One of my favourite yearly entomological events is coming up soon, and I wanted to spread the word to all those who may be interested in attending. The Entomological Society of Ontario Annual General Meeting is being held October 15-17 in Grand Bend, Ontario, and it promises to be another great meeting.
The star viewing over El Copal was absolutely fantastic and gave me a great opportunity to practice some astrophotography in the evenings. I’m still refining my techniques, and my equipment isn’t great at handling long exposure noise, but this is by far my best attempt at capturing the Milky Way and all the potential of the universe! Of course, when I see photos like this one I realize I have a long ways to go, but that just means I have an excuse to keep trying!
Dr. Fiona F. Hunter has funding available to support one MSc graduate student for 2 years (effective immediately) to study the pollination ecology of Daucus carota. This includes both edible carrot and its wild relative, Queen Anne’s Lace. Daucus carota is characterized by having a dark central floret. Darwin, himself, speculated that the dark central floret may now be functionless and possibly represents a trait that has persisted long after its original function has been lost. Other researchers have postulated that the dark central floret serves to attract pollinators to the flower. This MSc opportunity will be aimed at determining what insects are common visitors to edible carrot and to Queen Anne’s Lace, how these insects affect seed set, and whether the dark central floret is adaptive or not. The student who undertakes this project will have a strong background in ecology and evolution, entomology and biostatistics.
If you are interested in this MSc opportunity, please send a covering letter, cv, unofficial transcript and a statement of interest to: Dr. Fiona F. Hunter, Department of Biological Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, L2S 3A1 or email the documents to fhunter@brocku.ca
Macoun’s Arctic (Oeneis macounii) and other butterfly species in the genus Oeneis are reported to have biennial life cycles, with individuals requiring two years to develop from egg to adult. Preliminary evidence indicates that this 2‐year life cycle is obligatory in O. macounii. This presents the possibility that even‐year populations are reproductively isolated from odd‐year populations. The central question is: has allochrony caused by their two year life cycle resulted in genetic and morphological divergence between even‐ and odd‐year populations? This question will be explored through laboratory sequencing and computer analyses of both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA regions as well as landmark‐based morphometric analyses. In addition, field studies will lead to a better understanding of adult ecology, dispersal, and male‐male competition in one or more lekking species.
Applicant must have a strong interest and background in ecology and evolution as well as excellent writing abilities. Experience with entomology, DNA amplification and sequencing, animal behaviour and/or biostatistics will be strengthen your application. You must meet the minimum conditions of NSERC Scholars (i.e. citizen or permanent resident of Canada; minimum 80% average in your last two years of study). Completion of an MSc degree is preferred, but students with an honours BSc degree and very strong academic record will be considered.
If you are interested in this PhD opportunity, please e‐mail or mail a covering letter, cv/resume, unofficial transcript and a statement of interest to: Dr. Gard W. Otis, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, gotis@uoguelph.ca
Please contact the advising professor if you want more information. Good luck!
After last night’s escapade, I took the opportunity to sleep in, and ended up missing breakfast. I’ve had enough rice, beans and eggs to last me awhile so I wasn’t too upset. My feet were in no shape to be shoved back into rubber boots, so I took what was left of the morning off from collecting and worked inside. I wish I could have explored one last area, a meadow that was over-filled with mantisflies (Mantispidae), but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it this time. After lunch everyone prepared to leave, and before we knew it, we were pulling away from the ACG and headed back to San Jose. Our luxury bus was a nice ride, and it wasn’t long until we pulled into Puntarenas for dinner, meeting up with another group of dipterists who traveled to Monteverde while we were at ACG. Our dinner wasn’t too bad, but the stray cat wandering around the restaurant created a strange ambiance. Another hour and a half and we were back at the Adventure Inn in San Jose. A quick repacking of gear for our flight home, and it was time for bed one last time in Costa Rica.
Our travel day started bright and early at 5:30 in order to grab our complementary breakfast before heading off to the airport. We were pleasantly surprised to find no lines throughout the airport, and we breezed through exit taxes, check-in, and security without any significant waiting. A quick stop in the airport gift shop, and soon we were ready to board our flight back to Dallas. For whatever reason our flight was chosen for a secondary security check, including bag searches for everyone and pat downs for an unlucky few. An uneventful flight gave me the chance to start and finish a new book (Generation A by Douglas Coupland, watch for a review in the near future) and before I knew it we were descending into Dallas. Due to some complications with our export permits, Gil (who is traveling on a student visa to start with) was tasked with carrying all of our specimens into the country, and since our final flight destination was Detroit, we were all a little unsure how customs and agriculture would react to our insects. Our fretting was compounded slightly by a short lay-over (<2hr) and the long line out of the baggage area had us all slightly concerned. Luckily none of us ran into any prolonged issues, including Gil, and everyone made it to the gate in time for our next flight (which was ultimately delayed 30 minutes anyways). Dinner was a Big Mac that tasted like filet mignon (a guilty pleasure of mine after every trip to the tropics) and our flight into Detroit was fast and comfortable. A late night drive back to Guelph and after 2.5 weeks I was back home.
Although no longer than any of my previous Neotropical trips, this trip felt like I was away for months. My theory is the multiple locations we traveled to combined with a heavily intellectual load at the congress created this illusion, but the trip still stands as one of my more memorable adventures. The number of kind, generous people we met, both locals around Costa Rica and dipterists from around the globe, was fantastic and was definitely the leading factor in the success of the trip. Costa Rica lived up to all that I had heard of it, with beautiful habitats, fantastic infrastructure, and friendly smiling people. The photos and memories I brought home with me all add to the experience, and I know that this won’t be my last trip to Costa Rica!
One of the talks that drew the largest crowds at the 7th International Congress of Dipterology a few weeks ago was on the functional morphology and sexual selection in mating tsetse flies, Glossina pallidipes & Glossina swynnertonni (Glossinidae)*. Why was a talk on fly porn so popular you may ask? Well Dipterists in general are always on the lookout for mating opportunities (of their research subjects – get your mind out of the gutter) and with the promise of videos and a new technique, it was like a moth to a flame (so to speak). The videos were amazing, and as of last night were made available via YouTube for the world to see! (Explanation after the videos)
Full speed video of G. pallidipes:
Slow Motion video of G. pallidipes:
Slow motion video of G. swynnertonni:
So what’s going on here? These are x-ray videos of copulation made by the research team using a synchrotron facility in Europe. The female (the abdomen on the right) has been glued to a stage and the tip of her abdomen placed in the path of the beam of x-rays. Barry White is piped into the chamber, candles are lit, the lights are turned down low, and the male is released into the chamber to do his thing (his abdomen is on the left). When coupling begins the x-ray beam is turned on and we get a very intimate idea of mating in tsetse flies! What we see happening is the phallus of the fly is the part that is thrust in and out within the vagina of the female (easiest to see on the first slo-mo video), and is apparently stimulating the female with ornate, inflatable projections. Possibly he is attempting to make her receptive to his sperm. Meanwhile on the outside, the hook pressing the outside of the female’s abdomen is also involved in stimulation. In this case, experiments have shown that these stimuli induce the female to receive and transport sperm, to ovulate, and to reject future mating attempts by other males. These routines are hypothesized to be an evolutionary race between the males to be especially effective stimulators, with the female requiring just the right touch to accept the males sperm and use it to fertilize her eggs. Ejaculation occurs only after many minutes of rhythmic thrusting and squeezing (in G. pallidipes, in the last minute or two of an approximately 45 minute copulation).
To the best of my knowledge this is the first time that anyone has seen what’s happening inside, in real-time, during copulation in flies. A really amazing insight into the mojo of flies, and hopefully a technique that can be used more in the future to untangle the complicated world of fly genitalia!
Thanks to the research team for making this video available:
R. Daniel Briceño, William Eberhard, Ernesto Chinea-Cano, Dariusz Wegrzynek, and Tommy dos Santos Rolo
ICD7 Talk:
Species-specific behavioral differences in male tsetse fly genitalia revealed by x-ray videos – R.D. Briceño, W.G. Eberhard, E. Chinea-Cano, D. Wegrzynek, T. dos Santos Rolo. Presented to the ICD7 Aug. 11 2010, San Jose, Costa Rica.
* – Tsetse flies are the group of flies responsible for commuting the trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness in Africa, making them one of the most important human disease vectors on Earth.
UPDATED Aug-10-2010 4:00PM : In order to make sure the details of the research were correct I contacted Dr. Briceño, who kindly provided the information highlighted in BOLD. I’ve removed erroneous information from my initial post.
With a full day’s collecting (as unproductive as it was) already under my belt, I’m ready for some dinner, and the cook staff at ACG provides the best meal of our visit; fried fish and purple salad, plus the ubiquitous rice and beans I take out of pure hunger. I finish my dinner in a hurry, as our next adventure will be beginning shortly; a trip to the beach searching for nesting sea turtles. Although the chances are low that we’ll actually witness an arribada, the opportunity to explore another region of this conservation area was all I needed to sign up. We’ve been warned that the rainy season is not the best time of year to even get to the beach, and it was pointed out that most surfers don’t bother trying to get there this time of year. I see this as an added bonus, the opportunity to get to an area almost devoid of human presence, a stark contrast to today’s “tourist trail”.
I awake in time for a hurried breakfast before the bus departs for Rincon de la Veija, our destination for the day. Rice, beans and scrambled eggs again, so I choose some toast and cereal and sit off on my own to gain a moment of solitude before another long day. We soon load onto the school bus that’s delivered many a generation of child and which will hopefully last one more trip with us aboard. Settling into my seat, or what’s left of it, and enjoying the scenery of jungles, pastures, and forested volcanoes rising up to the clouds, I ignore the growing discomfort settling in my back from the aged seat. It seems the seats are not the only components lacking functionality, with each rock and bump being translated directly from the road to my body with little dampening as we turn onto the winding road up the mountain. The grasses introduced from Africa for cattle pasture roll on and on along the sides of the volcanoes, with vultures, iguanas, and flycatchers each choosing a fence post to admire the morning sun from. As I readjust in my seat to find a scrap of padding for the umpteenth time, the bus pulls to a halt and the driver jumps out without a word. As I watch from my seat while he looks under the bus and then down the road with a puzzled look, I decide that perhaps today marks the end for this decrepit vehicle. Apparently the transport boss and our local coordinator feel the same way and it isn’t long before they’ve joined the driver looking back down the road with concerned faces. Information trickles in now that the battery has fallen out of the bus somewhere along the road, but not to worry because we’ll keep on driving. A few turns more and the bus decides that in fact we won’t keep driving, coming to a silent stop and then rolling back down the mountain before the driver applies the brakes. I can’t help but laugh at the situation, but also wonder what happens next. It seems we’re within a short walk to the outer edges of the conservation property and that a new bus will be brought in shortly to take us up to our true destination. In the meantime, they say, we can collect and explore the stream meandering its way down the volcano, a welcome and unexpected break from the mechanical chiropractor misaligning my back.
Tonight I’ll be looking for the trifecta of families – superfamily (2), family (5), and subfamily (5). I’ll post the points and the answers after I get back to Canada. Enjoy!
I think the long days are starting to catch up with me, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed to go birdwatching this morning! The extra hour of sleep was well worth it though, and I enjoyed a simpler breakfast today of PB on toast and some cereal. We had the day to explore around the main ACG station, so myself, Joel G, Joel K, Andrew and Jeff journeyed to a picturesque overlook that also happens to be a nice, open hilltop. Of course it’s taped off for safety’s sake (the ladder up the side of the building seems to be falling out of the wall) but we didn’t attempt the full climb and just stuck around the base. The sun was fighting for some space today, but we had some pretty good luck when it did break through. Something that I hadn’t seen before was huge congregations of dragonflies floating up above where the flies and other insects were looking for a mate, seemingly feasting on the buffet of bugs. Easily 100 dragonflies were visible at any given time! Really the only exciting Diptera finds were some large robber flies (Asilidae), which were gladly claimed by the group of asilidologists back at camp, and a few rather large grasshoppers. Of course, by rather large I actually mean the length of my pointer finger…
Click to Enlarge
It wasn’t just insects at the top of the hill though, as we saw some soaring raptors, and had a visit from a large troop of white-headed capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus)…
The rain chased us off the hill shortly after, and we had a long, rainy afternoon to pin insects and rest up. After dinner a small group of us decided to go on a “short” night walk with the hopes of finding a snake or two. We didn’t find any snakes, but we did see a possum, a few nightjars, and a spectacled owl! It was pretty fun calling in the owl and patiently scanning the trees in the dark for signs of movement. Ultimately it sat right out in the open for us and I was even able to get a few record shots of it. A pair of Pacific screech owls back at the station, and we called it a night!
