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Stupidity is the mother of invention

By Dr. Terry Wheeler, Director of the Lyman Entomological Museum, McGill University

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Warning: the following post contains content that makes a university professor and museum director look a bit ridiculous. Readers who wish to cling to the fiction that University Professors are smart, infallible and wise may find this post unsettling.

“Do you have everything?” A logical and reasonable question from The Students as The Professor exits his hotel room in the morning, several bags in hand. Some Students may consider such a question presumptuous, but it’s good to run through these little mental checklists.

Lesson #1 (for Students and Assistants): “Do you have everything?” may be a little too broad a question. A series of questions identifying particular individual items of necessary field equipment might be better. In this case, for example, a question along the lines of “Do you have the sweep net handles?” might have saved much subsequent humiliation and hilarity.

Lesson #2 (for Professors): Pack the gear the night before AND get enough sleep!

We jumped in The Vehicle and headed south for a long day of collecting in the dry prairies of southeastern Alberta. We had our sights set on a few promising collecting spots and it was a sunny day. After an hour or so of driving we arrived at the first site and The Professor disgorged the contents of the several bags as The Students waited to begin doing science. “Where are the net handles?” asked both Students, almost simultaneously. “Well,” replied The Professor “obviously they’re in the $#%#$ hotel in my &#@% red duffel bag.”

Lesson #3 (for Students and Assistants): Do not be afraid to laugh at a Professor, especially when they deserve it.

Lesson #4 (for Professors and Aspiring Professors): You can’t afford to take yourself too seriously. Things happen and people will laugh at you. Pretend you’ve just told a wickedly funny joke. I find that helps.

So, not relishing a long drive back to the hotel in the prairie heat, The Professor was forced to improvise, which he did in a rather unspectacular way, and the Short-Handled Shortgrass-Prairie Sweep Net (SHSPSN) was born.

The short-handled shortgrass-prairie sweep-net, ready for deployment. (Photo by T. Wheeler)

Some readers will recognize the SHSPSN as reminiscent of a short-handled folding insect net commonly referred to as a “National Park Special”, a net that folds up compactly and is easily concealed in a pocket for . . . well . . . ummm . . . inclement weather and increased mobility and the like. In our case (we were not in a National Park or other similarly protected area), the short handle worked quite well to keep us low and out of the high wind blowing across the site. Of course, the actual process of sweeping required a slightly modified stance compared to regular sweeping.

Anna demonstrating excellent SHSPSN technique. Her back will be fine. (Photo by T. Wheeler)

In the end, we collected (very successfully!) at four good sites that day with our lightweight, compact SHSPSN’s. Fortunately, we encountered no other Entomologists (especially Lepidopterists, with their penchant for freakishly long-handled nets) who could have taken advantage of our predicament and heaped ridicule upon us, especially The Professor.

And the next morning, when The Professor emerged from his room, well-rested and laden with several bags, The Students greeted him with a hearty “Do you have the net handles?” and it didn’t sound sarcastic AT ALL.

Lesson #5 (for Students and Assistants): Sooner or later, every Professor is going to do something dumb. Take joy in such magical moments. They are the times that make The Professor appear slightly less than superhuman. It helps to have a camera handy for the more spectacular times. Such photos make great content for retirement celebrations or department Christmas parties.

Lesson #6 (for Professors): The great thing about tenure is that you can actually get away with a lot of really dumb stuff. Just don’t lose any Students in the field – there’s a lot of paperwork involved. I find keeping the numbers low and giving each of them a distinct name helps. Take attendance a lot. Especially at airports.

And if anyone would like plans for making their very own SHSPSN, please contact The Professor.

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The original post can be found on Dr. Wheeler’s blog, here: http://lymanmuseum.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/stupidity-is-the-mother-of-invention/

We’d love to hear about other people’s (mis-)adventures in the field! Please feel free to send your stories and pictures to EntSocCanada@gmail.com

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Dufourea bee on flower
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CJAI #20 – Dufourea (Apoidea: Halictidae) of Canada

pcyu_logo

By Sheila Dumesh, entomology research assistant at York University.

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My interest in bees was ignited in 2007, when I took a biodiversity course in my last year as an undergraduate student at York University in Toronto.  The course instructor was the well-known melittologist, Laurence Packer, and, although I had not met him before, I had heard many good things.  Laurence’s affection for bees was inspiring, not only to me, but to others in the past and many more to come.  He was so fascinated by these cute and fuzzy insects (at the time, I did not see myself describing them as such).  Even though he had been studying bees for decades, the look of excitement on his face never faded when collected and examined them.  Back then, my knowledge of bees was very limited.  I was unaware of their diversity, importance, and great beauty!

I began with an Honours thesis under Laurence’s supervision in the “bee lab” at York University.  I was keen on taxonomy and began a systematic study on a Central American bee genus, Mexalictus.  For my Master’s thesis, I chose to continue that work and complete a revision of Mexalictus, which included descriptions for 20 new species, an illustrated key, and a phylogenetic analysis.  I conducted my field work in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, where I sampled in high elevation cloud forests (the known habitat of Mexalictus).  As these species are quite rare, I did not always have the pleasure of finding them; although this was somewhat upsetting, I was amazed by the bee (and general insect) diversity in that part of the world.  I was aware of it, but being out in the field in those countries was a truly amazing experience.  Just the change in habitat and species make-up along a small sector of the elevation gradient was incredible to witness!

Dufourea bee on flower

Dufourea sp. – Photo by Sheila Dumesh

Throughout my time as a Master’s student, I studied other groups of bees and collaborated with others in our lab.  One such project is the revision of the Canadian species in the genus Dufourea (Apoidea: Halictidae), which I undertook with Cory Sheffield and recently published in the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification.  There are eight species in Canada, but some were described from only one sex, the descriptions were written by several authors in different publications, and a key to identify these species was previously unavailable!  These bees are also floral specialists, meaning they visit specific flowers (usually a genus or family).  Cory and I set out to revise this group and provide all of this information in one paper.  The identification key is user-friendly and illustrates the characters mentioned in the key couplets to aid the user.  We also constructed species pages, which include full descriptions, important features, distribution maps, and images of each species.

We are striving towards creating many more illustrated (and web-based) keys to facilitate bee identification.  I am very excited to have this work freely available and hope that it is found useful by others in the community!

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Dumesh, S. & Sheffield, C.S. (2012). Bees of the Genus Dufourea Lepeletier (Hymenoptera: Halictidae: Rophitinae) of Canada, Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification, 20 DOI: 10.3752/cjai.2012.20

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Pollenia griseotomentosa Calliphoridae Cluster fly
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CJAI #19 – Cluster flies of North America

Pollenia rudis Face

Pollenia rudis

By Adam Jewiss-Gaines,  a research assistant at Brock University.

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When people ask me what the heck a calliphorid is (often after I have mentioned the family name and am being gawked at as if I’m crazy), I usually remark “You know those shiny flies you often see flying around in the spring and summer?”  This isn’t technically 100% accurate since the genus Pollenia, one of the most commonly encountered genera of the family, is in fact non-reflective and grey.  Upon closer inspection, a keen eye can also observe varying amounts of wrinkled, yellow hairs on the thorax.  These two qualities distinguish Pollenia from other blow flies throughout North America.  Despite being a little dull when compared to their more eye-catching iridescent relatives, Pollenia are ecologically important insects as they aid in plant pollination and the processing of various biomaterials.

Pollenia often become particularly active during the spring and summer months once the temperature warms up, although they can occasionally be spotted indoors in the wintertime on a warmer day.  With a sudden onslaught of large, grey insects flying around when the snow begins to melt, it comes as no surprise that people tend to get irritated with them and consider them pests.  Oftentimes they are mistaken as houseflies (Family Muscidae) causing Pollenia species to be labeled as potential food contaminators, but this is not the case.  These insects are also particularly well-known for their clustering behaviour on walls, earning them their common name: cluster flies.

Even though Pollenia are extremely common, their general biology is largely unknown with a few exceptional details. It is known that larval Pollenia are parasites on various other organisms, such as maggots and worms. For example, Rognes (1991) noted that Pollenia pediculata, one of the most common species found throughout the continent, is a parasite of the earthworm species Eisenia rosea. Aside from this little tidbit however, specific information regarding the life cycles of Pollenia species is relatively scarce and further studies in this particular field would greatly improve our knowledge of the genus.

Pollenia griseotomentosa Calliphoridae Cluster fly

Pollenia griseotomentosa

Until very recently it has been thought that all Pollenia found in North America were the same species (Pollenia rudis), but after examining various collections throughout the world, Knut Rognes found that six members of the genus occur throughout the region.  Terry Whitworth adapted much of Rognes’ work shortly thereafter into a nice, clean, simple identification key for North America. With accurate images and photography, however, characters could be even easier to distinguish and observe when one is able to compare a photograph to the creature they have under their microscope.

Therefore, to further expand on Terry’s key and clarify important visual characters, I collaborated with him and Dr. Steve Marshall to create a fully-illustrated digital key for distinguishing the six North American Pollenia species from one another.  Now published in the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification, Cluster Flies of North America couples high-resolution images of important traits with a clean and simple interface to create a handy tool to be used by entomologists and non-entomologists alike. If you are relying on this key for identification, it is recommended to use physical specimens of Pollenia rather than images or photos, since even the best of hand-photographs have difficulty capturing key features. In addition, distribution maps are provided for each species, constructed from locality data of specimens from the University of Guelph Insect Collection and Terry Whitworth’s personal collection of Pollenia.

Creating this key has been a great opportunity, and I hope the entomological community is able to make good use of it. My sincere thanks go out to Steve Marshall, Terry Whitworth, the editors, and my labmates and friends for all of their support.

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Jewiss-Gaines, A., Marshall, S.A. & Whitworth, T.L. (2012). Cluster flies (Calliphoridae: Polleniinae: Pollenia) of North America, Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification, 19 DOI: 10.3752/cjai.2012.19

Rognes, K. 1991. Blowflies (Diptera, Calliphoridae) of Fennoscandia and Denmark. Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica Vol. 24.

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Respect your specimens

By Crystal Ernst, PhD Candidate (McGill University)

Since I finally submitted my manuscript to a journal (YAY!), I’ve been tying up the little loose ends remaining at the end of the project. You know: organizing the useful data and image files, tossing the files marked “MESSING_AROUND_WITH_DATA_v.29), tidying up my R code, and, perhaps most importantly, curating my specimens.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the project here (I’m saving that for another post). I will say, though, that the work I just completed includes just over 2,600 beetles from a single location in Nunavut (Kugluktuk, where I spent my entire first field season).

Two major aspects of the physical work (as opposed to the thinking, reading and writing) involved in an ecological/entomological project such as this one are the pinning and the identifications. Some of the tasks are a bit tedious (cutting labels; entering data; gluing over 800 specimens of the same tiny, plain black ground beetle to paper points), and some of them are thrilling (finally getting over the “hump” of the morphological learning curve and feeling good and confident when working with your keys; having experts tell you “Yep, you got those all right”; discovering rare species or new regional species records). In the end, in addition to the published (*knocks on wood*) paper, you have boxes or drawers full of specimens.

The specimens are gold. (Read this post by Dr. Terry Wheeler to understand why.)

Unfortunately, they don’t always get treated as such.

In the two-ish years that I’ve been working in my lab, we’ve had two major “lab clean-up days”. The first managed to get rid of a lot of clutter (old papers, broken apparatus, random crap). The second involved going through the “stuff” that was eating up all the most valuable storage space: specimens. Years and years worth of graduate and undergraduate projects’ specimens, stashed in freezers, boxes, bags and vials of all shapes and sizes.

Some things were in good shape (pinned well, or in clear ethanol). Other things were, well, downright nasty: gooey beetles in sludgy brown ethanol, dried up bits of moth wings in plastic containers, and a little bit of “what in the name of pearl is growing on that agar plate???” in the fridge.

None of these items were kept – their value as useful specimens was nil. So, the physical representation of some student’s work – probably months or years worth of work – was tossed in the trash.

Others, happily, were tucked back into drawers and cupboards, because someone had taken the time to ensure the specimens were well-preserved.

However, even many of these were suffering from a serious issue: bad labels.

Allow me to illustrate the point. This is a bad label:

This is also a bad label:

The first, you’ll note, is written in ballpoint pen (which fades) on a torn piece of notebook paper and contains almost no information. The second, although it looks fancier and perhaps more sciencey, is just as bad: it contains a cryptic code that is useful only to the bearer of the lab notebook in which said code has been written down. Or, perhaps the code is completely intelligible to the researcher who developed it, but the key to it exists only in his or her head.

To everyone else, it is meaningless. Neither of these labels indicate who collected the specimen, where, when, or how. And we all know what happens in labs: upon completion of their degrees, students move on, email addresses change, notebooks are misplaced, data files are not backed up. The labels’ codes can never be broken, and the scientific value of the specimens – *poof*.

While there’s nothing wrong, in theory, with using labels like these temporarily (although there is always a risk that they will be misinterpreted or misunderstood after a little while, even by the person who wrote them), they are absolutely useless as permanent records.

These are good labels:

These labels, properly affixed to a specimen, provide clear and universally understood information. One provides the location, including GPS coordinates, a method of collection, a date, the name of the collector(s). The information that goes on this label can vary a bit (it may include information about the habitat or host plant, for example), but those are the basic requirements. The smaller label is typically affixed on the pin below the first, and contains the specimen’s scientific name and the name of the person who identified it (it is the “det. label”, i.e., “determined by”). These labels, and therefore the specimen with which they are associated, will remain useful for decades, even centuries.

I am totally guilty of both of the offenses I just explained (the gooky vials of nastiness and the bad labels). For my undergraduate honors project, I identified close to 8000 spiders, mites and insects to the Family level – it was hundreds of hours of microscope work. Then I stuffed all those specimens back into vials with cryptic little codes, like V-1-F(!), hand-written on STICKERS(!), which I placed on the LIDS(!) and not even in the vials themselves(!). Oh, and I’ve long since lost the notebook that contained my decoder key(!). THIS IS ALL SO BAD. I have no doubt that those boxes of vials, which I once prized so highly and felt such pride for, have been unceremoniously tossed in the trash by my former advisor.

Well, I’ve learned from my mistakes, and from working with museum and other collection specimens. I now understand that each specimen is deserving of respect – it’s the original data after all – and that means it should be properly preserved, and labelled.

So.

Last week I spent a great deal of time, as I said, tying up my loose ends. The last thing I needed to do was remove my cryptic labels (the second in the series up there is an actual example of one of my own “secret code” labels) and replace them with proper ones, sorting and tidying up the collection in the process. The end result?

This:

Frankly, it’s a thing of beauty. It’s also enormously scientifically valuable. These specimens will be deposited in various nationally-important collections and museums, like the CNC.

As a matter of fact, just last week I was at the CNC, and I saw specimens bearing the name of the last person to do a comprehensive survey of the insects in Kugluktuk, back in 1955. That tiny but so-important label suddenly made me feel connected to the man who, almost 60 years earlier, had stood on the same stretch of tundra as me, holding and perhaps delighting in the very specimen that I held in my own hand.

Giving my specimens the respect they deserve is worth it, not only for the scientific value, but also because perhaps, 60 years from now, another grad student will discover my name on a specimen’s det. label. Perhaps she, too, will feel that same wondrous sense of connection to the the greater scheme of scientific discovery…

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Original post at: http://thebuggeek.com/2012/06/25/respect-your-specimens/

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Stick Insect Baculum extradentatum
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Physiology Friday – Nitric oxide causes a sticky situation

Physiology Friday is a monthly column by UWO PhD candidate Katie Marshall and will feature new Canadian research on insect physiology.

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Nitric oxide (NO) is usually overshadowed in fame by its more famous cousin laughing gas, but it’s difficult to think of many simple molecules that have such a variety of important biological functions.  While NO only lasts a few seconds in the free gaseous state in the blood, it has been implicated in processes that involve everything from immune function to neurotransmission.  One important role for NO is in the cardiac system, where it functions as a vasodilator and in vertebrates it slows heart rate, while in insects it has the opposite effect.

Stick Insect Baculum extradentatum

Baculum extradentatum photo by Sara da Silva

Most of the research about the physiological functions of NO has focused on vertebrates, but recent work published in the journal of Cellular Signalling by graduate student Sara da Silva and her postdoctoral fellow mentor Rosa da Silva in the lab of Angela Lange (University of Toronto Mississauga), has shown that, unlike other insects, the Vietnamese stick insect Baculum extradentatum can respond to NO like a vertebrate.

“Our initial research interests in cardiac physiology were influenced by earlier work indicating that stick insect hearts are innervated and can be modulated by endogenous chemicals [like NO],” says study director and University of Toronto Biology professor Angela Lange.  “It is for this reason that we chose this understudied organism, which contains a simplified cardiovascular system that can be considered a model for work on other cardiac systems.”

The researchers first attempted to find the natural source of NO in the stick insect by removing hemolymph (blood) samples and staining for the presence of an enzyme that produces NO.  Then they examined the effects of NO on heart rate by dissecting the dorsal vessel out and maintaining it in a Petri dish with physiological saline.  They could measure heart rate through the placement of electrodes on either side of the dissected heart, and monitor the effects of various chemicals on the cardiac activity of the stick insect.   They also could examine whether heart rate was mediated by the central nervous system by leaving the nervous system attached or not.

insect heart rate

The effects of nitric oxide on the heart rate of B. extradentatum. Figure 3 from da Silva et al. 2012

They found that the hemocytes (blood cells) of the stick insect were producing an enzyme that was similar to the enzyme other animals use to produce NO.  In addition, the more of a chemical called MAHMA-NONOate (which produces NO) they added, the slower the stick insect hearts beat.  This surprising effect was completely opposite to what had been found in other insects and was more like the response of the vertebrate heart.

“Insects have evolved different strategies depending upon life history, and have co-opted different messenger systems for this success,” says study author da Silva. “We need to understand the full ecology of all species to finally appreciate the factors involved.”

Using the same setup, they also tested other components of a system of compounds that they thought might be involved in the pathway that produces NO that leads to decreased heart rate in B. extradentatum.  They believe that NO is produced in the hemocytes, travels to the wall of the heart, and then leads to the production of a messenger molecule that decreases heart rate.

Schematic diagram of the proposed regulation of cardiac activity in B. extradentatum by the gaseous signaling molecule, nitric oxide (NO)

Schematic diagram of the proposed regulation of cardiac activity in B. extradentatum by the gaseous signaling molecule, nitric oxide (NO). Figure 7 from da Silva et al. 2012.

“This study further emphasizes the evolutionary links between the physiological processes of vertebrate and invertebrate systems,” says da Silva. “Our findings suggest that signaling molecules (such as NO) common to both types of organisms can have similar effects on cardiac activity.  These novel findings demonstrate that the study of vertebrate systems can be complemented with studies in model invertebrate organisms.”

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da Silva, R., da Silva, S.R. & Lange, A.B. (2012). The regulation of cardiac activity by nitric oxide (NO) in the Vietnamese stick insect, Baculum extradentatum, Cellular Signalling, 24 (6) 1350. DOI: 10.1016/j.cellsig.2012.01.010

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