify and breed these other fruitflies, will allow investigators to take advantage, on a large scale, of the valuable qualities of these other Drosophila species and their newly developed genomic resources to address critical scientific questions.* Provides easy to use keys and illustrations to identify different Drosophila species* A guide to the life history differences of hundreds of species* Worldwide distribution maps of hundreds of species* Complete recipes for different Drosophila diets* Offers an analysis on how to account for species differences in designing and conducting experiments* Presents useful ideas of how to collect the many different Drosophila species in the wild
Two Symposia on speciation in insects held at the Fourteenth International Congress of Entomology (Canberra, Australia, August 22-30, 1972) are included in this volume. The first, on the more general topic of Genetic Analysis of Speciation Mechanisms, includes four papers on speciation in various groups of Diptera and Orthopteroid insects. The second symposium was devoted to the topic of Evolution in the Hawaiian Drosophilidae; it deals with the explosive speciation of a group of flies with specialized ecological requirements in the complex ecolOgical habitats provided by a recent tropical volcanic archipelago. The Hawaiian Symposium, organized by Professor D. Elmo Hardy, is the latest outcome of a major collaborative research project involving over 20 scientists and about 125 technical assistants over a period of ten years. Some recent books on evolution have taken the standpoint that the funda mental genetic mechanism of speciation is relatively uniform and stereotyped and, in particular, that the 'allopatric' model of its geographic component is universally valid. Certainly, this has been a rather generally accepted viewpoint on the part of students of vertebrate speciation. Workers on speciation in insects have tended, in general, to be less dogmatic and more willing to consider a variety of alternative models of speciation. Thus, in the present volume, several contributions adopt viewpoints which are unorthodox or novel. Only time will tell whether their conclusions will turn out to have been soundly based.
This volume surveys advances in the study of adaptive radiation showing how molecular characters can be used to analyze the origin and pattern of diversification within a lineage in a non-circular fashion.
