fossil flies in Antarctica

[christian thompson]

Yes, do read the Nature article.

Willi Hennig once suggested on the basis of zoogeographic analysis that
higher flies where not part of the earlier Gondwana fauna, etc.

Upon finding POSITIVE evidence that higher flies did exist on the
Antarctic landmass, we merely suggested that there are two
possibilities: 1) higher flies may be older and may have been part of
the earlier (Mesozoic) Gondwana fauna (that is, Hennig was wrong) or 2)
they colonized Antarctica more recently.

So, we concluded that "dipterists need to re-examine the taxonomy of
southern cylcyorrphaphan fly taxa to see whether any trans-Antarctic
relationships among the more derived clades have been overlooked."

Yes, Nature likes fancy/catchy titles. But at least Nature accepted
something about little things, not just big fossil bird / dinos for
once!

Cheers

F. Christian Thompson
Systematic Entomology Lab., USDA
c/o Smithsonian Institution
MRC-0169 NHB
PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 382-1800 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
cthompso at sel.barc.usda.gov e-mail
www.diptera.org  web site

>>> John Grehan <jgrehan at SCIENCEBUFF.ORG> 05/09/03 08:43AM >>>
Without yet seeing the article, I would concur with Ken that, in
general
principle, there would be nothing to suggest that the apparent absence
of
the taxon in Antarctica represents a historical reality. For the ghost
moths (Hepialidae), for example, there are no fossil or living taxa in
Antarctica, yet one cannot say they were never there. Similarly, they
are
absent from Madagascar, the Caribbean, much of West Africa, and the
lowlands of the southeastern United States but this does not mean they
were
never there.

There is a common technique in the biogeographic and evolutionary
literature (and this may not apply to the Thompson article) to
proclaim
that a new find (modern or fossil) as changing what was 'previously
thought' about the age or distribution of that taxon to make the
discovery
more significant and noteworthy. One does see this kind of rhetoric
quite
often in Nature and Science, but it is widespread in other journals as
well. It will be interesting to see what the empirical issue is in
Thompson's article.

John Grehan

At 01:55 AM 5/9/2003 +0000, Ken Kinman wrote:
>Dear All,
>      I see that Christian Thompson is co-author of a short piece in
the
>latest issue of Nature.  I don't have a subscription, so could only
read the
>first paragraph.  However, it contained a statement that I found
puzzling:
>that there had been a longheld belief that flies of the clade
Cyclorrhapha
>had never inhabited Antarctica.
>     What was the basis of that belief?  If the fossil record of
>Cyclorrhapha goes back into the Mesozoic, why wouldn't some members of
that
>clade have lived in Antarctica in the late Mesozoic and Early
Tertiary?
>Just curious.
>      ---- Thanks,
>                Ken
>
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Dr. John Grehan
Director of Science and Collections
Buffalo Museum of Science
1020 Humboldt Parkway
Buffalo, New York 14211-1293
Voice 716-896-5200 x372
Fax 716-897-6723
jgrehan at sciencebuff.org
http://www.sciencebuff.org/biogeography/Panbiogeography/Panbiogeography-Gate.htm

http://www.sciencebuff.org/HepialidaeGate.htm