I’m applying for a student fee waiver for this summer’s BugShot Insect Photography Workshop, and spent today putting together my image portfolio. After some ruthless culling and extra time spent with edits, I’ve arrived at 10 photos which I feel best represent my insect photography. Going through my photo library was an enlightening experience, and I’m quite happy with the progress I’ve made since my first attempts at macrophotography 5 years ago. Of course there’s still plenty of room for improvement (hence my hopeful application to learn from the masters), and there are a number of different techniques and ideas I want to play around with, so I don’t see myself running out of subjects or projects anytime soon!
Click the images to view at a larger size (650px long edge).
Long-legged fly (Dolichipodidae) from Ontario
Treehopper (Membracidae) from Ontario
Clusia lateralis, a druid fly (Clusiidae) from Ontario
Dance fly (Empididae) from Ontario
Halictid bee from Ontario
Formica sp. (Formicidae) with aphids from Ontario
Rainieria sp. stilt-legged fly (Micropezidae) from Costa Rica
Spider illuminated from beneath in Ontario
Urophora affinis fruit fly (Tephritidae) from Ontario
I come across a large number of interesting blog posts, news articles, scientific papers and various other types of media every week, which I try and share through Twitter on a regular basis. Since I know not everyone has been bitten by the Twitter bug yet1, I figured I’d start a weekly round up of links to some of the stories I find interesting, important or just plain entertaining.
True to form, most of these links will be insect related, but I have broad interests, so some other topics are sure to turn up from time to time2. The internet is full of talented people, and I hope you enjoy their work as much as I have.
The Edmonton Journal has a great biography of Dr. George Ball, a beetle taxonomist at the University of Alberta who has impacted the careers of dozens of top entomologists across North America.
While not EAB, Chrysobothris vivida looks quite similar on first glance. The Field Museum shows off the holotype and label data, helping to explain the role that natural history collections play in day to day science.
Although written by a marine ecologist and discussing a paper about plant taxonomists, this post on the Sea Monster Blog is one of the most best stories about the role of taxonomy and the decrease in taxonomists being hired and funded. A must read for anyone who depends on biology in their day-to-day lives (that means you).
I don’t know who started it, but the #InsectSongs suggested by Twitter users this week was an afternoon of hilarity. Check out some of my favourites, and then see which ones Bug Girl selected.
Finally, enjoy this fun stop-motion video detailing the everyday lives of insects.
2- Ed Yong, and Bora Zivkovic do extensive weekly link round-ups covering a very broad spectrum of science writing if you need something else to read this weekend!
Let me start by saying that when I went looking for a song for this week’s Tuesday Tunes, I didn’t expect to find such a gem as this. All I wanted was something simple that would allow me to segue into some very cool insect news, but what I got instead was one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard, but which actually has some relevant biology included in the lyrics. That being said, consider yourself warned: there’s cool science ahead, but also some really, really, bad music!
The University of California Davis insect collection announced yesterday (with future taxonomic publication to come I assume) that they collected specimens of Bombus cockerelliFranklin 1913 for the first time since 1956. Collected again from it’s extremely restricted known range (a 300 square mile plot of land in New Mexico), this species is understandably rare in insect collections. There has apparently been considerable debate amongst Bombus experts over whether B. cockerelli represented a unique species or whether it was a variant of the much more common Bombus vagans, and with museum specimens 50+ years old, there has been no ability to compare DNA between species. Lead researcher Doug Yanega implies that molecular evidence obtained from these new specimens supports B. cockerelli as its own species, and it will be interesting to see in future publications how this species fits into the larger Bombus picture! Doug has some succinct comments on why it shouldn’t come as a surprise to rediscover an insect species thought to be “lost”, so I’d highly recommend giving the press release a read!
Bombus cockerelli courtesy of EOL.org (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Moving on to this week’s “killer” song, if you grew up in the late 90’s (or had offspring doing so), you’re probably familiar with the musical torturestylings torture that was Aqua, the Danish pop band responsible for the hit song Barbie Girl. This week I bring you another musical instrument of torture, Bumble Bees:
Well, did you catch the surprisingly accurate lyrics as pertaining to pollination biology? From the “Wham bam, thank you mam” insinuating the correct sex for flower visiting bees, to the fact that bumblebees regularly leave “donations” of pollen while “invading” deep flowers, the song is actually pretty good for biology. Even though it sounds horrible, Aqua get props for taking the time to pen some pollination biology into their “music”!
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!
Imagine waking up to that hideous thing every morning! (The painting, not Phil!)
A reminder that things can be a lot worse in your lab!
How many symposia have an interpretive station? Biosurveillance did!
What’s this antlered little wasp you may be asking yourself? To be honest, I have no clue! Probably something in the Chalcidoidea, but really, I have no idea.
What I do know is there’s somewhere I could go to learn all about these endearing little wasps, as well as their larger yet equally diverse parasitic brethren. That place? The HYM Course, offered by a collaboration of top hymenopterists from around the USA. This course was designed to teach you how to identify parasitic Hymenoptera, and provide information on the phylogenetic relationships between groups, as well as the behaviour, biology and host interactions which make these wasps fascinating.
The course is being held August 14-20 at the Humboldt Field Research Institute in beautiful coastal Maine, and looks to be a good time, with lessons taught in the field, in the lab, and in the classroom. The enrollment is limited to 14 people (with 5 instructors, that promises plenty of 1-on-1 interaction), and there are still several spaces available from what I’ve been told. If you’re a naturalist, insect photographer, graduate student or professional entomologist who wants or needs to learn more about parasitic Hymenoptera, then this course is a steal for gaining valuable knowledge and making important connections with some of the world’s leading taxonomists!
For more information, and to find out how you can enroll and begin exploring the Parasitica, check out the promotional PDF. Contact any of the instructors listed at the bottom of the flyer to enroll or to receive additional details!
T.G.I.Formicidae is a new occasional feature here on the blog, and this inaugural edition features some collusion between Alex Wild, Ted MacRae and myself. Alex normally features beetles on Fridays, and Ted and I thought it might be fun to continue the trend, with Ted blogging flies today while I cover ants to complete the triad of major insect groups! Make sure to check out their blogs to see what fantastic Friday finds they have to share!
In a last minute rush to produce some ant photos to compliment the fine photographs of Ted’s and Alex’s, I ran back to the Dairy Bush on the University of Guelph campus with hopes of finding some interesting ants to shoot. Luckily for me, I happened across what I believe are CamponotusFormica ants tending to masses of aphids. Ant mutualism with aphids was one of the first insect interactions I can remember learning about in my intro entomology courses, and I can’t resist watching and photographing these tiny ranchers whenever I come across them!
Yep, a honey bee swarm decided that this parking sign in our department’s parking lot was as good a place as any to settle down for the evening. Lucky for them, the parking authority goes home at 5…
Sometimes equipment, technique and the weather don’t always come together when I’m out photographing insects. Take for example, my recent efforts photographing a halictid bee on a flower. Trying out a new feature on my camera, in the wind and with the winter’s rust still hanging on, I came away with this picture, straight out of the camera:
We’ve heard it repeated in the media before, with varying degrees of alarmism; honey bees are disappearing, and society better repent before we follow them. Termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in North America, the number of bee colonies which are dying or exiting en mass (swarming) leaving beekeeper’s hives empty has garnered a great deal of attention in the past few years. Of course there’s plenty of evidence that honey bee populations have been in decline for decades and CCD isn’t really a new phenomenon, but sometimes facts just get in the way of a good story, don’ t they?
That’s the way I felt after watching the new documentary Queen of the Sun: What Are The Bees Telling Us? – the production team didn’t want to weigh the audience down with actual evidence for theories proposed by featured beekeepers or even some of the “experts”. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the film, I did, I just left feeling that so much more could have been done to educate the audience.
The movie starts off with endless acres of almond trees in California and the bees trucked in from around the USA tasked with pollinating this giant monoculture. From here the film gathers the opinions of some of the most eccentric beekeepers I’ve seen (which is saying something, trust me) on why the bees are disappearing, with some input from “experts”. It was the beekeepers which make this movie worth a watch, and while each and every one of them personifies bees more than I’d like (damn my scientific objectivity), and there is a lot of Gaiaism and Druid religious undertones, meeting and watching these beekeepers work was a lot of fun. Whether it was the bee historian/Yogi who tickles his bees with his impressive mustache or the rooftop apiculturists in London, UK & Brooklyn, New York (where in the former city beekeeping is legal and the latter illegal), the filmmakers found some very interesting people who shared a passion for their hobby/trade.
The majority of the theories on what is causing the decline of the bees comes from the beekeepers with notes thrown in from the chosen “experts”. I’m using the term “expert” loosely, mainly because there were virtually no credentials or explanation about what made each person an “expert” on the topic. Some I recognized, like May Berenbaum from University of Illinois or Scott Black of the Xerces Society and trusted their opinions because of my knowledge of their work. Others, I have no clue why they were consulted; a physicist discussing genetically-modified plants transferring modified bacteria genomes to bees, without mention of why a physicist would be involved with this research or what institute she was associated with? Providing further credentials and background for each expert would allow the audience to make an informed decision on the information provided to them.
Overall, Queen of the Sun was an entertaining movie with some beautiful photography and fantastic people. If you’re looking for a movie which celebrates individuality and passion for apiculture, then this is your movie. If you’re looking for a scientific nature documentary, stick to David Attenborough and the BBC!
