No abstract

Systematists have come under a barrage of criticism because of the alleged inadequacy of the 'traditional' taxonomic paradigm to curb the 'biodiversity crisis' and expeditiously make available the products of systematic research-usually species names-to the professional biological 'user' community (including ecologists, physiologists, population geneticists, and conservationists). The accusations leveled on systematists range from being 'slow' to 'incapable' of furnishing these products at a rate considered (by users) appropriate, especially given that the professional systematic community is portrayed as being in stark decline while operating in a quickly deteriorating natural world. Some of the critics have proposed solutions to this 'taxonomic impediment' in the form of a triumvirate adjoining a unitary taxonomic cyberstructure + automated DNA barcoding + molecular phylogeny, which we consider to be nothing but a threefold miopia; one critic has even gone as far as to suggest that biologists who need systematists can circumvent this dependency by 'doing systematics themselves'. The application of a quick-fix, 'automatedpragmatist' model is antithetical to a science endowed with a strong epistemological and theoretical foundation. We view the current propaganda in favor of automation and pragmatism in systematics as a distraction from the real issues confronting systematists, who must do more to impede the current trend that has 'marginalized' organismal biology in general. Simply increasing the rate of species descriptions, as suggested by critics, will not ameliorate the 'crisis'-taxa that correspond to incorrect hypotheses of biological entities (i.e. that are not monophyletic) will compromise the reliability of systematic information. Systematists must therefore provide more than 'binomials'-they must strive to produce vigorous hypotheses of comparative biology that are historical and theory-rich in order to augment the general reference system that is so critical to research in other biological sciences and conservation.

No abstract

A growing number of biogeographical methods have attempted to describe formal means of reconstructing

No abstract

Two new species of Notalina (Neonotalina) Holzenthal 1986 from southeastern Brazil are described and illustrated, N. (Neonotalina) froehlichi Calor & Holzenthal and N. (Neonotalina) paulista Calor & Holzenthal. Phylogenetic analyses confirm the placement of the nine Neotropical species of Notalina into two species groups, the roraima species-group and the brasiliana speciesgroup, with northern South American and southeastern Brazilian patterns of distribution, respectively. Additional collection records of previously described species from Brazil are provided.

Recently a new species of bombyliid fly, Marleyimyia xylocopae, was described by Marshall & Evenhuis (2015) based on two photographs taken during fieldwork in the Republic of South Africa. This species has no preserved holotype. The paper generated some buzz, especially among dipterists, because in most cases photographs taken in the field provide insufficient information for properly diagnosing and documenting species of Diptera.

We present a study of the endemicity patterns in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest on the basis of the distribution of 107 fly species belonging to 24 genera of 15 families. This is the first picture of endemism for Diptera in the Atlantic Forest. Instead of the traditional grid of geographical coordinates, we used a system of topographic units (TUs) for the analysis, delimited after gathering information on rivers and altitude for each state and country. A parsimony analysis of the data matrix with the species records for the TUs was performed, named topographic-unit parsimony analysis (TUPA). The same distributional data was used in a NDM/VNDM analysis. The combination of the resulting patterns from both analyses indicated the existence of the following three major areas of endemism for flies in the Atlantic Forest: a Northern Atlantic Forest, north of Rio Doce; a Southern Atlantic Forest, south of Rio Doce along the coast, extending to the west and to the south at the level of the state of Paraná; and a Semideciduous Seasonal Forest, west to the ombrophilous forest along the coast. None of these areas seems to be shaped solely by vicariance events. They can possibly be the result of biotic fusion of ancestral areas of endemism as a result of barrier collapse and secondary overlap of sister biotas, a hypothesis yet to be tested. The recognition of a separate area of endemism for flies in the Semideciduous Forest agrees with phytogeographical reconstructions and raises an important alert for the scarcity of biological reserves for this vegetation.