|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At the beginning of the current year "Apollo Books Aps." Publishers (Kirkeby Sand 19, DK-5771, Stenstrup, Denmark - apollobooks@vip.cybercity.dk) published the first volume of the "Catalogue of Palearctic Beetles" dealing with families of suborders Archostemata, Myxophaga and Adephaga. It contains 574 pages of the main text and also 221 pages with literature list and 23 pages with an index of generic names.
This volume begins a series including all names of species of recent beetles, which were discovered on the territory of the Palearctic region in the historical time preceding the 21st century and also all synonyms and all references to all publications including descriptions of these species and their synonyms. The range of the Palearctic is accepted in the broadest sense including Europe and North Africa (Sahara) with the closest insular systems, nearly the entire Asia (except Indostan and Indo-China) and also the closest Pacific islands north of Philippines. The general scheme of material arrangement in this volume is the same as has been adopted in the series "World Catalogue of Insects" (see on our site "Catalogue of (Dytiscidae) of the World"). There is an urgent need for this kind of editions on many groups of insects, after the catalogues published by W. Junk and S. Schenkling, "Coleopterorum catalogus", which for the most part were published approximately 100 years ago and also the catalogue of Palearctic beetles by A. Winkler, 1924-1932, "Catalogus Coleopterorum regionis palaearcticae". In a sense series of the Publishers "Apollo Books Aps" are analogous to the catalogue by A. Winkler, which included only names of all Palearctic beetles, their synonyms and also information on distribution. The entire catalogue comprised one or two volumes, the second type of the catalogue included clean sheets between pages with text for additions to be made by the users. Unlike the catalogue by Junk and Schenkling, the catalogue of Winkler and catalogues "Apollo Books Aps" do not intend to provide references to entire bibliography, which somewhat reduces their usefulness, however one can imagine the tremendous effort needed for compiling such catalogues with indications of the main literature on all species and how many volumes such catalogue is to include. It appears to be inconvenient that the catalogue has no index of species names and only taxonomic interpretation is given, adopted by compiler of a certain part of the catalogue indicating the name of the genus within which the species name was used for the first time. In those cases when a species was differently interpreted by different researchers its search in the catalogue may pose serious difficulties. Used in the catalogue are for the most part generally accepted names of families. Only for the family, in which the genus Sikhotealinia is placed, junior synonym (Sikhotealiniidae Lafer, 1996) is used, but not senior synonym (Jurodidae Ponomarenko, 1985), although this family, unlike both previous interpretations, is placed in the suborder in which it should be placed. Moreover, unfortunately not all parts of the catalogue have been prepared carefully to the same extent. As a result, for instance, the genus Pentagonica Schmidt-Goebel, 1846 is not indicated for Russia. If the author of this part thinks that the indication of G.Sh. Lafer and other researchers of P. angulosa Bates, 1883 as a species spread also in Primorski Krai and on Kunashir (Lafer, 1989: 210; Kryzhanovskij et al., 1995: 160) was not confirmed by the material, this ought to have been noted. In the last version of the list of ground beetles of Russia, permanently updated on our site this species is also given.
Such edition would have been impossible with a limited team of authors. Forty three highly qualified coleopterists that ascertained all names and references participated in compiling the volume. We are pleased to note that Russian specialists are among the authors of the first volume:
I.A. Belousov,
A.S. Zamotailov,
I.I. Kabak,
B.M. Katayev,
A.V. Matalin,
A.V. Puchkov.
We are particularly happy that nearly all of them are represented on our site.
Apart from the high quality of the text of the catalogue, it is necessary to note that it is printed on paper of high quality, in a good binding, using an optimum ratio of different fonts for different part of the text.
This book will, undoubtedly, be always very useful to coleopterists, however, it is far from being available to everyone because of its price. I think that few coleopterists of Eastern Europe will be able to purchase it. At present the Publishers sell it for 900 Danish krons. For instance, the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences has not yet purchased this book and there is reason to assume that it will never buy it because of the high cost. Anders Nilsson, considering the limited financial resources of his colleagues, placed the catalogue of water Adephaga on the Internet. The Internet made this catalogue available to all coleopterists.
A.G. Kireitshuk
August, 2003
|
|
|
Considering the great interest this book may generate among beetle experts and laymen I have scanned a dozen and a half of the most important pages. Given below are the title page, beginning of the introduction, list of contents, comments to the accepted form of showing geographic distribution of species, map of zoogeographic regions of the Earth, maps of division of Russia and China accepted in the catalogue, conventional designations of countries and their parts, list of authors of the volume, postal and E-mail addresses of all authors, sample of one page of the catalogue proper, sample of the page of references.
I would like to remind our visitors using Internet Explorer for viewing our site that, when showing images larger than the size of the screen, many versions of this browser by default reduce the scale and therefore make reading of our images of scanned texts difficult. For viewing images that have not been distorted one should disable this property of the browser or, moving the mouse, to find in the right lower corner "zoom"controlling pictogram and "click" on it.
A.L. Lobanov
August, 2003
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|