Amber fossils of sooty moulds

The fossil record documenting the evolution of hylobatids is extremely poor, so details of their phylogenetic and geographic origins and subsequent evolutionary history are obscure. Based on molecular clock estimates, hylobatids diverged from other hominoids during the early Miocene , at ~19 Ma, and crown hylobatids originated at ~8 Ma. The oldest fossil hylobatid is Yuanmoupithecus from the late Miocene of China, dating to ~7–9 Ma, which represents the primitive sister taxon of crown hylobatids. The molecular and paleontological evidence indicates that there was a ghost lineage for the initial 10 myrs of hylobatid evolutionary history, with no trace of a fossil record. Hylobatids presumably originated in Africa during the early Miocene, but the timing of their arrival in Asia and their early geographic distribution is unknown. Since there are no suitable fossil precursors for Yuanmoupithecus at older sites in China, it is likely that stem hylobatids migrated northwards from Southeast Asia during the late Miocene, but the Neogene fossil record from this region is poorly documented. Hylobatids occur at a number of Pleistocene archaeological and paleontological sites throughout southern China and Southeast Asia, but they tend to be relatively rare elements of the primate fauna. These are generally referable to extant lineages and species, except for Bunopithecus sericus from the early or middle Pleistocene of China. This contribution reviews what is known about the evolutionary history of the hylobatids based on the fossil evidence, but since there is much that we do not know and cannot deduce about the phylogeny of hylobatids from the incomplete fossil record, a fuller appreciation of the evolutionary history relies on what can also be learned from comparative anatomy and molecular data.

Metcalfa pruinosa (Say, 1830) is an invasive, gregarious sap-sucking insect that spreads rapidly through Ukraine and now detects in Kyiv city, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zakarpattia, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Kyiv regions. Additionally, this sap-sucking insect parasitizes more than 300 species of plants, including the common hop (Humulus lupulus L.). H. lupulus is a valuable industrial crop grown in many countries, including Ukraine. In Ukraine, this industrial crop is grown in the Lviv, Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, and Zhytomyr regions. Specifically, the Zhytomyr region accounts for almost 74% of the total area of hop plantations in Ukraine. Thus, hop-growing areas in Ukraine are closest to Kyiv city and the Kyiv region, among the M. pruinosa infested areas in Ukraine. Additionally, H. lupulus is an important ornamental plant used for vertical gardening throughout Ukraine, including Kyiv city. Given the above, this study aimed to characterize the “M. pruinosa — H. Lupulus” host-parasite system in Kyiv city. To achieve the above purpose, the authors visually inspected hop plants in Kyiv city in 2021–2022. As a result, the inspections revealed that infestation of H. lupulus by this parasite predisposed the appearance of sooty mould. The authors also identified that micromycetes belonging to the genus Cladosporium Link, 1816 caused the sooty mould and that these micromycetes used honeydew excreted by M. pruinosa as substrate. Additionally, inspections found that in Kyiv city in 2021 and 2022, 4.4% and 1.29%, and 26.4% and 1.94% of common hop plants were damaged by M. pruinosa and sooty mould, respectively. Finally, the authors described the signs of hop infestation with M. pruinosa and sooty mould-causing micromycetes, including the diagnostic ones. The diagnostic sign of hop infestation by M. pruinosa was, respectively, the presence of a whitish, sticky, woolly coating on the leaves and stems, presented from the beginning of July until the end of October. The non-diagnostic signs of hop infestation by M. pruinosa included interveinal chlorosis and necrosis, chlorotic and necrotic spots on leaves. Meanwhile, the diagnostic sign of sooty mould was the presence of a black sticky coating on the leaves.

Primates

Fresh approach to the study of fossil plants

The sooty molds are a globally distributed ecological group of ascomycetes with epiphyllous, saprotrophic habit, comprising several phylogenetically distant taxa (i.e., members of the classes Dothideomycetes and Eurotiomycetes). Their fossil record extends almost continuously back to the early Cretaceous; however, they are hypothesized to have originated in the early Mesozoic. Here, we describe new specimens of sooty molds associated with conifer leaves from Jurassic hot spring deposits of Patagonia, Argentina. Thin sections of chert samples from the La Matilde Formation, Deseado Massif (Santa Cruz, Argentina) were observed using light microscopy. The fungi occur on the surface and axils of leafy twigs with podocarpaceous affinities, forming dense subicula comprised by opaque moniliform hyphae. Additionally, several asexual and sexual reproductive structures are observed. On the basis of vegetative (i.e., dense subicula composed of moniliform hyphae; hyphae composed of opaque cells deeply constricted at the septa) and reproductive characters (i.e., poroconidial and sympodioconidial asexual stages and diverse spores), two morphotypes were identified with affinities within lineages of the subphylum Pezizomycotina that encompass the ecological group of sooty molds, and a third morphotype was within the phylum Ascomycota. This finding extends the fossil record of sooty molds to the Jurassic and their geographic fossil range to the South American continent. In particular, their association with podocarpaceous conifers is shown to be ancient, dating back to the Jurassic. This new record provides an additional reference point on the diversity of interactions that characterized Jurassic forests in Patagonia.

A description is provided for Capnodium salicinum . Information is included on the disease caused by the organism, its transmission, geographical distribution, and hosts. HOSTS: recorded from living leaves and twigs of a wide variety of species, including species of Acer (Aceraceae), Baccharis (Compositae), Bursaria (Pittosporaceae), Castanospermum (Leguminosae), Casuarina (Casuarinaceae), Citrus (Rutaceae), Epacris (Epacridaceae), Helichrysum (Compositae), Leptospermum (Myrtaceae), Pittosporum (Pittosporaceae), Populus (Salicaceae), Salix (Salicaceae), Syncarpia (Myrtaceae) and Ulmus (Ulmaceae). DISEASE: sooty mould; saprobic on honeydew and plant exudates, apparently without a deleterious effect on the plant apart from loss of photosynthetic capacity; this has been demonstrated for other species of Capnodium . GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION: widely distributed; recorded from Australia, Cameroun, France, Hungary, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom, USA (California, Montana, Wisconsin) and Zimbabwe. TRANSMISSION: the ascospores are presumably air-dispersed and the conidia transmitted via water-splash, but there is no experimental evidence to support these suppositions.

The radiation of macaques out of Africa: Evidence from mitogenome divergence times and the fossil record

SummarySooty moulds on crape myrtle leaves were investigated using light and electron microscopy. The adaxial leaf surface was distinctly covered with soot‐like masses of dark brown hyphae and conidia. The main characteristics of the sooty moulds included stauroconidia, conidial clusters, hyphal degeneration and extracellular melanin depositions. Some conidia were round, measured ~10 μm in diameter, and mostly one‐septate; others were branched and multiseptate (stauroconidia). Based on their morphology, the sooty moulds were determined to consist of several component fungal species belonging to genera such as Antennaria, Metacapnodium and Tripospermum. Enclosed in electron‐dense melanin layers, hyphae and conidial clusters had concentric bodies exhibiting electron‐transparent cores and electron‐dense shells with fibrillar sheaths. Concentric bodies are hypothesized to function as multilayer lipid‐encapsulated nanobubbles or eukaryotic gas vesicles for cytoplasmic volume control. Intrahyphal hyphae possessed electron‐dense cytoplasm and lipid globules. These results suggest that sooty moulds are equipped with melanized cell walls, multicelled resting structures, hyphal regeneration, intrahyphal growth and gas vesicles to adapt to their xeric phylloplane environment. Condensed and elongated starch granules in the chloroplasts of mesophyll tissues may indicate the acclimation of the sooty leaf regions to light reduction and temperature increase.

absent

Antiquity of cancer.

The stem catarrhine Saadanius does not inform the timing of the origin of crown catarrhines

Thuja, a genus of Cupressaceae comprising five extant species, presently occurs in both East Asia (3 species) and North America (2 species) and has a long fossil record from Paleocene to Pleistocene in the Northern Hemisphere. Two distinct hypotheses have been proposed to account for the origin and present distribution of this genus. Here we recognize and describe T. sutchuenensis Franch., a new fossil Thuja from the late Pliocene sediments of Zhangcun, Shanxi, North China, based on detailed comparisons with all living species and other fossil ones, integrate the global fossil records of this genus plotted in a set of paleomaps from different time intervals, which show that Thuja probably first appeared at high latitudes of North America in or before the Paleocene. This genus reached Greenland in the Paleocene, then arrived in eastern Asia in the Miocene via the land connection between East Asia and western North America. In the late Pliocene, it migrated into the interior of China. With the Quaternary cooling and drying, Thuja gradually retreated southwards to form today’s disjunctive distribution between East Asia and North America.

The New Zealand endemic bat family Mystacinidae comprises just two Recent species referred to a single genus, Mystacina. The family was once more diverse and widespread, with an additional six extinct taxa recorded from Australia and New Zealand. Here, a new mystacinid is described from the early Miocene (19–16 Ma) St Bathans Fauna of Central Otago, South Island, New Zealand. It is the first pre-Pleistocene record of the modern genus and it extends the evolutionary history of Mystacina back at least 16 million years. Extant Mystacina species occupy old-growth rainforest and are semi-terrestrial with an exceptionally broad omnivorous diet. The majority of the plants inhabited, pollinated, dispersed or eaten by modern Mystacina were well-established in southern New Zealand in the early Miocene, based on the fossil record from sites at or near where the bat fossils are found. Similarly, many of the arthropod prey of living Mystacina are recorded as fossils in the same area. Although none of the Miocene plant and arthropod species is extant, most are closely related to modern taxa, demonstrating potentially long-standing ecological associations with Mystacina.

Itea is a genus of about 20 species of trees and shrubs that are today native to southeastern North America, eastern Asia, and eastern Africa. In this paper, I review the fossil record of Itea, which is based on four types of fossils: diporate, psilate pollen attributed to Itea or the dispersed pollen genus Iteapollis; carpofossils representing fruits and seeds attributed to Itea europaea; flowers preserved in amber and assigned to Adenanthemum iteoides; and leaf impressions attributed to Itea. The distributions of these fossils indicate that Itea was present in western North America from the early Eocene to Miocene, in eastern North America beginning no later than the early Miocene, and in western Eurasia from the late Eocene to Pliocene. Only one datapoint is known from eastern Asia; it is early Miocene in age. Based on the fossil record, it can be inferred that Itea crossed between continents over both the Bering Land Bridge and North American Land Bridge, and that it reached Africa from Europe via Anatolia. Thus, it is predicted that the sole extant North American species, I. virginica, may be most closely related to the sole extant African species, I. rhamnoides. The potential application of Itea fossils to calibrating phylogenetic trees generated from molecular sequence data is also discussed.

A new species of Priapulida was discovered from the Beaufort Sea near Barrow, Alaska. Following an unusually strong autumnal storm, 30 adult specimens of Halicryptus higginsi n.sp. were collected, many alive, from intertidal beaches Additional specimens were found in museum collections misidentified as Halicryptus spinulosus von Siebold 1849. The new species represents the 11th priapulid species described since 1968 and increases the number of described extant species of Priapulida to 18. While all other recently described priapulids have been meiofaunal, Halicryptus higginsi n.sp. is macrofaunal and the largest extant priapulid species, with one specimen being 39 cm long in a contracted condition. Additional key words: arctic, benthos In recent years the concept of the marine phylum Priapulida has changed radically, from that of a macrobenthic, cold-water taxon, to one that is more speciose in the tropical meiofauna. Before 1968, only 7 extant species were known and additional species had been described from the fossil record; all extant species were macrobenthic and found only in cold-water habitats (Higgins et al. 1993). In 1968 the first meiobenthic priapulid, Tubiluchus corallicola VAN DER LAND 1968, was described from a tropical, shallowwater habitat (van der Land 1968). Since 1968 an additional 9 priapulid species, all meiobenthic and mostly inhabitants of tropical, shallow-water sediments, have been described. Tubiluchus arcticus ADRIANOV, MALAKOV, CHESUNOV, & TSETLIN 1989 is the only cold-water species that has been described in recent years, and it is a meiofaunal priapulid that inhabits shallow-water sediments in the arctic (Adrianov et al. 1989). During a survey of museum specimens of priapulids, one of us (VS) discovered that specimens in the United States National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, misidentified as Halicryptus spinulosus von Siebold from Barrow, Alaska, had been used for scanning electron microscopy (Merriman 1981) and instead represented a new and undescribed congener. Subsequent to the museum discovery we found larvae and juveniles of the undescribed species a Author for correspondence. E-mail: fftcs@uaf.edu in the shallow subtidal during two expeditions to Barrow, Alaska in 1991 and 1992, but did not find adults of the new species. Following an unusually strong autumnal storm in 1993, 30 adult specimens of Halicryptus higginsi n.sp. were collected, many alive, from intertidal beaches near Barrow. In this paper we describe the new species and compare it with H. spinulosus. The larvae will be described in a separate pub-