Insect odorant binding proteins (OBPs) are thought to deliver odors to olfactory receptors, and thus may be the first biochemical step in odor reception capable of some level of odor discrimination. OBPs have been identified from numerous species of several insect orders, including Lepidoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera and Hymenoptera; all are holometabolous insects belonging to the monophyletic div...

Six brachiopod species, i.e., Discradisca sp., Cryptopora sp., Pliothyrina sp. cf. P. grandis (Blumenbach, 1803), Terebratulina tenuistriata (Leymerie, 1846), Rhynchonellopsis nysti (Bosquet, 1862), and Orthothyris pectinoides (von Koenen, 1894), have been identified in the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene Silberberg Formation of Atzendorf, Central Germany. The species R. nysti and O. pectinoides...

—A new genus and species of predaceous water bugs, Triassonepa solensis n. gen. n. sp., is described from the Triassic Cow Branch Formation of Virginia and North Carolina (USA) based on ~36 adult specimens and 51 nymphs. This species is the oldest known member of the extant family Belostomatidae. It is placed in a new genus based on the unique structure of the raptorial foreleg, in which the ta...

Rarity reflects the low abundance of a species while distinctiveness its quality being easy to recognize because it has unique functional characteristics and/or an isolated phylogenetic position. As such, assemblage-level rarity species' and (that we name ‘effective originality’) results from both this species. The diversity assemblage then compromise between abundances effective originalities ...

A new genus and species of the family Capniidae (Plecoptera), Sinocapnia kuankuoshui gen. n., sp. n. is described from the adult male and a female collected in Guizhou Province of southwest China. The new taxon is distinguished from all extant Capniidae genera and the assemblage of species currently included in Capnia sensu lato by combination of unique genitalic, wing, and thoracic sclerites c...