Acceso a las páginas de la Revista Ibérica de Aracnología

Revista Ibérica de Aracnología

Vol. esp. 1

Rev. Iber. Aracnol., vol. esp. 1

Annotated catalogue of the Laniatores of the New World (Arachnida, Opiliones).

Dr. Adriano B. Kury

338 pp., en el formato folio. Idioma: inglés. Resúmenes en inglés y español.

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            The book reviews all the systematic literature dealing with the suborder Laniatores in the Americas up to December 31^st 2002 (some 800 references). Nearly 2400 species, belonging to 750 genera and 21 families, are listed for the New World. Synonymies, reinstatements, replacement names and emended spellings are proposed where necessary. The work includes a special section with a list of the proposed nomenclatural acts, which include, among many others of a lower rank, proposals for a new family and subfamily. There is a list of species recorded from each country and maritime territory.

            En este trabajo se revisa toda la literatura sistemática relativa al suborden Laniatores del continente americano hasta el 31 de diciembre de 2002 (unas 800 referencias). Casi 2400 especies, pertenecientes a 750 géneros y 21 familias son listados para el Nuevo Mundo. Numerosas sinonimias, revalidaciones, reemplazo de nombres y otras enmiendas nomenclaturales son incluidas en el texto. El trabajo incluye un apartado especial donde son listados los actos nomenclaturales propuestos, que incluyen, entre muchos otros de menor rango, una propuesta de nueva familia y subfamilia. Para cada país y departamento marítimo se presenta un listado de especies citadas.

Prologue

Quite a number of years ago, Adriano informed me of his preparation of a catalogue to the Laniatores of South America.  At that point, I suggested that he should consider including species from all of the Americas before publishing his work.  Fortunately, for all of us, he did just that.  However, his catalogue is much more than just a listing of names, dates, and places.  It includes countless annotations and a very useful checklist by countries and states, including the maritime territories.  His efforts to organize, revise, and bring together all of these records in one place should stimulate research on these animals for many years.

            Adriano’s multilingual talents have resulted in an excellent treatment of the vast amount of literature on New World Laniatores, most of which is not in English.  Especially important are his efforts with the 175 papers written in Portuguese, his native tongue.  This is most notable in his comments regarding nomenclatorial acts that are concealed amidst the text by Brazilian authors and Mello-Leitão publishing some of his descriptions twice.

            Laniatores from the Americas comprise roughly 40% of all the described members of the order.  Up to this point, our acquisition of knowledge on this group has been greatly hampered by the very confusing and outdated surveys on the order.  Besides the reviews of the harvestmen of the World by Roewer (1923) and those from Brazil and Argentina by Mello-Leitão (1932) and Ringuelet (1959), there are relatively few comprehensive regional compilations.  Since these publications, the number and organization of the higher-level groupings in the Laniatores have changed greatly.  These changes have occurred in numerous publications from around the World, making it very difficult for researchers to stay updated.  Up to today, it has often been a difficult task just to discover to which family a common species might belong.

            This book reviews all the systematic and distributional literature on Laniatores from the New World (about 800 publications).  Nearly 2,400 species, belonging to 750 genera and 21 families, are recognized from this region.  New and rejected synonymies, new replacement names, and emended spellings are proposed where necessary.  Among the numerous proposed nomenclatural acts of lower rank, there is also establishment of a new family and subfamily. 

            Overall, this is a wonderful volume, which should become a standard reference for anyone (not just those in the New World) working on Laniatores.  Because so many of the collection localities are the same as many of the non-Laniatores harvestmen (and arachnids in general) from the Americas, the remarks and corrections about localities and spellings will be useful for many arachnologists.