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The traditional audience for books and scientific papers in which scientists report their findings has been the human reader. Now we can enhance publications by attaching to them many different kinds of digital objects (such as the sounds made by birds, maps that show where they occur, or images and videos) or by adding computer-readable sections and terms that allow computers to extract information for re-use. We refer to these enriched and marked-up documents as 'enhanced'. While the technology is available, only a tiny proportion of scientific publications are enhanced. Without enhancement, the research that is reported in the biosystematic (= taxonomic) literature cannot participate quickly and easily in the big data world. The EU e-Infrastructure coordination project "pro-iBiosphere", targeting the preparation of the European Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System, makes thirteen recommendations to enhance the publication process in order to to make biodiversity data accessible, computable and re-usable. These recommendations are a plea for a major change in how we publish biodiversity research. If adopted, they have the potential to transform the role of scientific publications. The recommendations include the need to make all biosystematic literature "openly and freely accessible to the maximum extent possible and for it to be marked up with computer-legible terms from an open, platform-independent XML or similar language. Mark-up allows computers to understand what is in a document, and to extract content for use elsewhere. The complete list of recommendations is available on "The State and Quality of Biosystematics Documents and Survey Reports". The report demonstrates that publishers and scientists are not using new technologies to their full potential. The process of publication has historically targeted scientific articles that are suited to human readership. Nowadays, articles can also be used as vehicles for data that can be extracted and then re-used by others. This process does not reduce the value of articles for people, but creates a richer and more valuable resource at a very small additional cost The authors of the report recognise that the community must build an infrastructure that can capture and manage the rich supply of re-usable data, and make it available to other users, for example through the Linked Open Data Cloud. Only through this process, can the very rich corpus of data and its underlying sources in the published record be linked to the huge production of born-digital genomic data. With developments such as this, biologists will be better placed to rise to the grander challenges, such as understanding how the natural world will respond to a warming world. (Description by Donat Agosti, September 2013)

Telenomus hysteropteri sp. n. (Hym., Scelionidae, Telenominae) has been reared in Italy from eggs of Hysteropterum flavescens Oliv. (Rhynchota, Fulgoridae). Only the female is known. The shape of the cheeks, protruding at right angles to the level of the lower orbit of compounds eyes, is an unusual and distinctive character. From the same host and in the same localities also Telenomus sacchii Ogl. has been reared, so far the only known T elenomus parasite of this fulgorid. Occasionaly, Azotus pulcherrimus Merc. (Hym., Aphelinidae) has also been reared from eggs of Hysteropterum., Entomologica, Vol 11 (1975)

According to current hypotheses the main types of social parasitism among ants, namely slavery, temporary parasitism, and inquilinism, arose from such features as predation on other ants, or territorial behavior, both presumed precursors of slavemaking, and polygyny, a presumed precursor of temporary parasitism and inquilinism. The latter is believed also to represent a final instar in several evolutionary pathways leading from slavery, temporary parasitism, and xenobiosis to this permanently parasitic, workerless condition. Speciation, the origin of parasitic species from their usually closely related host species, is suggested to occur due to temporary geographic isolation and subsequent transition of one of the newly formed daughter species to parasitism in the nests of the other. Evidence is presented suggesting that the main types of social parasitism originated independently of each other. 15 ant genera are parasitized exclusively by inquilines, Eve other genera exclusively by temporary parasites. Only four groups of non-parasitic ant species (Formica, Tet-ramorium, Leptothorax subgenera Leptothorax and Myrafant) have parasites of several types each. Within these roups, however, there is little evidence of evolutionary transitions from one type to another. The few exceptions, mainly workerless species of the genera Epimyrma and Chalepoxenus, represent parasites which clearly derive from slave-making congeners, but differ from ordinary inquilines in that they eliminate the host colony queens like their actively dulotic ancestors. The new hypothesis suggests that all forms of interspecific true social parasitism (excluding xenobiosis) orginated from a common “preparasitic” stage, a subpopulation of reproductives in polygynous colonies and species, with diverging sexual behavior (near-nest mating vs. swarming) and caste ratios (production of more sexuals vs. workers). Arguments for sympatric speciation are compiled. Various features of the ancestral, and then host species (colony sizes, population density and structure, transition from polygyny to monoyny, etc.), and of the “preparasite” (production of few, or no workers, etc.) may shape the developing parasite to become a slave-maker, inquiline, or temporary parasite. These features usually leave open only one, or in a few genera, several options. The different types of parasitism within one host species group thus may have developed in a radiative manner from the common, preparasitic stage, which explains that independent colony foundation is a common feature of all true social parasites among ants.

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SYNOPSIS Three species of Ectatommini, one of which is described as new, are reported from Ghana. A key to workers of the Ghanaian species is included.

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Rostromyrmex, a new genus of myrmicine ants from Peninsular Malaysia is described on the basis of workers, dealate females, and a single male. Analysis of characters suggests a closest relationship with either Lordomyrma or the Solenopsis genus group.

New data suggest that the North American antDoronomyrmex pocahontas Buschinger 1979, originally described as a workerless inquiline, is not a social parasite. Breeding experiments show a remarkable phenotypic plasticity, which is probably due to hybridization or to intraspecific polymorphism.

The definition of the Tribe Pheidologetini in the ant subfamily Myrmicinae has always been problematic. Emery (1922) erected the tribe to contain the genera Pheidologeton, Oligomyrmex, Aneleus, Lophomyrmex, Trigonogaster, Ekebomyrma, Carebara and Paedalgus, but Wheeler (1922) put all these genera in the Solenopsidini. Neither Emery nor Wheeler satisfactorily defined either tribe. More recently, Ettershank (1966) proposed the "Pheidologeton genus group" composed of Pheidologeton, Oligomyrmex (including most Aneleus), Lophomyrmex, Carebara, Paedalgus and Anisopheidole, but still uncertainty remains as to relationships of these genera and even the definitions of the genera themselves. New characters and new means of analysis are needed to help resolve this problem.

Workers and queens from 224 nest samples of Formica pratensis Retzius originating from all over Europe, but mainly from Germany were investigated for several morphological characters, particularly pilosity. Statistic differences between the hairy N morph (= F. nigricans Emery 1909) and the less hairy P morph in body size, pilosity, geographic frequency, habitat selection and mound construction could be shown but other aspects of external biology coincide. There are no suggestions of reproductive isolation of the morphs which are interpreted as different genotypes of the same population and represent different ecological adaptions. The strong decrease of N morph frequency in pratensis populations from S to N Europe, its higher frequency in more xerothermous habitats in Germany, and its well-documented peculiarity of constructing higher mounds than the P morph for conditions of equal sunexposure characterize the N morph as a genotype adapted to higher temperatures. In Germany, as much as 16% of pratensis nests investigated contained both morphs. Polycalic colonies are found in both morphs but isolated nests predominate. Formica minor pratensoides Gößwald 1951 is a synonym of pratensis and refers to polycalic colonies of the P morph which occasionally occur inside more mesophilic, less sun-exposed forests.

Females ofTechnomyrmex albipes consist of winged queens, intercastes and workers. In established colonies, reproduction is performed by many intercastes (wingless females which have intermediate phenotypes between queen and worker characters). Dissection and morphological examination revealed that intercastes had a spermatheca, but workers did not. Intercastes can be divided into three classes: major intercastes with three ocelli, medium intercastes with one ocellus, and minor intercases without ocelli. Workers have no ocelli. The thoracic structure of intercastes gradually becomes more complex from minors to majors. The body size of intercastes gradually increases from minors to majors, and so does the number of overioles. The body size distributions of minor intercastes and workers overlap considerably, but the distributions of ovariole numbers overlap less. Winged queens had distinctly larger body sizes, more ovarioles and larger spermathecae than intercastes. Most intercastes were inseminated with developed ovaries and appeared to reproduce. The caste system and reproductive division of labour inT. albipes is compared to those of ant species in which permanently wingless females reproduce.

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В статье приведены первоописания самок семи и самцов четырех видов Myrmica. Эти виды были описаны по рабочим в период между 1865 и 1947 г. Все они составляют часть фауны мирмик, населяющих юго-западный макросклон Гималаев. Приведены рисунки, промеры и индексы описываемых форм, а также дано их сравнение с близкими видами. First descriptions of queens of seven of Myrmica ant species and males of four of these species are given. The species were first described between 1865 and 1947 from workers. They form part of the distinctive Himalayan Myrmica fauna that inhabit the south-western slopes of the Himalaya. Drawings, measurements and indices of the specimens are provided and the key characters that distinguish them from the other related Himalayan Myrmica species are noted.

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