AMPYX-VERLAG Dr. Andreas Stark

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Studia dipterologica Supplement 23 Leseprobe (*.pdf-Datei, 1 MB)

Preface

F. Christian Thompson or Chris, as most of us knew him, made a seminal contribution to the taxonomy of Syrphidae. Sadly, Chris passed away in February 2021 and in response Studia dipterologica kindly agreed to publish this special issue in his memory. The issue contains 18 contributions all of which are original work by colleagues who have enjoyed the privilege of collaborating with Chris and who wish to express their appreciation with selected contributions from their research. The volume starts with a detailed overview of Chris’s life and career by Neal Evenhuis, Thomas Pape and Adrian Pont (9–18), followed by an historical overview of Systema Dipterorum, the online database for Diptera names created by Chris, by the same authors (19–30). The second set of papers starts with the legacy of Chris´s work at the National Museum of Natural History (USNM) by Torsten Dikow (31–41) followed by contributions on the impact of Chris in several biogeographical areas. Ximo Mengual summarizes Chris’s influence and legacy to Neotropical dipterology (43–52), and Kurt Jordaens and Marc De Meyer relate his major contributions to the Syrphidae of the Afrotropical Region (53–67). Next, Jeff Skevington, Andrew Young and Chris (77–102) describe three of the 18 new species the authors recognized in the recent "Field Guide to the Flower Flies of Northeastern North America". One of the best known unpublished works of Chris is the “Conspectus on the Nearctic flower flies (Diptera: Syrphidae)”, which proves invaluable to our understanding of the flower flies of the area. Inspired by this, Wouter van Steenis provides a contribution on the flower flies of Nebraska (103–145), and Thalles Pereira highlights Chris`s contribution to the study of Alaskan Diptera and discusses his work at the University of Alaska Museum Insect Collection (69–76). Chris had many unfinished and unpublished papers. Two of these are here finished and published; the first by Christopher Bergh, Paul Marek, Brent Stuart, Jeff Skevington & Chris Thompson is on the identity of Neocnemodon calcarata, and the second by Gunilla Ståhls,Graham Rotheray & Chris himself deals with the intra-tribal relationships of Volucellini (Syrphidae) (237–254). Five papers in this supplement describe various new dipteran species, with one new species named after Chris in each: Vlad Blagoderov describes two new species of Lygistorrhina (Keroplatidae) (175–187); Norm Woodley revises the Neotropical genus Pseudocyphomyia (Stratiomyidae) with the description of two new species (189–198); Dan Bickel describes four new Australasian species of Nepalomyia (Dolichopodidae) and a new genus of long-legged flies from the Solomon Islands (199–218); Li Shi, Miao Liu & ZhiWei Wang describe a new species in the genus Homoneura (Lauxaniidae) from China (219–226); and Ximo Mengual and Anatolij Barkalov describe Cheilosia (Syrphidae) from the high mountains of India (227–235). In addition, John Midgley, Terence Bellingan and Kurt Jordaens describe the female of the flower fly Spheginobaccha pamela (255–263), and Jason Pollock and Martin Hauser survey the Syrphidae as prey of Asilidae in eastern New Mexico and western Texas (165–174). The special volume ends with a contribution from Jeroen van Steenis (265–277) on the ICZN code-compliant authorship for nominal species and genera-group names of Diptera (Insecta), with special reference to Meigen (1822) on the "Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten". Chris had a penchant for the rules of zoological nomenclature and all of its peculiarities, and he was an ICZN Commissioner and a member of the editorial board for the Fourth Edition of the ICZN Code (see Evenhuis et al. this volume). We are sure Chris would have loved this contribution.
Besides these contributions, we have compiled the publications of Chris and listed them at the end of this supplement (279–295), together with some images of Chris ans colleagues (297–308).
Such a special volume takes much organization and preparation and we need to thank a number of people for their efforts. First, we thank Andreas Stark, the key person between us and the publisher Ampyx-Verlag, for his enthusiasm and hard work to get the special volume printed and published. We are indebted to the reviewers for their time and help to bring this project to fruition, and we are very grateful to the authors for their superb work and research. Thanks also to Taina Litwak for the amazing front cover of the volume. Our special thanks to the S. W. Williston Diptera Research Fund for supporting the publication of this Studia dipterologica Supplement and to Torsten Dikow for coordinating the donation, and to the Royal Museum for Central Africa also for funding this volume dedicated to Chris.
Enjoy reading!
Kurt Jordaens, Ximo Mengual and Jeff Skevington