Sep 082012
 

Well look at that, I’m actually getting a Flypaper out on back-to-back weekends! That means this one is pretty short, but with the semester just starting, that means you’ll still have plenty of time for homework/grading/lesson prep! OK,  that’s not really a great alternative, sorry.

General Entomology

DEET: good for keeping mosquitoes away, bad for mixing in your drink. The tragic story of two Canadian tourists in Thailand.

A new IUCN report suggests 20% of invertebrates are at risk of extinction. Holy crap.

Wolbachia is a strange bacteria that makes insects do crazy things, like eat their own brains.

Do you know what the label around the neck of a ketchup bottle is for? The answer will probably surprise you.

I could probably include every post by Piotr Naskrecki in these weekly roundups because his writing and photos are so damn good, but I’ll keep it to just these two this week; The benefits of constant rain & Leaf-eating Leaves.

Continue reading »

Sep 012012
 

September 1, 2012. Can anyone explain to me where the summer has gone? It feels like just yesterday that the snow was melting and I had grand plans of exploration, doable to-do lists to do, and plenty of time to enjoy the summer, but now BugShot is finished, a new crop of undergrads are moving into the University of Guelph residences, and the fall entomology conference circuit is quickly upon us!

Good thing I can bank on the Bug-o-sphere to keep the summer flowing throughout the year.

Continue reading »

Aug 182012
 

Back in April, Bug Girl found a trailer for a movie that looks amazing, “Eega”. The movie is about a man who is murdered while protecting his girlfriend from the bad guy and is reincarnated as a house fly to seek revenge! AMAZING. Well, I think that’s what the movie is about because it’s in Telugu, a language unique to southern India, and there weren’t any subtitles. I’ve added the trailer at the bottom of this post because I don’t think I shared it at the time, and honestly more people need to see it.

Then last week, Ani (of Wanderer’s Eye) sent me an email:

It is with great delight that I’m sharing this story with you. Telugu (an Indian language), and Southern India (known to make unique (read bizarre) movies, made a movie a few months ago. It is called Eega (Telugu word for House Fly). The story goes like this: A guy falls in love with a girl. But a gangster likes her too, and has the boy killed, who is then reborn as a fly (M. domestica), and seeks revenge on the villains. More on this movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eega

The first thing that came to my mind was to share this story with you. Please see the attached image.

Really, flies are taking over the world. The whole of the world looks upon other arthropods as a means of destroying the world – but not the flies! Isn’t this the most best means to spread awareness?!

And the best part? He sent a picture of the movie poster he found in Hyderabad (a city in central India)!

 

Eega poster in Hyderaguda – Photo by Aniruddha Dhamorikar

Thanks for sharing your find Ani! If anyone happens to find a copy of this movie with or without English subtitles, let me know because I’d love to see it!

Now, on to some linky goodness! Continue reading »

Aug 042012
 

Perhaps I should have named this The Biweekly Flypaper since it seems summer activities are conspiring against me, but hopefully I can get back on track soon.

(Inter)National Moth Week (NMW)

I don’t know if you noticed, but the Bug-osphere took (Inter)National Moth Week by storm and scaled new heights with their mothy contributions! Here’s but a sampling of the moth-related postings from my fellow bug bloggers.

A Bug Blog talked about a bat-sensing moth, as did the group behind the Audubon Field Guides.

OMAFRA’s Field Crop News explained how you can recognize butterfly and moth damage in your soybeans and corn crops.

The Bug Geek started off with some of her unidentified moths, and ended with a moth with a special surprise.

The Home Bug Gardeners posted some great moths all week, and eventually found themselves as new moth-er enthusiasts.

The National Moth Week team had a whole suite of great posts during the week, as well as showing off some cool moth sidewalk art spotted in Ottawa.

Itsy Bitsy Beetle found a little moth street art of her own on a wall in Berkeley California.

Brian Cutting showed off some of his tropical moth photos and ended Moth Week with a bang!

Bug Eric’s Wasp Wednesday turned into Not Actually a Wasp Wednesday in honour of NMW.

Matt “the Biology Geek” Bergeron got ambitious and took on the micro moths.

The Dragonfly Woman fought the elements to share moths with the public at an official event at her new job.

And of course CaterpillarBlog joined in on the fun attending a mothing event organized by her and her lab mates. Continue reading »

Jul 212012
 

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:

Now onto the rest of the best from the last 2 weeks!

General Entomology

If you ever need a gift idea for the Dragonfly Woman, she’s got a nice wishlist of field guides that any nature nut would appreciate.

Speaking of gifts, we’re right in the midst of wedding season, and if you need nuptial gift ideas, why not take a page out of the insect world.

Erica McAlister, the Diptera curator at the Natural History Museum, London, takes you on a backstage tour of the NHM insect collection and shows off some spectacular specimens, including a grasshopper hugging a mouse. Seriously.

What’s the biggest bug? The North Carolina State University Insect Collection has a couple of options to answer that.

Entomology is a hobby all unto its own for some people, but it also happens to be a sub-hobby for some fly fisherman!

My wife and I had a date night this week and went to see The Amazing Spider-Man. I really enjoyed it, but was a little disappointed that Peter Parker didn’t snack on a fly or two at some point in the movie. Even if you’re not an arachnid-infused superhero, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t consider eating bugs as Doug Yanega explains to the University of California Food Blog. The Weird Bug Lady even has a tasty sounding recipe for entomological power bars to get you started!

Flies – Diptera

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.

Brian Brown is having a pretty good month for publications, with his latest discussing phorid flies which are parasites of endangered ants.

Researchers have bred “super” smart fruit flies which can count. I for one, welcome our new Dipteran overlords.

Black flies take the majority of bad press for Northern pests, but don’t forget to watch out for moose flies while in Alaska.

Robber flies are popular with a lot of people, including devoted beetler Ted MacRae. And with their own special facial hair, the mystax, it’s no wonder.

The Geek demonstrates that sometimes when you’re photographing flies, you’re only able to snipe one photo before they take off.

Beetles – Coleoptera

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.

Cerceris fumipennis is also a useful tool for collecting other jewel beetles besides EAB as Ted MacRae recently found out.

Of course you don’t need to always rely on other species to find your jewel beetles for you, as the Geek reminds us to always look.

Some people can be picky eaters,  but the same holds true for dung beetles, with species preferring different types of brown sauce, and Bug Girl is on it.

Why might it matter what type of dung a beetle prefers? Because places like Australia and New Zealand don’t have any native dung beetles, making agricultural waste a significant problem. Becky Crew has a nice feature on the work being done to bring dung beetles to New Zealand.

Not all scarab beetles like to feed on dung though, like these Green June Beetles that Derek Hennen found in his yard.

With summer comes the opportunity to watch fireflies flashing in the night. Check out this nice flash guide to see if you can recognize any of the species in your backyard, and contribute to a citizen science program.

Ants, Bees & Wasps – Hymenoptera

This photo of a flying bumblebee by Adrian Thysse might be the best of it’s kind that I’ve ever seen.

The Gratton Lab at the University of Wisconsin – Madison is working on an automated bee identification project.

Urban beekeepers in Edmonton are pushing for changes to bylaws that keep their hives in hiding.

Meanwhile in Edmonton, Matthias Buck has discovered 2 new species of paper wasps right under our noses.

The School of Ants is holding a student essay contest with a nice cash prize.

Eric Eaton shows that solitary wasps can be used for monitoring other insects, like stink bugs (potentially including the mega-pest Brown Marmorated Stink Bug) or membracids.

Moths & Butterflies – Lepidoptera

National Moth Week is coming up this week, so expect most of the bug-blogosphere to get a little scaley!

The Dragonfly Woman started a little earlier by announcing an event she’s helping with at her new job.

Other Insect Orders

Troy Bartlett thinks ants mite do a better job of taking care of their herds of membracids.

Ever wondered why your car attracts some insects like dragonflies and horse flies? The Dragonfly Woman has a great explanation.

It looks like the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is becoming ground zero for mantid research in North America.

The Neuroptera are an amazing group of insects with incredible diversity. Jonathan Wojcik provides a nice overview of that diversity, and introduced me to an amazing group called the Spoonwings (family Nemopteridae). Brian Cutting showed off a member of another one of my favourite groups, the Mantis flies, while Derek Hennen found a spectacular antlion adult.

Spiders – Arachnida

“Oh look at that lovely lady beetle! It looks so cute and cuddly and OH MY GOD!!!”

Next time I go to Chicago, I’m definitely rewarding the Chicago Hilton with my business for being so awesome with their natural history and outreach!

I hate when I get a spider web across my face while out walking in the woods, but I think I might have to learn more about spiders and their webbing from a book Bug Girl recently reviewed, Spider Silk by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig.

Now if all spiders lived among the canopy of trees like this Hentzia mitrata that Chris Buddle and colleagues are studying, then I wouldn’t have to worry about silk wrapping my face…

Speaking of Chris, he went, he saw, he videoed; Beringian pseudoscorpions in the Yukon that is!

Taxonomy & Systematics

A parasitic isopod was recently described and named after Bob Marley. Too bad the authors messed up and published the name a few months earlier in an ecological paper before formally describing it. Everybody repeat after me — in taxonomy, the order in which you publish or publicize MATTERS.

Of course, because this species was named after somebody famous, the media took off with it and the BBC published a top 10 list of what I’m now going to start calling “Celebronyms”. Have I mentioned how much I hate these top 10 species lists lately? Because I do. With a passion. Ugh.

Where should money be invested to solve the taxonomic impediment? Quentin Wheeler of Arizona State University thinks technology leads the way (i.e. the University of Arizona’s new funding to revitalize and digitize their collection), while Bob Mesibov of the Queen Victoria Museum (Tasmania) argues that more taxonomists need to be hired first. Me? I think technology will be useless if there’s no one around to develop, maintain and actually use it. I’ll also need a job in 3-5 years, so I might be a bit biased here.

The Willi Hennig Society Meeting was held at the end of June, and Itsy Bitsy attended. So did Salva at Computer Cladistics, who has a fantastic detailed review of the conference.

Kevin Peterson is literally uprooting the mammal phylogeny with a new technique he’s developed. My question is what makes this new technique more accurate to the true evolutionary history of the mammals? Micro-RNA is also being used to study Diptera evolution, but I can’t understand why it’s considered more “accurate”. It’s a wonder I get any sleep at all with these types of questions rolling around in my head…

Does the way that we traditionally draw and think of phylogenies (i.e. a “tree” of life) block us from considering new ideas on relationships?

Academia

My post on Citations, Social Media & Science gathered some attention last week, including that of the researcher who’s improperly cited blog started the whole discussion. The author of the paper also stopped by and explained they tried to include the citation, but the publisher wouldn’t allow a blog to be cited like a journal. I’m not really sure why a publisher has so much control over the content of a journal rather than the editorial staff of said journal, but I find it troubling.

This is pretty handy for people just starting out in academia/grad school – Field Guide to Scientific Conferences: An Ecological Review.

Also handy, this complete walkthrough by Steve Hamblin on laying out and developing a poster for a conference. Many, many good tips here for balancing form and function. It’s also a pretty interesting view inside the head of a Post-Doc…

It’s good to remember that it matters how you write in academia, not just what you write.

Science Communication & Social Media

Bora Zivkovic (aka the Blogfather) drops a massive backgrounder on the history and rise of science blogging.

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.

Here’s 10 Apps That Put Science In Your Pocket.

Dr. Olin Sander compares Twitter popularity during the recent Evolution meeting in Ottawa to a sage grouse lek. Awesome.

Photography

Ted MacRae demonstrates why the placement of your lighting sources and choice of background can have a dramatic effect on a photo’s feel.

Alex Wild has a nice flowchart of his digital darkroom workflow.

Adrian Thysse has a lovely interview with renowned nature photographer Heather Angel.

Other Fun Stuff

David Winter does a great job of explaining why red heads are here to stay. Looks like my wife won’t be getting rid of me that easily!

This fish grows ant-shaped appendages to get laid. I feel like there’s an inappropriate joke in here somewhere…

Who needs cable TV when you can get all kinds of drama & comedy from social media?

Aquaman makes a terrible marine mammal. He also makes a terrible superhero.

What would happen if a pitcher threw a baseball at 90% of the speed of light? I suspect he’d be investigated for Perfomance Enhancing Drug use and never make it into the Hall of Fame.

Video of the Week

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.

Further Reading

Bora Zivkovic – The Science Blogging Weekly, July 13th 2012 – (I made the Top 10 posts list! W00T!)

Ed Yong – Missing Links, July 14, 2012

Ed Yong – Missing Links, July 21, 2012

Jul 072012
 

Evolutionary biologists from around the world have converged on Ottawa this weekend to partake in the First Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology. Luckily for those of us who couldn’t make it, there are a ton of people tweeting about talks, the conference and evolution in general. I’ve been watching the #evol2012 hashtag all morning while writing this, and although I’m even more jealous of those that are attending the conference in person, I’m glad I can enjoy a slice of the conference through the tweets of others!

General Entomology

There was plenty of talk about national insects this week. I brought up Canada’s distinct lack of a national insect over at ESC Blog, while Brian Cutting noted how lame many of the state insects are in the US. Meanwhile, across the pond, Africa Gomez found some insects who had come out to celebrate the UK’s National Insect Week.

Charley Eiseman has a fun party trick: watch a walking stick emerge from it’s egg and then get guests to try and figure out how the hell it fit in there to begin with!

While teaching this winter, my students were equal parts horrified and fascinated when we talked about entomopathogenic nematodes. I can’t wait for them to read Ed Yong’s story about the glowing green bacteria who lend a deadly hand.

Dragonfly Woman continues to find cool stuff at her new job, including a magnificent phantom midge larva!

Unlike Gatorade, which fails to contain any actual alligator, Chapul energy bars will contain plenty of ground up crickets to help keep you jumping!

The Amazing Spider-man was released this week and looks great, but I kind of wish Peter Parker had been bitten by any of these other superpower-inducing arthropods.

Diptera

An amazing new fly was described this week by Brian Brown, and now ranks as the smaller species of fly we know of at only 0.4mm long! Brian has an excellent write up of his discovery over at flyobsession, and he also posted a bonus illustration of the fly which wasn’t in the paper.

The Geek in Question was asked what a strange looking aquatic arthropod was.

Dave Stone got up close and personal with a Diogmites robber fly.

In what was easily the most galling post of the week, Charley Eiseman explores the hickory homes of flies.

The Home Bug Gardener starts with a pretty picture of a flower fly, but soon begins an etymological exploration into the meaning behind Syritta pipiens.

Everytime Africa Gomez posts a photo of beautiful fly like this Scaeva pyrastri, it makes me more determined to get to the UK and see some of these things for myself!

And just to further established which order is truly the best:

Boo yah!

Hymenoptera

Fresh off the pixels, Siricidae of the Western Hemisphere was just published in Issue 21 of the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification. Including a number of new nomenclatural changes, new species descriptions and beautifully illustrated keys to all of the horntail wasps found in the New World, I highly recommend you check this one out as a sterling example of where taxonomic monographs are heading in the digital age.

If an ant could sneeze, I imagine it would look a little like this.

Arachnophobic statistics professor Dan Gillis discovers he’s sharing his home with mud daubers (Sphecidae) and finds himself in conflict about whether to remove his new neighbours.

Adrian Thysse has a great photo of an aphid-killer that doesn’t get much recognition.

Pretending to be a part of the pack, Takashi Komatsu exposes other interesting imposters amoung army ant raids.

Proof that even honey bees suffer from petty sibling rivaly.

Coleoptera

I’m excited to see so much entomological love at Scientific American Blogs now that Becky Crew has joined the team. Her piece on colour changing tortoise beetles is an absolute must read!

It’s that time of year again when fireflies start making yards and urban parks a veritable orgy of light displays!

A wonderful short story by Derek Niemann about a beetle attempting to climb a blade of grass.

Ted MacRae is running an ID Challenge this week with a twist!

Other Arthropod Orders

Bug Girl is in top form as she asks whether stick insects can really mate for 1400 hours.

Will the Sea Grape Flatid become a pest in the US one day? Ted MacRae worries it might, and he has some nice photos to help people keep an eye out for it.

What do dog-day cicadas and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have in common? Ask Brian Cutting.

Atlantic Canada had 3 endemic butterflies to call their own, until a keen butterfly collector in Maine went and found one of them just within state lines. Nice post by U of Guelph Diptera alum John Klymko in his new role as director of the Maritime Butterfly Atlas.

Chris Buddle is off to the Yukon in search of a neat Beringian pseudoscorpion.

Taxonomy/Academia

Kai Burington shares his thoughts on the “Do species names need to change?” thread from last week.

On Thursday, University of Wisconsin PhD candidate (and science communication proponentJacquelyn Gill defended her thesis and streamed the entire process live over the internet! She did a great job, and I really enjoyed seeing how her live-stream worked, as it’s something that I am hoping to do at the conclusion of my PhD1.

Rosie Redfield (of #ArsenicLife renown) shares some very helpful tips for coming out of your shell and connecting with other people at scientific conferences. I’m pretty bad at this sort of thing, but I’m looking forward to trying some of her tips out this fall!

Science Communication

Christie Wilcox has launched a new wiki to help scientists interested in using social media for science communication find the tool that works best for them.

Although not a scientist, Moose Peterson is a highly published wildlife & conservation photographer who regularly blogs about his work. This letter from one of his reader’s is a perfect example of the power that a blog can have in affecting people’s lives.

If you’re a grad student, you’re probably well aware of PhD Comics and their eerily accurate portrayal of grad student life. A new contest from PhD comics wants to turn YOUR THESIS into an animated comic!

Other Fun Stuff

How useful are those middle-school career aptitude tests? Marine biologist David Shiffman found his old report and puts it’s utility and advice to the test.

Apparently biodiversity ads don’t make enough to warrant inclusion by Google Ads as Chris Clarke found out.

Cuttlefish are much too clever for their own good.

This portrait of a spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) by TGIQ is absolutely stunning.

Your thesis can be a comic, but why not submit your own identity to Jason Hogle for the chance to become a character in his upcoming novel series!

In one of the most creative and touching pieces of feature journalism I’ve ever read, the Toronto Star turns up at a woman’s funeral and writes a beautiful biography of her life by interviewing her friends & family.

I leave you today with an interview that John Klymko gave to The Weather Network about record butterfly numbers in the Canadian Maritimes.

 

Further Reading

Ed Yong – Missing Links – July 7, 2012

Bora Zivkovic – Scienceblogging Weekly – July 6, 2012

—————————

1- Not sure whether I’ve explicitly mentioned this here on the blog, but I’m starting my PhD at the University of Guelph in September! Lots of work to finish up before then, but I’m really excited to become a student again. :)

Jun 262012
 

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 »

Jun 112012
 

After some not-so-gentle encouragement (ahem, Geek), I finally updated my blog list with all of the new and different blogs to which I subscribe. I can’t link to all of the great content that’s produced by the online entomological community, but I highly recommend giving each of those blogs a look to see what they’re up to!

General Entomology

If you’ve ever wished you could have seen a dragonfly with a 6′ wingspan, Ed Yong explains why birds are partly to blame. Jerky birds ruin everything.

Undoubtedly coming to a Bond movie in the near future, a new insect-inspired device can skate between oil & water.

Pretty soon we’ll be able to know whether Encino Man was science fiction or science possible, because researchers are working on making Drosophila melanogaster freeze-tolerant. Nice guest piece at the Journal of Experimental Biology by UWO’s Katie Marshall, who will be making her debut on ESC Blog later this week!

Adrian Thysse at Splendor Awaits has a super-crop challenge this week and is in knee-d of some participants. See what I did there? Yep, I’m that guy.

Diptera

Larval mosquitoes may be aquatic, but that doesn’t explain why adults aren’t obliterated and drowned after the lightest of spring showers. Turns out the actual explanation is pretty awesome.

When Dave Stone named his blog All Things Biological, he meant it. Exhibit A: signal fly sex.

The Geek found a fly close to my heart, a soldier fly!

Brigette at Caterpillar Blog is big into fitness & Crossfit, and has created a new racing event: Chrysops Cross-Country!

Hymenoptera

Well, it seems Alex Wild’s trip to Brazil was successful. In this instance, success will be measured in the level of OMG SQUEEE induced by the encyrtid wasp he found.

The USDA has begun releasing a parasitic wasp around Maryland to try and stem the spread of Emerald Ash Borer.

Brian Fisher and the AntWeb are on a world tour to photograph all the type specimens (the exact specimen that a scientific name is attached) for all ant species described and given a name. Despite the headline, which is garnering a lot of media attention, the team isn’t taking 3D photos of ants, just high-detail focus-stacked images, a technique that has been used by macro photographers for years and years. Maybe one day 3D rendered insect photos will be possible (which would be amazing), but unfortunately that day is not today.

Other Arthropod Orders

Last week featured a bunch of glowing arthropods, and now Derek Hennen has discovered millipede eggs glow too!

Apparently there was a cute bug competition this week, and Brian Cushing threw down with some nymphal stink bugs.

If you’ve ever chased a cockroach across your counter until it suddenly disappeared over the edge, scientists have figured out how they disappear. Ed Yong on fire, again.

Birds may have led to insects getting smaller, but that doesn’t mean they’re defenseless, as this mantid made clear by catching and eating a hummingbird in Panama.

Arachnida

Jumping spiders, they vant to suck your blood! But only after it passes through a mosquito! Ed Yong finishes off a trilogy of excellent posts.

So now that you’re on the lookout for vampiric spiders and their mosquito minions, Chris Buddle wants you to know that you are in fact rarely more than 3 feet from a spider.

There’s a new blog on the Scientific American block, Running Ponies by Becky Crew, and she’s off to a rolling start with some tumbling spiders & beetles.

Science Communication/Publication

Exciting news: Michel Cusson’s first post on ESC Blog was selected as an editor’s choice by the team at ResearchBlogging!

The role of science communication in academia has been gathering quite a lot of attention lately, even garnering a discussion in Nature (well, their blog, not the journal itself. Yet):

The discussion has since spilled out from Nature and into the blogosphere.

Scicurious explains why although it’d be great for more scientists to reach out and explain their work, there isn’t much of an incentive for those in academia to do so.

Kate Clancy, a pre-tenure anthropologist, picks up the outreach+tenure torch and runs with it, and provides a slice of hope care of her department review committee.

Deciding to invest time into science outreach, whether by blogging or by speaking about your passion to a group of students like Derek Hennen recently did, can certainly have benefits for future career prospects. I’ll definitely be expanding on my thoughts on the issue soon.

Ted MacRae provides some excellent advice about preparing a scientific manuscript for publication.

Finally, I leave you with two videos this week. One with hypnotizing footage of a dragonfly in flight, and the other a viral song that’s been on loop on my computer all week.

Jun 032012
 

It’s been a pretty exciting week ’round these parts, with the debut of the ESC Blog. In it’s brief 72 hour existence it has had more than 400 views already, thanks in large part to a fantastic post by ESC President Michel Cusson about parasitic wasps and their “domestication” of viral DNA to help colonize their hosts. Of course there’s been plenty of other insect information being shared around the web this week, including an inordinate number of glowing invertebrate stories…

Like a Beacon in the Night

Scorpions are one of the better known examples of UV fluorescing invertebrates, and over at Safari Ecology there’s a nice breakdown of why they might do so (plus some other interesting scorpion factoids).

Scorpions aren’t the only ones with such a fancy party trick however. While surveying for rats on Alcatraz Island (yep, that Alcatraz), a research team from UC Davis inadvertently found a common millipede species glowing around the island. For the explanation of why these millipedes glow, check out Science Friday’s excellent interview & video with University of Arizona expert Paul Marek.

During the US civil war, some injured Tennessee soldiers noticed their wounds would glow at night, and what’s more, those soldiers who’s injuries glowed were more likely to survive their injuries! Excellent story of the “Angel’s Glow” and how scientific serendipity helped explain an excellent story of insects, nematodes and commensualism.

Last but certainly not least, check out this picture of a UV-fluorescing harvestman from Ecuador! I had no idea that (some?)  Opiliones could fluoresce, but I’d love to try it out around here. Here’s a paper (open access) which discusses surverying for a harvestman species in Argentina using UV light. Anyone know where I can get a UV flashlight?

Diptera

Haddaway may have asked “What is Love“, but Floridians are starting ask where are the love bugs?

Ever wondered how to tell the difference between a male mosquito and a male midge? Dave at the Home Bug Garden has the info you need.

Brian Cutting gets some nice shots of an aphid’s worst nightmare: flower fly larvae.

Coleoptera

How much does the bite of a long-horned beetle (Cerambycidae) hurt? I don’t know, but The Bug Geek does!

Turns out that beetle elytra not only offer protection while at rest, but also provide lift while the beetle is in flight!

Ted MacRae finds a real jewel of a beetle that he hadn’t seen in quite some time.

Perhaps this post would be better classified under “Field trips that make me incredibly jealous”, but Hitoshi Takano of the Natural History Museum in London, UK is having a grand old time collecting dung beetles in Tanzania.

Science artist/illustrator Glendon Mellow has a sneak preview for a project he’s been working on recently. I’m incredibly  biased, but I can’t wait for the full announcement about that project (hint: it’s coming soon)!

Hymenoptera

I’m not sure whether plants can be turned into zombies, but I think this parasitic wasp featured by Parasite of the Day gets pretty close!

A cup of tea with a touch of honey is a pretty common remedy for a cold, but can honey bees provide us with something more powerful to fight drug-resistant bacteria?

Lepidoptera

National Moth Week is coming up at the end of July, and what better way to get prepared than to pick up Seabrooke Leckie’s new field guide to moths? Seabrooke just got back from what sounds like a really fun book tour and has started sharing stories of some of the people and moths she met. In case you want to get outside and start practicing your mothing skills, Brigette Zacharczenko at Caterpillar Blog shares how she finds moths (and other creatures of the night).

Other Arthropod Orders

Chagas disease has flown under the epidemiological radar for a long time, but new research about infection rates in the US hopes to bring it into the light.

Just when I think I’ve got insects all figured out, Ted MacRae shares a roach that can curl up into a ball and which “nurses” its young. Mind. Blown.

Arachnida

I just heard about these Spider Assassins (also known as Pelican Spiders for pretty obvious reasons), but I already want to learn more about them! Amazing observations and photos of this poorly understood group by Paul Bertner.

The Buddle Lab and its academic offspring are helping to unravel the natural history of spiders in the Arctic, and Chris shares one of their recent publications.

Taxonomy

X-Men figurines: toys, or tools for teaching species concepts & evolutionary history?

By the sounds of it, McGill dipterist Terry Wheeler has an extremely enviable and extensive book collection.

Photography

Want a cool new technique to photograph insects any time, any place? Check out these amazing light stencil photographs by TigTab, and also the tutorial on how to make stencils for yourself!

This photo wins any and all competitions related to last week’s annular solar eclipse, hands down.

 

To leave off this week, enjoy this fantastic #IAmScience video put together by the team at Story Collider:

Further Reading

Symbiartic – Science-Art Scumble

Ed Yong – Missing Links

Bora Zivkovic – The Scienceblogging Weekly

May 272012
 

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.

The Environmental Lakes Area, a world-class facility studying the affects humans and our products have on freshwater ecosystems, is being closed down.

If we’re not studying the affects of pollution on freshwater ecosystems, I guess we can still keep track of pollutants in marine environments. Wait, you mean that entire department has been cut as well? Oh. (As a slightly ironic aside, even the US media is picking this one up and questioning what the hell Canada is thinking)

Well, certainly our protected terrestrial environments will be studied and Canadian National Parks kept safe. No?! You have got to be kidding me. (It’s not only the natural history aspects of Parks Canada getting cut, it’s also our cultural history.)

Add to this the thousands of jobs cut across the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, Environment Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada, and it’s not hard to see that our current government views scientists & environmental research as an inconvenient truth (especially when they don’t tow the party line).

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?”

————

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!

Tardigrades are pretty awesome, but this plush tardigrade by the Weird Bug Lady is way beyond cute!

Ani of Wanderer’s Eye documented the insect fauna of the Northwestern Ghats in India during last year’s monsoon season, and has put together an absolutely stunning e-book/slideshow. Amazing first step to documenting the insects of this poorly studied area; a must read!

Most people are familiar with entomopathogenic fungi in agricultural or tropical ecosystems, but what about in the Arctic? Chris Buddle explains why it’s important that we start learning about it soon.

Not shocking, but enlightening: city street lighting is changing the guild ecology of arthropods.

The Dragonfly Lady has 5 possible reasons why insects are so scarce in the ocean. I tend to follow the “Crustaceans were here first” line of thinking, but some of the other hypotheses are intriguing.

I’m not sure how I hadn’t heard of this project until now, but DrawWing aims to provide insect identifications via automated wing vein comparative analysis. Here’s some more info if you’re interested.

Diptera

It must be nearly summer, the stilt-legged flies are out and about again! Nice pictures of Rainieria antennaepes by Dave Stone at Things Biological.

Debbie Hadley at About.com Insects has a fun ID challenge this week. Think you can solve it?

How many flies are too many in a public bathroom? If you’re in Beijing, apparently 3…

One day I will make it to New Zealand and observe the caves of glow worms myself. Absolutely amazing spectacle, and something I can’t wait to see.

BugGuide.net is an awesome resource for North American insect lovers, and a big reason for that is the willingness of professional taxonomists like Terry Wheeler to contribute their time and knowledge to curating submitted images.

I suppose this great interview of Mohamed Noor is more about academia and evolutionary biology, but he uses fruit flies other than Drosophila/Sophophora melanogaster so I’ll leave it here in the fly files!

Hymenoptera

Bug Girl keeps the heat on the CCD-pesticide-bee health debate.

If you think all bees live in hives and produce honey, you’d best read this excellent primer on solitary bees by Africa Gomez at BugBlog.

Coleoptera

Ted MacRae has a touching tribute to Chuck Bellamy, a world-renowned expert in jewel beetle (Buprestidae) taxonomy, and the latest honorary member of the Coleopterists Society.

A genus of jewel beetles (Melanophila) have infra-red sensing organs more sensitive to forest fires than most man-made devices. Hot stuff!

Warning: this next link contains graphic images of beetles in compromising positions. What are they doing? You’ll just have to click to find out…

Lepidoptera

A lot is said about new digital cameras and their increasingly huge megapixel counts, but BunyipCo shows off the potential for entomology that a high megapixel camera can provide.

Arachnida

Earlier this year, major bank JP Morgan Chase suffered a multi-billion dollar financial meltdown, and it was just revealed that one of the leading causes was the chief executive being out of the office for significant amounts of time while she received treatment for Lyme Disease.

Another week, another stunning photo of a spider. This time by Rick Lieder at Bug Dreams.

Taxonomy/Biodiversity

This past Thursday was Carl Linnaeus’ 305 birthday, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library has a nice biography and a special download gift to help celebrate.

Natural history collections are a wealth of information, but sometimes that information comes in poorly appreciated packages. Like bottles of bird stomach contents cared for by an entomologist.

Other Fun Stuff

Scientific illustration meets comic book hero anatomy. Wicked anatomical drawing by Glendon Mellow.

So it turns out you can perform your own backyard DNA extraction using only the ingredients you’ll find in a strawberry daiquiri served in a soapy glass…

And now for a little etymological history. Ever wonder how those naughty little four letter words came into such infamy (or retreated from it)? Or why a question mark is squiggly while an exclamation mark is straight?

Finally, check out this great video about becoming a naturalist in your own backyard by the crew at Days Edge Productions. I loved every second of it!

Further Reading

Bora Zivkovic – The Scienceblogging Weekly

Ed Yong – Missing Links