Sorry there wasn’t a bug of the day yesterday, I ran out of steam and couldn’t get an image edited before I fell asleep! Here’s today’s:
What’s this you say? A graphical representation of a fly? Well today I’m looking for one of the families that this fly could be based on the head morphology (I’m giving you a break since the wing veination isn’t really visible). I’ll give 5 points to each correct family name (scientific or common). Have fun, and spelling counts!
The long days and late nights finally caught up with me this morning, so I slept in until a little after 8. I know, pretty adventurous of me! I felt much better this morning than the last few mornings however, and refreshed for the last 2 days of the conference and the field work following. The plenary session this morning was by Marty Condon, an ecologist/evolutionary biologist who works on the speciation patterns of a tropical genus of fruit flies (Tephritidae). Her research shows that 3 closely related but distinct species of fruit flies utilize 3 different regions of the same species of plant (one laying eggs in the flowers, one in the seed heads, and one in the stems I believe), a phenomenon that is relatively unheard of elsewhere in nature. When we think of niche partitioning, we generally think of one species as parasite and one species as host, so to have 3 species on the same plant at the same time and not getting confused over which of the other species they should be mating with (they look very, very similar until you look very closely at wing patterns and female ovipositor shape) or where to insert their eggs is pretty remarkable. Further proof that evolution is amazing and that assumptions can never be made about the natural world!
The rest of the day I spent in a symposium on using new technologies to increase the efficiency of Diptera taxonomy. There is a large push in the systematics community in general to develop and implement database systems at various stages of the taxonomic process, from species capture and curation, through to description and analysis of species, and finally to dissemination through resources such as keys or resources like the Encyclopedia of Life. The symposium today highlighted several models of these databases and briefly explained how each is being used, and highlighted the utility of each and where improvements might need to be made. This area of research (bioinformatics) really resonates with me, and I’m hoping to help implement and develop some of these programs during the course of my Ph.D. (eventually…). I signed up to participate in a half-day workshop learning how to use one of these systems, ScratchPads, and I’ll report back tomorrow night how that goes and my initial impressions. At the end of the day myself and most of the rest of the Ottawa and Guelph student crew caught a cab to downtown San Jose to have a nice dinner out at a restaurant that was recommended to us as the best restaurant in Costa Rica (Tin Jo Asian Restaurant)! The food fully lived up to the hype, with some fantastic appetizers and the very best curry I’ve ever had, and all at reasonable prices! I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the sorbet sampler we had for dessert, with the passionfruit being my favourite of 5 unique flavours. Add in an extremely friendly front house manager recalling his stories of Canadians and our use of the word “eh” and it was quite the evening. One more day of the congress left, and then back into the wilds for some more collecting and shooting before heading home!
Most of this morning’s new digital tools talks were recorded and posted online, including my advisor Steve Marshall’s talk (although it seems the messed up and only recorded the audio, plus I can’t get it to work at the moment…). Additionally, all of the Powerpoint presentations themselves will be uploaded to The Diptera Site (they will probably be listed under the attachments link, although there are only 2 up there as of now)
Another buzz-worthy talk today was on the potential utility of the reflective properties of wings as thin films as identification and taxonomic characters. What this complicated sentence means is that when you shine a light on fly wings and have a black background behind them, a full spectrum of colours will shine off the wings (much like the rainbow you see on the outside of a bubble) and that there is evidence that these patterns might be species specific! Some really amazing photographs of these patterns. I’ll definitely be checking out the wings of my micropezids as soon as I get back to Canada!
Stores close really early down here (like 7pm at the latest for most it seems).
We saw a surprising number of “ladies of the night” openly working the corners of downtown San Jose on our cab ride back to the hotel. Definitely didn’t expect that profession to be so easily spotted!
I’ve included some (mostly poor) photos of some familiar faces giving their talks. I’ve also put in a few of the other people who have been doing talks:
Andrew giving his talk on Platycheirus
Gil introducing one of his 3 talks at this congress
Me, presenting my work (thanks Joel for snapping the shot!)
Joel Gibson, a friend from Ottawa presenting his work on Conopidae
Michelle Locke, another friend from Ottawa discussing Dasysyrphus
Dr. Monty Wood, one of the preeminent Canadian dipterists, talking about Tachinids on Wednesday
Dr. Marty Condon giving her Plenary Address on Tephritidae speciation
I think the long days of intellectually stimulating talks are starting to stack up against me, so I slept in an extra half hour today! I know, I know, lazy! I still made it to the plenary session on time, and I’m certainly glad that I did! William Eberhard was today’s speaker, and he was discussing several mechanisms of sexual selection. He showed some fantastic SEM (scanning electron microscopy) shots of weird Sepsidae fore legs modified to hold female’s wings during copulation, a short clip of X-ray video showing the internal structure and function of Tsetse fly mating (Glossinidae) and discussed the different ways in which female and male insects are constantly competing to increase their own reproductive fitness. A very informative talk, and one that I learned quite a bit of relevant information from. After the morning coffee break I sat in on some tachinid talks, and then headed over to the Syrphidae symposium to watch a streak of Ontarians give their talks. Gil, Andrew and Michelle all did a great job with their presentations, and I think each received some nice feedback from those in the audience. Lunch was a little different today, with lots of seafood and some Costa Rican dishes. Not as good as yesterday, but still ok since it was free! The early afternoon brought more Syrphidae talks, including Gil’s discussion of affordable technology for imaging fly genitalia, a talk which I was a co-author. Again he did well, and there were a lot of people who stopped in to see the talk. I believe we’ll be putting a note out detailing some of our methods in Fly Times, the newsletter for the North American Dipterists Society, in the near future. The best symposium of the entire conference followed the afternoon coffee break, with the Acalyptratae being on display! Of course I may be biased since I gave 2 out of the 7 talks, but I think it was still the best symposium. I presented my work on the Tephritidae of Ontario, the paper I submitted a few weeks back, as well as an overview of my Master’s thesis work. Both were well received, with several questions after each, and I had a couple of people come up to me afterwards to discuss some points further. I’m definitely glad to be done with my talks now, although I wasn’t too worried about either.
I had a bit of a rushed evening however when I realized that I hadn’t received a ticket to the banquet with my registration package. I ended up running back up the road to our hotel to find my receipt and make sure I had indeed paid for it, then scooping someone’s cab and getting back to the conference centre, only to find out it was no big deal and that they had a full checklist anyways! Oh well, at least I didn’t miss the bus at least. The banquet was a bit different than other conference banquets I’ve been to. The guest speaker was Dan Janzen, who is in the process of trying to identify every caterpillar, host plant, and parasitoid within the national park that I’ll be traveling to this weekend. Unfortunately he takes a fairly strong stance that DNA barcoding is the way of the future and that everyone else is stupid for not realizing it, almost reaching a crazy old man status. Not to mention his 30 minute talk ended up being 75 minutes, so there were a lot of hungry, cranky dipterists by the end of it! The dinner itself was pretty good, but the live Caribbean band had a very limited playlist, so we heard the same 3 or 4 songs over and over again. An open bar did create some rather funny moments however when a large group of researchers decided to get up and dance! Lets just say that perhaps some should stick to reserach… The only other unfortunate thing was the party ended at 11, only about an hour after the guest speaker finished, making for not a lot of time to socialize and even less time to take advantage of the bar! Only 2 more days of the congress left, and tomorrow should be a good one with a symposium on developing new technologies to help in the study of flies.
The X-ray video of mating flies was expanded upon by another researcher this afternoon. What a fantastic methodology and some fantastic footage of what goes on during copulation! Too bad they needed a large nuclear facility to carry it out…
I think that the entire Calyptrate symposium was recorded today, and there were some really good talks featured, so make sure to check out the videos of the congress today!
I think there is more that happened today, but I’m just too tired to remember right now, I’ll post an update tomorrow morning if I think of anything else.
MTC…
Another day, another few dozen fly talks! Today started a little later than yesterday so I took the opportunity to sleep in a bit and get caught up on my sleep. This morning’s plenary was by Dalton Amorim on fossil Diptera and the process of establishing origins for old fly lineages and the role of the Gondwanian split in speciation. I’ll be honest, a lot of his talk went straight over my head, until the 3rd last slide when I finally understood what he was getting at! At least I didn’t regret breakfast like yesterday. Pretty well the rest of the day I spent in a symposium discussing the Orthorrhaphorous Diptera (Stratiomyidae, Tabanidae, Bombyliidae, etc). Seeing all the work that still needs to be done on the soldier flies (Stratiomyidae) certainly rekindled my interest in these flies (I did my undergraduate honour’s thesis on the Stratiomyidae of Ontario). After talking to the Stratiomyidae presenter later in the day, I’m hoping to collaborate on some work in the future (as another side project; I like to be busy). Besides that, hearing about all the advanced taxonomic studies being undertaken around the world kept me on my toes and like usual, made me want to get back to the lab and do some more work! Today’s lunch was the Costa Rican version of Italian, which went surprisingly well, including the brandy-spiked tiramisu for dessert. After lunch were a large number of talks from Brazil, where the fauna appears to be starting to get some much needed attention. The Brazilian insect fauna has essentially been inaccessible to foreign systematists because of multiple layers of paperwork, permits, and legislation that over eagerly attempted to thwart biopiracy, and which only served to isolate Brazil from the entomological community in many ways. Hopefully these obstacles will begin to decrease and more collaboration and collecting can be accomplished in the near future! A quick walk through the poster session, and today ended a little earlier than usual. A little extra time to do some last minute work on my talks and a call home made for an excellent evening, topped off with more PB & Nutella! It’s good being a student!
I met the student presenting his work on Neriidae tomorrow and had a good chat with him about his work (the Neriidae are the sister group to the Micropezidae).
I’ve noticed a number of people head-bobbing through some of the more, lets say technical, talks. Pretty funny to watch professors doing what their students get in trouble for!
One of the scientific posters on display today was on the Tephritidae of the Netherlands, and after talking with the author and looking through his book, the similarity between his work and my Tephritidae of Ontario project was amazing! Pretty serendipitous really, so I invited him to come see my talk on the project tomorrow.
Likely the most exciting poster on display was on the use of infra-red spectrometry for species identification! Apparently the author can make not only species identifications simply by analyzing the infra-red light reflected off the molecular composition of insect cuticle, but can even distinguish between populations. Pretty amazing work, but unfortunately his talk is at the exact same time as mine is tomorrow. I guess I’ll just have to wait to learn more when his work is published, but it certainly sounds exciting and created a buzz in the community.
MTC…
With all these stories flying around, I figured it’d be a good time to introduce my travel companions for the trip.
Gil Goncalves Miranda
Gil is a PhD. candidate in our lab who works on the systematics of Neotropical (Central and South America) Syrphidae, specifically the genus Ocyptamus. As you might be able to tell, Gil does everything the heavy metal way, including pinning insects! He’s also been our translator this trip, and the butt of plenty of jokes (all in good fun of course)!
Joel Kits
Joel is the other PhD. candidate in the lab, and works on the systematics of the Archiborborini, a basal tribe of lesser dung flies (Sphaeroceridae). Joel is also an avid birder and naturalist, and makes sure to keep fastidious notes of his sightings each day.
Nichelle Lomas
This is Nichelle’s first time collecting flies, as she comes to dipterology from the agricultural sector. She’s researching the utility of Musca domestica, amoung other flies, to efficiently break down chicken manure into dried fertilizer. Here, she’s decided to stick around a little longer, mostly because the vine has grabbed hold of her head!
Andrew Young
Finally, we have Andrew Young, who you technically met the other day. Andrew is working on the genus Platycheirus (Syrphidae) in North America, writing a key to species and matching the males and females of each species to one another for the first time.
Today was the first full day of the 7th International Congress of Dipterology, and were there ever a lot of flies discussed! The morning started with breakfast in the hotel restaurant followed by another group taxi ride to the conference centre (only $1 each this time). The plenary session this morning featured Dr. Lee Goff. Not many people likely recognize his name, but pretty well everyone will recognize the TV character based on him… Gil Grissom from CSI! Dr. Goff is a medical forensic entomologist in Hawaii and also works as a scientific consultant for CSI: Crime Scene Investigators. In fact, a few of the cases that he’s worked in real life have inspired episodes of the show, or rather the entomological evidence that he deciphered did. Let me tell you though, seeing true life murder photos and the ensuing entomological evidence is not as tidy as TV may have you believe. His talk was incredibly interesting and entertaining, but there were certainly some gruesome photos of victims in various states of decay that made me regret the ham and cheese omelet I had for breakfast! As an aside, it is absolutely horrible what some people do to other human beings. I can confidently say that I’ll not be looking to work in this field down the road!
Most of the rest of the day was filled with talks on the fly fauna of Africa, and included some really interesting discussions about how poorly the flies of Africa are known. Most of the major fly families that have hundreds if not thousands of described species in Central and South America are only known to have dozens or a few hundred species in Africa. Clearly there are orders of magnitude more species, but it just goes to show how understudied that area is. With the announcement of the new Manual of Afrotropical Diptera project (similar to the Nearctic Manual I discussed a few months back) the push is on to discover as many flies as possible and really get a hold on the Diptera fauna of Africa finally. Should be a busy few years for those dipterists who volunteered to undertake this massive project!
Nichelle had her presentation today, and did a really good job. Being her first scientific conference, it was a little like trial by fire, but she did well and had many interested people come to further discuss her work afterwards.
Torsten Dikow’s presentation of the Afrotropical Mydas flies (Mydidae) was great, and I’d recommend people check out his mydid information site for more info about his research on these huge and rarely collected flies!
The opening ceremonies featured an address by the Deputy Minister of the Environment of Costa Rica, who perhaps should have had her speech writers check what the congress is about before giving her a speech. Nothing too major, just that she went on about the importance of Drosophila and the role it plays in human genetics. Unfortunately for her, this sort of research isn’t at all what the people at this conference are concerned over, which is largely a meeting about the taxonomy of flies!
Had Subway for dinner at the local mall, felt really exotic…
Finally, apparently some of the talks being given this week will be recorded and streamed online for everyone to watch. It seems the talks are chosen at random to be “taped”, but there are already 20 talks online for you to watch. I’d recommend B.J. Sinclair’s talk on African Empidoidea, and A. Friedberg’s talk on the Fruit Flies (Tephritidae) of Africa to start. Check back to the site regularly (and possibly live, I’m not sure if they are streaming it or not) to see more fly research from around the world! Who knows, maybe one of my talks will make the cut!
MTC….
Our final day at El Copal started a little later, only 5:45am! The birding was much improved this morning over yesterday with a few new species added to our total bird list for the lodge. One last traditional breakfast of eggs, rice, beans and another fresh tortilla, and a relaxing morning of packing, bird watching, and having a last look at El Copal, for the time being of course! Maya (our taxi driver) arrived at noon, just as it began raining, so after a hurried goodbye to Beto and Patricia, we tossed our gear and Andrew into the trunk of the 4×4 again and off we went back towards San Jose. Maya’s son Johnny ended up driving us from El Humo to San Jose, but only after they shared some raw sugar cane with us. That is some sweet, sweet grass! Surprisingly it wasn’t as sweet as regular granulated sugar, but the liquid extracted from the cane was extremely tasty and made a good supplement for lunch en route. I had the middle seat in the back of the 4×4 which got to be fairly uncomfortable after 2.5 hours, but Johnny was a great driver and a lot of fun. We got back into San Jose about 3pm, just as the skies opened and the rain poured down again. Some more confusion at the Adventure Inn, but eventually we had our room, our baggage and our computers back on the ‘net! After each of us enjoyed a warm shower and some clean clothes we headed off to the conference to register and meet up with old acquaintances and new friends. A little rant, but it seems that the student registration doesn’t include the congress monographed satchel and coffee press, which were reserved for the full price “Delegate” members, even though I would guess it’d be appreciated by students more than professors and research scientists. That’s pretty damn ridiculous in my mind, and doesn’t seem to encourage students to attend these meetings if they are to be treated as second class scientists, but nothing much I can do about it besides this little rant! We decided to walk from the conference centre back to our hotel (about 20 minutes) and picked up some peanut butter, Nutella, and Bimbo (Latin American bread, similar to Wonder Bread) for dinners over the next few days to save some money. We walked back to the conference centre for the opening night mixer, and were pleasantly surprised to find an open bar and lots of high-quality hors d’oeuvres! It was great getting to meet other Dipterists and become reacquainted with those I’d met before. After a few hours of socializing and wine/dining we headed back to the hotel en masse via taxi. The driver had a good night as he swindled all 12 of us for $2 US a piece for a 3 minute cab ride. Dipterists are generally a cheap bunch to start with, but faced with the injustice of this cab ride, there were a lot of pissed off fly specialists! Luckily we’re also pretty laid back, so a few minutes of griping and we were back to normal and ready for bed. Polishing and publishing my backlog of blog entries for our time at El Copal finished off my evening, and the pillow was calling my name from across the hotel!
MTC…
Today is our last full day here at El Copal Lodge, so I tried to make the most of it by getting up at 5:15 to catch the sunrise and snag some photos before birding with Joel until breakfast. The birds must have decided to sleep in however as there wasn’t much activity today. Patricia prepared another traditional breakfast of eggs, rice, beans, cheese and fresh tortilla to fuel our collecting for the morning, and we headed off to the Mariposa (butterfly in Spanish) trail. The clouds decided they were going to roll in early today so the collecting wasn’t nearly as good as the last 2 days, but we did hit the target groups and each got some interesting specimens. Apparently the mosquitoes didn’t get the message that it was going to be cloudy today though, as they were the thickest we’ve had to deal with yet. It turns out our malaise didn’t survive the previous night’s rain, with the duct tape and twine failing us. All of our hard work and MacGyver training for naught! Oh well, that’s the way it goes sometimes. At least we won’t have to worry about setting it up in Guanacaste! A lunch of steak, salad and palm heart finished off with freshly made rice pudding took our minds off the malaise failure however. The rains came again this afternoon, meaning time to pin our meager catch from the day and relaxation time in the hammocks processing images. Our final dinner at El Copal Reserve, and Patricia outdid herself again (pan fried fish, fried potatoes, fresh salsa)! Tonight has been the first night where the clouds and rain have stuck around, so the 5 of us just hung out and talked late into the night. Beto had enjoyed a little too much wine with the birder’s who came today, and came out to join us around midnight to thank us for coming and to encourage us to bring our friends in the future! It was a great way to spend our final evening at the El Copal Ecolodge.
We tried putting some fruit out today in an effort to catch more flies (and see more birds), but it didn’t work as well as we had hoped for either. A few vinegar flies (Drosophilidae) were all we saw.
Everyone seemed to be able to find micropezids except for me, with Joel, Andrew and Gil each contributing 2 apiece.
Andrew Rick-Rolled us while walking along the trail…
A colony of army ants decided to crash the lodge today and were swarming over the porch and into Gil and Andrew’s room. Sandals weren’t a good idea tonight!
MTC….
5:30am and the sun is just peeking over the mountains; time to go birding! Without leaving the grounds of the lodge, we had a good hour of birding before breakfast with about 20 species confidently identified. A hearty breakfast of arrepes (dense pancakes), eggs, and honey and we were off. Beto needed to walk into town today for groceries, so we had to fend for ourselves on the trails. Gil wanted to revisit the grassy bog at the top of the mountain, so he lead us on a break-neck death march, getting us to the top around 8am. After about 3 hours of steady collecting we came back down at a leisurely pace, collecting and shooting when we found something worthwhile. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be as much moving around today, so it wasn’t quite as good as yesterday, but we did manage to find 2 genera of Micropezidae that we hadn’t seen yet. I experienced how cold the mountain-fed showers were after we got back (and they were cold alright, but refreshing after the hike) then Patricia called us in for lunch (marinated chicken, potato & beet salad, broccoli, and of course, rice). The clouds were beginning to look ominous, but Patricia reassured us that it wouldn’t rain this afternoon, no problemo. Turns out she was a little off, as half an hour later the clouds opened and it started pouring!
Before dinner and during a lull in the rain, Joel, Andrew and I figured we better set up the malaise trap, since we brought it all this way! Now, this isn’t your ordinary, off-the-shelf malaise trap! Oh no, this is a hack job that Joel and I put together at the last minute while packing last week. The netting itself has long seen better days and the head was composed of a urine sample vial with the bottom cut out, a plastic pasta sauce jar with a hole cut in the side and a mason jar screwring glued to the mouth, finished off with a large Nalgene screwed underneath, plus a healthy proportion of duct tape and hot glue! We decided to set up the trap across a small trail in the hopes that the local flies would be using it as a super highway, and strung it up with a few dozen feet of twine and some sticks acting as pegs. We had high hopes for our contraption, but when the urine vial peeled off the pasta jar, and we added a few more feet of duct tape, we began to think we were fighting a losing battle. Perseverance, plus some more twine and duct tape, and we were set to catch us some insects! It started raining right before we finalized the set up, so we didn’t have time to really admire our handiwork, but hopefully it’ll still be in one piece and standing tomorrow morning. A quick run through the jungle in the rain to avoid getting my camera gear wet and we were back at the lodge and ready for dinner! Another excellent dinner (marinated cubed beef, pasta, rice, dulce square) was followed with a long conversation with Beto & Patricia about the history of El Copal, the environmental issues facing Costa Rica, and how we came to find out about El Copal. I truly can’t express how great this lodge and the owners are! Conversation was cut short (a figurative term as we sat there talking for over an hour) when Beto ran out listening to an owl. We never did see the owl, but the sky was so clear, the star viewing was even better than last night. I spent a good half an hour making new images of the Milky Way, before going inside to show the others what I had captured. Beto & Patricia in particular were very excited to see the shots and also some of the insects that we’ve encountered on their property. While everyone else headed off to bed, I saw that the star conditions had further improved, so I spent another hour outside playing and making images. By far and away the most amazing nightscapes I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t be happier with the pictures (they need some more advanced post-processing, but I’ll have them up here shortly after getting back to Canada).
We came across a huge colony of army ants swarming the trail this morning, providing a nice break from the brisk pace Gil set. Seeing thousands of ants swarming through the undergrowth is a pretty neat experience. Collected some army ant-associated thick-headed flies (Conopidae: Stylogaster) and Tachinidae.
Gil had me try and get some shots of hovering Ornidia (Syrphidae), which presented a new challenge that will need some practice, despite the flies staying relatively still while hovering.
MTC…
Here comes the sun! Waking up at 6:30 for breakfast (eggs, rice, beans, freshly made tortilla) is easy when the sun is up and the flies are flying. Everyone was itching to get out into the jungle, and so we headed up towards the peak of the nearest mountain. We definitely had some great collecting, with each of us finding a few specimens of our respective study/hobby groups, and I’m fairly happy with my photos from this morning. Getting exposures correct in the shadows of the jungle can be difficult, and there are a lot of black backgrounds, but it certainly beats nothing! After making it up to the top of the mountain (altitude = ~1300m) we came back down to our lunch while rain clouds started to blow in. With perfect timing we got back to the lodge only minutes before the rain hit and just in time for lunch (pasta, fried pork chop, coconut & dulce squares). The food here has been awesome, and Patricia has been spoiling us! After lunch we proceeded to pin the day’s catch and make our notes for the day. With the rain still coming down all afternoon, the only thing left to do was sit in a hammock and hope the insects came to us. A bit of a slow afternoon, but the morning made up for it! After dinner (broasted chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and rice) the rain had finally ceased, so we stepped out for a quick night walk to look for herps, then sat and looked at the Milky Way, visible to the naked eye so far from the light pollution of major cities.
There were a ton of reptiles and frogs hopping around the trail today, so many that I think we may have seen more species here than I have seen in all my other trips combined!
The clouds seem to come and go in the blink of an eye, revealing dramatic landscapes of rolling mountains one second, and concealing all but the closest of trees the next.
Well, it seems that the rain is determined to keep us lodge-locked for the rest of the day. Hopefully tomorrow morning will be as nice as today was so we can get out and find some more flies!
Beto had us believing that our dinner tonight was actually Crested Guan (a large native chicken-like bird); he is certainly a big fan of practical jokes!
Tonight was the night of the giant wolf* spider it seems, with an orange species courting Andrew’s laptop (which is also orange) and a black species waiting for Nichelle to come to bed. Being inquisitive, we figured we’d try feeding them with some freshly caught moths. The orange species put on a good show, pouncing on the moth the moment it hit the floor and then running between Joel’s legs while he was squatting, while the black species didn’t seem to be hungry. Both were released outside before bed!
Despite having experience with feeder roaches back in Canada, Andrew had a bit of a freakout after a large cockroach landed on his shoulder in the common room. Hilarity ensued!
MTC…
* – I say wolf spider with a grain of salt as I’m not an arachnid expert by any means, and Neotropical spiders are a little more diverse than back home!