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Catalogue of the Heteroptera of the Palaearctic Region

1997; Oxford University Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/aesa/90.2.272

1938-2901

Carl W. Schafer,

Forest Insect Ecology and Management

THIS CATALOG, WHEN finished, will be the most extensive and most important work on Heteroptera in this century.Its 5 volumes will catalog thousands of bugs from a region more extensive than, and nearly as taxonomically well known as, our own Nearctic Region.The vastness of the Palearctic Region as defined for this catalog (see below) means that it contains a great variety of habitats, and also vast separations among similar habitats; and, as a result, much speciation has occurred and many species have arisen.In addition, of course, Europeans have been studying their fauna for centuries.As a result, the fauna is taxonomically very well known-perhaps too well known: Differences among populations loom large in a well studied fauna and may be greeted too enthusiastically and given "a local habitation and [too often] a name."Thus the literature to be covered by a cataloger becomes very large, and also scattered among many journals, some of them intensely regional and some of them transitory to the point of being ephemeral.To cover so vast an area, to cover so vast a literature, and to catalog completely and successfully the heteropterans in both, is to attempt perhaps the grandest work on Heteroptera in this century.Judging from this 1st volume, the attempt has succeeded.The geographical area covered is a liberally defined Palearctic, including temperate Asia.It extends from Iceland and the Azores on the west through Japan and Siberian Russia on the east; from Scandinavia (including apparently Norwegian Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean) on the north, south through China and the Korean peninsula to the east and northern Africa (north of the Sahara) to the west.For each region, and each country, I. M. Kerzhner reviews the literature and lists in detail earlier catalogs and faunal lists.Because of its completeness, this section (10 pp.) alone is invaluable, as a starting point for anyone interested in the heteropteran fauna of a Palearctic country.This vast area's heteropterans have been described, listed, and in various ways discussed and considered, in hundreds of papers in many languages.Most of these (about 1,800) have been used for this catalog, whose bibliography includes many papers published in the 1990s, and a few given as in press.