Contribution to the knowledge of Limoniidae (Diptera: Tipuloidea): first records of 244 species from various European countries.

Background: Limoniidae is one of the most species-rich Dipteran families, with 661 reported species in Europe. Despite the fact that the European limoniid crane fly fauna has been studied ever since Carolus Linnaeus, it is still poorly known. New information: In this study, we summarise the taxonomic and faunistic studies of European Limoniidae, which described new species and reported first country records, between 2010 and 2020. We also report occurrence data of 244 Limoniidae species which represent the first country records or conformational records from various European countries, as we report ten species from Albania, one from Austria, thirty-seven from Belarus, five from Belgium, two from Bulgaria, two from Estonia, six from Finland, seven from France, fourteen from Greece, sixteen from Hungary, two from Iceland, six from Italy, ten from Latvia, one from Malta, nine from Montenegro, two from The Netherlands, ten from North Macedonia, forty-two from Norway, one from Poland, five from Portugal, twenty from Romania, thirty-eight from Serbia, six from Slovenia, five from Spain and seven species from Sweden for the first time. From the European territory of Russia, we report twenty-eight species from Central European Russia, seventy-two from East European Russia, fifteen from North European Russia, one from Northwest European Russia and seven from North Caucasus for the first time. Confirmatory records and corrigenda are also included.

Coelosynapha, a new genus of the subfamily Gnoristinae (Diptera: Mycetophilidae) with a circumpolar, Holarctic distribution.

BACKGROUND: The subfamily Gnoristinae is one of the most diverse and taxonomically difficult subfamilies of Mycetophilidae, with new species and genera being described almost every year from various parts of the world. Through inventories of fungus gnats in the Nordic Region and Russia, a genus and species new to science was discovered, yet with links back to an illustration made by the late French entomologist Loïc Matile in the 1980s. DNA barcoding aligned it with yet another species new to science, distributed across Canada and documented through The Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) by Paul D. N. Hebert and colleagues at the BOLD team. NEW INFORMATION: The new Holarctic genus, Coelosynapha gen. n. is described, consisting of two new species, the Palaearctic Coelosynapha loici sp. n. and the Nearctic Coelosynapha heberti sp. n. DNA-barcodes assign the two new species to distinctly separated (8.27% p-distance) Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) which are most closely aligned to unidentified species of Mycetophilidae from South Australia and Costa Rica on BOLD. The new genus shows morphological characteristics in between the two Holarctic genera Coelosia Winnertz, 1864 and Synapha Meigen, 1818 and further shows affinity to the southern continents genus Austrosynapha Tonnoir, 1929. The Palaearctic Coelosynapha loici sp. n., for which habitat requirements are best documented, is largely restricted to pristine, old-growth conifer (mostly spruce, Picea abies ssp. obovata) forests within the boreal vegetation zone, although it is also recorded from hummock tundra along the Anadyr River in Far East Russia.

Eleven remarkable Diptera species, emerged from fallen aspens in Kivach Nature Reserve, Russian Karelia.

BACKGROUND: In 2016, saproxylic Diptera associated with aspen (Populus tremula L.) logs were studied in the Kivach Nature Reserve, Russian Karelia, using trunk emergence traps. NEW INFORMATION: Eleven rare species of Diptera (families Limoniidae, Scatopsidae, Axymyiidae, Mycetophilidae, Sciaridae, Platypezidae, Syrphidae and Clusiidae) with poorly known distribution and ecology were recorded. For each species, basic diagnostic characteristics were provided along with the information on microhabitats. An attempt was also undertaken to outline possible associations with wood-decaying macrofungi using nonparametric correlation.

New data on poorly known species of the genus Leia Meigen (Diptera, Mycetophilidae) from the Palaearctic region.

New data on four poorly known species of the genus Leia Meigen (L. nigricornis van Duzee, L. flavipennis Lastovka & Matile, L. iturupensis Zaitzev and L. rufiptera Ostroverkhova) are presented. Detailed redescriptions and terminalia figures are provided. Leia nigricornis is reported for the first time from the Palaearctic region and L. automnala Ostroverkhova & Grishina is found to be a junior synonym of L. flavipennis. A variation in the male terminalia of L. bimaculata Meigen is illustrated, based on specimens from several European countries.

Recent noteworthy findings of fungus gnats from Finland and northwestern Russia (Diptera: Ditomyiidae, Keroplatidae, Bolitophilidae and Mycetophilidae).

New faunistic data on fungus gnats (Diptera: Sciaroidea excluding Sciaridae) from Finland and NW Russia (Karelia and Murmansk Region) are presented. A total of 64 and 34 species are reported for the first time form Finland and Russian Karelia, respectively. Nine of the species are also new for the European fauna: Mycomyashewelli Väisänen, 1984, Mycomyathula Väisänen, 1984, Acnemiatrifida Zaitzev, 1982, Coelosiagracilis Johannsen, 1912, Orfeliakrivosheinae Zaitzev, 1994, Mycetophilabiformis Maximova, 2002, Mycetophilamonstera Maximova, 2002, Mycetophilauschaica Subbotina & Maximova, 2011 and Trichontapalustris Maximova, 2002.

Intranasal oxytocin blocks alcohol withdrawal in human subjects.

BACKGROUND: The neuropeptide, oxytocin (OT), has been reported to block tolerance formation to alcohol and decrease withdrawal symptoms in alcohol-dependent rodents. Numerous recent studies in human subjects indicate that OT administered by the intranasal route penetrates into and exerts effects within the brain. METHODS: In a randomized, double-blind clinical trial, intranasal OT (24 IU/dose, N = 7) or placebo (N = 4) was given twice daily for 3 days in alcohol-dependent subjects admitted to a research unit for medical detoxification using Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol (CIWA) score-driven PRN administration of lorazepam. Subjects rated themselves on the Alcohol Withdrawal Symptom Checklist (AWSC) each time CIWA scores were obtained. Subjects also completed the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale, an Alcohol Craving Visual Analog Scale (ACVAS) and the Profile of Mood States (POMS) on inpatient days 2 and 3. RESULTS: All subjects had drunk heavily each day for at least 2 weeks prior to study and had previously experienced withdrawal upon stopping/decreasing alcohol consumption. OT was superior to placebo in reducing alcohol withdrawal as evidenced by: less total lorazepam required to complete detoxification (3.4 mg [4.7, SD] vs. 16.5 [4.4], p = 0.0015), lower mean CIWA scores on admission day 1 (4.3 [2.3] vs. 11.8 [0.4], p < 0.0001) and day 2 (3.4 [2.2] vs. 11.1 [3.6], p < 0.002), lower AWSC scores on days 1 and 2 (p < 0.02; p = 0.07), and lower ACVAS ratings (p = 0.01) and lower POMS Tension/Anxiety subscale scores on day 2 (p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: This is the first demonstration that OT treatment may block alcohol withdrawal in human subjects. Our results are consistent with previous findings in rodents that OT inhibits neuroadaptation to and withdrawal from alcohol. OT could have advantages over benzodiazepines in managing alcohol withdrawal because it may reverse rather than maintain sedative-hypnotic tolerance. It will be important to test whether OT treatment is effective in reducing drinking in alcohol-dependent outpatients.

Centrally-mediated sensory information processing is impacted with increased alcohol consumption in college-aged individuals.

Alcohol consumption can have an impact on a variety of centrally-mediated functions of the nervous system, and some aspects of sensory perception can be altered as a result of long-term alcohol use. In order to assess the potential impact of alcohol intake on sensory information processing, metrics of sensory perception (simple and choice reaction time; static and dynamic threshold detection; amplitude discrimination with and without pre-exposure to conditioning stimulation) were tested in college-aged subjects (18 to 26 years of age) across a broad range of levels of alcohol consumption. The analysis indicated no detectable associations between reaction time and threshold measures with alcohol consumption. However, measures of adaptation to short duration (0.5s) conditioning stimuli were significantly associated with alcohol consumption: the impact of a confounding conditioning stimulus on amplitude discriminative capacity was comparable to values reported in previous studies on healthy controls (28.9±8.6) for light drinkers while the same adaptation metric for heavy drinkers (consuming greater than 60 drinks per month) was significantly reduced (8.9±7.1). The results suggest that while some of the sensory perceptual metrics which are normally impacted in chronic alcoholism (e.g., reaction time and threshold detection) were relatively insensitive to change with increased alcohol consumption in young non-alcoholic individuals, other metrics, which are influenced predominantly by centrally-mediated mechanisms, demonstrate a deviation from normative values with increased consumption. Results of this study suggest that higher levels of alcohol consumption may be associated with alterations in centrally-mediated neural mechanisms in this age group.