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International audience; Three Graphium species belonging to two species groups of the subgenus Pazala, the alebion and tamerlanus groups,were examined in molecular and morphological studies, and their female genitalia are reported for the first time. Theirrelationship with other species groups within the subgenus is assessed and their divergence times are estimated. We findthat G. (P.) alebion is the first lineage to diverge within Pazala in the early Miocene (20 Ma) and that G. (P.) tamerlanusand G. (P.) parus are sister species and diverged from each other in the late Miocene (7 Ma). A revision of the fourrecognised taxa belonging to three species is presented, and historical misidentification of these taxa and their geographicranges are explained.

Two new species of Stathmopodidae are described from Taiwan: Cuprina atayalica Shen & Hsu, sp. nov., reared from larvae on Microsorum brachylepis, and C. insolita Hsu & Shen, sp. nov., reared from larvae on Tectaria subtriphylla and T. harlandii. Diagnostic characters for both species are provided. Larval host plants and the biology of the immature stages of both new species are documented.

This paper investigates the energy cost minimization problem for smart grids with distributed renewable energy resources. Unlike earlier research studies that either have assumed all the appliance jobs are interruptible or power-shiftable and that the electricity prices as well as the availability of renewable resources are known, this paper focuses on more challenging scenarios in which appliance jobs are non-interruptible and non-power-shiftable, the electricity prices vary with the overall load of the entire grid in real-time, and the renewable power generation is uncertain. Because home solar systems are widely available, this paper assumes that each consumer in the grid can have a photovoltaic system and a side battery. Collected solar energy can be used to meet a consumer’s individual power demand, stored in the battery for future use, or sold back to the grid during peak hours to lower electricity bills and the overall load on the entire grid. To solve this problem, a two-stage robust optimization model is proposed, and the C&CG method is utilized to solve it. However, to solve the problem more efficiently when the number of consumers and appliance jobs is large, a second approach called SRDSM is proposed. The SRDSM algorithm consists of two parts: The first part is a job scheduling algorithm that minimizes electricity costs for all consumers. The second part is a power management algorithm based on dynamic programming that reduces the energy cost further by utilizing renewable energy. The numerical results show that, although the C&CG method produces optimal solutions, the SRDSM algorithm is much more scalable and efficient when the problem size is large.

Ants are a dominant insect group in terrestrial ecosystems and many myrmecophilous species evolve to associate with ants to gain benefits. One iconic example is myrmecophilous butterflies that often produce ant-mimicking vibrational calls to modulate ant behaviors. Despite its popularity, empirical exploration of how butterflies utilize vibrational signals to communicate with ants is scarce. In this study, we reported that the myrmecophilous butterfly Spindasis lohita produce three types of larval calls and one type of pupal call, while its tending ant, Crematogaster rogenhoferi emit a single type of call. The results of discriminant analysis revealed that calls of the two species are quantitatively similar in their signal attributes; the potential role of butterfly calls are further confirmed by the playback experiments in which certain ant behaviors including antennation, aggregation, and guarding were induced when one of the butterfly calls was played to C. rogenhoferi workers. The findings in the current study represent the very first evidence on vibrational communication between Spindasis and Crematogaster and also imply that S. lohita may have been benefited from ant attendance due to the ability to produce similar calls of the ant C. rogenhoferi.

Ussuriana fani wangi, ssp. nov. is described and illustrated from Baihuashan of Taihangshan Mountain Range, Beijing. This new subspecies utilizes Fraxinus bungeana as the larval hostplant, representing the first record of U. fani in northern China. The immature biology, larval morphology, and data of COI barcode all indicate the population belonging to U. fani rather than superficially similar U. michaelis.

Araragi panda sichuanensis Hsu & Li, subsp. nov. (Theclinae: Theclini) is described from Baoxing, Sichuan Province of western China, the type locality of the Giant Panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca. The present article also clarifies the identity of the hostplant for A. panda previously mis-identified. It should be the wheel wingnut (Cyclocarya paliurus) instead of the iron walnut (Juglans sigllata) recorded in literature. C. paliurus is sometimes called “the Giant Panda in plant kingdom” in China.

Neptis reducta Fruhsorfer, 1908 is currently recognized as a nymphalid butterfly found only in Taiwan and Thailand, with previously recorded larval hostplant and immature biology involving mis-identifications. The present study recognizes Aphananthe aspera (Cannabaceae) as the sole larval hostplant for N. reducta, and the nymphalid butterfly is the first known lepidopterous insect specialized on Aphananthe.

Two new species of Stathmopodidae are described from Taiwan: Cuprina atayalica Shen & Hsu, sp. nov., reared from larvae on Microsorum brachylepis, and C. insolita Hsu & Shen, sp. nov., reared from larvae on Tectaria subtriphylla and T. harlandii. Diagnostic characters for both species are provided. Larval host plants and the biology of the immature stages of both new species are documented.

Two new species of the tribe Synanthedonini are described from Taiwan: Synanthedonauritinctaoidissp. nov. and Paranthrenellahelvolasp. nov. Diagnostic characters for the two species are presented using body color, wing pattern, and genitalia. New records of the relationships between host plants and the immatures are also provided. S.auritinctaoidis feeds in the trunk of Cinnamomumcamphora (Lauraceae) and P.helvola in callus tissue of Heliciaformosana (Proteaceae) or Prunuscampanulata (Rosaceae).

Mycalesis kagina Fruhstorfer, 1911 is separated from Mycalesis suaveolens Wood-Mason & de Nicéville, 1883 to represent a species endemic to Taiwan based upon COI barcode divergence, morphological diagnosis of larva, and genitalia of both sexes. Both kagina and suaveolens are confirmed as members of the genus Mycalesis in Mycalesina. Immature morphology, biology, and hostplant associations for both species are given for the first time. Larvae of both species are recognized as specialists on Zingiberaceae, a plant family rarely used by satyrid butterflies.

Routing in delay-tolerant networks exploits node mobility to distribute messages among inter-contact of mobile nodes in intermittently connected environments. However, only depending on node movements to deliver messages between any two nodes in a network could result in lower successful delivery ratio, longer latency and high transmission overhead. Recent research intends to add ferries which can itinerate around some strategic places in a network to expedite message distribution and improve network performance. This paper designs a ferry-travel scheduling approach for efficiently message forwarding in delay-tolerant networks. In this approach, multiple ferries attempt to sense the intensity of message exchanges in geographic proximity, discover hotspot areas by contact history and then autonomously plan travel routes to go through those hot spots. To examine the network performance elevated by ferries, this paper incorporates this ferry-aided approach into several typical delay-tolerant routing schemes, including Epidemic, Spray and Wait, and PRoPHET. Relative comparison among these combined schemes is shown under synthetical Random Waypoint and real NCUTrace mobility models.

The life history, morphology, and biology of the immature stages and phylogenetic relationships of Rotunda rotundapex (Miyata & Kishida, 1990) are described and illustrated for the first time. The species is univoltine: eggs hatch in spring (March or April) and the life cycle from egg to adult is completed in about 3 wk, with larvae developing rapidly on young leaves of the host plants, Morus australis and to a lesser extent Broussonetia monoica (Moraceae), and adults emerging in April–May. Eggs are laid in clusters on twigs of the host plant, are covered by scales during female oviposition, and remain in diapause for the remainder of the year (i.e., for 10–11 mo). Larvae (all instars) are unique among the Bombycidae in that they lack a horn on abdominal segment 8. A strongly supported molecular phylogeny based on six genes (5.0 Kbp: COI, EF-1α, RpS5, CAD, GAPDH, and wgl) representing seven genera of Bombycinae from the Old World revealed that Rotunda is a distinct monotypic lineage sister to Bombyx. This phylogenetic position, together with morphological data of the immature stages (egg and larval chaetotaxy), supports the current systematic classification in which the species rotundapex has been placed in a separate genus (Rotunda) from Bombyx in which it was previously classified.

Caltoris ranrunna (Sonan, 1936) is resurrected from synonymy of Caltoris cahira austeni (Moore, 1883) to represent a Caltoris species endemic to Taiwan based upon COI barcode divergence and morphological diagnosis in genitalia of both sexes. This species distributes allopatrically from C. cahira of continental Asia and Andamans.

Neptis hesione podarces Matsumura (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) is a rare nymphalid butterfly in Taiwan. Bionomics and immature morphology of this rare species are given in detail in the present article. Its larvae are monophagous, consuming leaves of a climbing fig Ficus sarmantosa (Moraceae). Seven instars are required to complete larval development. We found that younger larvae of N. h. podarces make frass chains, a behavior that has not been found in other Neptis species. Here we test the antipredator function of this larval behavior and provide details on nest building.

International audience; The previously recognised closely related species Graphium (Pazala) mandarinus (Oberthür, 1879) and G. (P.) sichuanica(Koiwaya, 1993) are shown to comprise seven species as a result of both molecular and morphological analysis. Molecular dating analysis is also performed on the mandarinus group in order to investigate the divergence time of the taxa. Two HU ET AL. 402·Zootaxa 4441 (3) © 2018Magnolia Presstaxa, G. (P.) garhwalica (Katayama, 1988) stat. nov. and G. (P.) paphus (de Nicéville, 1886) stat. nov., are raised from sub-specific to specific status; G. (P.) hoeneanus Cotton & Hu nom. nov., stat. rev. is separated from sichuanica at species level; and two previously unrecognised new species, G. (P.) daiyuanae Hu, Zhang & Cotton sp. nov. and G. (P.) confucius Hu, Duan & Cotton sp. nov. are described from Vietnam and China respectively, the latter being sympatric with nominate G.(P.) mandarinus. The identity of the lectotype of G. (P.) mandarinus is confirmed and a lectotype is designated for the tax-on Papilio Glycerion Gray, 1831. A new subspecies of G. (P.) mandarinus is described from western Yunnan and northern Myanmar, G. (P.) mandarinusstilwelli Cotton & Hu ssp. nov.

Chrysozephyrus laoshanensis, sp. nov., is described and illustrated from Cenwanglaoshan in the western part of Guangxi Province, China and Ha Giang Province of Vietnam. The new species is associated with Lithocarpus corneus, which has not previously been recognized as a hostplant for Theclini or any lepidopterous specialist feeder. The valva and brachia of the new species are distinct from all known members of Chrysozephyrus.

The Tailed Punch, Dodona eugenes, is widely distributed in East Asia with seven subspecies currently recognized. However, two of them, namely ssp. formosana and ssp. esakii found in Taiwan, are hard to distinguish from each other due to ambiguous diagnostic characters. In this study, their taxonomic status is clarified by comparing genitalia characters and phylogenetic relationships based on mitochondrial sequences, COI and COII (total 2211 bps). Our results show that there is no reliable feature to separate these two subspecies. Surprisingly we found that Dodona in Taiwan is more closely related to the Orange Punch, D. egeon, than to other subspecies of D. eugenes. Therefore, the following nomenclatural changes are proposed: Dodona eugenes formosana is revised to specific status as Dodona formosana Matsumura, 1919, stat. rev, and ssp. esakii is sunk to a junior synonym of Dodona formosana syn. n.

A new species of Hyposoter Foerster, 1869 is discovered based on morphology of adults and cocoons, biology, and DNA barcoding evidence. It is herein described as Hyposoter distriangulum Chen, Huang & Hsu sp. nov. , which is a common parasitoid of a rare zygaenid moth Artona flavipuncta Hampson, 1900. The differences between similar Hyposoter species in Japan and Taiwan are also presented.

A new species of Hyposoter Foerster, 1869 is discovered based on morphology of adults and cocoons, biology, and DNA barcoding evidence. It is herein described as Hyposoter distriangulum Chen, HuangHsu sp. nov. , which is a common parasitoid of a rare zygaenid moth Artona flavipuncta Hampson, 1900. The differences between similar Hyposoter species in Japan and Taiwan are also presented.

In recent years, a considerable number of pierid butterflies of the genus Delias have been found from Jinmen Islands, where no available hostplants grow, rendering a proof of cross sea water migration of these butterflies. It is suggested here that these butterflies come from nearby continent of eastern China, visiting the islands for nectar acquisition in seasons when nectar is in short supply because they mostly show up in autumn months. Samples obtained during the survey contained two species, namely Delias pasithoe (Linnaeus, 1767) and Delias acalis (Godart, 1819). Subspecific names applied to both species in eastern China appear to involve nomenclatural problems, with erroneous usage in recent literature.

The immature biology and morphology of Catapaecilma major moltrechti (Wileman) from Taiwan are reported. The larva of this taxon is proven to be largely predacious on a few scale insect species attended by ant Crematogester rogenhoferi in satellite nests constructed by the ants, but it also consumes plant material within or near ants’ satellite nests in elder instars. The discovery of the food habit of this taxon is interesting as the larva of C. major is known to be phytophagous in India and Sri Lanka.

Analysis of female sex pheromone components and subsequent field trap experiments demonstrated that the bombycid moth Trilocha varians uses a mixture of (E,Z)-10,12-hexadecadienal (bombykal) and (E,Z)-10,12-hexadecadienyl acetate (bombykyl acetate) as a sex pheromone. Both of these components are derivatives of (E,Z)-10,12-hexadecadienol (bombykol), the sex pheromone of the domesticated silkmoth Bombyx mori. This finding prompted us to compare the antennal and behavioral responses of T. varians and B. mori to bombykol, bombykal, and bombykyl acetate in detail. The antennae of T. varians males responded to bombykal and bombykyl acetate but not to bombykol, and males were attracted only when lures contained both bombykal and bombykyl acetate. In contrast, the antennae of B. mori males responded to all the three components. Behavioral analysis showed that B. mori males responded to neither bombykal nor bombykyl acetate. Meanwhile, the wing fluttering response of B. mori males to bombykol was strongly inhibited by bombykal and bombykyl acetate, thereby indicating that bombykal and bombykyl acetate act as behavioral antagonists for B. mori males. T. varians would serve as a reference species for B. mori in future investigations into the molecular mechanisms underlying the evolution of sex pheromone communication systems in bombycid moths.

The implication of corporate bankruptcy prediction is important to financial institutions when making lending decisions. In related studies, many bankruptcy prediction models have been developed based on some machine-learning techniques. This paper presents a meta-learning framework, which is composed of two-level classifiers for bankruptcy prediction. The first-level multiple classifiers perform the data reduction task by filtering out unrepresentative training data. Then, the outputs of the first-level classifiers are utilized to create the second-level single (meta) classifier. The experiments are based on five related datasets and the results show that the proposed meta-learning framework provides higher prediction accuracy rates and lower type I/II errors when compared with the stacked generalization classifier and other three widely developed baselines, such as neural networks, decision trees, and logistic regression. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Minois nagasawae (Matsumua) is a relict species inhabiting the alpine zones of Taiwan. The genus belongs to the “Satyrus series,” which is primarily Eurasian in distribution. We present the first observations of its host plants, biology, and morphology of the early stages. Two species of grasses, Brachypodium kawakamii and Deschampsia caespitosa (both Poaceae), were recorded as larval host plants. We confirmed that the eggs of M. nagasawae are dropped freely without attachment to the substrate and that five instars are required to complete larval development. Obligate winter diapause occurs in the larval stage, usually in the first or second instar. This biology is highly consistent with the closely related, temperate species Minois dryas (Scopoli), suggesting that M. nagasawae retains biological traits adapted to cool habitats even though it is restricted to an island dominated by a subtropical climate.

Taiwan is at the northeastern limits of the Asian center of diversity for fruit flies in the tribe Dacini, and the country has several endemic species. Between 2013 and 2015, we surveyed the diversity of dacine fruit flies in Taiwan using kairomone baited traps and found 15 species. We report four species for the first time in Taiwan and figure them: Bactrocera nigrifacia (Zhang, Ji, & Chen 2011), B.rubigina (Wang & Zhao 1989), B. dorsaloides (Hardy & Adachi 1954) and B. bhutaniae (Drew & Romig 2013). For the species that are classified as pests, we explored how their spatial distribution correlates with elevation. The oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel 1912), is the most abundant pest on the island, but decreases sharply in abundance at higher elevations. Other pest species occur in much smaller numbers and respond differently to elevation and latitude. We also re-evaluated all records of previously recorded species and add our records to provide a checklist with 30 species of Dacini that occur in Taiwan. All species are regarded as native, six are endemic, and seven are agricultural pests. Historical records were georeferenced and plotted on maps along with records from the 2013–2015 survey to collate all known distribution data. We briefly discuss the state of knowledge of the fruit flies in Taiwan and how the distribution and host usage of Dacini may change in the future. Finally, considering the economic importance of the group, our understanding of their diversity and distributions is surprisingly poor.

Agehana maraho (Shiraki and Sonan, 1934) is a near-threatened swallowtail butterfly endemic to Taiwan. As a first step in evaluating the most variable molecular markers for further population genetic and conservation studies of this and other insects, the entire mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) was sequenced (16,094bp). The most distinctive structure of the Agehana mitogenome is the control region (CR; 1,270bp). This is the longest CR found so far in any lepidopteran, and it also represents the first known case of two units of macro repeats within a tandem region. In a comparison with another 12 lepidopteran mitogenomes, the genes atp8, atp6, and nad6 were found to be more variable than cox1, suggesting an undue focus on cox1 (COI) in identification and phylogeographic studies. A combination of these first three genes plus the CR, comprising micro as well as macro repeats, may thus provide more suitable markers for conservation genetic studies, not only of this near-threatened species, but also...

Foreign plants are usually introduced for food or aesthetic reasons. Most of these plants are non-invasive, but can alter the evolutionary trajectory of the associated native insects or inadvertently spread potential pests. A hitherto poorly documented example is the rapid expansion of Chilades pandava, a Cycas-feeding butterfly. Since about 1990, large numbers of the Sago Palm Cycas revoluta were introduced into Taiwan. Invading or introduced with this hostplant, Ch. pandava has rapidly spread to all major parts of Taiwan. To trace the source of outbreaks, we sampled 810 specimens covering 50 Taiwanese localities and other regions using mitochondrial COII sequences. Overall haplotype diversity was high (h = 0.791), but only 29 haplotypes were found. The haplotype C which dominates outbreak populations from western Taiwan was endemic to the island. This is consistent with the hypothesis of a local range expansion of Ch. pandava, rather than an introduction. In addition, the Taiwanese Central Mountain Ridge may constitute a primary biogeographic barrier restricting gene flow between eastern and western populations. Our study not only flags an important new invasive insect that needs to be monitored and controlled within the horticultural trade and for in situ cycad conservation, but also provides a clearly documented case of the transformation of a native tropical butterfly into a pest via introduced horticultural plants.

Two new Fagus-feeding notodontids, i.e. Syntypistis taipingshanensis WuHsu sp. n. and Pheosiopsis seni WuHsu sp. n. are recently discovered from the relic Fagus forests in northeastern Taiwan. Based on the genitalia structures, the closely relatives of two new species are S. melana WuFang, 2003 and P. albalienata KishidaKobayashi, 2005, respectively, both occurring in the Fagus forests of Southern China.

Although Pseudocoladenia dan is a common skipper throughout much of its distributional range, the race sadakoe (Sonan & Mitono) inhabiting Taiwan has not been recorded since its description. Pseudocoladenia dan sadakoe was found to be associated with Achyranthes bidentata var. japonica and another unidentified Achyranthes species, as opposed to A. aspera and A. bidentata var. bidentata, which are used as the primary hosts by the populations of P. dan in neighboring mainland China and the other regions. The host associations may explain the rarity of this skipper in Taiwan because A. bidentata var. japonica is an uncommon herb growing in montane broad-leaved forests. By constrast, A. aspera is a weedy species found in disturbed habitats. Preliminary results show that P. dan sadakoe is bivoltine, and may have a different preference for host plants between generations. A discussion on the systematic status of P. dan sadakoe and a synonymic list are also given.

We present the first dated higher-level phylogenetic and biogeographic analysis of the butterfly family Riodinidae. This family is distributed worldwide, but more than 90% of the c. 1500 species are found in the Neotropics, while the c. 120 Old World species are concentrated in the Southeast Asian tropics, with minor Afrotropical and Australasian tropical radiations, and few temperate species. Morphologically based higher classification is partly unresolved, with genera incompletely assigned to tribes. Using 3666 bp from one mitochondrial and four nuclear markers for each of 23 outgroups and 178 riodinid taxa representing all subfamilies, tribes and subtribes, and 98 out of 145 described genera of riodinids, we estimate that Riodinidae split from Lycaenidae about 96 Mya in the mid-Cretaceous and started to diversify about 81 Mya. The Riodinidae are monophyletic and originated in the Neotropics, most likely in lowland proto-Amazonia. Neither the subfamily Euselasiinae nor the Nemeobiinae are monophyletic as currently constituted. The enigmatic, monotypic Neotropical genera Styx and Corrachia (most recently treated in Euselasiinae: Corrachiini) are highly supported as derived taxa in the Old World Nemeobiinae, with dispersal most likely occurring across the Beringia land bridge during the Oligocene. Styx and Corrachia, together with all other nemeobiines, are the only exclusively Primulaceae-feeding riodinids. The steadily increasing proliferation of the Neotropical Riodininae subfamily contrasts with the decrease in diversification in the Old World, and may provide insights into factors influencing the diversification rate of this relatively ancient clade of Neotropical insects., The study was funded by grant #204308 from the Research Council of Norway to M.E., and grants from the Baker Foundation, the Putnam Expeditionary Fund of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and NSFDEB-0447242 to N.E.P. D.C.L. was funded by INRA and by ERC EMARES #250325 during writing. L.-W.W. and Y-F.H. were funded by NSC97-2621-B-003-003-MY3 and COA101-CF-02.1-C12.

The Synanthedonini fauna of Taiwan is reviewed, and a checklist of 9 species for this region is provided. Six new species are described: Paranthrenella dortmundi LiangHsu sp. nov., Paranthrenella weiyui LiangHsu sp. nov., Ichneumenoptera gryphus LiangHsu sp. nov., Kantipuria glansvorax LiangHsu sp. nov., Synanthedon ceraunus LiangHsu sp. nov., and Synanthedon phoenix LiangHsu sp. nov. New records of relationships between host plants and the immatures of Synanthedonini in Taiwan are also provided, with three species feeding on callus tissue of stems of Fagaceae, two on Lauraceae, and one on Rosaceae. One species is an obligatory borer into acorns of Fagaceae, and such kind of feeding strategy is rare among clearwing moths.

Shaanxiana australis sp. nov. (Theclinae: Theclini) is described from southern China, representing a new taxon of the genus and a remarkable known geographical range extension of the genus. The larval host plant of S. australis is unknown, but the most likely candidate is Fraxinus chinensis (Oleaceae), because congeneric Shaanxiana takashimai use Fraxinus spp. as larval hosts, and F. chinensis is known to grow at the type locality of S. australis.

This paper presents an intelligent bus system and services with the force of the masses to provide real-time bus information. Consider that while waiting for buses on the road, we often have no idea about how long we have to wait for, or which bus we can take for a destination. The information that we can get is quite limited, this situation which motivates us to design and develop a real-time bus information system. This system can group bus passengers on the same route as a virtual social community where participants can share time and location tags during travelling by buses. Then, the system can derive real-time bus information from a collection of user-provided data. Technically, the system combines users' geographic information, via GPS and NFC built-in with mobile devices, and their virtual social relations on the Internet, thus acquiring a set of practical bus information services, for example, when a bus will arrive, where a bus is, and what a bus route is. Accordingly, this paper specifies the proposed system design, development work, and prototypical implementation. Prototypical demonstration shows the interesting scenario of a social-based bus information service, as well as its feasibility in ubiquitous network environments.

Subalpine sclerophyllous oak forest grows at high elevation in Taiwan, distantly separated from similar forest communities found in western China, Tibet and India. An investigation on bud‐breaking phenology of oaks and associated phytophagous insects in this community revealed an undescribed species of Teratozephyrus lycaenid. This and other oak‐associated insects suggest that the presence of this oak community in Taiwan resulted from a more widely distributed community. The newly discovered Teratozephyrus turned out to be most closely related to T. nuwaii, described from western China, and is described below as T. elatus sp. nov. Two other species of Teratozephyrus also inhabit Taiwan, but both are associated with broad‐leaved oak forests. Of them, T. arisanus is widespread both in China and Taiwan, is morphologically distinct from the other Teratozephyrus species and is exclusively associated with broad‐leaved oaks. The other, T. yugaii, probably gained its broad‐leaved oak association secondarily as no...

A previously undescribed, montane forest-dwelling Potanthus is reported as a species endemic to Taiwan. Its closest relatives are suggested to be P. flavus, distributed from the continental Asia to Japan, and P. niobe from the Philippines, based upon two synapomorphies in the genital structures of both sexes. This new species inhabits altitudes higher than all the congeneric members previously known from Taiwan. Its presence fills the gap in the P. flavus + P. niobe distribution between the Philippines and the Asian continent, demonstrating a biotic connection between these regions.

Within the genus Howarthia, Howarthia melli (Forster) is the most frequently reported species across the southern provinces of China. An examination of the type series of H. melli ,i n combination with results of rearingexperiments, reveals that three species have been frequently confused under the name H. melli. The three are superÞcially similar but not closely related to each other within the genus. H. melli is much more restricted in distribution than previously thought, with most literature records referringto the other two species, Howarthia cheni Chou & Wangand an undescribed species, Howarthia cyanea sp. n., described herein. We provide a discussion of the relationships of these species and a review of Rhododendron-association in Lycaenidae.

Two new species of Sesiidae (clearwing moth) are described from Taiwan: Ceratocorema woodstocki Liang & Hsu sp. nov., and Melittia tao Liang & Hsu sp. nov. Diagnostic characters for the two species are presented using wing morphology, wing pattern, presence of androconial patches on the hindwing, and genitalia. The adults and their genitalia are documented, and distribution data are provided. New records of relationships between host plants and the immatures are also provided.

The current placement of the genus Araragi in the Chaetoprocta lineage has been problematic because Araragi does not possess a bilobed uncus, a synapomorphy shared by all the other genera of the lineage. The discovery of Araragi panda, a new species with features of Araragi and a bilobed uncus, justifies this systematic treatment. Phylogenetic analysis identifies Chaetoprocta as the sister of Araragi, and demonstrates that colonization of walnuts as larval hosts occurred only once in Theclini evolution, contradicting previously proposed hypotheses.

Anthropogenic introduction of a plant species may cause novel encounters between the plant and local herbivores, and initiate evolutionary changes in host plant usage by herbivores. Until recently the endemic aquatic plant Hygrophila pogonocalyx was endangered and had a restricted distribution in Taiwan. Massive restoration efforts since 1997 have led to an expansion of the plant's distribution and a novel encounter between it and an Asian butterfly, the chocolate pansy, Junonia iphita (Nymphalidae). This butterfly appears to have colonized H. pogonocalyx, switching from its original host, Strobilanthes penstemonoides var. formosana. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether the utilization of H. pogonocalyx as a host plant has initiated a differentiation between butterflies using the novel and the original hosts. To this purpose we collected butterflies from patches of the two host plants which grow sympatrically. We tested oviposition preference for the two hosts and larval performance on them. Female adults exhibited distinct oviposition preference toward the host plant their mothers preferred. Offspring showed greater survivorship and pupal weight when fed on the host plant their mothers preferred. Male adults displayed territorial behaviors on the host plant that their mothers had preferred. Finally, the survival rate of offspring produced from cross-mating between individuals with different host plant preference was lower than that of non-hybrids. Taken together, we suggest that genetic differentiation has occurred between individuals preferring H. pogonocalyx versus S. penstemonoides as host plants via host shifting. This process was likely induced by the mass restoration of the formerly rare and endangered plant species.

We address the problem of accurate and efficient alignment of 3D point clouds captured by an RGB-D (Kinect-style) camera from different viewpoints. Our approach introduces a new cost function for the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm that balances the significance of structural and photometric features with dynamically adjusted weights to improve the error minimization process. We also enhance the algorithm with a novel outlier rejection method, which relies on adaptive thresholding at each ICP iteration, using both the structural information of the object and the spatial distances of sparse SIFT feature pairs. The effectiveness of our proposed approach is demonstrated in challenging scenarios, involving objects lacking structural features, and significant camera view and lighting changes. We obtained superior registration accuracy than existing related methods while requiring low computational processing.

In delay-tolerant networks where connectivity between nodes is intermittent, replication-based delivery mechanisms are often employed to deliver messages in a store-carry-forward manner instead of end-to-end delivery techniques that are mainly used in traditional computer networks and mobile ad-hoc networks. However, multicasting with replication-based methodologies can induce considerable message traffic and longer delivery delay time, thereby being vulnerable upon system performance. This paper exploits the potential of network coding to design an efficient network-coding multicast mechanism in delay-tolerant networks. In this design, intermediate nodes in a network can perform a specific remix qualification approach which can not only alleviate the dependency problem among coded blocks but also generate more innovative coded blocks for restoring the original message by destination nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism is able to achieve cost-effective performance as compared with the naive network-coding and the replication-based delivery mechanisms for message multicasting in delay-tolerant networks.

This study describes the molecular phylogeny, laboratory rearing, and karyotype of a bombycid moth, Trilocha varians (F. Walker) (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae), which feeds on leaves of Ficus spp. (Rosales: Moraceae). The larvae of this species were collected in Taipei city, Taiwan, and the Ryukyu Archipelago (Ishigaki and Okinawa Islands, Japan). Molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed that T. varians belongs to the subfamily Bombycinae, thus showing a close relationship to the domesticated silkworm Bombyx mori (L.), a lepidopteran model insect. A laboratory method was developed for rearing T. varians and the time required for development from the embryo to adult was determined. From oviposition to adult emergence, the developmental zero was 10.47 °C and total effective temperature was 531.2 day—degrees, i.e., approximately 30 days for one generation when reared at 28 °C. The haploid of T. varians consisted of n = 26 chromosomes. In highly polyploid somatic nuclei, females showed a large heterochromatin body, indicating that the sex chromosome system in T. varians is WZ/ZZ (female/male). The results of the present study should facilitate the utilization of T. varians as a reference species for B. mori, thereby leading to a greater understanding of the ecology and evolution of bombycid moths.

We propose a novel method for the problem of target retrieval for wide area video surveillance (WAVS). Different from previous methods, our algorithm does not require environment model construction nor the learning or usage of any transition probabilities. Furthermore, our method can be applied to an arbitrarily large area for surveillance. The essence of our method lies in an optimization problem formulation using only the shortest driving distance between pairs of cameras, and the provision of an algorithm that finds a global optimum to the optimization. Experiments show that our method can achieve 99% precision and > 80% recall on an input of thousands of frames, which far exceeds the performance of the baseline, whilst taking under 10 seconds to run on a 1.67GHz Intel Centrino laptop. This makes it feasibly deployable on handheld devices in a police car.

Videos recorded on moving cameras are often known to be shaky due to unstable carrier motion and the video stabilization problem involves inferring the intended smooth motion to keep and the unintended shaky motion to remove. However, conventional methods typically require proper, scenario-specific parameter setting, which does not generalize well across different scenarios. Moreover, we observe that a stable video should satisfy two conditions: a smooth trajectory and consistent inter-frame transition. While conventional methods only target at the former condition, we address these two issues at the same time. In this paper, we propose a homography consistency based algorithm to directly extract the optimal smooth trajectory and evenly distribute the inter-frame transition. By optimizing in the homography domain, our method does not need further matrix decomposition and parameter adjustment, automatically adapting to all possible types of motion (eg. translational or rotational) and video properties (eg. frame rates). We test our algorithm on translational videos recorded from a car and rotational videos from a hovering aerial vehicle, both of high and low frame rates. Results show our method widely applicable to different scenarios without any need of additional parameter adjustment.

Night video enhancement is important for video surveillance since many objects or activities of interest occur in a dark environment which cannot be seen easily without enhancement. In this paper, we discuss several problems of existing techniques for illumination-fusion based night video enhancement, which fuses video frames from day-time backgrounds and night-time video. We then present a simple enhancement algorithm without these problems. The algorithm uses an additive enhancement term with foreground object extraction and constrained low-passed object illumination to avoid light-inversion and sensitivity problems and to reduce ghost patterns. Experimental results show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm.

We introduce a novel approach to cross camera people counting that can adapt itself to a new environment without the need of manual inspection. The proposed counting model is composed of a pair of collaborative Gaussian processes (GP), which are respectively designed to count people by taking the visible and occluded parts into account. While the first GP exploits multiple visual features to result in better accuracy, the second GP instead investigates the conflicts among these features to recover the underestimate caused by occlusions. Our contributions are threefold. First, we establish a cross camera people counting system that can facilitate forensics investigation and security preservation. Second, a principled way is proposed to estimate the degree of occlusions. Third, our system is comprehensively evaluated on two benchmark datasets. The promising performance demonstrates the effectiveness of our system.

In this paper, we propose an aerial surveillance system utilizing a static camera and a PTZ camera. The static camera captures a wide angle view of the scene, while the PTZ camera is capable of zooming in to a region of interest (ROI) selected by the user and capturing a detailed image. The system consists of a novel tracking algorithm named Simultaneous Estimation, Filtering and Rejection (SEFAR) and a multi-camera apparatus accommodating real-time requirements. The SEFAR algorithm performs feature point detection, homography estimation and outlier rejection in a one-pass process, avoiding time consuming iterations. The multi-camera apparatus uses high-resolution cameras of different zoom factors with a rotatable mirror for faster PTZ movements. Experimental results show robust and efficient tracking performance of SEFAR, demonstrating its possible use in real aerial surveillance systems in the future.

This paper proposes a home gateway architecture which integrates P2P file sharing and UPnP AV services on the OSGi framework. This design allows UPnP devices to access P2P media content from the Internet. Prototype demonstration presents several friendly UPnP-style scenarios for P2P AV entertainment in a home network environment.