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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!

: The view from the hotel

: Fly greeting cards from Virginia Tech

: Bug Girl is here!

: U of G Grad Student Chris Earley’s Poster

: U of G Grad Student Laura Burns’ Poster

Bye Bye Bird Louse

Biology, Entomology, Natural History, Taxonomy 3 Responses »

Oct 032011

Remember that last ID challenge I put to you? The one at the end of August which I’m only now getting around to answering? Ya, that one.

With the best turn out of commenters willing to wager on their IDs, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to award those hard earned points. But no fear, that day is finally here!

It seems that Hippoboscidae have a face that more than it’s mother can love, as everyone correctly guessed the right family! I can’t say I blame the enthusiasm surrounding this fly, as their morphological adaptations for living on birds are pretty amazing!

Dorso-ventrally flattened to slide in amongst the feathers, plenty of thick setae on the thorax and abdomen which I assume are used for getting nestled in for the long haul, and trifurcated tarsal claws to hold onto their feathered hosts. Although I enjoy a morning bird watching from time to time, I’m not exactly a bird wrangler, so how did I come by this spectacular specimen? It seems my wife was putting out the bird vibes back in August while we were out hiking through Mono Cliffs Provincial Park (which is a fantastic hike by the way, definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area), and this fly latched on while we walked back to the parking lot.

Renee wasn’t all too impressed with her little hitchhiker, but I was ecstatic! I quickly scooped it off and put in my camera bag for a few snaps, all the while expecting it to get away. With these photos in hand, I threw it in my bag anticipating another opportunity to shoot it when I got home, but I guess all this excitement was too much, as it didn’t survive the car ride. Oh well, it found a good resting place in the Guelph Insect Collection, and also gave me a chance to identify it back in the lab.

Of course, that would prove more difficult than I had imagined, and I’m still not 100% confident in my final identification. The genus ID was relatively easy using the Manual of Nearctic Diptera, and I quickly had it keyed to the genus Icosta. That’s where the “fun” began however, as I tracked down the authoritative paper on Icosta taxonomy and biology published in 1969 by T.C. Maa of the Bishops Museum. Although the keys were well written and relatively well illustrated for a 1969 key, the characters needed for identification were anything but simple! I eventually ended up at Icosta ardeae (Macquart), although from what I could tell it was Icosta ardeae ardeae, a subspecies recorded from much of the Old World, ranging from the UK, down to South Africa and as far east as the Philippines and Australia! The other subspecies, Icosta ardeae botaurinorum, is listed as being known from North America, including Ontario, but the abdominal setae and wing shape illustrated just didn’t fit. Both species are known to choose herons as their preferred host, with I. a. botaurinorum breeding almost solely on American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus), which could very well have been lurking in the pond near the parking lot.

So what’s the deal; is it I. a. ardeae, or I. a. botaurinorum? I’m not a big believer in the idea of subspecies, so I’m happy simply calling it Icosta ardeae, but it speaks volumes about our understanding of the taxonomy of the family. Often found on birds (one of the best studied groups on earth), you would assume these flies would be as well studied and well collected as their avian counterparts, and yet I can’t get a definitive ID on one found 30 minutes from Toronto! Without any further taxonomic work since Maa’s 1969 revision, and with Maa leaving numerous species unnamed in his paper, simply calling them Icosta sp. “S” or sp. “N”, Icosta seems like a great project for someone interested in fly and bird taxonomy, and I could see a cool phylogenetic comparison between hippoboscid species and their avian hosts!

With that suggestion for the future, lets finish off the past and allocate some BioPoints! Chris scores a cool 15 points (3 for family, 4 for subfamily, 2 for being the first to answer and 6 for the review of hippoboscid larval biology), Laurie Knight picks up 8 (3 for family, 2 for picking a related species, and 3 for sharing her awesome photos of hippoboscid’s with mallophagan lice attached), Miles scores 3 points for his family ID, and Matt grabs 5 points (3 for family plus 2 for providing the morphological characters he used).

Thanks for playing once again everyone, and watch for more ID challenges in the near future (I mean it this time, I swear…)

All notes on taxonomy and biology of these flies was found in:

Maa, T.C. 1969. Revision of Icosta (=Lynchia Auctt.) with erection of a related genus Phthona. Pacific Insects Monograph 20: pg. 25-203.

What Wasp Art Thou?

Cool Science, Entomology, General Information, Meeting, Taxonomy, Workshop 6 Responses »

Jul 092011

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!

Hidden Treasures

Cool Science, Entomology, Natural History, Publication 6 Responses »

Jun 082011

With new identification aids, entomological collections begin to give up all manner of hidden treasures. The “Miscellaneous” drawers are no longer out of reach, and determining the species found in your own backyard (sometimes literally) can result in surprising finds.

Rhagoletis meigenii

Rhagoletis meigenii is an introduced species from Europe which infests fruits of European barberry (Barberis vulgaris) as larvae. This species had previously been recorded in North America as early as 1986, but after examining specimens from the Lyman Entomological Museum and here at the University of Guelph Insect Collection, I found specimens collected as early as 1956 in Montreal, Quebec and 1977 in Oakville, Ontario! This indicates that it had made it’s way to North America much earlier than previously thought, and either spread extremely rapidly across eastern North America, or had multiple introduction events! Luckily this species isn’t of economic concern (European barberry fruits are eaten and used in jams in Europe, but the plant harbours wheat rust and is considered noxious in North America), but it indicates how easily a non-native species can slip into a new area unnoticed by scientists and society.

Urophora affinis

Not all fruit flies enter North America “illegally” though. All three species of Urophora found in Ontario are native to Europe, but were intentionally introduced to help control unwanted, invasive knapweed species. Two of the species introduced became established and quickly spread through southern Ontario (Urophora cardui and Urophora quadrifasciata) while one species didn’t appear to survive. Urophora affinis was experimentally introduced in western Canada where it seemed to thrive, but after release in the early 1980’s at a research plot in Hastings County it failed to be found the next few years, leading the researcher to assume the population hadn’t survived the winter. But, a fly collected 250 km away and more than 20 years later in Simcoe County made it through the curatorial stream, and low-and-behold it was Urophora affinis! Apparently this species did in fact survive the winter, and managed to spread at low population density across central Ontario.

Rhagoletotrypeta rohweri

Finding flies thought to be gone is unfortunately not as unlikely as it may seem. Rhagoletotrypeta rohweri is a rarely collected species that hadn’t been seen since 1962. Or at least it hadn’t been thought to have been seen since then! The University of Guelph Insect Collection actually has 4 specimens collected between 1978 and 1985 around Point Pelee National Park. Hopefully this is evidence that this species is still clinging to existence in small pockets of eastern North America!

Rhagoletis chionanthi

To round out some of the important species uncovered during this study, here’s Rhagoletis chionanthi. This species had previously only been recorded from North Carolina and Florida, making it’s presence in Ontario a significant expansion of its natural range! Of course this also begs the question as to what it’s using for a larval habitat; the only recorded host plant for R. chionanthi is Chionanthus virginicus (see what they did there, naming the species after its host? Crafty taxonomists…), a plant species which hasn’t been recorded from Canada yet! So what may be happening here? Has the plant expanded it’s range into Canada, bringing it’s pest with it? Or does Rhagoletis chionanthi have multiple hosts? Of course, the apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, actually underwent a host-shift from hawthorn to apples when the latter were cultivated in North America, so perhaps Rhagoletis chionanthi has undergone a similar host-shift which we aren’t aware of!

Of course none of these records would have been possible without the entomological collections housed at universities or under provincial or federal care. At a time when taxonomy and natural history collections are devastatingly under funded (or threatened with military take-over), their intrinsic value is made clear through faunistic studies such as this. Who knows what other treasures are awaiting discovery in entomological collections, both large and small? New species await description, rare species make surprise appearances, and the dynamics between species and geography are unfolding with every study!

Fly Cankles and Literary Evolution

Cool Science, Entomology, Publication 7 Responses »

Jan 272011

Flies are cool. You might even say they’re phat (I know, I’m pretty fly for a white guy). But a newly described dance fly species (Empididae) from Japan takes the term “phat” to an all new level. Meet Empis jaschhoforum:

Empis jaschhoforum male morphs from Daugeron et al. 2011

Figures 1a-c from Daugeron et al., 2011

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