A revision of all the species of the genus Thopeutica described or cited from the island of Mindanao (Philippines) is presented. Four species are described as new: T. (s. str.) cassolai sp. nov., T. (s. str.) intermedia sp. nov., T. (s. str.) maindai sp. nov. and Wiesner, 1992 syn. nov., and T. (s. str.) davaoensis Cassola & Ward, 2004 = T. (s. str.) anichtchenkoi Wiesner, 2015 syn. nov. In total, 12 species are confirmed for the fauna of this island; the previous citations of 4 other species from Mindanao are discussed and considered erroneous. A key to the species is provided. Color photographs of the habitus, the main diagnostic characters, and the variability of all species are presented.
An excellent insight into the agrarian economy and society of the extreme western end of the Sussex Coastal Plain at the beginning of the eighteenth century can be obtained through examining the extensive documents associated with a case brought before the Exchequer Court in 1709-10 by William Stanley, the Bishop of Chichester's lessee of Cakeham farm in West Wittering, against his former bailiff Thomas Pilsworth. The action has yielded an exceptional number of linked documents which offer an unrivalled view of farming as seen by people from the local community as well as allowing some evaluation of the merits of the case.
The present article considers the bio-ecological crisis of the 1310s in England and Wales from the perspective of livestock health and disease, both enzootic and epizootic. It shows that the short-term anomaly of the same decade created a shortage of fodder, which, in turn, compromised the well-being of local herds and flocks, exposing them to various pathogens and culminating in epizootic disease. Importantly, it is argued that the impact of the crisis was, in some instances, passed through a generation of animal cohorts, whereby the survivors of earlier crises would develop into weaker animals and pass their genes to their offspring. A close analysis of the available sources reveals a complex chain of interconnected and intergenerational crises of the early fourteenth century, between the disaster of 1314-17 and the Black Death of 1348-50, affecting both animals and humans. This stresses the importance of epigenetics as a major factor in the bio-ecological crisis of the fourteenth century and calls into further interdisciplinary exploration of this hitherto unstudied phenomenon.
Lapicixius yixianensis sp. nov., the second species of this genus, is described and illustrated on the basis of an almost complete specimen from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, China. This new representative of the extinct hemipteran family Lalacidae increases the taxonomic diversity of the group during the Cretaceous. The affinities of the new fossil with described lalacid planthoppers and the validity of Lalacidae are discussed.
Advances in manuring underpinned agricultural improvement during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By 1900 standardized farming methods had been widely adopted. Regional practices did persist, however. One such was using raw fish as a field dressing. This study reveals that the practice was already widespread around the north Atlantic littoral by c.1750. The use of fish as manure, and the quantities of fish caught for this purpose, increased significantly over the next 150 years. In tracing the history of 'fishing' fields, new light is shone on the economic and agrarian imperatives and knowledge exchange that drove agricultural improvement during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; on the tensions that could be engendered when different parties competed for the same resource; and on the emerging sense of anxiety over the environmental consequences of more intensive farming and fishing practices that began to be voiced towards the end of the nineteenth century.
