I can’t help but get a little excited about sphinx moths; they’re so big and cool looking that I just can’t resist taking a photo (foreshadowing: expect to see more sphinx moth photos by the end of the week). This individual came in while I was blacklighting at the Rouge Valley BioBlitz, right in the heart of Toronto.
The Waved Sphinx Moth feeds on a variety of plants as a caterpillar, including ash (Fraxinus), privet (Ligustrum), oak (Quercus), hawthorn (Crataegus), and fringe (Chionanthus). and can be found across much of eastern North America throughout the summer.
The organizers of National Moth Week have done a great job getting people to volunteer to do public moth-related events, so check to see if there’s something going on in your neck of the woods. If there aren’t, that doesn’t have to stop you from mothing; go hang out at bright lights just after dark and see what you can find!
This week should be pretty fun, and I’m going to try and get out at least one night to see if I can’t add to my abysmally poor list of moth photographs, and will try and tweet any encounters I have with moths throughout the week. I’ll also be contributing any new sightings to Project Noah and iNaturalist, so feel free to follow along with me there.
I’ve successfully ignored the Lepidoptera thus far in my entomological career, so I’m taking this opportunity to do a little learning and see if I can’t improve on my moth ID skills. I’m going to be posting photos of moths throughout the week, some from North America which I’ve been able to identify, and some from my tropical travels which I have no idea about. If you notice that I messed up an identification, please feel free to gloat and mock my error; perhaps it’ll teach me not to ignore an entire order of insects from now on…
Oh, and because I can’t completely turn my blog over to moths, I’m going to be featuring their dipteran parasites whenever possible, so expect plenty of tachinid talk this week too!
Exciting news since the last Weekly Flypaper: Piotr Naskrecki, orthopteroid taxonomist, photographer, and author (Relics and The Smaller Majority) has started a new blog — The Smaller Majority. So far Piotr has been killing this whole blogging business, with fascinating posts on tropical entomology and macrophotography tips. I’m pretty sure I bookmarked every post he made for future reference, but here are a few of my favourites:
Apparently I missed the memo about Photo Bombing blogs, as Matt Bergeron, Dave Stone and Alex Wild all showed off gorgeous photos of bombyliid bee flies.
Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) has continued it’s inevitable march across eastern North America, this week being detected in Connecticut for the first time. What’s important about this is that Cerceris fumipennis, a solitary wasp which specializes on buprestid jewel beetles, was the first to detect it’s presence in the state. This is the sort of Bio-surveillance that Phil Careless and the rest of Team Cerceris had hoped for, and now hopefully more government agencies will invest in expanding this simple monitoring tool.
I’ve seen a bunch of people start blogs only to watch them peter out after a few weeks/months. As a blogger who has a relatively small (yet loyal) readership, I can sympathize with this post on Why Blogs Fail.
Carl Zimmer was a plenary speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for the Presevation of Natural History Collections a few weeks ago, and they just posted his talk on YouTube. It’s long (more than an hour), but it’s an interesting talk and well delivered.
You may have noticed the Weekly Flypaper has been missing the past two weekends. I have a good reason for missing one, and a not so good reason for missing the other…
First, the good reason. I took part in the Rouge Park BioBlitz in Toronto, and along with 230+ other naturalists, taxonomists and volunteers, we scoured Rouge Park (soon to be Canada’s first urban National Park) for all signs of life, trying to identify as much as possible in 24 hours. Although the numbers are still coming in, the official species count is already nearing 1,300 species, all sighted or caught in 24 hours (and more than 800 of those were identified within the first 24 hours too)! That is an absolutely amazing number, and sets the bar very high for future BioBlitzes! The Guelph crew had a great time, and I think we contributed almost 100 insect species identifications, including 60+ flies. Lots more came home with us, and we’ll be getting names on them in the near future to be added to the list. The arthropod coordinator, Antonia Guidotti of the Royal Ontario Museum has posted an awesome synopsis of the BioBlitz over at the ROM Blog.
The other reason? I was lazy last weekend and didn’t get around to doing it. Oops.
So with 3 weeks worth of links, and major holidays upcoming in Canada & the USA, I suggest you grab a cold drink, find a comfy spot, and clear your schedule, because the Bugosphere has been busy! Continue reading »
Well this is fun1: an entomologist in New Zealand has decided to name a recently discovered moth species after the movie Avatar.
Arctesthes avatar courtesy of the Forest & Bird press release
The moth in question was recently discovered on a parcel of land in central New Zealand which is currently slated to become an opencast coal mine. In an effort to prevent the area from being destroyed, Forest & Bird (a conservation group in New Zealand) staged a BioBlitz to draw attention to the unique flora & fauna found there. After realizing that they had discovered an undescribed species at the BioBlitz, entomologist Brian Patrick and his son decided to hold a contest, encouraging the public to come up with a potential name for the new species to further draw attention to the cause.
After nearly 100 names were submitted, it was announced June 19, 2012 that the winning name will be Arctesthes avatar. From the press release:
Brian said the Avatar moth was a clear winner. “It was by far the best one. It’s a novel name and the movie is about a mining company that threatens to devastate a human-like species that’s living in harmony with nature. It’s just a really good analogy.”
As we’ve seen with other species names referencing pop-culture icons, the New Zealand media picked up the story and ran with it, publishing the story, the name, and a photo of the moth. Normally this would be great exposure for the researchers (and biodiversity science in general), getting some press for a new species in a location that’s not that far from populated areas.
Unfortunately for the researchers, they may have put the cart before the horse on this one by publicizing their discovery before publishing it themselves.
Unlike other sciences, where you may be able to get away with leaking your results a little ahead of your publication2, when it comes to naming species it’s incredibly important to wait until you’ve actually published. The reason being that if the new species name appears in a publication that has multiple, simultaneously printed copies (like the NZ Herald/Greymouth Star newspapers3) with even a semblance of a description (like “striped moth”, which has been used repeatedly with this story) and/or a photograph (see above), whoever wrote that article becomes the authority behind the name! Nevermind that Brian Patrick is the taxonomic expert, collected the specimen, recognized it as being unique, discovered where it belonged in the tree of life and, in this instance, acquired DNA evidence. All of that will go unrecognized4 and the first journalist who wrote up the story off the press release will go down as the one who formally described the species!
Simply put, instead of being recorded as Arctesthes avatar Patrick & Patrick 2012, the species will be known as Arctesthes avatar RandomJournalist 2012. Oops!
The fact that new species descriptions needn’t be published in a peer-reviewed journal may come as a surprise, but I think it’s an effort to keep taxonomy an accessible science for anyone, anywhere. It’s clear that some funny things can happen when there are few restrictions on where a species can be described, and as the Code of Zoological Nomenclature moves into the digital age with the next edition, many taxonomists are hoping that registration services like ZooBank will play a big role in new species descriptions and validation in the future. Until the new “Code” is ratified however, unfortunate events like what happened here with Arctesthes avatar are possible.
So remember kids, when you go to describe a new species, publish first, publicize second!
UPDATE 27/06/2012: As Kai pointed out in the comments below, the authors have escaped this embarrassing scenario because none of the media stories will likely include enough information to form a proper type designation.
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1- My definition of fun and that of the entomologist involved are probably different here…
2- Although I would assume this is frowned upon as well.
This has been a very busy week for insect news & science, and there are a ton of great things to keep you busy reading all weekend. First though, I need to get something a little broader but incredibly important off my chest.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s War on Environmental Science
I don’t normally wade into discussing politics because 1) I don’t follow it as closely as perhaps I should and, 2) it can be a pretty controversial topic which can get messy in a hurry. I don’t want to weigh this week’s flypaper down too much, but I feel compelled to share a number of deeply concerning developments in the Canadian government’s recent cuts to environmental research.
I’m incredibly proud to call Canada my home & native land, but am utterly ashamed of these “cost saving” measures being rapidly pushed through by the Conservative government. These short-sighted cuts will have long-lasting environmental ramifications well beyond the tenure of any political party’s leadership, will tarnish Canada’s reputation as an environmentally-friendly nation, and will hamper our ability to attract new minds to our universities, industries and governments. I have no doubt that in 10-15 years we will look back on this government and wonder “O Canada, what have you done?”
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OK, that’s enough doom and gloom for one week. Now onto some bug links!
General Entomology
What would you classify angels as? If you said winged humans, you’re wrong. Clearly they’re insects. And in case you’re interested, the Taxonomy Fail Index for such a gaff is 122.3!
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!
Since I’m here at ESA 2011 and becoming reacquainted with old friends and meeting all sorts of new people interested in insects, I thought it was only fitting to share this short song from Weezer! We’ll forgive the slight transgression about earthworms being insects for now, but Rivers Cuomo best watch his taxonomy in the future!
Don’t be afraid to go out and make an insect/entomologist friend of your own this week!
Well, it’s been awhile since the last sugar pop edition of Tuesday Tunes, so I guess now’s as good a time as any.
Proudly Canadian, the Stereos share that feeling of gastric unease in Butterflies.
Speaking of gastrointestinal Lepidoptera, I’ll be traveling to Reno, NV this weekend to take part in the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting. It’s going to be a busy week for me, and I’ll be sharing my schedule with times for my talks, what I’ll be talking about and some of the other events I’ll be looking forward to tomorrow! So watch next week when I hope to be active sharing the experience with all of you, here on the blog and on Twitter (where you can follow me @BioInFocus).
Well, it’s the day after Halloween (commonly referred to as November 1st) and what better song to accompany the tossing of Jack-o-Lanterns to the curb than something by the Smashing Pumpkins? Another 90’s hit that I remember quite fondly from my formative years, Bullet with Butterfly Wings doesn’t really have much to do with insects beyond the title, but with reference to vampires and plenty of rats, it’s a pretty decent Halloween song (complete with creepy zombie-like miners).
And speaking of Smashing Pumpkins, stay tuned later today for the big reveal of our lab’s annual Ent-o-Lantern!
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