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The Biologia Centrali-Americana is an encyclopedia of the natural history of Mexico and Central America, privately issued in 215 parts from 1879 to 1915 by the editors Frederick DuCane Godman and Osbert Salvin, of the British Museum (Natural History) in London. [1] It was begun by Alfred Maudslay publishing his first long-form description of the Archaeology at Chichen Itza (London: R.H. Porter and Dulau, 1889-1902).
This work is still fundamental for the study of Neotropical plants and animals, because it contains almost all that was known of the biodiversity of Mexico and Central America at the time of its publication. Leading scientists of the day were the authors of the volumes. The whole series has 63 volumes with 1677 lithograph plates (more than 900 of which are in color) depicting 18,587 subjects. In total, 50,263 species are treated, of which 19,263 are described as new. [2] Archaeology was added to the already monumental project because of new discoveries in the region.
Since the Biologia Centrali-Americana was published, several volumes have been reprinted, but on the whole the series is rare in libraries and mostly absent from Latin American research institutions. The original volumes were printed on acid paper and have suffered from handling of the now brittle pages.
The Smithsonian Institution has digitized the encyclopedia for distribution via the internet. All the volumes are available at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Frederick DuCane Godman DCL FRS FLS FGS FRGS FES FZS MRI FRHS was an English lepidopterist, entomologist and ornithologist. He was one of the twenty founding members of the British Ornithologists' Union. Along with Osbert Salvin, he is remembered for studying the fauna and flora of Central America.
Osbert Salvin FRS was an English naturalist, ornithologist, and herpetologist best known for co-authoring Biologia Centrali-Americana (1879–1915) with Frederick DuCane Godman. This was a 52 volume encyclopedia on the natural history of Central America.
Alfred Percival Maudslay FRAI was a British diplomat, explorer, and archaeologist. He was one of the first Europeans to study Maya ruins. He also fully translated and annotated the best version of Bernal Díaz del Castillo's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España from the only original manuscript in 1908 for the Hakluyt Society, which was abridged in 1928.
Reginald Innes Pocock F.R.S. was a British zoologist.
The Bureau of American Ethnology was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution. But from the start, the bureau's visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell, promoted a broader mission: "to organize anthropologic research in America." Under Powell, the bureau organized research-intensive multi-year projects; sponsored ethnographic, archaeological and linguistic field research; initiated publications series ; and promoted the fledgling discipline of anthropology. It prepared exhibits for expositions and collected anthropological artifacts for the Smithsonian United States National Museum. In addition, the BAE was the official repository of documents concerning American Indians collected by the various US geological surveys, especially the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region and the Geological Survey of the Territories. It developed a manuscript repository, library and illustrations section that included photographic work and the collection of photographs.
George Charles Champion was an English entomologist specialising in the study of beetles. He was born in Walworth, South London, and the eldest son of George Champion.
William Lucas Distant was an English entomologist.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to address this challenge by digitizing the natural history literature held in their collections and making it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.” The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, publishers, bioinformaticians, and information technology professionals to develop tools and services to facilitate greater access, interoperability, and reuse of content and data. BHL provides a range of services, data exports, and APIs to allow users to download content, harvest source data files, and reuse materials for research purposes. Through taxonomic intelligence tools developed by Global Names Architecture, BHL indexes the taxonomic names throughout the collection, allowing researchers to locate publications about specific taxa. In partnership with the Internet Archive and through local digitization efforts, BHL's portal provides free access to hundreds of thousands of volumes, comprising over 59 million pages, from the 15th-21st centuries.
Dryotribus mimeticus is a species of beetle in the family Curculionidae. It is endemic to the United States, with the species also being recorded on Scorpion Reef a remote island chain in Mexico. The species also occurred in Florida, it has been suggested in Biologia Centrali-Americana that it was actually introduced to Hawaii from the Florida population. The species was said to have occurred in drift logs on Laysan Island, French Frigate Shoals, Johnston Island and Wake Island. Despite being considered extinct since 1986, 2 specimen of D. mimeticus were found and collected in the Dominican Republic in 1997; 11 years after the species was said to be extinct. In 2002 another specimen of the species was collected in Montserrat.
Peter Cameron was an English amateur entomologist who specialised in Hymenoptera.
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is an institutional archives and library system comprising 21 branch libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institution staff as well as the scholarly community and general public with information and reference support. Its collections number nearly 3 million volumes including 50,000 rare books and manuscripts.
William Schaus was an American entomologist who became known for his major contribution to the knowledge and description of new species of the Neotropical Lepidoptera.
Augustus Busck was a Danish-American entomologist with the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Entomology. He is best known for his work with microlepidoptera, of which he described over 600 species. His collections of Lepidoptera from North America and the Panama Canal Zone are held by the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Astianthus is a monotypic genus of flowering plants in the Bignoniaceae family. The sole species is Astianthus viminalis. It is known by the common names achuchil in Mexico and chilca in Guatemala and Honduras.
Acanthoderes rubripes is a species of beetle in the family Cerambycidae. It was described by Henry Walter Bates in 1872. This species has been observed in the Chontales Department in Nicaragua as well as at Volcan de Chiriqui and Bugaba in Panama.
Eudulophasia invaria is a species of moth in the family Geometridae first described by Francis Walker in 1854.
Machimia dolopis is a moth in the family Depressariidae. It was described by Walsingham in 1912. It is found in Mexico (Guerrero).
Dichomeris arotrosema is a moth in the family Gelechiidae. It was described by Walsingham in 1911. It is found in Mexico (Veracruz).
Allocyclosa is a genus of orb weaver spiders that contains only one species, Allocyclosa bifurca. It was first described in 1887 by McCook under the name Cyrtophora bifurca, and was transferred to its own genus in 1999. It is the only Cyclosa species north of Mexico to have a forked tail, hence the name bifurca, Latin for "two-forked". The forked abdomen, bearing two humps shaped like the letter M, is a defining feature in both males and females, though it is similar to features present in certain Cyrtophora species. Both sexes are a transparent green color, though only females have an area of red on their underside between the epigynum and the spinnerets. Females are nearly thirty percent larger than males, ranging from five to nine millimeters, while males range from two to three millimeters. Males are very uncommon. In a 1977 study by Levi, only two of the nearly 350 specimens that were positively identified as Cyrtophora bifurca were males. This is a very odd distribution, and it has been posed that females of the species, which have less prominent genitalia relative to other members of the orb-weaver family, may be parthenogenic, or able to reproduce without the help of males. Like other members of Araneidae, these spiders create orb webs, six to eight inches in diameter, but apply a unique form of protective mimicry. Females sit in the middle of a vertical row of web decoration, with egg sacs above and wrapped prey below. Because they all have a similar color and shape, it is difficult to discern between the egg sacs, the wrapped prey, and the spider itself.
Epilineutes is a monotypic genus of South and Central American ray spiders containing the single species, Epilineutes globosus. The genus was first described by Jonathan A. Coddington in 1986. The single species was first described in 1896 under the name Andasta globosa, but has also been referred to as Theridiosoma globosum.