The Scydmaenidae and Pselaphidae Occurring near Iowa City, Iowa

The minute beetles belonging to the above families have been much neglected by collectors, although their many peculiarities of habit and structure make them well worthy of attention. For three years past my wife and I have collected them systematically in this vicinity, with the result of very largely increasing the list of species known to occur here

Insects

Cychrus lecontei, Dej., Independence. Nomaretus cavicollis, Lec., Iowa, (Leng & Beutenmuller.) Carabus limbatus, Say, Iowa City. Elaphrus clairvillei, Kirby, Iowa City. Nebria pallipes, Say, Independence. Clivina impressifrons, Lec., Iowa City. Bembidium postremum, Say, Iowa {Reinecke). Evarthrus sodalis, Lec., Iowa City. Amara remotestriata, Doj., Iowa (Hamilton). Diplochila obtusa, Lec., Iowa City. Platynus picticornis, Newm., Iowa (Reinecke). --placidus, Say, Iowa City. Perigona pallipennis, Lec., Iowa (Horn). Galerita atripes, Lec., Iowa City. Callida punctata, Lec., Iowa City. Pinacodera limbata, Dej., Iowa City. Helluomorpha bicolor, Harr., Iowa City. Chlaenius diffinis, Chaud, Iowa City. --brevilabris, Lec., Iowa City (Horn). Harpalus testaceus, Lec., Iowa City (Bailey)

Eleodes in Iowa

The genus Eleodes contains certain species of beetles belonging to the family Tenebrionidae. They are terrestrial and cursorial, rarely being found on plants of any size, though a few are known to ascend the stems of shrubs. All are of large or medium size, and devoid of functional wings, the elytra being connate, forming a perfect shield which clasps the sides of the body. The integument is very thick, and forms, in connection with this elytral structure, an efficient protection from desiccation. Repugnatorial glands are present, secreting a powerful caustic fluid which is discharged through the anus when the insect is irritated. In order to protect themselves more efficiently they elevate the posterior portions of the body when alarmed, and run off in that position. Probably it is this habit which has suggested the name circus bugs, often applied to them in the west

Fragment of a Catalogue of the Coleoptera of Iowa

The collections in this extensive order of insects are now sufficiently full to give us, we believe, a fair idea of the Coleopterous fauna of the State

Meta‐analysis on pulse disturbances reveals differences in functional and compositional recovery across ecosystems

Most ecosystems are affected by anthropogenic or natural pulse disturbances, which alter the community composition and functioning for a limited period of time. Whether and how quickly communities recover from such pulses is central to our understanding of biodiversity dynamics and ecosystem organisation, but also to nature conservation and management. Here, we present a meta‐analysis of 508 (semi‐)natural field experiments globally distributed across marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. We found recovery to be significant yet incomplete. At the end of the experiments, disturbed treatments resembled controls again when considering abundance (94%), biomass (82%), and univariate diversity measures (88%). Most disturbed treatments did not further depart from control after the pulse, indicating that few studies showed novel trajectories induced by the pulse. Only multivariate community composition on average showed little recovery: disturbed species composition remained dissimilar to the control throughout most experiments. Still, when experiments revealed a higher compositional stability, they tended to also show higher functional stability. Recovery was more complete when systems had high resistance, whereas resilience and resistance were negatively correlated. The overall results were highly consistent across studies, but significant differences between ecosystems and organism groups appeared. Future research on disturbances should aim to understand these differences, but also fill obvious gaps in the empirical assessments for regions (especially the tropics), ecosystems and organisms. In summary, we provide general evidence that (semi‐)natural communities can recover from pulse disturbances, but compositional aspects are more vulnerable to long‐lasting effects of pulse disturbance than the emergent functions associated to them

A global evaluation of forest interior area dynamics using tree cover data from 2000 to 2012

Context Published maps of global tree cover derived from Landsat data have indicated substantial changes in forest area from 2000 to 2012. The changes can be arranged in different patterns, with different conse- quences for forest fragmentation. Thus, the changes in forest area do not necessarily equate to changes in forest sustainability. Objective The objective is to assess global and regional changes in forest fragmentation in relation to the change of forest area from 2000 to 2012. Methods Using published global tree cover data, forest and forest interior areas were mapped in 2000 and 2012. The locations of forest interior change were compared to the locations of overall forest change to identify the direct (pixel level) and indirect (landscape level) components of forest interior change. The changes of forest interior area were compared to the changes of total forest area in each of 768 ecological regions. Results A 1.71 million km2 (3.2 %) net loss of global forest area translated to a net loss of 3.76 million km2 (9.9 %) of forest interior area. The difference in loss rates was consistent in most of the 768 ecological regions. The indirect component accounted for 2.44 million km2 of the net forest interior change, com- pared to 1.32 million km2 that was attributable to the direct component. Conclusion Forest area loss alone from 2000 to 2012 underestimates ecological risks from forest fragmen- tation. In addition to the direct loss of forest, there was a widespread shift of the remaining global forest to a more fragmented condition.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

“If You've Got Friends and Neighbours”: Constituency Voting Patterns for the UK Labour Party Leader in 2010

Most attention in British electoral studies has been paid to the pattern of voting for parties, with relatively little to that for individual candidates. In intra-party elections, however, candidates may perform better in some areas than others, illustrating V. O. Key's well-known “friends and neighbours” effect. This paper explores whether that was so at the election for the leader of the UK Labour party in 2010, expecting each of the five candidates to perform better in their own constituency and its environs and also with those constituency parties whose MPs supported their candidature. The results are in line with the expectations, especially for one of the candidates who ran an explicitly geographical campaign

Living Film Histories: Researching at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Edinburgh University Press via the DOI in this recordThe Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter is both a public museum and a research and teaching resource originally based on the collection put together by film-maker Bill Douglas and his friend Peter Jewell. Augmented constantly with new donations, it now holds over 85,000 items. In this article we will demonstrate how the range and depth of the museum’s collections on moving image history create a ‘people’s history’ of the medium. Despite the variety of the holdings, the museum has a coherence for researchers, allowing scholars to evidence continuities as well as changes across the history which it charts. We will show how this works in three distinct ways. Firstly we will consider how research on the everyday ephemera of cinema, and the optical media that preceded it, which forms much of the collection, such as programmes, publicity material or merchandise, can illuminate our understanding of film history as it is lived: what Raymond Williams saw as ‘the structures of feeling’ underpinning popular culture. Second, we will draw on examples from the stipend scheme that we operate, whereby awards enable researchers from around the world to explore our holdings in order to discover new paths through this history. How has material found within collections complicated research questions or allowed scholars to make connections between the past and the present? Lastly, we will explore how artefacts gain meanings from the processes of their curation. Here we will analyse the curatorial practices of students at the University of Exeter

gtrellis: an R/Bioconductor package for making genome-level Trellis graphics

BACKGROUND: Trellis graphics are a visualization method that splits data by one or more categorical variables and displays subsets of the data in a grid of panels. Trellis graphics are broadly used in genomic data analysis to compare statistics over different categories in parallel and reveal multivariate relationships. However, current software packages to produce Trellis graphics have not been designed with genomic data in mind and lack some functionality that is required for effective visualization of genomic data. RESULTS: Here we introduce the gtrellis package which provides an efficient and extensible way to visualize genomic data in a Trellis layout. gtrellis provides highly flexible Trellis layouts which allow efficient arrangement of genomic categories on the plot. It supports multiple-track visualization, which makes it straightforward to visualize several properties of genomic data in parallel to explain complex relationships. In addition, gtrellis provides an extensible framework that allows adding user-defined graphics. CONCLUSIONS: The gtrellis package provides an easy and effective way to visualize genomic data and reveal high dimensional relationships on a genome-wide scale. gtrellis can be flexibly extended and thus can also serve as a base package for highly specific purposes. gtrellis makes it easy to produce novel visualizations, which can lead to the discovery of previously unrecognized patterns in genomic data. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-016-1051-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users