Extracting scientific articles from a large digital archive: BioStor and the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Background: The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a large digital archive of legacy biological literature, comprising over 31 million pages scanned from books, monographs, and journals. During the digitisation process basic metadata about the scanned items is recorded, but not article-level metadata. Given that the article is the standard unit of citation, this makes it difficult to locate cited literature in BHL. Adding the ability to easily find articles in BHL would greatly enhance the value of the archive. Description: A service was developed to locate articles in BHL based on matching article metadata to BHL metadata using approximate string matching, regular expressions, and string alignment. This article locating service is exposed as a standard OpenURL resolver on the BioStor web site http://biostor.org/openurl/. This resolver can be used on the web, or called by bibliographic tools that support OpenURL. Conclusions: BioStor provides tools for extracting, annotating, and visualising articles from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. BioStor is available from http://biostor.org

Preimaginal Stages of the Emerald Ash Borer, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae): An Invasive Pest on Ash Trees (Fraxinus)

This study provides the most detailed description of the immature stages of Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire to date and illustrates suites of larval characters useful in distinguishing among Agrilus Curtis species and instars. Immature stages of eight species of Agrilus were examined and imaged using light and scanning electron microscopy. For A. planipennis all preimaginal stages (egg, instars I-IV, prepupa and pupa) were described. A combination of 14 character states were identified that serve to identify larvae of A. planipennis. Our results support the segregation of Agrilus larvae into two informal assemblages based on characters of the mouthparts, prothorax, and abdomen: the A. viridis and A. ater assemblages, with A. planipennis being more similar to the former. Additional evidence is provided in favor of excluding A. planipennis from the subgenus Uragrilus

Changes to the Fossil Record of Insects through Fifteen Years of Discovery

The first and last occurrences of hexapod families in the fossil record are compiled from publications up to end-2009. The major features of these data are compared with those of previous datasets (1993 and 1994). About a third of families (>400) are new to the fossil record since 1994, over half of the earlier, existing families have experienced changes in their known stratigraphic range and only about ten percent have unchanged ranges. Despite these significant additions to knowledge, the broad pattern of described richness through time remains similar, with described richness increasing steadily through geological history and a shift in dominant taxa, from Palaeoptera and Polyneoptera to Paraneoptera and Holometabola, after the Palaeozoic. However, after detrending, described richness is not well correlated with the earlier datasets, indicating significant changes in shorter-term patterns. There is reduced Palaeozoic richness, peaking at a different time, and a less pronounced Permian decline. A pronounced Triassic peak and decline is shown, and the plateau from the mid Early Cretaceous to the end of the period remains, albeit at substantially higher richness compared to earlier datasets. Origination and extinction rates are broadly similar to before, with a broad decline in both through time but episodic peaks, including end-Permian turnover. Origination more consistently exceeds extinction compared to previous datasets and exceptions are mainly in the Palaeozoic. These changes suggest that some inferences about causal mechanisms in insect macroevolution are likely to differ as well

An updated key to the genera of Egyptian beeflies (Diptera: Bombyliidae)

An updated key for the Egyptian genera of Bombyliidae with some elucidative drawings is provided. A total of 52 genera, 15 tribes, and 11 subfamilies are treated. The key is based mainly on morphological characters including the genitalia. Egyptian Journal of Biology Vol. 10 2008: pp. 104-1

Species diversity in bee flies and hover flies (Diptera: Bombyliidae and Syrphidae) in the horticultural environments of the Blue Mountains, Australia

Flies (Diptera) are one of the most important groups of insect pollinators. Families Bombyliidae (bee flies) and Syrphidae (hover flies) are globally distributed with aproximately 5000 and 6200 described species, respectively. Many studies have attempted to quantify Syrphidae diversity in natural and agricultural environments, due to their perceived value as pollinators, decomposers of organic waste and agents of pest control. However, to date, there have been only two studies of Syrphidae communities in Australia, both of which focused on arable crops. Meanwhile, there have been very few studies of Bombyliidae diversity and none in Australia, despite the fact that bombyliid diversity can be high, far exceeding that of Syrphidae in some ecosystems. We aimed to learn more about Australia's anthophilous Diptera and their diversity in agricultural and native ecosystems. Using a combination of pan trapping and observation plot surveys, we assessed bombyliid and syrphid diversity at Bilpin, New South Wales, Australia, an important horticultural area within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Five syrphid species made up 62% of all individuals collected, while 22 species made up the remaining 32%, including nine species of Bombyliidae. The hover fly Melangyna viridiceps alone accounted for a third of all captured specimens. The larvae of the five most commonly encountered species are all aphidophagous. As such, aphidophagous species appear to be numerically dominant, and this is consistent with previous studies in south-east Australian agroecosystems. M. viridiceps and Triglyphus fulvicornis were frequent visitors to flowering fruit trees and may therefore contribute to the pollination of these crops. However, most visited flowers were introduced weeds or escaped crop plants. The maintenance of diverse floral resources, which may include weeds, is important for sustaining populations of aphidophagous Syrphidae, which may contribute to both pollination and pest control. As a consequence, we recommend a more tolerant approach to weed management in orchards to better facilitate the ecosystem services provided by Diptera

Longitudinal data from [seven waves, three years] 10-16 year old adolescents and their mothers focusing on alcohol use and related lifestyle variables

PROCEDURE: The study consisted of a seven-wave longitudinal family study (2015-2018). A sample of young adolescents (aged 10 to 13 at baseline) and their mothers, were recruited from primary schools from five provinces in the Netherlands. Participants registered for the study via the study website (http://www.vol-onderzoek.nl) and were asked to provide informed consent. The ethics committee of the Faculty of Social Sciences approved the study procedures (ECSW2014-2411-272). Over three years, adolescents completed questionnaires semi-annually and mothers completed online questionnaires annualy. Yearly monetary incentives (€10) were provided to adolescents PARTICIPANTS: Of the 913 contacted primary schools, 123 school boards agreed to participate (13.5%). Rea-sons for non-participation included being overburdened (76%) or uninterested in the subject (3%). In other cases, reasons were not provided (21%). Families from 104 of the 123 partici-pating schools opted in to the study, resulting in a total of 765 participating families. Overall, 755 preteens (45.6% boys, Mage=11.27, SD=.56) and 755 mothers (98.7%, Mage=42.57, SD=4.66), who also reported on the alcohol use of 709 fathers, completed the administered questionnaires. MOTHER QUESTIONNAIRES: Exists of instruments assessing demographics (including SES), parents’ alcohol use (frequency and intensity, alcohol availability at home[22] and alcohol use visible to the child, i.e. exposure[37]) and cognitions (alcohol expectancies and drinking motives[15, 38]).Additional assessed variables concern possible covariates. Being closely linked to drinking onset and alcohol use, it is important to control for these factors when testing the aforementioned hypotheses. Extensive questionnaires will be provided regarding monitoring[47], alcohol-related rules (rules towards underage drinking and alcohol consumption[21, 24, 25], and media exposure [1]), family factors (parent-child relationship quality[23], parenting styles[48], frequency of family activities[49]) and alcohol-specific parenting (alcohol-specific communication and relation[27]). CHILD QUESTIONNAIRES to be used will be identical to the parent questionnaire, although questions will be adapted to the adolescents’ perspective. TIn addition, several instruments will be added to the adolescent questionnaire: first, questions will be added regarding exposure of alcohol consumption of both parents (if possible), best friend, and peer group. This self-constructed instrument measures the perceived alcohol use (i.e. frequency and intensity) and in which situations alcohol was used. Second, as risky behaviors, such as substance related experimentation, characterize adolescence and may co-occur with alcohol use [1], questions regarding cigarette smoking are included. Third, as characteristics such as impulsivity and conduct disorders are associated with drinking onset [6], the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) will be added to measure personality characteristics[50