|
|
New analytical techniques for the study of amber inclusions
Škorpíková, Šárka ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Sakala, Jakub (referee)
Amber is an amorphous organic material, a fossil plant resin, mostly produced by Mesozoic and Cenozoic wetland trees. It was often used in jewelry in the past. However, together with the development of paleobiology it has begun to be used as an object of scientific studies, due to its unique abilities to conserve various inclusions in their three-dimensional matter and unusual preservation of their structures. These facts show its important role in the reconstruction of past ecosystems and organism interactions. Various groups of insects and chelicerates groups are typical inclusions that can be found in fossil resins. But the spectrum of these fossil organisms is much wider - from unicellular to vertebrates. For menaningful research of fossil material, precise analytic observations methods are necessary. Their development made a huge progress in last few years. This thesis summarizes the overview of some of these methods and also of inclusions described in several past years from various amber deposits (review of major deposits is included). Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
|
|
|
Quaternary insects and their significance for zoogeography, paleoclimatology and paleoecology
Moudrý, Jakub ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Říhová, Dagmar (referee)
The present thesis is a review of available published data on Quaternary insects. Research focused on Quaternary insects has been so far overlooked by the Czech scientists, even though there is potential to provide additional data for complex reconstruction of Quaternary deposits. Insect faunas allow to trace the dynamic development of areas across continents and serve for example as proof of migration routes. It is especially true for the Pleistocene, well known for prominent climatic oscillations. Thus, the insect species served as climatic indicators allowing estimations of average temperatures by application of the MCR method. Finally, these faunal changes reflect dynamic development of palaeoenvironments. The fact that the subfossil taxa correspond to the recent species allows broader reconstruction of the Quaternary deposits.
|
|
|
Origin and evolution of insect wings
Patlevič, Matyáš ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Pecháček, Pavel (referee)
Insecta is the most diversified animal group, which comprises more than a half of eukaryotic species. Its massive adaptive radiation is most frequently attributed to an origin of insect's wings and flapping flight. Due to lack of transitional forms in fossil record it is impossible to study directly these procedures but only in a theoretical approach only. In this thesis the origin of insect wings is considered in two ways - in evolutionary way, when the points of interest are selection pressures and evolutionary advantages for insects with proto-wings, and a morphological way, when objects of study are structures that preceded wings and developmental modules allowing this event. The present thesis contains review of relevant published hypothesis dealing with evolutionary and morphological origin of insect wings.
|
|
|
Plant - insect interactions in lower Miocene of Central Europe: palaeoclimatological and palaeoecological implications
Knor, Stanislav ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Kvaček, Jiří (referee) ; Mikuláš, Radek (referee)
The paleoecology of plant - arthropod herbivory associations constitute very important source of knowledge about the phylogeny and co-evolution of both groups. The traces of herbivory interactions between plants and arthropods on the fossil leaves are preserved as so called damaged types (DTs) clustered into distinct functional feeding groups (FFGs). The diversity and frequency of these damage traces also seem to have been strongly influenced by environmental and climatic conditions. This research has been focused on rich fossil plant assemblages from the area of the Most Basin in the north-western Bohemia. The undergoing work has comprised the diagnosis of the individual damages on the basis of their specific morphological traits as their number, size, shape and distributional pattern on the leaf surface. The next issue has involved the statistical analyses concerning the differences in the frequency and diversity of the types of damage and functional feeding groups between two separate fossiliferous layers, namely those of the stratigraphically older Bílina Delta and younger Břešťany Clay. Significant differences were confirmed in this regard, especially in connection with achieved frequency and proportional occurrences of distinct functional feeding groups in the Bílina Delta. The galls were the...
|
|
|
Variation in dragonfly wing venation with application of geometric morphometrics (Insecta: Odonata)
Přibylová, Petra ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Růžička, Jan (referee)
The pattern of wing venation in dragonflies (Odonata) bears a set of characters commonly used in systematics. The aim of this thesis is to identify the wing venation variability of dragonflies by various methods of geometric morphometric. The wing venation variability was examined on the level of suborder, family, species and also in respect to dimorphism through the principal component analysis (PCA), redundancy analysis (RDA) and centroid size. Data set consisting of images of 46 dragonfly species, belonging to 43 genera and 24 families was obtained from institutional entomological collections. The research carried out that Zygoptera have a large variety of wing contours. The wing venation variability of Epiprocta is shown primarily in the costa and node area. Between sexes there is no noticeable difference in shape or structure of the wing. The ratio between wing length and width and the pterostigma shape is dependent on dragonfly body size. Key words: Odonatoptera, Odonata, Epiprocta, Zygoptera, wing venation, variability, geometric morphometrics
|
|
|
Palaeodictyoptera: morphology of immature wings from the Upper Carboniferous of Poland
Tippeltová, Zuzana ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Nel, Andre (referee)
Insect wings are very specific and unique structures in animal kingdom. Wing morphology is a result of long-standing complicated evolutionary process and until recently the way how the wings have evolved is not completely clarified. The flight ability is one of the most important event in insect history because it allows them to exploit new habitats, escape from predators or find the sexual partner. Here we present the newly discovered material consisting of Palaeodictyoptera immature wings from the Upper Carboniferous (Westphalian A) of Poland. This order became extinct in the end of Permian, however during the Late Paleozoic was remarkably diversified. Until recently, number of adult palaeodictyopterans have been described, however the immature stages are relatively unknown due to lack of suitable fossils. Immature wings present in this thesis have undoubtedly palaeodictyopterous affinities with atribution within superfamilies Breyeroidea and Homoiopteroidea. However, their familial assignment into Breyeriidae (morphotype A) and Homiopteridae (morphotype B) based on fore wing venation characters is not definite because of wing venation limits in early ontogenetic stages. The aim of the present work is a complex description of 14 new palaeodictyopteriids immature wings, and to point out certain important...
|
|
|
Megasecoptera: morphology and taxonomy of newly discovered specimens from Upper Carboniferous of northern China (Insecta: Palaeodictyopteroida)
Pecharová, Martina ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Godunko, Roman (referee)
The extinct insect group of Palaeodictyopteroida (Insecta: Palaeoptera) comprised mainly phytophagous species and occurred from Upper Carboniferous to Upper Permian. Megasecoptera is one of several orders of belonging to this group. Although, the order Megasecoptera comprised over 20 described families, morphology of some body structures are insufficiently studied. The present thesis deals with evaluation of new material comprising the extensive set of 76 fossil insect specimens from the Upper Carboniferous (Bashkirian) of northern China. The fossils having excellent state of preservation of the wings and other body structures provide new insights concerning the external morphology of Megasecoptera. All studied specimens were attributed based on wing venation pattern into two known megasecopteran genera within families Brodiopteridae and Sphecopteridae. The aim of the present thesis is examine the morphology and variability of wing venation of two newly proposed species Brodioptera sp. n. and Cyclocelis sp. n. from site in northern China. In addition the following methods of geometric morphometrics based on landmarks were used for comparison of venational characters: a comparison of centroid size, procrustes analysis, principal component analysis and thin plate spline. Variability of wing venation...
|
|
|
Design and functional morphology of insect wings
Jechová, Kateřina ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Janšta, Petr (referee)
Animal fly ability is undoubtedly one of the biggest innovation in evolution that allow animals to settle down another space on the Earth - the air. However, there are significant impacts on the other organisms during the evolution, too. The insect is single group of invertebrates with abilities to fly and because of that it became the most diversified group of organisms. There are a couple of theories about origin of the insect wings. Two major hypotheses considering the recent insects with their fossil record are widely known. Nevertheless, there is no direct clue to the first Pterygota due to the discontinuity of fossil record in the initial phase of their evolution The wing is very complex and unique structure throughout organisms. Insects became very good fliers during the evolution and wings are also used to protect of the body, carrying sensory organs, etc. Nevertheless, only very few insect species are well explored in term of flight and, an open theme for future studies. Aim of the present work is to describe the significance of the wing and to briefly review its morphological and design properties. Key words: Insecta, Pterygota, wing, venation, morphology, flight, evolution.
|
|
|
Gigantism of Paleozoic insects and other arthropods
Pecharová, Martina ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Knor, Stanislav (referee)
Gigantism of insects and other arthropods was rather common in Late Paleozoic. Hypothesis of the oxygen limitation is one the probable explanations caused the phenomenon. Carboniferous insect gigantism was probably directly caused by the higher level of atmospheric oxygen due to direct effectiveness on the tracheal system. Therefore the possibility to grow to large sizes is clearly dependent on the amount of available oxygen. Another fact supporting the hypothesis is the extinction or the change of the giant insect forms at the end of the Permian, when the level of atmospheric oxygen suddenly decreased. This thesis also describes the ecological relationships of the Late Paleozoic arthropods, which is clearly connected to the evolution of giant forms. Gigantism during this period was thus developed by the interplay of several factors related to the global elements cycles. Another part covers major groups and representatives of Palaeozoic gigantic insects and other arthropods. The final part is devoted to describing the physiological experiments related to this topic.
|
|
|
Vodomilovití brouci (Coleoptera: Hydrophiloidea): taxomomie, fylogeneze a fosilní záznam vybraných skupin
Fikáček, Martin ; Prokop, Jakub (advisor) ; Engel, Michael (referee) ; Balke, Michael (referee)
The presented PhD thesis consists of two parts. The first part concerns the fos- sil record of the hydrophiloid beetles. Its introductory chapter summarizes the current author's knowledge of the topic, based on the review of all available literature and his published and unpublished data. Historical review is provided, problems concerning the study of the hydrophiloid fossil taxa and the relevance of the fossil record are discussed. Two published papers and two manuscripts concerning the systematics and taxonomy of selected hydrophilid beetles from European Cenozoic deposits are attached. As a part of these results, the diver- sification of the greater hydrophilines lineage of the subtribe Hydrophilina is dated back to the middle Eocene and the occurrence of the currently tropical ge- nus Hydrobiomorpha in Europe is proved from Eocene to the latest Oligocene. The first fossil of the genus Limnoxenus (subtribe Hydrobiusina) is recorded from the late Oligocene locality of Aix-en-Provence, its taxonomic placement is tested by the phylogenetic analysis combining modern and fossil taxa and its relevance is discussed. The second part concerns selected taxa of the terrestrial hydrophilids of the subfamily Sphaeridiinae. Its introductory chapter briefly summarizes the...
|
guest ::
RSS feed.