#BugShot2012 Day 1 – Transit & Exploring New Ground

 Entomology, Travel, Trip Report, Uncategorized  9 Responses »
Aug 242012
 

Excuse this rather abrupt recollection of Day 1; for a day that started at 4:40am I’m running on pure adrenalin right now! (I’ll add some photos in later, I promise).

I had great flights and really excellent luck at both airports (Chicago in particular, where I walked off the plane, got to the baggage claim just as my bag rounded the carousel, and was through security again all within 15 minutes!) and other than a pretty boring layover in Chicago (note to airports: not offering free wifi is lame. Don’t be lame) travel today was some of the easiest I’ve experienced (knock on wood the same goes for the return trip).

After arriving in Orlando I met up with a few fellow BugShotters and met with my carpool pals for the drive to Archbold Biological Station. After a brief orientation we had some free time to start exploring around the station. The scrub habitat surrounding Archbold is fascinating, with lots of sand, palmetto and even some cacti, all of which I’m sure I’ll become more closely acquainted with by the time the weekend is over. The enthusiasm of the participants was off the charts, with everyone sharing a smile as they scoured the area for anything with 6 or 8 legs.

Dinner was great (steak, brisket and fixin’s) and afterwards Alex, Thomas and John each shared their 5 Top Tips for insect photography. So as not to spoil any future attendee’s experience, I’ll only share the top tip from each that resonated the most with me:

John – Support, Support, Support! He apparently changed this from last year’s Tripod, Tripod, Tripod! to better encompass other forms of stabilization, but it’s a very good point and certainly one of the more difficult aspects of macrophotography.

Thomas (who must be the most modest person ever) – Be persistent and keep taking photos (good things come with volume). Yep, pretty well sums it up.

Alex – Know your subject. Knowing how an insect is going to react, or where it can be found in the first place is one of the most important aspects of insect photography. If you can anticipate an insects behaviour, you stand a better chance of making a good image.

After this first session we all grabbed our gear and explored in the dark. Other than getting munched by a huge number of mosquitoes (who apparently have an ankle affinity) there was a nice diversity of insects out and about for everyone to get started photographing!

Sorry, some sketchy wifi confounded my attempt to post this late last night. Hopefully today’s post will be up later today, with photos!

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Spring Peepers: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

 Biology, Natural History, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized  11 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

This past week saw some unseasonably AWESOME weather around Southern Ontario, allowing me to break out the shorts and sandals nice and early. Better yet, our local fauna has started to emerge from their winter hiding places, with flies buzzing, ants battling, and frogs calling!

Thursday evening I went out to a local conservation area with a few of my labmates in search of the early indicators of vernal vertebrate life: spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer). It wasn’t long until we heard the high pitched squeaks of males calling throughout a small pond, so we donned waders and headed in to the water! Of course, just because you can hear the males doesn’t mean their easy to find, especially in a mucky-bottomed pond hiding logs just waiting to drag you (and your photo gear) into the depths, and among clumps of reeds forming perfect hiding places & bandshells for their performances. Add to that dozens, if not hundreds, of calling frogs, and you have an ear-splitting distraction which makes it difficult to hone in on a single individual!

Eventually I did find a male who was out in the open and doing his best to seduce any potential mates in the area. While being in the open made it easy for me to see and photograph him, it also made it easy for him to see me coming, causing him to stop calling as soon as I crawled in close for a photo. With some patience, a better angle, and some interesting body contortions, I finally got a few photos I was happy with.

Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)? More like Spring Peeker

Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)? More like Spring Peeker...

 

Why you no call for me Spring Peeper?

Why you no call for me Spring Peeper?

 

Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) in mid call

Success! Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) in mid call

Presumably this male will eventually find himself a mate, hold on tight and contribute his spawn to the pond ecosystem. Perhaps one day his progeny will emerge as tiny froglets, like this young’un I found in Maryland a few summers back.

Spring Peeper froglet dealing with the jungle of a lawn!

Spring Peeper froglet dealing with the jungle of a lawn!

Funny story to finish off; when I got home Thursday evening I posted to Twitter:

 

It was a good lesson in word choice, as I had several followers asking why I wanted to hurt these innocent little frogs or what caliber firearm I was using… Oops! Rest assured that no spring peepers were harmed in the production of this blog post!

Ent-o-Lantern 2008

 Cool Science, Fun Stuff, Insects, Life as a Grad Student, Uncategorized  1 Response »
Oct 272010
 

Having found success with our jumping spider, we ventured further into the realm of morphological correctness, and constructed an ode to our advisor, Dr. Steve Marshall:

Sphaeroceridae Pumpkin Carving Jack-o-Lantern Fly Insect

Photo courtesy of Matt Bergeron

This lovely creature is a morphologically correct Sphaerocerid fly, right down to wing venation and the square rear basitarsus (hard to see in this picture, but it’s there, trust me). I was working in Ottawa at the time so I can’t claim any credit for this, but I believe it was another 8+ hours of work between 3-4 grad students. The sculptors incorporated a range of materials, including a wire frame for leg and head support, toothpicks for bristles and tarsal claws, and popsicle stick wing veins. As per the jumping spider, we use fiberoptic microscope lights to illuminate our creations (the silver tubes sticking out from below the head). Unfortunately there are no images of the fly lit up, but I hear it was pretty spectacular!

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 12 – International Congress of Dipterology & Scratchpad

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 142010
 

Today’s the final day of the congress, and I’ll certainly miss the full days of fly talks. It’s been a much different atmosphere here than at the other entomological meetings as everyone is focused on flies. There were no periods where I was fading in and out of focus, or times where I sat outside wasting time during a few hours of IPM talks (sorry to those that work in IPM, just not my thing). This is probably why I was so drained everyday, from the constant intellectual stimulation of keeping up with all these different families of flies. Most of the methods are the same, but keeping track of the proposed relationships and how they may or may not have differed from previous hypotheses can take its toll. The sheer volume of work being discussed at this meeting was amazing, although there were some areas of the tree of life missing any taxonomic respect. Despite three full day symposia on the lower Brachycera (Syrphoidea, Tabanomorpha, Stratiomyomorpha, Empidoidea, etc) there were only a handful of talks on the systematics of the Acalyptratae, with the symposium devoted to them made up of 7 talks by 6 systematists (I gave 2 of the talks). Considering how hyper-diverse the acalyptrates are (a point made this morning by several of the higher-level systematics speakers) and the absolutely amazing morphological diversity within the (paraphyletic) group, its surprising how few people have decided to work on them. Sure they’re small, hard to see, hard to collect, and full of undescribed species that need attention, but the available niches for new students or researchers are limitless. Perhaps there are a number of acalyptrate workers who decided not to make the journey to Costa Rica this year, but of all the locations for a major international congress I’d think that a place where you can bookend your trip with a few days of collecting in some diverse habitats (as we are) would be all the impetus required to get people out of their collections and into the world. Maybe I’m still naïve.

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