Atthis

Abstract: Geographical and temporal patterns of diversification in bee hummingbirds (Mellisugini) were assessed with respect to the evolution of migration, critical for colonization of North America We generated a dated multilocus phylogeny of the Mellisugini based on a dense sampling using Bayesian inference, maximum-likelihood and maximum parsimony methods, and reconstructed the ancestral states of distributional areas in a Bayesian framework and migratory behavior using maximum parsimony, maximum-likelihood and re-rooting methods All phylogenetic analyses confirmed monophyly of the Mellisugini and the inclusion of Atthis, Calothorax, Doricha, Eulidia, Mellisuga, Microstilbon, Myrmia, Tilmatura, and Thaumastura Mellisugini consists of two clades: (1) South American species (including Tilmatura dupontii), and (2) species distributed in North and Central America and the Caribbean islands The second clade consists of four subclades: Mexican (Calothorax, Doricha) and Caribbean (Archilochus, Calliphlox, Mellisuga) sheartails, Calypte, and Selasphorus (incl Atthis) Coalescent-based dating places the origin of the Mellisugini in the mid-to-late Miocene, with crown ages of most subclades in the early Pliocene, and subsequent species splits in the Pleistocene Bee hummingbirds reached western North America by the end of the Miocene and the ancestral mellisuginid (bee hummingbirds) was reconstructed as sedentary, with four independent gains of migratory behavior during the evolution of the Mellisugini Early colonization of North America and subsequent evolution of migration best explained biogeographic and diversification patterns within the Mellisugini The repeated evolution of long-distance migration by different lineages was critical for the colonization of North America, contributing to the radiation of bee hummingbirds Comparative phylogeography is needed to test whether the repeated evolution of migration resulted from northward expansion of southern sedentary populations

Abstract: Spatial and temporal variation in interactions between hummingbirds and plants have often been examined, and hummingbirds and insects are known to indirectly interact in networks of nectar plants. In a highland temperate forest in Hidalgo, Mexico some oak trees were heavily infested by honeydew-producing insects (family Margarodidae, tribe Xylococcini, genus Strigmacoccus) and the honeydew was consumed by hummingbirds. Here using survival analysis we investigate how the honey- dew produced by dense populations of these margarodids is temporally and spatially partitioned by hummingbirds. We also measured the availability and quality of honeydew exudates, and then we recorded the time until a bird visited and used such re- sources. Four hummingbird species consumed this resource (Atthis eloisa, Hylocharis leucotis, Colibri thalassinus and Eugenes fulgens). Data from 294 hours of observation on seven focal trees suggested temporal and spatial segregation among visiting birds according to body size and territorial behavior during the most honeydew-limited time. Hummingbird species differed in the daily times they foraged, as well as in the location where honeydew-producing insects were visited on the trees. Temporal and spatial segregation among hummingbird species is interpreted as an adaptation to reduce the risk of aggressive encounters. This may facili- tate multispecies coexistence and allow these birds to exploit honeydew more effectively (Current Zoology 57 (1): 56-62, 2011).

Abstract: Abstract In her extant poetry, Sappho uses fourteen female personal names, four of which are not attested elsewhere. The essay is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of all of them. The results challenge the opinion, still prevailing in scholarship today, that Sappho’s companions were adolescent girls forming an educational or initiatory group, led by the poetess, that prepared them for respectable marriages. As a matter of fact, the female proper names in Sappho belong to four categories: ethnics, abstract nouns, nicknames and mythological names. According to the onomastic conventions of ancient Greece, names of all these categories typically denote females as slaves and courtesans, at least until the Hellenistic period. Thus it is argued that Sappho’s nomenclature creates a ‘reality effect’, implying furthermore that her use of the term hetairai (‘companions’) - and likewise of kalai and philai - could also point to the status of courtesans in the technical sense. This best fits the emphasis put on female beauty, seductiveness and musical skills, but also on invective and rivalry. Under the auspices of Aphrodite and from a female perspective, Sappho’s poems feature erotic experiences with lovers of both sexes as well as the reflection of those loves’ vicissitudes. The world imagined and displayed in her songs would therefore be mainly related to the symposion as the dominating realm of archaic poetry. This is how Sappho’s work was actually received in antiquity.

Abstract: A board of ?law-guardians?, or nomophulakes, has long been associated with the Athenian regime of Demetrius of Phalerum (317-307 bc). The duties of Demetrius? officials have been surmised from an entry on nomophulakes in the Atthis of Philochorus (FGrHist 328 F64), which lists their central functions as the supervision of ma-gistrates and the prevention of illegal resolutions by the assembly and council. This understanding of the fourth-century nomophulakes stands in contradiction to the explicit testimony of Pollux (8.102), who asserts that Demetrius changed the name of the hendeka, the eleven Athenian gaolers, to nomophulakes. A case is made here for the acceptance of Pollux, a case based on textual grounds and on comparison with other reforms associated with Demetrius. It is further argued that Philochorus? description applies ? as the sole excerpter of the Atthis to give a temporal context, the Lexicon Cantabrigiense, indeed states ? to nomophulakes created in the aftermath of Areopagite reform in the mid-fifth century, and that Demetrius? officials were linked to these early nomophulakes through their inheritance of different aspects of nomophulakia associated with the early Areopagus.