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…
Good luck tomorrow!