National Museums Scotland

Abstract This article analyzes lozenge belts to comprehend community construction across Villanovan Etruria. While lozenge belts have received some prior analyses, none have focused specifically on their funerary context nor the role they played in constructing the corpse as a means for understanding the communities that dressed those corpses. The article studies how communities formed dressed corpses and how the belts invested those corpses with specific personas. From this, we can extrapolate new insights into how these communities constructed, presented, and understood themselves. This analysis first considers how funerary dress generally constructs and invests personas in ancient communities, especially Etruscan, and then analyzes the belts in terms of how they were worn, their role in grave assemblages, and the significance of their form and decoration. The result provides a holistic, kaleidoscopic image of what the belts were and how they functioned in the funeral. Through this discussion, new facets of these communities, including a surprisingly shared construction of certain social personas, appear including clear associations between the belts and the construction of high status, weaving associations, specific elements of cult, and communication with northern Europe.

We present a genome assembly from an individual female Nothochrysa capitata (a black lacewing; Arthropoda; Insecta; Neuroptera; Chrysopidae). The assembly contains two haplotypes with total lengths of 688.43 megabases and 587.48 megabases. Most of haplotype 1 (78.72%) is scaffolded into 8 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the W and Z sex chromosomes. Haplotype 2 was assembled to scaffold level. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled, with a length of 16.43 kilobases. This assembly was generated as part of the Darwin Tree of Life project, which produces reference genomes for eukaryotic species found in Britain and Ireland.

Climate change is expected to expand the geographic ranges of ectoparasites, increasing the transmission of vector‐borne diseases and necessitating a better understanding of ectoparasite–host trophic dynamics. Haematophagous ectoparasites can serve as valuable subsamples of their hosts, retaining isotopic values that reflect dietary information in both their blood meals and tissues. However, differences in the life histories and feeding strategies of lice, fleas and ticks may influence how host isotopic composition is preserved. Here, stable isotope values of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) were used to investigate trophic interactions between ectoparasites and their mammalian hosts in three pairings: lice (Anoplura: Polyplacidae; n = 101) from Eurasian red squirrels Sciurus vulgaris L. (Rodentia: Sciuridae), fleas (Siphonaptera: Ceratophyllidae; n = 92) from fat dormice Glis glis L. (Rodentia: Gliridae) and ticks (Ixodida: Ixodidae; n = 16) from European hedgehogs Erinaceus europaeus L. (Eulipotyphla: Erinaceidae). Our findings indicate that ectoparasites reflect the dietary patterns of their hosts, with lice exhibiting the closest isotopic values, followed by fleas and ticks. All parasites had significantly higher δ15N values than their hosts, indicative of trophic enrichment, but their δ13C values varied. Notably, we found that the presence of a blood meal did not significantly affect the isotopic values found in lice and fleas, while ticks showed a significant difference between exoskeleton and blood meal in δ13C values. This study highlights the importance of understanding how the life histories of parasite species influence the preservation of isotopic host signals in order to be able to utilise stable isotope analyses of ectoparasites to infer host dietary niches and preferences, with broader implications for understanding host–parasite dynamics and disease transmission pathways.

Eastern Palaearctic Tetramopria are reviewed; the previously unknown female of T. turbinata is described; T. tortilis is newly recorded from Korea and T. turbinata is newly recorded from Japan; an updated key for all Palaearctic Tetramopria species is given. For both Eastern Palaearctic Tetramopria species we report observations of mating, and interactions between the wasps and their host ants.

In the first book-length history of the Board of Longitude, a distinguished team of historians of science bring to life one of Georgian Britain's most important scientific institutions. Having developed in the eighteenth century following legislation offering rewards for methods to determine longitude at sea, the Board came to support the work of navigators, instrument makers, clockmakers and surveyors, and assembled the Nautical Almanac. Utilizing the archives and records of the Board, recently digitised by the same team, the authors shed new light on the Board's involvement in colonial projects, Pacific and Arctic exploration, as well as on innovative practitioners whose work would otherwise be lost to history. This is an invaluable guide to science, state and society in Georgian Britain, a period of dramatic industrial and imperial and technological expansion.

Prototaxiteswas the first giant organism to live on the terrestrial surface, reaching sizes of 8 metres in the Early Devonian. However, its taxonomic assignment has been debated for over 165 years1–7. Tentative assignments to groups of multicellular algae or land plants1,2,8–11have been repeatedly ruled out based on anatomy and chemistry5,7,11–16resulting in two major alternatives:Prototaxiteswas either a fungus5,6,17–22or a now entirely extinct lineage7,16,23. Recent studies have converged on a fungal affinity5–7,17–20,22. Here we test this by contrasting the anatomy and molecular composition ofPrototaxiteswith contemporary fungi from the 407-million-year-old Rhynie chert. We report thatPrototaxites taitiwas the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi. Furthermore, our molecular composition analysis indicates that cell walls ofP. taitiinclude aliphatic, aromatic, and phenolic components most similar to fossilisation products of lignin, but no fossilisation products characteristic of chitin or chitosan, which are diagnostic of all groups of extant and extinct fungi, including those preserved in the Rhynie chert. We therefore conclude thatPrototaxiteswas not a fungus, and instead propose it is best assigned to a now entirely extinct terrestrial lineage.

A distinctive species of Neosilba Waddill & Weems, namely Neosilba flavitarsis sp. nov is described from specimens reared from cultivated figs in Mexico. DNA sequencing confirms that the species belongs in the genus Neosilba and it is placed in a phylogenetic tree with other close relatives.

Abstract We describe multiple partial skeletons and isolated bones of the palaeognathous Lithornithiformes from the early Eocene London Clay of Walton‐on‐the‐Naze (Essex, UK). The well‐preserved specimens are assigned to at least four species of the taxa Lithornis and Pseudocrypturus. Two species of Lithornis are identified as L. nasi and L. cf. grandei. The latter species, which was established for fossils from the North American Green River Formation, was initially assigned to the monotypic taxon Calciavis, which is here considered synonymous with Lithornis. Two further new species are tentatively referred to the taxon Pseudocrypturus and are described as ?P. danielsi and ?P. gracilipes. In previous analyses, lithornithiforms most often resulted as the sister taxon of either the Tinamiformes or all crown group Palaeognathae. We detail that current morphological evidence conforms best to a position of these birds outside crown group Palaeognathae and discuss previously unrecognized plesiomorphic features of the foot and pelvis, which support this phylogenetic placement.