Lessons Learned from Teaching

 Academia, Entomology, Science Communication, Student Info, Teaching  8 Responses »
Mar 302012
 

You may have noticed that this blog has been rather quiet lately. Too quiet… My apologies for that, as there’s been a lot of cool science going on in my absence! I hope to get caught up on some of the delightful Diptera discoveries that have been published lately, not to mention all sorts of other fun stories, but for now they’ll have to wait for another day.

Why have I been neglecting the blog as of late? In January I was offered the opportunity to build and teach a Horticultural Integrative Pest Management and Plant Health course for Mohawk College in Hamilton, and I saw it as an excellent chance to expand my CV and gain valuable teaching experience (also make some money, ’cause that’s pretty important). I knew from the outset that I was in for a challenge; I was hired less than 2 weeks before the course began; my combined knowledge of IPM, botany and horticulture amounted to 1 university IPM course and some extremely black thumbs; and oh yeah, I’ve never constructed and taught a course before! Nevertheless, I took the rough curriculum the college provided and set out to make my mark on the horticulture class of 2012.

I expected this course to be as much a learning exercise for myself as it would be for my students, and it certainly lived up to expectations. Here are a few things I learned while teaching.

1) Lesson preparation will take longer than you anticipate

Before accepting the position I tried to guess how much time I would need to devote to the different projects/duties I have on the go:

Time Management Guess

An example of poorly estimated time commitments (and poor penmanship)

You probably guessed that those 6 hours/week of blogging didn’t happen, with much of that time being spent on lecture preparation. The amount of time needed to prepare lectures from scratch really blew me away, and I usually ended up spending at least one day on the weekend plus all day Monday & Tuesday getting ready for my 5 hour lecture on Wednesday. Because IPM isn’t my area of expertise, a lot of my time was spent on background research, getting up to speed on topics before trying to teach it back to my students. Theoretically that prep time would go down if I was teaching something I was more familiar with (i.e. taxonomy or general insect diversity), but the decrease probably wouldn’t be that dramatic. I must admit that I learned and retained more having to teach these topics than I did as a student sitting through class…

 

2) Five hour lectures require creativity (and a good night’s sleep)

A 5 hour class is not an ideal learning environment, especially for a group of students who would much prefer to be outside! In order to try and retain their attention, I broke my class into 4 segments with short breaks in between: 1 hour of review & quiz covering the previous week’s work, 45 minute lecture on Topic A, 1 hour lecture on Topic B, and 1.5 hour pest identification lab. I found this worked pretty well, with the students still paying attention through most of the classes, and only occasionally head bobbing (which is pretty hilarious to see from the front of the room, albeit a little disheartening).

Trying to keep the students engaged for each of these lessons required a little more work. I found YouTube to be invaluable, providing a lot of great resources to help illustrate my points (and give me a chance to grab a sip of water). If you’re interested, I’ve created a playlist of all the videos I included (or promoted) in my lectures; 72 clips in all. Some of them might seem a little odd out of context, but they made sense (mostly). Of all the videos I showed, I think I got the largest reaction out of the early DDT propaganda videos; seems the students didn’t like the idea of eating their cereal with a helping of insecticide…

I tried to draw on my natural history & pop culture knowledge to draw the students into the topics. Whether it was using Jacob from the Twilight series to introduce the concept of the “silver bullet” (heh) or using movie plots to explain the differences between invasive species control tactics (Containment = Outbreak; Control = Night of the Living Dead; Eradication = Independence Day), by bringing pop culture references into the lecture I could usually get the students to show signs of life. My students also seemed to enjoy parasititism, so anytime I could find a way to work a parasite into a topic I did.

Also, it seems giving a 5 hour lecture is physically exhausting! I’m not sure whether it was the standing/pacing or the mental marathon to stay ahead of the students, but I was pretty wiped each afternoon following my class. Make sure to eat your Wheaties prior to teaching, and have something to drink nearby!

 

3) Blog posts are a great way to keep students engaged outside of the classroom

Every week I assigned my students a blog post to read, and rewarded those that read it with a bonus question on the next week’s quiz. It was a great way to expose the students to topics and stories that tied back to our lectures but which weren’t necessarily about IPM. Judging by how many students got the bonus question correct each week I think they enjoyed the posts as well. Here are the posts I assigned over the semester (they’re all worth a read, believe me):

The Home Bug Garden – Clivia Foodweb: Part II

Not Exactly Rocket Science – The world’s biggest market (and it’s underground)

This Scientific Life – Berry Butts: Parasitized Black Ants Resemble Red Berries

The Beacon News – Hunting for the super-bug

Not Exactly Rocket Science – Since pythons invaded, Florida’s mammal populations have crashed

BioBlog – blood-sucking vampire moths!

Not Exactly Rocket Science – Scientists and tourists bring thousands of alien seeds into Antarctica

About.com Insects – Before You Mulch, Read This

 

Look Ma, no wings! (female Fall Cankerworm - Alsophila pometaria)

4) Seeing a student make a breakthrough makes all the hard work worthwhile!

It’s amazingly rewarding when a student asks a question that shows they’re engaged and curious about a topic. Case in point, while discussing gypsy moths (Lymantria dispar) I noted that adult females don’t fly, instead waiting for males to come to them. Having discussed the Fall Cankerworm1 a few minutes earlier, one of my students eagerly asked why female gypsy moths invest energy in developing wings which they never use2? Suffice to say I could hardly answer because I was geeking out over the question! Not only was she clearly connecting the dots between ideas, but she was applying advanced ecological & evolutionary concepts to something she’d only just been introduced to! SO AWESOME. It was these sort of moments that made every second I spent on lecture preparation worthwhile!

Of all the things I learned over the course of the semester, the most important was that I really enjoy teaching! I’ve had some experience with teaching before3, but never to this degree. There are certainly some areas of my teaching that I’d like to improve on moving forward, but overall the semester was a success, and my students walked away happy (or so they tell me at least). This course was a nice confirmation that I’m heading down the correct career path, and I’m already excited to give it another shot in the future.

IPM Class Photo 2012

My class on our grower field trip. Thanks for a great semester everyone!

 

——————————–

1 – Female Fall Cankerworms are also flightless, but have wings that are reduced to tiny little stubs.

2 – This is almost an exact quote, she actually said “invest energy”. It blew my mind in a good way!

3 – I’ve given several guest lectures at the University of Guelph and was a teacher’s assistant on an entomology field course.

Mushroom Monday

 Busy Busy Busy, Nature, Photography  7 Responses »
Jan 302012
 

Just a quick post to let you know I’m still alive. It’s been a busy few weeks, and writing new blog posts has had to take a backseat lately. Sorry about that. I hope to get a few posts up in the next few weeks as I get a handle on some of the projects, but until then, enjoy this photo of autumnal mushrooms!

I used this photo in one of my lectures last week (more on that soon, I promise) and figured I’d share it with all of you as well. My fungal identification skills are less than zero, so if you have an inkling as to what it may be, let me know!

 

Fall Mushrooms from Bancroft Ontario Canada

 

More to come soon!

Tuesday Tunes – Entomologist – Heather Wilson

 Academia, Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Pop Culture, Tuesday Tunes  16 Responses »
Dec 202011
 

As a scientist, I’ve come to expect the unexpected. When I started working with fruit flies, my advisor and I thought it’d take 6-8 months to complete (it ended up taking almost 18 months of work spread out over 4 years). When I began my Master’s, I expected to finish in 2 years,  yet 11 semesters later I proudly defended. Throughout my academic career, it’s been proven time and again that nothing comes easily, and speed bumps lurk beneath the surface waiting to slow your research down. So although I was crushed and extremely disappointed yesterday, a part of me wasn’t surprised to learn my Ph.D. NSERC proposal was not selected by the university for further consideration.

There’s nothing that compares to reading that rejection letter, informing you again that you were oh so close, but please try again next year. This isn’t my first experience with the email-of-academic-death, but its repeated blows don’t soften the pain. It can be easy to blame yourself (“If I’d only gotten one more manuscript submitted…”), others (“They don’t appreciate the work we do as taxonomists…”) or even the system (“Interdepartmental politics sidelined my chances from the start…”), but it’s important to not  give in to feelings of inadequacy or contempt imposed on you by awards committees.

No, I choose to funnel my frustration into proving those awards committees wrong, that they missed their opportunity to contribute to my rising academic star. I know I’m a damn good scientist and a damn good taxonomist, with ideas that will force others to take notice, a work ethic to out-compete my peers, and, most importantly, the drive to become a leader in my field. While the perks which come with NSERC scholarship make life & research easier, I have excelled without them by substituting harder work for financial freedom, and am now better prepared to face all trials I am confronted with. If the awards committee of today fails to see that, it’s their loss, not mine; I’ll find a way, and give my acknowledgement to someone else.

And when I return with Ph.D. in hand and apply to join their ranks as faculty, I know they’ll see a stronger researcher; one who has dealt with adversity; one who has done what was necessary to surpass his goals; and one who has the ability to lead where others follow. I have friends and colleagues who challenge, inspire and drive me, a wife who supports and comforts me, and an ego that won’t lay down and die.

So look out dammit, because I don’t just want to be an entomologist. I will be an entomologist.

Shared Citations – Mendeley as a Social Network

 Entomology, General Information, Life as a Grad Student, Publication, ScienceShare  3 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

Mendeley logoThe first step when starting any new research project is to become familiar with the past literature, and know who did what, and when. This is especially true for taxonomy, where each and every paper published in the past 250 years regarding the description of new species or discussion of the framework for the tree of life for any given taxon is relevant and needs to be examined. This can result in a huge library of publications to keep track of, for which there are a number of options available to the beginning biologist.

One in particular however, has something a little extra incorporated in it; a social network.

Mendeley was developed as a freely available, online, cloud-based reference manager, where individual users add citations & publications to a central repository, which in turn is accessible to all other users for building citation catalogs of their own. There are several benefits to this system, one of which is a recommendation of other publications which may be relevant to your field of research, some of which you may not have been previously aware of. The other benefit is of more use for evaluating the impact of a publication (including your own).

Mendeley Stats

User statistics for Gibson et al, 2011

Because all 1 million current users are building citation lists from the same pool, it’s possible to obtain basic demographics of the people reading your work. Take for example a recent paper I collaborated on regarding PCR primers specific for Diptera phylogenetics. 3 people (other than myself) have added the paper to their Mendeley citation list, with 2 working in the US and one in the UK. While these aren’t groundbreaking numbers, nor the stats overly informative, it’s encouraging to see researchers are noticing the work we did. I would like it if you could see who exactly was reading your papers, as I think it could be useful for finding future collaborators or potential advisors for graduate or post-doctoral work, but I’ll take the simple gratification that our work is being read by 0.0003% of the Mendeley community!

Mendeley has also incorporated several other networking tools, including profiles where you can share your CV, publications, funding sources and contact information (similar to the tools available to LinkedIn users), as well as infrastructure  for sharing publications and holding discussions specific to your field of research in both public and private groups. Being based primarily online, it’s pretty simple to add references to your library using available web browser add-ons, and there are also desktop & mobile clients available which allow you to access your reference library anywhere or while on the go, although I’ve found them both to be a little buggy and prone to crashing (on my iPhone 4S and Windows XP PC).

The central citation database built by the community of users also holds the potential for some interesting data-mining projects, like Roderic Page’s goal of linking species names with the literature containing their original description. If you’re interested in cybertaxonomy, I’d recommend checking out Rod’s blog for more information (it’s pretty cool, but a little on the technical side).

Ultimately, Mendeley is attempting to streamline the accumulation and distribution of scientific literature for researchers. If you’re looking for a reference manager, or are interested in exploring some of it’s capabilities, feel free to look me up; who knows how we might connect!

 

 

Gibson, J. F., Kelso, S., Jackson, M. D., Kits, J. H., Miranda, G. F. G., & Skevington, J. H. (2011). Diptera-Specific Polymerase Chain Reaction Amplification Primers of Use in Molecular Phylogenetic Research. Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 104(5), 976-997. Available online (OPEN ACCESS)

Me @ ESA: Field Guide to the Jewel Beetles of Northeastern North America

 Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Meeting, Publication  2 Responses »
Dec 092011
 

Continuing with my presentations from ESA 2011 in Reno last month, this talk was a part of the Biosurveillance & Cerceris fumipennis symposium and debuts the field guide to jewel beetles (Buprestidae) I’m helping to develop (along with Steve Paiero and Adam Jewiss-Gaines). I also gave a variation of this talk at the Entomological Society of Ontario Annual General Meeting back in October.

This project was originally conceived to assist the multiple groups working with Cerceris fumipennis and bringing in hundreds of jewel beetle specimens, and was funded by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Featuring 165 species of Buprestidae and hundreds of colour photos, maps and other identification tools, we’re in the final stages of preparation before bringing this bad boy to print!

The video capture and multiple conversions robbed some of the quality of the beetle images, so be sure to check out the SlideShare below for slightly better representations. Look forward to seeing plenty more information on this book in the coming months, as well as a sneak preview of some of the more charismatic species!

 

Morgan Jackson – Field guide to the jewel beetles of Northeastern North America

Me @ ESA: CJAI – Putting the Public Back into Publication

 Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Meeting  5 Responses »
Dec 082011
 

For those who were unable to make it to the ESA Annual Meeting this year, I’ll be sharing all 3 of the presentations I gave over the next week or so. The audio is my actual presentation from the ESA meeting (recorded using my iPhone set on the lectern), which I later synced to screen capture video of the slideshow, essentially transporting you through time & space to ESA 2011! Turns out I’m no David Attenborough or David Suzuki, but hearing myself present was actually a pretty useful tool for how to improve in the future!

This presentation was part of the Citizen Scientists in Entomology Research, and aimed at sharing how the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification is a great place for citizen science projects to publish identification aids specifically for their volunteers.

 

Here are the (slightly modified) slides if you’d like to explore a little further:

 

Morgan Jackson – The Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification; Putting the public back into publication
If you’d like more information on the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification, feel free to explore our published volumes, and if you’ve developed arthropod identification aids of your own, I encourage you to consider publishing them with CJAI!

 

ESA 2011 – The Wrap-up

 Cool Science, Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Meeting, Trip Report  16 Responses »
Dec 022011
 
My apologies for delaying this final post. Better late than never I suppose!
 

The final 2 days of ESA 2011 were a flurry of activity, with dozens of interesting talks, multiple social events, and plenty more to keep me completely tied up both days.

I started Tuesday off learning about the massive Beetle Tree of Life (similar in nature to the Fly Tree of Life I talked about last spring) presented by Ainsley Seago (@americanbeetles). Unlike the fly tree, this presentation was about the morphological work undertaken, and featured one of the largest phylogenies I’ve ever seen. Ainsley did a great job of showing a tree that was about 5 times too large for the screen by having it scroll, which really showed off the immense number of taxa the team included. The paper can be found here, although it isn’t open access. Ainsley was handing out PDFs after her talk, so perhaps if you ask really nice she’ll help you out and email you a PDF.

From there I went and sat in on the Web-Based Digital Insect Identification: Our Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities symposium, and got a preview of a lot of cool insect identification aids being prepared. From the utility of AntWeb and the construction of a matrix key to the invasive ants of North America to the development of wood-boring beetle identification tools full of gorgeous images, this symposium had a lot of interesting content. It wasn’t all about new tools however, with Clifford Keil making an impassioned plea for greater web publishing of Neotropical identification tools, and relating some of the problems he has identifying the insects of Ecuador. There are a lot of factors working against the inventorying of insects in Latin American countries like Ecuador, from habitat destruction to limited access to the resources and publications needed, but perhaps the most damaging is the paranoia and protectionism of “biological assets” by government bureaucracies. Cliff told tales of valuable specimens he was shipping to collaborators in Europe being destroyed by Ecuadorian border agents, even with the correct paperwork filled out. As an entomologist who studies insect diversity specifically in these biodiverse regions, I am all too aware of the headache-inducing paperwork associated with collecting and export permits, and to hear that even researchers “on the inside” are hitting major roadblocks is troubling.

This symposium had one major dark spot however; a close-minded, elitist presentation by a “traditional” taxonomist on the future of digital insect identification tools. While I’ll leave the presenter unnamed, I will say his presentation left me quite upset. I should have known it was coming when he started his talk by saying he wasn’t aware of some of the good work that’s been done (red flag #1) and then had someone else advancing his PowerPoint presentation because he apparently didn’t know how (red flag #2), but going in I was expecting an excitement about the potential for reaching new audiences, sharing new tools and identification aids, and inspiring new ideas. I couldn’t have been more wrong. For the next 20 minutes he lectured on how digital insect identification won’t help in the near future, and probably won’t work in the long term, going so far as to state that taxonomy and the creation of digital identification aids shouldn’t be undertaken by anyone other than professional taxonomists with decades of experience, because anyone else will just mess it up! I’m not sure when he managed to get any work done while he was building his ivory tower, but from his lofty vantage point all projects relating to taxonomy were best left to him and his equally aged colleagues (and I suppose he was born with the gift of perfect taxonomy and didn’t start out at the bottom). Can we all just agree that this is a messed up, bullshit stance to be clinging to in this day and age? While developing identification aids takes time, it’s not that hard, and no person should EVER be told they can’t do so! “Experts” shouldn’t be discouraging interested individuals, but rather partnering with them to transfer their acquired knowledge! Why on earth this man was invited to speak in this symposium is beyond me, but I assume the organizers weren’t expecting the antiquated tirade he unleashed!

After calming down, I explored the regular member poster session and vendors, grabbed some lunch, and then headed into an afternoon of entomologists utilizing social media, starting with Holly Menninger (@DrHolly) discussing her non-standard career path. It was a nice eye-opener that there are other ways to make a living working with insects in academia, and as expected, she did a great job sharing her experiences! You can also catch a brief interview with Holly on the ESA YouTube channel.

The rest of my day was spent in the Interaction and Education in a Brave New World of Social Media and Online Resources symposium. To be perfectly honest, I was pretty disappointed with the majority of presentations here, in large part because the projects weren’t really social. Sure they were online or on cell phones, but they didn’t really inspire discussion with their users, and were largely digital data collection projects. There were some providing resources, such as the Bugwood.org database of images, video and teaching tools, but even then there is no real network for corresponding with users. There were a few exceptions which I greatly enjoyed, such as Blake Bextine explaining how he engages his students through Facebook discussions as an extension of the classroom. While many people may see Facebook as a potential disaster where students and professors/researchers shouldn’t mix, I think that with some intelligent guidelines and privacy settings, there is no reason why it can’t be used professionally, and Bextine’s use of private, administrated groups seems like a good idea to me. The symposium was finalized by a great talk from the often-imitated-but-never-duplicated, blue-haired-blog-queen Bug Girl, who did a great job raising the profile of insect blogging! You should go watch her presentation right now, and also be sure to check out her interview by Guelph grad student Laura Burns for more reasons to blog!

Tuesday is generally the pub/social gathering night at ESA, and this year I tried to make appearances at 3 different events (“appearances”, ha! Like I’m some sort of celebrity). I say tried, as I missed out on the Dipterists Pub while hanging out with the Citizen Scientist group and a bunch of very friendly Lepidopterists & parasitic Hymenopterists at a house party on the western outskirts of Reno (a story that I won’t go into, but suffice to say I had my share of awkward I-don’t-know-anybody small talk). After getting back to the hotel, I met up with a small group of bug bloggers/bug blog readers and enjoyed a beer or two while talking about a wide range of entomological and social issues (also, Bug Girl is just as funny in real life as she is online). It was a great finish to a very full day!

Wednesday was the final day of the conference, and I unfortunately missed most of the morning sessions while checking out of the hotel and picking up a rental car in preparation for a quick post-conference road trip (more on that to come). Wednesday afternoon was spent in the Biosurveillance symposium, where a group of extremely passionate entomologists discussed their successes and challenges with using Cerceris fumipennis (a wasp in the family Crabronidae) to scout for Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis). This is a project that got it’s start here in the University of Guelph Insect Collection and which has been adopted and expanded by a great group of people throughout the eastern US in a relatively short period of time. Talks ranged from the development of mobile wasp colonies to selectively search areas to the study of Cerceris biology/chemistry/behaviour and even to the citizen scientist initiative being implented. I suggest you visit Cerceris.info for much more information on the project, and to learn how you can volunteer to become a Wasp Watcher! My final talk of the conference was right near the end of the symposium, and everyone seemed quite excited about the field guide to jewel beetles we’re developing.

With that, ESA 2011 came to a close for another year. While I always enjoy entomological conferences, this one will certainly stand out as one my favourites, featuring a great diversity of high-quality talks, dozens of new friends and contacts, and more than enough information and inspiration to keep me going through the long, Canadian winter! I’d like to thank everyone who followed along here and on Twitter, and especially the symposia organizers who invited me to speak in their programs. I had a great time, and I can hardly wait for ESA 2012 in Knoxville, TN! Hope to see you there!

ESA Day 3 – The Student Sessions

 Cool Science, Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Meeting, Trip Report  No Responses »
Nov 152011
 

Today was a bit of an oddity for a large meeting; the morning was chalk full of talks and poster presentations, but absolutely no scientific content all afternoon, but rather full of societal business meetings. This means I ran around like mad all morning and then sat on my hands all afternoon, so it’ll be a bit of a light review today.

As I mentioned, all of the student talks were this morning in order for the President’s Prizes to be awarded this evening. I ended up sitting in on 9 or 10 talks as well as exploring the poster session, so I was able to get a pretty good feel for the level of proficiency displayed, and was it ever high! I don’t think I went to a single talk or saw a single poster which I wasn’t inspired or awed by! Everyone seems to be doing fantastic research, whether revising Neotropical cicada taxonomy, studying the evolution of eusociality in carpenter bees, or exploring the relationships of Australian horse flies, every talk I sat in on had me entertained and curious about the hypotheses they were working on! Not only were the talks well presented, but the slides were well designed, and the research given in an understandable medium, immersing the audience in the project at hand. There was even a student describing the puparium of a North American Neriid fly (a group of flies very closely related to the Micropezidae I study)! I couldn’t have asked for a better morning of talks!

I just wanted to mention how great the new ESA Ento-2011 iPhone App is! It has allowed me to easily keep track of when and where I want to be, who’s speaking and what their talk number is, which I found to be a good way to keep track of citations on Twitter. Normally I’d need to fumble around with my big book of titles, switching pages and losing my spot while wasting valuable talk time, but the app has done an amazing job of keeping me on track and in the right room. Kudos to the ESA for developing and sharing a great tool!

Over lunch I took in the vendor displays again now that there weren’t as many people hanging around, and then looked into the ESA Career Center to see what sort of positions were available. Turns out that it’s not a good time to be looking for an entomological job or graduate position, as there were very few advertisements this year! The last time I was at ESA the binders were stuffed full of job, faculty and graduate postings, but this year there may have been 2 dozen total, with very few looking for ecologists and none interested in taxonomy. Whether this is a normal pattern and we’re in a lull, or whether this is a delayed effect of the economic downturn, I’m not sure, but it was a little disheartening. I suppose it can only get better from here, right?

After finishing up the slides for my last talk, I met with Ignasi Bartomeus (@ibartomeus), a pollination ecology post-doc at Rutgers who I’ve been corresponding with on Twitter since Sunday, to have a beer and talk insects. We had a great discussion about the value of social media for public outreach and the value of natural history collections to ecologists. It was enlightening conversation for me, and one that wouldn’t have happened had I not traveled to Reno, or hadn’t been using Twitter! Social Media for the Win again!

Finally, I met with the rest of the Cerceris fumipennis research crew for a brainstorming session on how to continue the work and discuss Wednesday’s symposium. We ended up crashing the Arkansas/Auburn/Clemson/Tennessee Alumni Reception (shh, don’t tell) and sat in the corner discussing new ideas for the next field season. If you want to see some passionate, dedicated entomologists committed to a research project they fully believe in, then you should come out Wednesday afternoon in room A12 for the Biosurveillance symposium!

Tomorrow is an extremely full day, with talks in almost every slot that I am looking forward to seeing! I’ll be taking plenty of notes, that’s for sure!

ESA 2011 – The Plan

 Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Meeting, Travel  7 Responses »
Nov 082011
 

Entomological Society of America 2011 Annual Meeting LogoAs I mentioned yesterday on Tuesday Tunes, I’m heading West this weekend to partake in the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting in Reno, Nevada. Besides marking my first time in the Pacific Time Zone, this conference will also be the first time I’ve given a triplet of talks at a conference, as I’ve been invited to give 3 talks in 3 different symposia! Chronologically, here’s my talk schedule:

Sunday Nov. 13 — Citizen Scientists in Entomology Research (Room A2, First Floor)

11:35-11:55 — “CJAI & citizen science – putting the “public” in publication” – M.D. Jackson & S.A. Marshall

CJAI LogoAbstract: The Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification (CJAI) is dedicated to providing high- quality, peer-reviewed identification aids to allow naturalists of all levels access to North America’s biodiversity. With papers published by both funded and unfunded professionals and shared online as 100% open access, CJAI has been referenced by scientists around the world, and has assisted countless “amateurs” in identifying specimens and photos. In the information age, CJAI unlocks the gate to biodiversity and democratizes the identification of insects and arthropods around us. Examples of published and upcoming publications and the impact they are expected to have will be presented.

Here’s a little announcement for you; I’m the new Technical Editor for the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification, where I’ll be taking over from Dave Cheung as he moves on to a new job in Copenhagen! He’s left some pretty big shoes to fill, but I’m really looking forward to contributing to the running of the journal, and will be discussing how CJAI is a great resource for citizen science projects. Also, expect plenty more info on CJAI coming up in the near future here on the blog!

 

Biodiversity in FocusSunday Nov. 13 — Myths, Misconceptions, and Mental Modifications: Identify, Clarify and Speak Out about Entomology (Room A13, First Floor)

14:50-15:05 — “The Social Entomologist: How connecting with social media can benefit your research program” – M.D. Jackson

This is a similar talk to the one I gave at the Entomological Society of Ontario AGM a few weeks ago (which was a great meeting and something I’ll write about soon), where I’ll be discussing the power of social media for entomology research and discussing how you can incorporate social media into your project. This is a topic which I find really interesting, and hope to do a week-long series of posts shortly after my return from Reno to share and expand on some ideas I have!

 

Buprestis rufipes Buprestidae Jewel BeetleWednesday Nov. 16 — Biosurveillance: Using a Native Wasp Cerceris fumipennis to Find Emerald Ash Borer and Other Species of Buprestidae (Room A12, First Floor)

16:30-16:50 — “A Field Guide to Northeastern Jewel Beetles: Identifying the prey of Cerceris fumipennis including both native and invasive species of Buprestidae” – M.D. Jackson, S.M. Paiero, & A. Jewiss-Gaines

This is a project I’ve been working on for over a year now and which I’ve been unable to publicly discuss until now. Myself, Steve Paiero and Adam Jewiss-Gaines, in collaboration with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, are putting the final touches on a massive field guide to the Buprestidae of Northeastern North America, which should be in print  in early 2012! With over 450 pages of colour illustrations, this field guide is designed to allow forestry professionals, border inspection agents, researchers and naturalists alike to recognize these beautiful yet economically important beetles, and features some stunning images and identification resources which I’m very proud to be a part of! Again, I’ll be sharing plenty more information here on the blog regarding the field guide, and hope to start showcasing some of these beautiful beetles which are found in our own backyards!

 

Between my talks I’ll be running around like a mad man trying to take in as many presentations, posters and other events as I can. Here are a couple I’m especially looking forward to:

Mon. Nov. 14 – 11:03-11:15 — Descriptions of Glyphidops flavifrons (Bigot) (Diptera: Neriidae) – Charity G. Owings

Tue. Nov. 15 – 9:40-10:00 — Design and development of web-based identification tools for wood boring beetles: a case study – Eugenio H. Nearns

Tue. Nov. 15 – 10:00-10:20 — A traditional taxonomists view on modern web-based insect identification — Charles O’Brien

Tue. Nov. 15 – 15:35-15:50 — Sharing the wonderful world of insects via the internet – Brett R. Blaauw

Tue. Nov. 15 – 17:05-17:20 — Operation global insect media domination: the adventures of Bug Girl – Bug G. Membracid

 

When I find a moment to breathe I’ll be checking on the multiple poster sessions (there are a bunch of Guelph students sharing their work this year) as well as scoping out the vendors, job bank and pretty well anything else I happen to wander into! And guess what! I’m taking you all with me, digitally speaking. I’ll be doing much the same as I did for my trip to Costa Rica last summer, providing a nightly report of the day’s activities, but I also hope to tweet my way through the conference as well, sharing all sorts of interesting insect news and science with you! If you’ve considered joining Twitter, perhaps this would be a good time to do so, just don’t forget to follow me @BioInFocus!

After the meeting concludes, a friend and I are going to take a mini road trip to do some exploring, so hopefully I’ll have plenty of new photos to share on my return.

It’s shaping up to be a crazy week, but I’m excited to take it all in, and I if you’ll be in Reno make sure to say hello!

Ent-O-Lantern 2011

 Fun Stuff, Life as a Grad Student  3 Responses »
Nov 012011
 

Remember when I told you ticks were pretty well my worst nightmare? Well with this year’s Ent-O-Lantern, you might start feeling the same…

Tick jack-o-lantern pumpkin Halloween

Tick pumpkin Jack-O-Lantern

Modeled after the Deer Tick (Ixodes scapularis), this tick isn’t likely to transmit Lyme Disease, but you might lose a kidney as it burrows into your back.

Deer Tick Ixodes scapularis

Deer Tick Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkin

With squash capitulum (head), butternut squash hypostome (mouthparts), carrot segmented legs, and feeding amongst pipe insulation hairs, this year’s pumpkin will hopefully stick deep inside your psyche and instill a year’s worth of nightmares until we can bring you an all new creation! Happy Halloween!

Thanks to all the U of G Insect Systematics lab members for help carving and suggestions on how to make it come together!
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