Japanese Journal of Systematic Entomology

I've just recently stumbled across the website for the Japanese Journal of Systematic Entomology, the new name for what was previously known as the Transactions of the Shikoku Entomological Society. I've encountered references to this journal before, but they've only recently made a home for themselves on the internet. They promise that older issues will become freely available, but it's a little early in the piece just yet. Here's hoping they're not too far away, because the contents look rather exciting!

Systematics of South Pacific sap beetles

The species of Carpophilus of particular interest: dorsal habitus above, male parameres below.

Two and a half years ago, I completed my MSc looking at the sap beetles in the genus Carpophilus. In particular, I looked at the C. oculatus species complex from the South Pacific. The species was first described in 1864, before it settled into obscurity. It was only mentioned a few times in the literature until 1993, when Ron Dobson published the results of a study where he looked at a large series of the species. He described three subspecies, two of which were widespread and sympatric, while the third was confined to Vanuatu. Another species, C. maculatus is rather similar in appearance, to the extent that questions were being raised as to the validity of the taxon complex.

My task was to look at this group using molecular methods. In particular, I used three genes to investigate the relationships between these four taxa, and any other species of Carpophilus I could get my grubby hands on. I found that C. maculatus is indeed a distinct species from C. oculatus, and also found sufficient evidence to warrant raising the subspecies from Vanuatu to a full species. The other two subspecies, while being somewhat distinct, did not form entirely separate groups, which suggests that something interesting has happened in the genetic history of these taxa. It was a successful and enjoyable project, and I am proud to say that I completed my MSc with first class honours.

So far, so good. However, the currency of modern academia is peer-reviewed publications. The preparation of manuscripts is an arduous process, and over the past two years the one describing the aforementioned research has been languishing on various people's desks (mine, mainly). In the past month though, it been brought into the light of day and has been published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. Check it out! If you don't have access to it, feel free to email the author.

References:
Brown SDJ, Armstrong KF, Cruickshank RH. 2012. Molecular phylogenetics of a South Pacific sap beetle species complex (Carpophilus spp., Coleoptera: Nitidulidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 64(3), 428–440

USP online book store

Over the years, the University of the South Pacific has published a number of important books on the natural history, politics and cultures of the South Pacific. Most of these books can be purchased at their online book store. Prices are in US dollars and are pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, the kicker is postage, which adds on around $10 per book ordered. However, this isn't surprising considering the location of Fiji. Despite that, the book store remains an important outlet for all sorts of interesting reading on the Pacific.

Bishop Museum Occasional Papers

I thought that I had blogged here before regarding the availability of the Bishop Museum Occasional Papers; but it seems that I was mistaken. Suffice to say, the Bishop Museum is in the process of digitising the issues of BMOP and making them available online. It is actively occuring—today I was able to see a few articles that were unavailable previously. The Occasional Papers and pretty much everything published by the Bishop Museum form a immensely valuable body of knowledge for South Pacific biology; and it should be considered a first port-of-call for anyone keen on the fauna and flora of the region.

1 2 3 steps to publishing a scientific comment

For a humorous, yet ultimately disturbing tale, check out Rick Trebino's How to publish a scientific comment in 1 2 3 easy steps, then wonder how scientific journals managed to achieve the power over the research process that they currently have.

Guardian article about academic publishing

I agree with a lot of this article in the Guardian. Especially:

Reading a single article published by one of Elsevier's journals will cost you $31.50. Springer charges €34.95, Wiley-Blackwell, $42. Read 10 and you pay 10 times. And the journals retain perpetual copyright. You want to read a letter printed in 1981? That'll be $31.50.

I get especially annoyed with the said letter was published in 1881, and therefore out of copyright yet they still charge you for it.

Koleopterologische Rundschau

The Austrian entomological journal Koleopterologische Rundschau is an excellent serial that is focussed on beetle taxonomy. It publishes a single issue a year, but this issue is filled to the brim with interesting and informative papers on beetles of all families from Europe and the world. Issues prior to 1990 (Volumes 1-59) are freely available online. PDF versions of papers published since then are also available, but at a cost. Unlike some other outfits though, this cost is actually reasonable; being around 1 Euro per paper.

South Pacific Study

South Pacific Study is a Japanese periodical that publishes scholarly articles on a diverse range of subjects of relevance to the South Pacific in a very broad sense. The scope of the journal is extremely wide—you'll find articles ranging from analyses of Buddhist missionary activity, to measurements of volcanic SO₂, to the biology of pests, to taxonomic papers. The icing on top is that these articles are freely available online, back to around 2000. Tables of contents and some articles prior to then are also available.

Tijdschrift voor Entomologie

Tijdschrift voor Entomologie is the Journal published by the Netherlands Entomological Society. The society has a bit of a heritage---it was founded in 1845, and has remained in action since. The Journal itself is has open access to PDFs of all papers published from 1998 until two years ago. Volumes published before 1923 are available at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

This clearly illustrates what I think is a growing trend. Literature published since 2000 can generally be easily found online. The same goes for literature older than 1925---there's a good chance it's on BHL. However, it's actually fairly difficult to find the literature published in the period in between (i.e. 1925--2000). No doubt this will change as the sliding window of Copyright slowly moves over this time period. In addition, I think that some societies and publications are starting to fill this gap of their own goodwill, which is excellent also.

Zookeys and Cybertaxonomy

Taxonomy is changing... Rather, the way that taxonomy is done is undergoing large shifts from the traditional way thanks to the advent of the internet. A recent Zookeys special issue published a couple of forum papers showing how data presented online in Scratchpads can be nigh-on automatically converted into a publishable document in Zookeys.

While my previous comments on Scratchpads were less than complementary, this application of them is pretty cool. Whether or not it will completely streamline the process of publication more than the usual is another question, but it will be interesting to see.

PNG Entomology Textbook

Michael Schneider was a lecturer at the Bulolo University College in Morobe Provence, PNG from 1994 to 1999. As a result, he has produced both a key to the Insect Pects of PNG, and an entomology textbook for students and forestry. This last work is a particularly impressive effort, being a clear, informative and thorough textbook with a strong emphasis on the insect fauna of Papua New Guinea. For anyone with a developing interest in insects, it's well worth checking out. For those of us who are particularly fascinated with the insects of Melanesia though, it's a must-see.

Smithsonian Contributions online

The Smithsonian Institute has published a lot of interesting and important stuff over the years. A lot of it is now available online here.

Fauna Hawaiiensis

I've always been surprised how hard it's been to find information on the beetles of Hawaii. Due to it being a state of the USA and the fascination for many other aspects of the fauna and flora of the islands I would've thought that it would be very easy to find out pretty much anything about the beetles of the area. This expectation for the most part has not been met.

Lately though, I've been having more luck. The other day I found the Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society, and today I found the website of Karl Magnacca. He's working on the Drosophila of Hawaii which form a very famous radiation with approximately 600 species found in Hawaii. A big task. He's also taken a number of photos of Hawaiian beetles, and has put online the masterpiece of early Hawaiian biological study: Fauna Hawaiiensis. This ambitious project details the entirety of the animals from Hawaii at that time. Vertebrates, insects, worms, springtails, molluscs: it's all here.

Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society

The Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society is one of the key journals for South Pacific entomology, and now it is freely available online. There's a lot of very cool things in here, including a large number of papers by Elwood Zimmerman on weevils from throughout the South Pacific.

South Pacific insects in a Russian Journal

The Russian Entomological Journal is not the usual outlet for taxonomic research on South Pacific insects. That said, it has published a number of papers over the last few years that are freely available to everyone on their website. For some reason, they all deal with the Hemiptera. So, if you ever wanted to know about Microveliines from Fiji, Maana emeljanovi (Lophopidae) from West Papua, or Nerthra kerzhneri (the first species of the Gelastocoridae found from New Caledonia, pictured), now you know where to look.

Fauna of France

Carrying on with the theme of big documents being put on line, here's a link to PDF versions of most of the volumes of the Fauna of France. Naturally, they're in French. They do make you want to learn it (if you don't know it already) because there's some good stuff in here....

Insects of Brazil

All 11 volumes of the substantial 1956 publication "Insetos do Brasil" is available online. Volume 10 is all about weevils with some interesting notes on their biology, and a few very spectacular pictures and photos. Not spectacular in their quality, but of the amazing insects they represent.

Volumes are available as both full volumes and as chapters.

A quick run down of their contents:
Volume 1: "minor" orders---springtails, dragonflies, lice, webspinners, grasshoppers, mantids and the like.
Volume 2: Heteroptera
Volume 3: Homoptera
Volume 4: Neuroptera, Trichoptera etc
Volume 5: Lepidoptera part I---Microlepidoptera mainly
Volume 6: Lepidoptera part II---Macrolepidoptera
Volume 7: Coleoptera---Adephaga and Archostemata
Volume 8: Coleoptera---Scarabaeoidea, Elateroidea, Cleroidea, Cucujoidea
Volume 9: Coleoptera---Tenebrionoidea, Chryomelidae, Cerambycidae
Volume 10: Coleoptera---Curculionoidea. Weevils!
Volume 11: Hymenoptera---non-Apocrita
Volume 12: Hymenoptera---Apocrita

Canadian Agriculture Entomological Monographs

Canada is a long way from the South Pacific I know. I know also that their insects are very, very different from those in this part of the world which I know and love. But they have done a lot of excellent work on their own insects and now they've decided to open the floodgates and let all and sundry benefit from their work.

On a page that begins: "The Entomological Society of Canada (ESC) has obtained copyright permission from Her Majesty the Queen in the Right of Canada" they have put online in PDF form over 30 years of publications including the extremely valuable "Manual of Nearctic Diptera" volumes 1 to 3, and publications on the weevils and bark beetles of that fair northern country.

I'm looking forward to reaping the benefits...

Conservation Biology papers with a Pacific focus

The most recent (April 2010) issue of Conservation Biology has a number of papers which focus on the fauna, flora and environment of the South Pacific.

The issue starts off with an editorial by David Melick on economic schemes to negate carbon emissions. In particular he deals with the scheme to compensate landowners for NOT cutting down forests on their land (REDD) and the way this has played out thus far in the Papua New Guinea scene. He ends with this very pertinent statement:

... REDD will come to nothing if the system is not supported by the people who own and live in the forests. If the process is not rushed (it may take years, not months) and the PNG government is willing to accept international scrutiny and advice, forest governance and communitybenefits for the rural poor may finally be improved significantly...

Highly relevant for all who work in the South Pacific, particularly those of us with a western, productivity-based mindset. As the Mainland cheese ads say---Good things take time.

William Laurance and others discuss the impact of Oil Palm cultivation and some of the issues and opportunities surrounding it. In particular, they discuss the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) a nonprofit organisation that hopes to promote and market sustainably grown palm oil. Unfortunately, its track record appears to be fairly poor. The seeming blind eye the organisation has taken toward the destruction caused by growing oil palm in peat swamps is singled out as being a major failing of the RSPO. however Laurance et al. refuse to be pessimistic about the situation and make some recommendations, most of which involve fairly major restructuring of the RSPO and developments in its monitoring and enforcement policies. However, the real problem in the situation is the lack of market demand for sustainably grown palm oil, meaning that the RSPO has little clout.

Alison Boyer revisits the very high extinction rate of Pacific Island birds, this time investigating what ecological traits seem to have an influence on extinction rate. She concludes that differences in endemism, body size and diet influence the potential for extinction and gives a list of bird species that may be worthy of a higher threat category than currently given.

Shankar Aswani and Armagan Sabetian look at the impact that urbanisation has had on the parrotfish population around Gizo and Munda, in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. Not surprisingly, they found that over the period 2004--2005 parrotfish numbers decreased around Gizo. However, they did find that some customary management systems were effectively preserving larger and greater numbers of parrotfish. The most effective systems were those that prevented all fishing in certain areas.

Mayeul Dalleau and team looked at shallow marine habitats around Wallis Island and used digital imagery and habitat maps as surrogates for biodiversity in the proposal of marine protected areas. While they promote this method as being an effective and efficient of surveying large areas, they do recognise that it is very desirable to do some actual field work to complement the habitat data, particularly in regions such as the Red Sea which has a very different environment from the oceanic Pacific islands.

It's a good issue. Well worth a read, certainly if any of the above issues pique your interest.

References:

Aswani S, Sabetian A. 2010. Implications of Urbanization for Artisanal Parrotfish Fisheries in the Western Solomon Islands. Conservation Biology 24(2): 520-530

Boyer AG. 2010. Consistent Ecological Selectivity through Time in Pacific Island Avian Extinctions Conservation Biology 24(2): 511-519

Dalleau M, Andréfouët S, Wabnitz CCC, Payri C, Wantiez L, Pichon M, Friedman K, Vigliola L, Benzoni F. 2010. Use of Habitats as Surrogates of Biodiversity for Efficient Coral Reef Conservation Planning in Pacific Ocean Islands. Conservation Biology 24(2): 541-552

Laurance WF, Koh LP, Butler R, Sodhi NS, Bradshaw CJA, Neidel JD, Consunji H, Vega JM. 2010. Improving the Performance of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil for Nature Conservation. Conservation Biology 24(2): p 377-381

Melick, D. 2010. Credibility of REDD and Experiences from Papua New Guinea. Conservation Biology 24(2): 359-361

Some bedtime reading for the kids.

Of all the ways to describe the Transactions, juvenile nonfiction would probably be my last choice...