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PREMISE OF THE STUDY: The complex geological and climatic history of the Neotropics has had major implications on the diversification of plant lineages. Chrysobalanaceae is a pantropical family of trees and shrubs with 75% of its 531 species found in the Neotropics, and a time-calibrated phylogeny of this family should shed light on the tempo of diversification in the Neotropical flora. Previously published phylogenetic hypotheses of this family were poorly supported, and its biogeography remains unclear. METHODS: We assembled the complete plastid genome of 51 Chrysobalanaceae species, and increased taxon sampling by Sanger-sequencing of five plastid regions for an additional 88 species. We generated a time-calibrated tree including all 139 Chrsyobalanaceae species and 23 outgroups. We then conducted an ancestral area reconstruction analysis and estimated diversification rates in the family. KEY RESULTS: The tree generated with the plastid genome alignment was almost fully resolved. It supports the polyphyly of Licania and Hirtella. The family has diversified starting around the Eocene-Oligocene transition. An ancestral area reconstruction confirms a Paleotropical origin for Chrysobalanaceae with several transoceanic dispersal events. The main Neotropical clade likely resulted from a single migration event from Africa around 28 mya ago, which subsequently underwent rapid diversification. CONCLUSIONS: Given the diverse ecologies exhibited by extant species, we hypothesize that the rapid diversification of Chrysobalanaceae following the colonization of the Neotropics was triggered by habitat specialization during the complex geological and paleoclimatic history of the Neotropics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how different party systems in Latin America affect the capability of opposition parties to use public concerns about political corruption for electoral mobilization. Opposition partisanship is more strongly linked to perceptions of corruption in the ideologically polarized party system of Chile than in the hegemonic party system then in decline in Mexico or in the centrist two-party system of Costa Rica. However, the capability of opposition parties in all three party systems to mobilize electoral support among voters dissatisfied with corruption is weakened by the tendency of these politically alienated citizens to withdraw from all types of political involvement. Implications of the findings for redressing problems of political corruption through the electoral process and for a deepening of democracy in Latin America are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several respects, Spanish-speaking Latin America appears to be a "fast follower" of electronic commerce, i.e. a region of the developing world that is capable of relatively rapid adoption of e-commerce technologies and business models. The region has one of the world's fastest-growing rates of growth of Internet connectivity, and demand for information technology is soaring. The telecommunications infrastructure is improving and access costs are declining. Business and technological information from North America and Europe is readily available. However, certain structural and cultural characteristics are shaping the ways in which e-commerce can drive economic renewal in Spanish-speaking Latin America. These characteristics include a relatively weak technological and educational infrastructure, highly skewed distribution of income within national populations, scarcity of capita! for new ventures, a traditional business culture that does not place high value on market responsiveness or customer service, and a policy and legal system that requires retrofitting. Nevertheless, the connectivity boom in the region has generated an array of e-commerce opportunities that are attracting many contenders from within and outside the region. This paper surveys recent research on the emergence of e-commerce in Spanish-speaking Latin America and describes the challenges facing this region as it enters the network economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a proposal to conserve the name of the plant Mascagnia at the place of Triopterys belonging to the family Malphigiaceae. Mascagnia is a genus of Neotropical flowering plants in the family and contains five species generally found in Bahamas and Greater Antilles and two have the samaras like Mascagnia.

Graphical abstract Highlights • Plastome analyses recovered Tovomita as non-monophyletic. • Tovomita includes three distantly related clades. • Tovomita croatii is well-placed as sister to, or nested within Chrysochlamys. • The genus, Arawakia , is proposed to accommodate the T. weddelliana species complex. Abstract Clusieae is an exclusively Neotropical tribe in the family Clusiaceae sensu stricto. Although tribes within Clusiaceae are morphologically and phylogenetically well-delimited, resolution among genera within these tribes remains elusive. The tribe Clusieae includes an estimated ∼500 species distributed among five genera: Chrysochlamys , Clusia , Dystovomita , Tovomita , and Tovomitopsis. In this study, we used nearly complete plastid genomes from 30 exemplar Clusieae species representing all genera recognized, plus two outgroups to infer the phylogeny of the tribe using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian Inference. For comparison, we also inferred a phylogeny from the nuclear Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region using the same methods. Our study corroborates earlier findings that Clusia is monophyletic while Tovomita is not. It also provides additional support to the hypothesis that Chrysochlamys and Tovomitopsis are not closely related despite gross morphological similarity. Tovomita is divided into three distantly related clades: (i) core Tovomita (including the type T. guianensis), (ii) T. croatii , and (iii) the T. weddelliana species complex. Members of the T. weddelliana complex are isolated from the core Tovomita , and placed in a well-supported clade that is sister to a clade composed of Chrysochlamys plus Clusia. Tovomita croatii is nested within Chrysochlamys. We propose taxonomic revisions to accommodate our phylogenetic findings, including the description of the new genus Arawakia , which includes the 18 species formerly recognized in the T. weddelliana species complex. Lectotypes are also designated for nine species (i.e., Arawakia angustata , A. lanceolata , A. lingulata , A. longicuneata , A. macrocarpa , A. oblanceolata , A. pithecobia , A. rhizophoroides , and A. weddelliana), and a taxonomic key for the identification of the six genera of Clusieae recognized is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]