Zhu papers

Mingsheng ZHU - papers on Opiliones

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明生朱

Mingsheng ZHU (also Ming-sheng Zhu)

Birthdate: December, 1950

Birthplace: Beijing, China

Nationality: Chinese.

Died: 7 July 2010.

BIOGRAPHY: Only has 5 publications on Opiliones, although he has finished more than 100 publications.

Research Interest:
The goal of my research is to understand taxonomy, systematics, ecology, biology, and the behavior of spiders and other arachnids, including scorpions, and opinions. I also study other invertebrates of economic importance.

(1) Systematics and historical biogeography of spiders (Araneae): My institute has more than 10,000 spider specimens, including 300 types. The spider families Araneidae, Thomisidae, Philodromidae, Theridiidae, Trochanteriidae, Tetragnathidae, Agelenidae, and Amaurobiidae are my focus.

(2) Systematics, phylogenetic relationship, and historical biogeography of the arachnid order Scorpiones: The Chinese scorpions are poorly studied, particularly the systematics. Nobody has ever done any research on scorpion systematics since Xianwen Wu in 1936. In 2004, I started a collaboration with Dr. M.R. Lourenco (Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle-in Paris) to study the Chinese scorpions. At this moment, scorpions from Tibet, Hainan Island, and Yunnan Province, including 3 genera and 11 new species have been studied. The number of scorpion species increased from the previous 19 to the current 32 species. From July to August in 2005, my research group revisited Tibet and Xinjiang and collected more than 500 scorpions and 420 of them are kept live in my lab. Three of my master-level students are working on the systematics of scorpions. I am planning additional collection trips to southwest and northwest China, Hainan Island and Xisha Islands(Paracel Islands) in southern China from 2007 to 2009. From those trips and the future study on those collections, we hope to reveal the distributional characteristics and historical biogeography of the species of arachnid order Scorpiones.

(3) Systematics of arachnid order Opiliones: Opiliones are poorly studied in China. Our collection has more than 1000 specimens and approximately 100 species. One of my master-level graduate students, Wei-Guang Lian, is working on those collections.

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS PAGE:

Weiguang Lian (sent relevant information and contributed PDFs - 1999a-b).
Chao Zhang (contributed PDF 2009).

DISCLAIMER ? This resource was first intended as for private use of the members of the arachnology lab of Museu Nacional, but later we thought "why not to share this with the world?". Eventually if greedy lawyers (redundance...) start to bother us with copyright matters, etc, we may have to be forced to quit the project and keep this just to ourselves.

	Zhu, Mingsheng & Song, Daxiang (1999a) Two species of harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones: Phalangidae) from China. Journal of Hebei University Natural Science Edition, 19(2), 159–162. [Jun 1999].
	Zhu, Mingsheng, Song, Daxiang, & Kim, J.P. (1999b) Notes on three species of the genus Homolophus (Opiliones: Phalangiidae) from China. Korean Arachnol., 15, 7–12.
	Zhu, Mingsheng & Lian, Weiguang (2006) First record of the genus Euepedanus from China, with the description of a new species (Opiliones: Laniatores: Epedanidae). Zootaxa, 1367, 63–68 [Nov 30, 2006].
	Zhang, Chao & Zhu, Mingsheng (2009) Description of Pseudomelanopa liupan sp. nov. from Ningxia, China (Opiliones, Eupnoi, Sclerosomatidae). Acta Zootaxonomica Sinica, 34(3) 411-414. [Issued July 2009].
	Lian, W., Zhu, M. & Kury A.B. (2008) A new species of the genus Tithaeus from China (Arachnida: Laniatores: Epedanidae). Zootaxa, 1841, 53-60 [Published 4 Aug 2008].

Credits