Phyllophaga delphinicauda, new species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae, Melolonthinae), is described from the eastern Sierra de Bahoruco in the Dominican Republic. Supportive taxonomic and biogeographic information is presented in a discussion of the new species' apparent relationship to Phyllophaga davidsoni Woodruff, 2004, and Phyllophaga carnegie Woodruff, 2004. The potential geographic and temporal distributions of P. delphinicauda are examined and its status as a species of conservation concern is discussed. A modification to the existing key to the Phyllophaga of Hispaniola (Woodruff 2004) is presented to accommodate this new species.

Population declines of species can be a concern, but before taking action, we need to verify whether apparent declines are real. Land snails are one of the most threatened groups of animals in the world, and anecdotes suggest that the abundance of the land snail Anguispira alternata has declined in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., over the past few decades. Might the apparent decline represent inadequate sampling by recent surveyors or could it represent a real decline? Past search effort is rarely documented, hindering direct comparisons of search effort. We used 547 museum records of A. alternata collected primarily from 1890 to 1960 and 2000 to 2015. Following two lines of reasoning, we conclude that the abundance of A. alternata has actually declined. (1) The smaller proportion of collecting events that found A. alternata after year 2000 suggests an actual decline of A. alternata in modern decades, regardless of the total number of collecting events. (2) The accumulation curve of new county records for all land snail species showed similar slopes in both past and modern decades, indicating comparable search effort in both time periods. The apparent decline of A. alternata was not explained by differential effort with respect to snail size or geographical area searched. The decline appears to have begun about 1960, although relatively little collecting effort from 1960 to 2000 decreases confidence in our ability to infer timing of abundance change in those decades. We speculate about three hypotheses regarding the decline (acid precipitation, climate warming, human mediated disturbance) and conclude that the historical increase in acid precipitation best matches the timing of the snail's decline. Population trends of other snail species and trends of A. alternata in other geographical areas should be studied to further explore these and other hypotheses. Our study highlights the importance of museum collections in understanding the current biodiversity crisis.

We report the discovery of a new singleton species of Oreobates Jiménez de la Espada, 1872, from the Yungas forest of the Amazonian versant of the Andes in Bolivia, infer its phylogenetic position, revisit the phylogenetic relationships of Oreobates, and discuss the conditions that justify description of the species with a single specimen. The new species, Oreobates yanucu, differs from all other Oreobates in a combination of external conditions: granular dorsal skin with scattered warts, finger I longer than finger II, finger tips of fingers III and IV distinctly enlarged and truncate in outline, tips of toes II to V with ungual flaps, head longer than wide, basal webbing between toes I and II and toes II and III, foot length/snout—vent length = 50%, lack of orange, red, or scarlet flecks and blotches in life. Although similar in appearance to O. amarakaeri Padial et al., 2012, O. choristolemma (Harvey and Sheehy, 2005), O. granulosus (Boulenger, 1902), O. sanctaecrucis (Harvey and Keck, 1995), and O. sanderi (Padial et al., 2005)—all of them species from the Yungas of Bolivia and southern Peru conforming a monophyletic group—the new species is nested within a clade, revealed by molecular phylogeny, in which all species share the condition of enlarged finger discs and is sister to O. berdemenos Pereyra et al., 2014, an allopatric species from the Yungas of Argentina. The new species is only known from a single specimen collected in 1999 at 1500 m above sea level within Carrasco National Park (Provincia Chapare, Departamento Cochabamba, Bolivia). Oreobates now includes 24 described species but seven other new species remain to be named formally and we expect the diversity of this group to increase considerably with the exploration of the Andean foothills of Bolivia and Peru.

Palmichnium kosinskiorum Briggs and Rolfe, 1983, is a fossil trackway recovered from sandstones of the purported marine Shenango Formation along the banks of Spring Creek, in Elk County, Pennsylvania. Discovered in 1948, the type specimen is interpreted as a trail made by a lower Mississippian eurypterid. Recent field work has disclosed that the trackway of P. kosinskiorum was recovered from an allocthonous block of pebbly sandstone inconsistent with the character of the surrounding Shenango Formation. The P. kosinskiorum block is one of more than a dozen out-of-place giant boulders that train up the valley wall. These boulders can be traced back to an outcrop of the Pennsylvanian Pottsville Group located several hundred feet up the side of the Spring Creek Valley. Thus, it can be demonstrated that P. kosinskiorum originated from lower Pennsylvanian, not lower Mississippian bedrock.

Palmichnium kosinskiorum was recovered from the top of a trough cross-bedded conglomeratic sequence, indicating that it was deposited in a high-energy fluvial environment of the Olean Conglomerate, a formation of the Pottsville Group. This purported depositional environment is consistent with other Upper Carboniferous eurypterid discoveries.

A new genus and species of a large ghost moth (Lepidoptera, Exoporia, Hepialidae) is described from south—central Peru based on a single pair of adults, male and female. Viridigigas ciseskii, new genus, new species, is recorded from two locations along the eastern versant of the Amazonian Andes. Its phylogenetic position within the Hepialidae is currently inconclusive with some features suggestive of affinity with two other genera, Puermytrans Viette, 1951 (Chile), and Phassodes Bethune-Baker, 1905 (Fiji). The forewing pattern is distinct from all other Hepialidae, consisting of green with numerous sub-circular dark brown to yellowish—brown spots of irregular shape enclosed by up to three concentric dark brown lines. In the male a prominent scent gland is present at the base of the fore wing and the metatibia support well-developed, elongate androconia.

New specimens from the Eocene of Nigeria yielded one new genus and species, Amekicarcinus enigmaticus, and the new species Glyphithyreus bendensis. Indeterminate remains of an axiid decapod were also collected from the same deposit. Nigerian decapod occurrences in general display a Tethyan or Paratethyan distribution in the Eocene, whereas Cretaceous occurrences include Atlantic distributions in addition. Many Nigerian decapod genera cross the K/Pg boundary in the Atlantic, proximal to the Chicxulub impact area.

The cylindrodontid rodent Pseudocylindrodon Burke, 1935, formerly included seven named species, but is here restricted to the type species P. neglectus Burke, 1935, two additional North. American species (P. citofluminis Storer, 1984, and P. lateriviae Storer, 1988), and the Asian species P. mongolicus Kowalski, 1974. The other three species previously assigned to Pseudocylindrodon are here referred to the new genus Dolocylindrodon: D. medius (Burke, 1938), D. tobeyi (Black, 1970), and D. texanus (Wood, 1974) based on a combination of cranial and dental morphology. Two new species of Dolocylindrodon are named from the Chadronian part of the Climbing. Arrow Formation of southwestern Montana: Dolocylindrodon vukae (type species of the genus) and Dolocylindrodon rahnensis. Additional specimens of D. medius from the early Chadronian McCarty's Mountain fauna of Montana are briefly discussed. The recognition of a new genus and two new species of cylindrodonts increases the known diversity of this family to 14 recognized species included in five genera during the North .American Chadronian, the time of greatest diversity of the family. Dolocylindrodon is viewed as a primitive member of the Cylindrodontinae that attained higher-crowned teeth independent of the more hypsodont Cylindrodon Douglass, 1901.