NEWLETTER EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENTS

Newsletter Editor: Norman Penny

Correspondents:

Address of Secretary: International Association for Neuropterology

1. Charles Henry, Stephen Brooks, and James (Ding) Johnson have a three-year, $70,000 grant to study hidden taxonomic diversity in European Chrysoperla.

2. Nicholas J. Gotelli has a 2.5 year, $90,000 grant to study ant-lion predation.

3. John D. Oswald has just been successful in getting a NSF grant to study the higher classificaiton and cladistics of the myrmeleontoid families of Neuroptera.

Aldini, R.N.   1993.  On the presence of Wesmaelius concinnus (Stephens)(Neuroptera, Hemerobiidae) in the Italian Alps.  [In Italian].  Bollettino di Zoologia Agraria e di Bachicoltura 25(2):247-250.

Aspöck, U. and M.W. Mansell.   1994.  A revision of the family Rhachiberothidae Tjeder, 1959, stat. n. (Neuroptera).  Systematic Entomology 19:181-206.

Brodsky, A.K. 1994.  Evolution of insect flight.  Oxford University Press.  290 pp.   (This book contains much original data on flight morphology of some Palearctic Neuroptera).

Krivokhatsky, V.A.   1990.  A new ant-lion species (Neuroptera, Myrmeleonidae) from Middle Asia.   Pp. 61-63 in, Novosti faunistiki i sistematiki.  Naukova Dumka, Kiev.

Krivokhatsky, V.A.   1991.  A new ant-lion species of the genus Myrmeleon (Neuroptera, Myrmeleonidae) from Turkmenia.  Zoologickeskiy Zhurnal 70(2):147-149.

Krivokhatsky, V.A.   1992.  Revision of the Genus Lopezus Navás, 1913 (Neuroptera, Myrmeleonidae).  Entomological Review 70(5):90-102. [translation of article originally published in Entomologicheskoye Obozreniye 71(4):893-904.]

Krivokhatsky, V.A.   1992.  New taxa of Asiatic ant-lions (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae).   Entomologicheskoye Obozreniye 71(2):405-413.

Krivokhatsky, V.A. 1992.  A new ant-lion from Turkmenia, Middle Asia (Insecta, Neuroptera, Myrmeleonidae).  Reichenbachia 29(1):77-80.

Krivokhatsky, V.A.   1993.  A review of ant-lions of the Myrmecaelurus (Nohoveus) zigan species group (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae) with description of a new species from Armenia.   Entomologicheskoye Obozeniye 72(3):626-630.

Krivokhatsky, V.A.   1993.  On the development of the Palaearctic ant-lions (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae) under the laboratory conditions.  Izvestiya of the Kharkov entomological Society 1(2):84-91.

Krivokhatsky, V.A.   1994.  Ant-lions (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae) in Turkmenistan, pp. 495-498 In Fet, V. and Atamuradov, K.I. (Editors).  Biogeography and Ecology of Turkmenistan.   Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.  (Corrections: In Table 1, p. 496, please change the lines to marks for: Acanthaclisis obscura Hz., A. curvispura Kriv., Myrmecaelurus varians Navas, and M. badkhysi [sic!] Kriv.).

LeGrand, J. and M. LaChaise.  1994.  Les Dilaridae de Navás conservés dans les collections nationales (MNHN, Paris)(Neuroptera).  Revue Française de'Entomologie (N.S.): 16(2):87-92.

Liu, Z. and C.-K. Yang.  1993.  Four New Species of Coniopteryginae (Neuroptera: Coniopterygidae) from Guizhou Province.  Entomotaxonomia 15(4):255-260.

Makarkin, V.N.  1990.  New Neuroptera from the Upper Cretaceous of Asia.  Pp. 63-68, in Novosti faunistiki i sistematiki.  Naukova Dumka, Kiev.

Stange, L.A.  1994.  Reclassification of the New World antlion genera formerly included in the tribe Brachynemurini (Myrmeleontidae).   Insecta Mundi 8(1-2):67-119.

Venzon, M. and C.F. Carvalho.  1992.  Biology of Ceraeochrysa cubana (Hagen, 1861)(Neuroptera, Chrysopidae) adults on different diets and temperatures.  Ciencia e Pratica 16(3):315-320.

Weissmair, W. and J. Waringer.  1994.  Identification of the Larvae and Pupae of Sisyra fuscata (Fabricius, 1793) and Sisyra terminalis Curtis, 1854 (Insecta: Planipennis: Sisyridae), Based on Austrian Material.  Aquatic Insects 16(3):147-155.

Yang, C.-K.  1993.  Three New Species of Osmylidae (Neuroptera) from Gizhou.  Entomoltaxonomia 15(4):261-264.

Yang, C.-K.  and Z. Liu.  1993.  The genus Cryptoscenea New to China, and a Species New to Science (Neuroptera: Coniopterygidae).   Entomotaxonomia 15(4):249-251.

Yang, C.-K. and Z. Liu.  1993.  Neuroptera: Coniopterygidae, Pp. 225-226 In, Huang, C.-M. (Ed.) The Series of the Bioresources Expedition to the Longqi Mountain Nature Reserve: Animals of Longqi Mountain.  China Forestry Publishing HOuse, Beijing, China.

Yang, X.-K.  1993.  Neuroptera, Chrysopidae, Pp. 223-224 In, Huang, C.-M. (Ed.) The Series of the Bioresources Expedition to the Longqi Mountain Nature Reserve: Animals of Longqi Mountain.  China Forestry Publishing HOuse, Beijing, China.

Yang, X.-K., J.-K. Yang and D. Yang.  1993.  Megaloptera, Corydalidae, Pp. 219-222 In, Huang, C.-M. (Ed.) The Series of the Bioresources Expedition to the Longqi Mountain Nature Reserve: Animals of Longqi Mountain.  China Forestry Publishing HOuse, Beijing, China.

Yang, D. and C.-K. Yang.  1993.  The fishflies (Megaloptera: Corydalidae) from Maolan, Gizhou.  Entomotaxonomia 15(4):246-248.

Yang, X. and C.-K. Yang.  1993.  The Lacewings (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) of Guizhou Province.  Entomotaxonomia 15(4):265-274.

Zakharenko, A.V.  1990.  A new species of the Genus Nedroleon (Neuroptera, Myrmeleonidae) from Uzbekistan.  Pp. 60-61 in, Novosti faunistiki i sistematiki.  Naukova dumka, Kiev.

Zakharenko, A.V. and V.A. Krivokhatsky.  1993.     Neuroptera from the European part of the former USSR.  Izvestiya of the Kharkov Entomological Society.  1(2):34-83.

WORLD BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE NEUROPTERIDA

by John D. Oswald

     For the past 12 years I have worked actively to compile a comprehensive bibliography of the world literature pertaining to the superorder Neuropterida (orders Neuroptera, Megaloptera and Raphidioptera).  This bibliography now contains references to approximately 7400 publications covering all possible aspects of the literature on neuropterid insects.   the bibliography is stored in a machine-readable format in a computerized database, and is especially strong in publications covering the taxonomic, morphological, and biological aspects of neuropterology.  although I do not consider the bibliography to be "complete" (if it ever could be), and some of its references will require additonal editing, it has now reached a size that will undoubtedly make it of general interest to neuropterists around the world.  With the help of Norm Penny, I am currently making plans to permit public access to this resource by implementing it as a bibliographic file in a "gopher" system that can be accessed electronically through the Internet.  Anyone interested in suing the bibliography to aid their research and/or documentation needs will be able to access the bibliography remotely, download all or part of the file, or use it on an on-line basis.  I would, however, like to see this database continue to grow as new neuropterid literature is published and additional older literature is identified.  I envision the possibility of making new references (and additions/corrections to older references) available on-line through periodic updates to the gopher file.  I am willing to provide the time and finger-power needed to maintain the database underlying the gopher file; however, I would like to ask you, my colleagues, to assist me in this task by contributing in several ways.

     (1)  To ensure that the bibliography contains citations to all of the neuropterid works published by living neuropterists, I would like to ask each neuropterist reading this note to send me a bibliographic list containing full citations to all of the works that you have published.   To my colleagues who publish in languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, it would aid me greatly in incorporating your works into the bibliography if you could provide me with translations or transliterations of the texts of your citations in a European language that does use Roman characters (preferably English).

     (2)  To ensure that the bibliography contains all of the neuropterid works of deceased neuropterists, I would appreciate the opportunity to compare copies of manuscript bibliographies compiled by other neuropterists against the reference list currently contained in my bibliographic database.  If you are able and willing to help out in this way, please send me a copy of the bibliography that you have compiled.  I am particularly interested in obtaining copies of bibliographies with an agricultural or applied focus, because these fields of study are currently not as well covered in the database as they could be.   Anyone contributing to the development of the bibliography by sharing unpublished bibliographic lists will be acknowledged for their contribution.  Also, please send me any published bibliographies of neuropterid authors that you may be aware of.

     (3).  To help me maintain the currency of the bibliography, I would ask that each of you send me a separate or photocopy of each of your new neuropterid papers soon after they are published.

     As I receive new papers and bibliographic lists from you, each will be checked against the existing bibliography, and appropriate additions and/or changes made.  Although the bibliography in its current form and size provides a solid core of references from which to begin the development of a shared comprehensive neuropterid bibliography, I need your help to continue the development of this resource, and I look forward to hearing from each of you in the near future.  Please send all correspondence concerning the bibliography to:

Dr. John D. Oswald

NHB MRC 105

Department of Entomology

National Museum of Natural History

Washington, DC  20560

Ed. Note: John should be highly complemented on his generousity in providing this exhaustive bibliography to the Neuropterid community.  It can be accessed electronically using Internet to reach the California Academy of Sciences "goher server".  Then use the menu to reach the Department of Entomology, as you would to read the electronic version of this newsletter.  We hope to have this new service on-line by the end of January, 1995.

AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL

     Last year at the Entomology Collections Network meetings, Dr. Dan Janzen mentioned to this editor a concept for the future direction of insect systematics.  The more that I thought about this concept the more I came to the conclusion that he was indeed correct that this will be the future direction of systematics.  Furthermore, I think that workers in the systematics of Neuroptera (and Mecoptera) are capable of bing in the forefront of this new direction for systematics.

     His concept was a unifying one, bringing together several of the present systematic functions and coordinating them with several computer software programs to produce monographs almost instantaneously.  For centuries systematists have been transcribing label information to include with revisions.  Today much of that is fed into a computer database.  I personally have a database of 26,000 records of Neuropteroids and Mecoptera that I expect will expand to well over 100,000 records eventually.  It could even reach one-half million specimens.  At the same time systematists have traditionally compiled and cataloged lists of species to define the limits of already described diversity in the field.  Again, today this can be done on computer and both John Oswald and myself already have computerized lists which we hope to publish in the near future.  These database lists of species are linked to computer reference tables, which again already exist (see comments above).  The species databases are linked to fields giving information about where types are located, synonyms, biological and ecological information, etc.  There are also mapping programs on the markedt that can take specimen level databases and produce distribution maps.

     Systematists have always studied morphological characters and made comparative analyses.  During the last two or three decades this has become more rigorous with the popularity of cladistic analysis.  Most frequently this has taken the form of a character matrix with indication of primitive and derived states.  In recent years, CSIRO in Australia has developed a software program, called DELTA, that will take a character matrix and create keys and species descritpions.

     Computers have been doing increasingly better jobs at producing and saving images, both protographs and illustrations.  As the price of hard disks declines, it is becoming more and more feasible to have image libraries that can be recalled at will from CD's or other storage systems.

     Although it has not yet been done, an integration of these technologies and software programs should soon be possible.  Thus, at a request from the computer user, a request would go out that would take geographical information and select the appropriate species from the specimen level database, then use this to call up information from the species level database database and apprpriate characters from the character matrix in the DELTA program to create descriptions and keys.  The image library would provide appropriate illustrations and photos.  These various parts: descriptions, keys, images, references and distribution maps would go to a desk top publishing program to organize in a more presentable, integrated monograph.  Science Fiction?  I don't think so.  All of the key ingredients are already there, and integration should be available soon (if it isn't already).  Why have I gone through this lengthy explanation?  Because I think that Neuropterists are in a position to take advantage of this new technology more than most groups.  We already have some basic databases in place on species and literature, and a good start on specimen databases.  John Oswald has recently done an excellent cladistic analysis of the Hemerobiidae and Psychopsidae.  He currently has a NSF grant to study the higher classification of the myrmeleontoid families, and has indicated his desire to expand that work eventually to a cladistic analysis of all families.  Brooks and Barnard (1990) had a cladistic analysis of the genera of chrysopids of the world.  Glorioso, with later additions from Penny, has developed a phylogeny of the Corydalinae.   Contreras-Ramos is working on a phylogeny of Corydalus and Whiting a phylogeny of Sialidae.  Ulrike and Horst Aspöck are working hard on phylogenies of Raphidioptera and Berothidae.  And I am certainly leaving out many other workers working equally hard on other neuropteroid groups.  Group by group we are developing a character matrix to run the DELTA program.  As analyses of individual genera progress, they can be added onto the matrix that is already developed.

     In many ways the image library is the most frustrating part of this scenario.  Images are easy to scan into computer memory.  It would take very littel time.  However, illustrations take a great deal of time to produce and are usually copyrighted by publishers.  Laws and legal precedent have not kept up well with technology.  Would authors be willing to allow their drawings to be incorporated into a general access computer image library?  These are things that will have to be worked out.  However, the unifying concept that was suggested to me is an exciting one, and one that I feel will be in place in time.  And, I hope that Neuropterists will be among the first to develop it.