The Flies of Western North America. F.R. Cole, with the collaboration of Evert I. Schlinger. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. xi, 693 pp. $25.00.

Excerpt: Knowing of the excellence of the author\u27s work especially as an artist of Diptera, entomologists have been waiting for this much-needed volume since the completion of the first manuscript in 1932. The work deals with two-winged flies (Diptera) of North America west of the 104th meridian, south of the 70th parallel and north of Mexico, but including Baja California

Some Reasons Courts Have Become Active Participants in the Search for Ultimate Moral and Political Truth

This short essay was prompted by the increasing delegation to courts of the responsibility for deciding what are basically moral questions, such as in litigation involving human rights conventions, as well as the responsibility for deciding basic issues of social policy with at best only the most general guidelines to guide their exercise of judicial discretion. The essay discusses some of the reasons for this delegation of authority and briefly describes how courts have struggled to meet this obligation without transcending accepted notions governing the limits of judicial discretion

New and Little-Known Agromyzidae from Michigan (Diptera: Acalyptratae)

The latest major work on North American Agromyzidae, The Agromyzidae of Canada and Alaska (Spencer, 1969), lists 290 regional species. Of that number, half (147) are new species and 23 are previously described species newly recorded for the continent. It is thus evident that the North American Agromyzid fauna is still poorly known. Among material recently determined for the collection of Michigan State University, East Lansing, were the 5 additional new species herein described. A male allotype for Melanagromyza inornata Spencer (1969), described from the female only, is also described, and more detailed figures of the male postabdomen of Melanagromyza lauta Spencer (1969) are presented. Unfortunately all of the material is from random collecting and no host plants for the species are known. Types are retained in the collections of the United States National Museum of Natural History (USNM) and paratypes are returned to the Michigan State University collections (MSC)

Historical Patterns of Arboviral Seroprevalence across Africa and Asia

The emergence and resurgence of arboviruses in recent history is challenging our scientific understanding of mosquito-borne diseases and their transmission. To better contextualize recent epidemics and gain insight into historical trends in arbovirus incidence, we conducted a literature review to identify serosurveys from Africa and Asia. We compiled all serosurvey data into a table and tested for variation in disease incidence across countries and between age categories. Our analysis showed that disease incidence was consistently higher in the \u3e15 age category than the \u3c15 age category and revealed significant variation in incidence across countries. In addition, the mean incidence of yellow fever virus was substantially higher than the incidences of the other diseases included in the analysis. Higher incidence in the \u3e15 age category is likely due to the long-term persistence of antibodies in human sera, while a higher incidence of yellow fever can likely be attributed to widespread vaccine use. Characteristics of countries with high disease incidence included a tropical climate, extended rainy season, and flat terrain, and countries with low disease incidence occurred at higher elevations and/or reflected a desert climate. This analysis can hopefully reveal the conditions most important in facilitating an arbovirus outbreak, leading to targeted prevention strategies in high-risk areas. It also highlights the need for continued serosurveys as a method of documenting disease spread

A Review of the North American Species of the Genus Otites Latreille, with Descriptions of Two New Species (Diptera: Otitidae)

Excerpt: In 1961 (Steyskal, 1961), I placed the genus Otites in a key to the North American genera of Otitidae and indicated the synonymy of the genus Ortalimyia. Bibliography and synonymy of the hitherto known species of our area will be found in the Catalog of the Diptera of America North of Mexico (Stone et al., 1965). The only previously published key to our species was by Hendel (1911, as Ortalis), wherein were included Cevoxys latiusculus (Loew) and the four species now known as Otites bimaculahs (Hendel), 0. evythvocephala (Hendel), 0. pyvvhocephala (Loew), and O. stigma (Hendel). The present treat- ment excludes Cevoxys but includes O. snowi (Cresson) and two new species here described as O. evythvosceles and O. michiganus, making a total of seven species. The species form two rather distinct groups based on the width of the fronto-orbital pruinosity and the nature of the closure of the anal cell of the wing, as set forth in the following key. However, O. stigma (Hendel), while referable to the second group, shows characters indicating rapprochement to the first group. The generic name, although not found in large Greek lexicons, is of a form that corresponds to a rather large class of Greek nouns ending in -ites. As these words are all of masculine gender, it seems reasonable, in the absence of other decisive evidence, to treat Otites as masculine