Revision of the new wandering spider genus Ohvida and taxonomic remarks on Celaetycheus Simon, 1897 (Araneae: Ctenidae)

The new ctenid genus Ohvida is proposed to include eight species: Ohvida fulvorufa (Franganillo, 1931) comb. nov. (type species) (=Celaetycheus cabriolatus Franganillo, 1930 syn. nov.; = C. cabriolatus pardosiformis Franganillo, 1930 syn. nov.; = C. fulvorufus afoliatus Franganillo, 1931 syn. nov.), O. isolata (Bryant, 1940) comb. nov., O. vernalis (Bryant, 1940) comb. nov., O. brevitarsus (Bryant, 1940) comb. nov., O. coxanus (Bryant, 1940), comb. nov., and three new species, O. turquino sp. nov. (all species from Cuba), and O. andros sp. nov. and O. bimini sp. nov. (both species from The Bahamas). Species of Ohvida differ from all other ctenid spiders by the presence of a retrodorsal projection on the cymbium of the male pedipalp and by a basal position of the lateral spurs on the female epigyne. The genus Celaetycheus Simon, 1897 is reviewed to only include its type species, C. flavostriatus Simon, 1897 from Brazil. We propose the following synonyms and new combinations: Ctenus ottleyi (Petrunkevitch, 1930) (= Celaetycheus strenuus Bryant, 1942 syn. nov. and C. modestus Bryant, 1942 syn. nov.); Ctenus delesserti (Caporiacco, 1947) comb. nov., and Leptoctenus paradoxus (F.O. P.-Cambridge, 1900) comb. nov. Celaetycheus modestus Bryant, 1942 is considered incertae sedis.

Characterization of the optical properties of atmospheric aerosols in Amazonia from long-term AERONET monitoring (1993-1995 and 1999-2006)

We present a new climatology of atmospheric aerosols (primarily pyrogenic and biogenic) for the Brazilian tropics on the basis of a high-quality data set of spectral aerosol optical depth and directional sky radiance measurements from Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) Cimel Sun-sky radiometers at more than 15 sites distributed across the Amazon basin and adjacent Cerrado region. This network is the only long-term project (with a record including observations from more than 11 years at some locations) ever to have provided ground-based remotely-sensed column aerosol properties for this critical region. Distinctive features of the Amazonian area aerosol are presented by partitioning the region into three aerosol regimes: southern Amazonian forest, Cerrado, and northern Amazonian forest. The monitoring sites generally include measurements from the interval 1999-2006, but some sites have measurement records that date back to the initial days of the AERONET program in 1993. Seasonal time series of aerosol optical depth (AOD), angstrom ngstrom exponent, and columnar-averaged microphysical properties of the aerosol derived from sky radiance inversion techniques (single-scattering albedo, volume size distribution, fine mode fraction of AOD, etc.) are described and contrasted for the defined regions. During the wet season, occurrences of mineral dust penetrating deep into the interior were observed.