BugShot 2012 Student Portfolio

 Insects, Photography  13 Responses »
May 312012
 

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).

The End is Near…

 Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Taxonomy, Tongue in Cheek  10 Responses »
Apr 132011
 

My MSc Defense Poster

 

The Quest for the Master’s Degree is nearing it’s conclusion! If you’ll be in the Guelph area on Monday, I invite you to stop in and see what I’ve been up to for the past 3.5 years. I can promise plenty of taxonomic discussion (hopefully well defended by yours truly), plenty of pictures and diagrams, and the world premiere of 3 species new to science! There will be Timbits and coffee for those who require further encouragement/bribes.

The last month has been all over the place, with periods of extremely long days full of final revisions and paperwork, and an eerie academic Limbo without needing to work on my thesis for the first time in years. There’s always work to be done however, and I’ve been preparing the chapters for peer-reviewed publication. Once everything is said and done, I’ll be doing a series of posts reflecting back on my first graduate degree; the highs, the lows, and some tips for those considering doing graduate work in taxonomy. Until then, have a good weekend, and I’ll see you on the other side!

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 14 – ACG & the day of Micropezid

 Entomology, Travel, Trip Report  1 Response »
Aug 162010
 

Our day started early again at 5:45 to catch some birds prior to breakfast. I really wasn’t feeling the breakfast this morning, so a small meal and then we loaded the school bus to get to our day trip location. Today we went partially up a local volcano to the San Cristobal Research Station, one of the outposts for the every caterpillar project I mentioned yesterday. The road was rough and the bus shocks poor, so it was a bit of a bouncy ride, but almost as soon as we got out of the bus and into the station the sun came out and there were quite a few flies out and about. Perhaps I should correct myself, there were a lot of micropezids flying! Within minutes of entering the jungle we found a tree fall where some Scipopus-like flies were freshly emerging and pumping hemolymph into their wings. I can’t positively identify the species to genus, but it was great to get a glimpse into the possible larval habitat. As we walked through the forest, it seemed as if everytime we looked up there was another species and a different genus flying nearby. I believe I ended up with 9 or 10 species in 6 or 7 genera and a total of almost 30 specimens. A very productive day for me, with specimens contributed by several people from the group. The rains set in right as we came back for lunch, and unfortunately stayed in for the remainder of our time at the station. We left a little early and made our way back to the main ACG station where we’re staying and the sun was shining, so some of us ended up jumping off the bus and walking the final few kilometres back to the station looking for more flies. Unfortunately they seemed to have gone into hiding early tonight, so instead we did some birding and saw a number of interesting species including Crested Curacao, a large chicken like bird with a bright yellow beak and ornate head feathers. A cold shower to get rid of a day’s grime, a brief dinner, and I was pinning away with all my new material.

The bus was a little slow this morning, taking 2 hours to do what normally would take 45 minutes in a 4×4 truck apparently. It certainly gave us plenty of opportunities to enjoy the lack of legroom and shocks…

I had my first Coke since leaving for Costa Rica 2 weeks ago, and man was it good. So much for going cold turkey…

I’ve now seen 3 monkey species (howler, Geoffrey’s spider, and white faced capuchin), white-tailed deer (weird, I know), agouti, bats, a strange ground-hog like creature, and something rustling through the undergrowth like bugs bunny. Pretty good mammal list for a day’s work!

The unidentified genus:

Unidentified Micropezidae fly stilt-legged

MTC…

A little rusty

 Insects, Nature, Photography  1 Response »
May 272010
 

I took a short break this morning to clear my head and get back into this photography thing, so I headed over to the University of Guelph Arboretum and went looking for flies. It became readily apparent that not picking up a camera for 8 months was going to make it a learning process all over again! And the first lesson? Charge your flash batteries! One shot into the day and I realize my SB-800 is dead in the water. Crap… luckily my shooting buddy also uses Nikon equipment, so while he was shooting I was collecting, and vice versa. Problems solved right? Well, lesson 2 quickly became apparent; check your settings! I had switched to shooting JPEG this winter for a family function! Crap… a quick switch back to RAW format with hope those first few shots were ok and won’t need much editing (JPEG files don’t handle heavy editing well) and back to work I go.

Compsobata univitta (Micropezidae) on green leaf

Well, at least something worked out! (Click to enlarge)

The rest of the morning was spent finding the body control and breathing necessary for macro work, and by lunch time I was feeling almost back into the swing of things! I definitely need to make the time to go out more regularly this summer, and remember, check, double check, and triple check your equipment each time you go out!

The “money-makers”

 Taxonomy  No Responses »
Jan 182010
 

Today I figured I’d introduce my study organisms, the Stilt-legged flies (Micropezidae) in the genus Taeniaptera (latin for ribbon wing I believe, referencing the bands on the wing).

Taeniaptera Micropezidae Fly Venezuela

(Click on the photos to view them larger)

I was first introduced to these flies in Amazonian Bolivia on a University of Guelph Field Entomology course (which was easily the best course of my undergrad). They are commonly encountered standing on broad leaves waiting for food to literally drop from the heavens (the females feed on bird droppings & monkey dung, and the males tag along to find a mate).  What makes these flies even cooler (I know, its hard to get cooler than feasting on fresh dung…) is their remarkable morphological and behavioural mimicry of parasitic wasps.

Ecuador Parasitic Wasp Braconidae

Ecuador Poecilotylus Micropezidae Fly

I came across these two specimens (a braconid wasp above and a Poecilotylus sp. fly below) while in Ecuador this past spring. Fairly similar at first glance, especially in the shadows of the jungle! The flies add to the deception with their fore legs, which they wave out in front of their bodies mimicking the constantly moving antennae of the wasps (notice the white bands on the wasp’s antennae and the white tips of the fly’s front legs).

Micropezidae Diptera Fly Bolivia Taeniaptera

So what am I doing with these attractive little buggers? Well, right now generic concepts (the characters that define a genus) of several genera including Taeniaptera are overlapping and ill-defined, resulting in confusion over the relationships between certain species groups. I am using morphological and molecular characters (DNA sequences) to find monophyletic groupings (groups descended from a single common ancestor as opposed to paraphyletic groupings where species from different ancestors are considered to be most closely related) of these species, which I can then confidently define as strongly supported genera. Think of it as untying knots in the branches of the tree of life!

I’ll provide updates on my work every once in awhile, but no worries, my posts won’t generally be as detail-oriented and will have more photos!