Science museums encourage not only scientific knowledge and methodology, but also people's opinion about scientific issues. This has been the main concern of Barcelona's Museo de la Ciência de la Fundación "la Caixa" throughout its twenty years of existence. According to the author of the present article, the goals of "total museology" comply with the new trend some museums have been following. So that this new trend becomes more sound and widespread, it is necessary to create new concepts for museology. The first science museums were natural history and tools and machinery museums, which displayed artifacts in glass cases to visitors. Their mission was also that of preserving collections for the use of scientists. Science museums of today display real phenomena and provide visitors' interaction with them. Whatever the topic it focus, a science museum is "concentrated reality" either of objects or phenomena. This is probably the main distinctive feature of museology and of other forms of scientific communication. For teachers and lecturers, words are the basic element of communication; for books and magazines, the written language. There are no films without images, as there is no radio without sounds. In a museum, there are no restrictions as to the use of simulation, models, graphic images or new technology, but just as accessories to reality, never as reality itself.
Extraordinary preservation in amber of the Miocene termite Mastotermes electrodominicus has led to the discovery of fossil symbiotic microbes. Spirochete bacteria and wood-digesting protists were identified in the intestinal tissue of the insect. Fossil wood (xylem: developing vessel-element cells, fibers, pit connections), protists (most likely xylophagic amitochondriates), an endospore (probably of the filamentous intestinal bacterium Arthromitus ؍ Bacillus), and large spirochetes were seen in thin section by light and transmission electron microscopy. The intestinal microbiota of the living termite Mastotermes darwiniensis, a genus now restricted to northern Australia, markedly resembles that preserved in amber. This is a direct observation of a 20-million-year-old xylophagus termite fossil microbial community. Mastotermes, a genus of large tropical wood-ingesting termites, is of evolutionary importance for two reasons: (i) they harbor Mixotricha paradoxa and other amitochondriate many-genomed protists considered key to the early history of nucleated cells, and (ii) they are phylogenetically proximal to cockroaches (1). Both morphological and molecular features consistently place the single extant species (Mastotermes darwiniensis, family Mastotermitidae) as an early taxon ancestral to other termites. For example, Mastotermes is the only termite that, like cockroaches, oviposits an ootheca (egg case), although it is rudimentary (2). Numerous mastotermitid fossil specimens, corresponding to four extinct genera and about 20 species, occur from the Eocene [40 million years ago (mya)] to the Miocene (20-5 mya) of Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, and especially Europe (3, 4). The two finest preserved fossil species, extremely similar to M. darwiniensis, occur in Oligocene and Miocene amber from southern Mexico (Mastotermes electromexicus) (5) and the Dominican Republic (Mastotermes electrodominicus) (6). The notoriously polyphagous ''living fossil'' M. darwiniensis is limited to northern Australia.Termites exhibit a complex and unique symbiosis with prokaryotic (eubacterial and archaebacterial) and eukaryotic microorganisms that live in their hindgut. The symbiotic microbiota digest cellulose to sugars and acetate and produce hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide (7). In addition to Mixotricha paradoxa, a giant trichomonad motile by means of a unique set of attached surface spirochetes (8, 9), M. darwiniensis harbors other Archaeprotista (class Parabasalia, those with distinctive parabasal bodies, a type of Golgi apparatus), including the two hypermastigote genera (Koruga and Deltotrichonympha), a devescovinid (Metadevescovina extranea), and a trichomonad (Pentatrichomonoides scroa) that harbors endosymbiotic methanogenic bacteria (10).Where and when did this symbiosis evolve? Here we use the remarkable preservative properties of termites in amber to seek direct paleontological evidence for the evolution of termite intestinal symbionts. Cellular and subcellular structures of amber-preserved tis...
A new species of Technomyrmex (T. caritatis sp. n.) is described based on workers and larvae from Dominican amber (Oligocene to Lower Miocene). These are preserved with eggs and pupae of the same species and with five other insects in one amber piece found in the Palo Quemado Mine, near Santiago and in two separate amber pieces collected in Carlos Diaz Mine. Both mines are in Cordillera Septentrional. Iridomyrmex hispaniolae Wilson is redescribed and transferred to Technomyrmex. Most Technomyrmex species occur from Africa, east through southern Asia, to Australia. One species transported by human activity is known in the New World and there is only one extant native Neotropical species recorded from Panama. Technomyrmex likely represents a case of an Old World ant genus undergoing extinction in the New World. We discuss the affinities of this genus with the extant Dolichoderinae and the phylogeny of the subfamily.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.