Studies in Hemiptera in Honour of Pavel Lauterer and Jaroslav L. Stehlík
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Acta Musei Moraviae, Scientiae biologicae Special issue, 98(2) Studies in Hemiptera in honour of Pavel Lauterer and Jaroslav L. Stehlík PETR KMENT, IGOR MALENOVSKÝ & JIØÍ KOLIBÁÈ (Eds.) ISSN 1211-8788 Moravian Museum, Brno 2013 RNDr. Pavel Lauterer (*1933) was RNDr. Jaroslav L. Stehlík, CSc. (*1923) born in Brno, to a family closely inter- was born in Jihlava. Ever since his ested in natural history. He soon deve- grammar school studies in Brno and loped a passion for nature, and parti- Tøebíè, he has been interested in ento- cularly for insects. He studied biology mology, particularly the true bugs at the Faculty of Science at Masaryk (Heteroptera). He graduated from the University, Brno, going on to work bri- Faculty of Science at Masaryk Univers- efly as an entomologist and parasitolo- ity, Brno in 1950 and defended his gist at the Hygienico-epidemiological CSc. (Ph.D.) thesis at the Institute of Station in Olomouc. From 1962 until Entomology of the Czechoslovak his retirement in 2002, he was Scienti- Academy of Sciences in Prague in fic Associate and Curator at the 1968. Since 1945 he has been profes- Department of Entomology in the sionally associated with the Moravian Moravian Museum, Brno, and still Museum, Brno and was Head of the continues his work there as a retired Department of Entomology there from research associate. Most of his profes- 1948 until his retirement in 1990. sional career has been devoted to the During this time, the insect collections study of psyllids, leafhoppers, plant- flourished and the journal Acta Musei hoppers and their natural enemies. He Moraviae became established as a sci- has built up a huge collection of these entific periodical. To date, he has pub- groups and has published over 200 sci- lished over 120 scientific papers, many entific papers on their systematics and of them addressing the systematics faunistics, as well as applied entomo- and taxonomy of world Pyrrhocoridae logy. He has also always been an ent- and Largidae and the faunistics of husiastic populariser of entomology, Czech and Slovak Heteroptera. especially among younger people. EDITORIAL This specially-published edition of Acta Musei Moraviae, Scientiae biologicae is dedicated to two outstanding entomologists, RNDr. Jaroslav Stehlík, CSc. and RNDr. Pavel Lauterer who, in 2013, celebrated their ninetieth and eightieth birthdays respectively. Both have devoted their entire professional careers to the Hemiptera and to the Moravian Museum. In the museum, they have, for several decades, set consistently high standards of research and built up huge scientific collections in the Department of Entomology. They kept both the museum and Czech entomology in continuous contact with the international scientific community, even in the times when politics rendered this exceptional and far from easy, and when the world was far less technically interconnected than that which we take for granted today. We include 27 contributions on the taxonomy, systematics, biology and faunistics of the Heteroptera, Auchenorrhyncha and Psylloidea – insect groups close to the hearts of Jaroslav Stehlík and Pavel Lauterer – from a total of 53 authors from all over the world. In addition to the authors, many other colleagues have participated in the volume with peer-reviews of individual papers or personal memories: Charles Bartlett (University of Delaware, Newark, USA), Jérôme Constant (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium), Jakob Damgaard (Zoological Museum/Zoological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark), Dmitry Dmitriev (Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, USA), Jowita Drohojowska (University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland), Sakis Drosopoulos (Athens, Greece), Murray Fletcher (Orange Agriculture Institute, Orange, Australia), Dimitri Forero (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia), Paul Freytag (University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA), Ian Hodkinson (Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK), Gernot Kunz (Graz, Austria), Mallik Malipatil (Bioprotection, Ferntree Gully Delivery Centre, Australia), Lorèn Marchal (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France), Felipe F. F. Moreira (Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Brazil), Wolfgang Rabitsch (Umweltbundesamt, Biodiversity and Nature Conservation, Vienna, Austria), David Rider (North Dakota State University, Fargo, USA), Dariusz Œwierczewski (Jan D³ugosz University, Czêstochowa, Poland), and James Zahniser (Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, USA). Tony Long (Svinošice) sub-edited and helped to work up most of the English texts with his usual enthusiasm and close attention to detail. We thank all of these people for their contributions and, on their behalf, extend to Jaroslav Stehlík and Pavel Lauterer the “Many Happy Returns” that their years and the anniversaries merit. Petr Kment, Igor Malenovský and Jiøí Kolibáè 3 ISSN 1211-8788 Acta Musei Moraviae, Scientiae biologicae (Brno) 98(2): 5–10, 2013 On the occasion of the ninetieth birthday of RNDr. Jaroslav L. Stehlík, CSc. On April 11, our dear colleague and long the mentor to Czech and Slovak heteropterology, RNDr. Jaroslav L. Stehlík, CSc., celebrated his ninetieth birthday. Moreover, the year 2013 is also the seventieth anniversary of the publication of his first scientific paper. For the past decade, Jaroslav has been spending his retirement in fruitful work on his beloved Pyrrhocoroidea, resulting in 38 scientific papers devoted to the taxonomy and chorology of that group. In acknowledgement of Jaroslav’s life achievements in entomology, he was appointed a honorary member of the Czech Entomological Society in 2006. We would like to congratulate Jaroslav Stehlík on his anniversaries and wish him all the best for the years to come. Here we include some recollections by two of his close colleagues, to commemorate the occasion. Petr Kment Meeting Jaroslav Stehlík Two research topics have dominated the scientific life of Jaroslav Stehlík. One is eco-faunistic research into the Heteroptera of Moravia and Slovakia, which has resulted in a plethora of publications containing exemplary summaries of the chorology, bionomics and diagnostics of species concerned. The other has been the alpha-taxonomy of the Pyrrhocoridae (firebugs, red bugs, cotton-stainers) and Largidae of the world. Jaroslav was also able to maintain an overview of general entomological approaches to the true bugs, although he did not actively pursuit such studies. I cannot really remember how I perceived Jaroslav’s abilities when, in early 1950s I was casting about for a suitable topic for my MSc thesis (“diploma thesis” in those days) at the Biological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. From my point of view, it should have been on Heteroptera but could not address taxonomy (a subject then very nearly taboo to the authorities). I was not interested in diapause (then a favoured subject) and I flatly refused applied topics. I asked Jaroslav for advice, warmly embraced his suggestion, and in 1957 I defended a thesis entitled “Ectodermal female genitalia of the trichophorous Heteroptera”. Evidence of the topicality of the subject was that, almost simultaneously, two other university students of the Heteroptera, Geoffrey G. E. Scudder in Oxford and Carl W. Schaefer in Storrs, Connecticut, began their theses along similar lines. I cannot be grateful enough to Jaroslav for setting me on my life-time research course, a combination of morphology, phylogeny, higher classification and taxonomy of critical groups of true bugs. My initial contacts with Jaroslav could, of course, never be entirely free of the limits imposed by our differences in age and status, but these soon disappeared and I had the privilege to know him both as a heteropterist and a personality. He was always true to his 5 P. K MENT, P. ŠTYS, H. GÜNTHER pronounced opinions on science, but he did not expect you to share them; he was friendly and open with those he trusted, but always ready to defend his territory. He loved the research he had chosen for himself, loved the Moravian and Slovakian countryside and its natural history, and in times when boorishness was nearly a required norm, he remained courteous and elegant, a trait surely greatly appreciated by his women collaborators. He did not cease research on retirement, and the volume of flow of his publications on Pyrrhocoroidea is astonishing. Surely all hemipterists would appreciate Jaroslav’s decision to write a kind of synthesis of his unique knowledge of these bugs. Dear Jaroslav, I wish you health, strength and happiness in both your personal and scientific life, and many further years of enjoyment of your research. Pavel Štys A circuit tour and short circuits in southern Slovakia with Jaroslav in 1991 At the invitation of my friend Jaroslav Stehlík we undertook a collecting trip through South Slovakia in June 1991. It was a highly interesting and successful trip with plenty of interesting collection sites and rare species of bugs to capture. Starting in Brno, we first went to the Nové Zámky district with all the famous places in its surroundings. We prepared breakfast in our hotel room and for this purpose Jaroslav had an immersion heater in his luggage. Trying to heat about a litre of water to prepare the coffee, there was a short in the unit and we had coffee neither that morning nor for nearly all the days that followed. Jaroslav was quite upset; the immersion heater belonged his wife, who used it in the school in which she taught. It was not possible to obtain a replacement. This was our first mishap with the electricity. We drove on and took up residence in a hotel in Ve¾ký Krtíš. It was very hot, even during the night, and we kept the window open. This type of window could rotate about its vertical axis. In the night, a strong wind blew up, the window spun and threw the bedside lamp to the ground. In an instant, the whole hotel had no power. A classic case of short circuit. Our last hotel was located in Luèenec, farther to the east. At that time Luèenec was a pretty, small town with many shops and I decided to look for an immersion heater to replace Madame Stehlík’s ruined one.