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A message from the ESC President

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The following is by Dr. Staffan Lindgren, ESC President

Christmas has come and gone and it is now closing in on the end of 2014. Most of us are busy with family and friends, and although winter seems to be spotty across the country (it is plus 3 oC in Prince George as I write this), our insect friends are mostly hibernating – at least those that don’t share our homes (like the pesky fruit flies and other small flies from my wife’s indoor worm compost I am constantly batting!) It is much more than just the end of another year for the Entomological Society of Canada, however. Over the past few years, largely in response to an increasingly challenging fiscal environment, the ESC is continuing the transitioning into a new era. Many of our colleagues have put in a lot of their time to make this happen, and I want to highlight a few of them here.

The transition started in 2011 with the move of The Canadian Entomologist from NRC Press to Cambridge University Press. This should restore TCE to its former glory, because we no longer have page charges, and colour plates are also free of charge. The hard work of former Editors-in-Chief Robb Bennett and Chris Buddle, as well as current EiC Kevin Floate and the Publications Committee made this move possible. Another big change has been our transition to the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act. I want to thank Alec McClay, whose diligence alerted us to the requirement for transitioning in a timely manner. Thanks to the invaluable help from the painstaking and detailed work by Gary Gibson and Bill Riel the ESC made a smooth transition and has been operating under this legislation for some time now. As is often the case, there are unforeseen complications with these types of bureaucratic exercises, and one of them is that we have to change the end of our fiscal year to be in compliance with the legislation.

The change that will be most tangible for members happened this fall. At the Annual General Meeting of the ESC on September 30, 2014, in Saskatoon, attending members voted unanimously in favour of contracting office and some other services to Strauss Event & Association Management. After negotiating terms, a contract was signed at the end of October, and as members of the ESC have already noted, communication with members is now handled by Strauss on behalf of the ESC. This means that we are no longer located in Ottawa, but in Winnipeg.

Over the next few months, you will see some tangible evidence of the move. It is important that we get your feedback to refine some of the new features that will be available to us. A major consequence of the change is that the headquarters building in Ottawa will be sold, which will provide some much needed capital to help us get through potential rough patches in the future. It also means that Derna Lisi, ESC’s office manager for the past eight plus years, has moved on to another job, so when you contact the ESC from now on, your first point of contact will be our partners at Strauss. In addition to the executives of the past few years (including Peter Mason, Michel Cusson, Rose DeClerck-Floate, and Rebecca Hallett), Bernie Roitberg, Scott Brooks, and Christopher Dufault among others have been instrumental in moving these issues along, and we owe them all a debt of gratitude for their efforts.

We are looking forward to continuing the traditions of the ESC into the next era, but we also hope that we can strengthen ESC. That can only be done with help from members. You can do your part by remaining a member, encouraging non-member colleagues to join, participating in meetings at the regional and national level, and volunteering for service on one of the many committees or even as a member on the Governing Board. I wish you all a wonderful 2015.

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Update from The Canadian Entomologist Editorial Board

The Editorial Board of The Canadian Entomologist (TCE) welcomes the comments that we receive from readers and authors.  We take these comments seriously and implement appropriate changes when possible.  We are pleased to announce three such changes that will further improve the speed, quality and flexibility of the service provided by TCE.

  • Simplified submission requirement.  Authors previously were required to submit papers with abstracts in both French and in English.  Although they can still do so, authors now need only submit an abstract in the language of the submitted paper; i.e., French or English.  This change eliminates delays associated with having abstracts translated, which will accelerate manuscript publication.
  • New open access option.  Although TCE has no page charges, there has always been a subscription fee.  As of 2014, authors now have the option of paying a one-time open access (OA) fee.  Payment of the OA fee makes articles freely available as soon as they are published online to anyone with internet access.
  • More content.  Elimination of page charges has increased submissions to the journal, with a consequence increase in the number of papers being accepted for publication.  In response, TCE is expanding its content by 10%.  This equates to an annual increase of 72 pages, or approximately 1-2 additional papers per issue.

In addition to the above changes, there are several other items that may be of interest.  ‘Instructions to Authors’ were revised in March of this year.  Revisions include instructions for the submission of ‘Supplementary Material’ and a link to third-party services that specialize in language editing.

You also may wish to read “Open access, predatory publishers, The Canadian Entomologist, and you”.  This article appears in the Bulletin of the ESC (Sept. 2013, p. 131), and examines issues that should be interest to anyone publishing in scientific journals.

In closing, we note that Dr. Chris Buddle (McGill University, Montreal, QC) will be completing his tenure as Editor-in-Chief this fall.  Dr. Kevin Floate (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, AB) is the incoming Editor-in-Chief.

 

We thank you, the authors and readers, for making TCE an ongoing success.

Chris Buddle

Kevin Floate

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When friends work together: The evolution of a review paper on the evolution of tree-killing in bark beetles. — TCE Editor’s Pick for 145(5)

By Dr. Chris Buddle, McGill University & Editor of The Canadian Entomologist

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This Issue’s Editor’s pick for The Canadian Entomologist is Staffan Lindgren and Ken Raffa’s paper, titled “Evolution of tree killing in bark beetles: trade-offs between the maddening crowds and a sticky situation”.  This is a key review paper that provides comprehensive and in-depth coverage of a critically important topic, especially for forest entomology in North America.  Bark beetles are often in the news because of the economic consequences of their population increases as we have seen in recent years. Behind this, however, are fascinating life history traits and a story about their tree killing habits. This is where the paper by Staffan and Ken comes into play. These two exceptional scientists have decades of experience on the topic of tree killing in bark beetles, and they bring this expertise forward with this paper.

I asked Staffan and Ken a few questions about their paper, and here are the responses:

Q1:  What inspired this work?

The scientific inspiration came from many years of reading about and studying these amazing insects. Over time, it became clear that “aggressiveness” is a relative term with respect to tree-killing beetles, because they generally appear to be very poor competitors. The same also seemed to be the case with tree-killing root diseases, so a pattern of trade-offs became apparent. Given the potent defensive capability of most conifers, the question naturally arose “why would a beetle risk its life attacking a live tree rather than utilizing a dead or dying tree?” It seemed that the answer had to be linked to trade-offs between the selection pressures exerted by competitors and host tree defenses. The inspiration to write these ideas up evolved through many years of developing a friendship with each other, and we tossed the idea around in a number of discussions we had. The opportunity to act came when the former editor of TCE, Robb Bennett, extended an invitation to submit an article as a CP Alexander Review.

Staffan (R) and Ken (L) (photo by C Raffa)

Staffan (R) and Ken (L) (photo by C Raffa)

Q2:  What do you hope will be the lasting impact of this paper?

The main objective was to put the idea out and to stimulate debate and perhaps generate new research ideas that will contribute to an increased understanding of bark beetle ecology and management. Whether or not we are proven right or wrong is really less important. Based on some feedback we have had already, it seems that the paper has had the desired effect in terms of stimulating thought. I also thought this was a great opportunity to work together on a project: we admire each other as scientist and are friends

Q3:  Where will your next line of research on this topic take you?  

We are working with another great friend of ours, Jean-Claude Grégoire, on two chapters in an upcoming book about bark beetles, so there may be some other ideas emerging from that collaboration.

Q4: Any amusing / interesting anecdotes about this research?

(from Staffan): From my perspective one of the most amusing things is that I can claim the unique experience of having Ken Raffa as a nurse. He is very good at that too, as it happens! The last time I visited him in Madison to work on this paper, I caught a bad cold. So we worked from home that week, with me intermittently resting and writing. It was embarrassing at the time, but now I find it rather amusing.

Cambridge University Press has made Staffan & Ken’s paper freely available worldwide until November 30 for being recognized as the Editor’s Pick. Thanks CUPress!

Citation:

Lindgren B.S. & Raffa K.F. (2013). Evolution of tree killing in bark beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae): trade-offs between the maddening crowds and a sticky situation, The Canadian Entomologist, 145 (05) 471-495. DOI:

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Canadian amber reveals bizarre ants from the Cretaceous – Editor’s Pick for TCE 145(4)

By Dr. Chris Buddle, McGill University & Editor of The Canadian Entomologist

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It’s with great pleasure that I announce my pick for the latest issue of The Canadian Entomologist.  Ryan McKellar and colleagues wrote a paper on a new trap-jawed ant from Canadian late Cretaceous amber (freely available during September).  As they write in the Abstract, the new species “….expands the distribution of the bizarre, exclusively Cretaceous, trap-jawed Haidomyrmecini beyond their previous records…”. They truly are bizarre! Facial structures right out of a sci-fi movie!  When reading the paper, I was also surprised that the fossil record for the Formicidae is sparse during the Cretaceous.

Haidoterminus cippus. Figure 1 from McKellar et al. 2013

I asked the lead author a few questions about this work, and am pleased to share the responses with you. It’s truly exciting research, and I am thrilled that the pages of TCE include systematics from amber. This work stirs the imagination, and takes us all back in time.

What inspired this work?

My interest in the Canadian amber assemblage really began when Brian Chatterton (then my M.Sc. supervisor) showed me some of the slides that he had borrowed from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in order to write a book on Canadian palaeontology. The sample set contained insects with bizarre adaptations for life at low Reynolds numbers, and obvious ecological associations, spurring an interest that ultimately led to a research in parasitic microhymenoptera. Michael Engel subsequently introduced me to a much wider array of taxa, and we continue to explore the Canadian assemblage together and with the help of colleagues.

What do you hope will be the lasting impact of this paper?

New records, such as this trap-jawed ant, help to flesh out our picture of the amber-producing forest and its inhabitants. I hope that a comprehensive account of this assemblage will eventually provide insights into terrestrial conditions that are unavailable from other fossil types, and that this will shed some light on changes in diversity and conditions leading up to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

Where will your next line of research on this topic take you?  

With any luck, we will be able to complete our coverage of Hymenoptera in Canadian amber soon, and make more of a concerted effort to cover other insect orders and some of the ecological associations found within the deposit. Grassy Lake amber still has a lot to offer, but it is only one of western Canada’s many amber deposits. As a larger-scale project, we are currently part of a team examining the numerous fragile ambers associated with coals in the region. The goal of this research is to create an amber-based record of forest types and inhabitants that spans more than 10 million years within the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene.

Can you share any interesting anecdotes from this research?

Surface-collecting amber can be quite difficult, because unpolished Canadian amber typically has a matte orange-brown colour, and is often covered with a carbon film or weathering crust. If there is no fractured surface visible and the specimen is not translucent, it can be quite difficult to distinguish from the surrounding coal or shale. Furthermore, there is such a range of shapes and sizes that some of the smaller amber droplets are easily confused with modern seeds. One of the quickest ways to see if you are dealing with amber is to wet the specimen and look for amber’s characteristic lustre, or tap the specimen on your teeth (amber feels like plastic compared to most suspect rocks). Naturally, I have licked quite a few samples in the course of my collecting, and have lost a lot of my appreciation for rabbits.

A selection of amber from Grassy Lake. Photo courtesy Brian Chatterton

A selection of amber from Grassy Lake. Photo courtesy Brian Chatterton

Thanks to Cambridge Journals Online for making this month’s Editor’s Pick Freely Available for the month of September!

This post is a regular series highlighting great papers from the pages of the Canadian Entomologist. 
McKellar R.C., Glasier J.R.N. & Engel M.S. (2013). A new trap-jawed ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Haidomyrmecini) from Canadian Late Cretaceous amber, The Canadian Entomologist, 145 (04) 454-465. DOI:

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From filing cabinets to fieldwork: an investigation into Aphid population variability

By Chris Buddle, Editor of the Canadian Entomologist

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I am pleased to present the “Editor’s Pick” manuscript for the current issue of The Canadian Entomologist. This pick was a paper by Bob Lamb, Patricia MacKay and Andrei Alyokhin, titled “Seasonal dynamics of three coexisting aphid species: implications for estimating population variability”

I had always admired the ongoing work on aphids, spearheaded by Bob and Pat. Their work is always relevant, meticulous, framed in an important and broader ecological context, and they have a ‘model system’ to work with. This is the kind of researcher many more junior entomologists look up to.  The current paper is no exception. In this work, Bob and Pat joined up with Andrei Alyokhin and present a careful study of population variability and effectively use this metric to better understand population dynamics over time.  For me, I see much value in this approach, and can see how this kind of work could effectively be used in teaching students about how to best describe, understand, and quantify population dynamics.  I’m also inspired to see long-term data with arthropods. These kinds of data are so useful, but relatively rare. It’s great to see Bob, Pat and Andrei publish thoughtful and important work using such data.  I may also look around some old filing cabinets at my University…

Bob was kind enough to answer a few questions about this work, with input from his co-authors.

What inspired this work?

When Pat MacKay and I were anticipating eventual retirement from paying jobs as entomologists, we decided to begin a study of an aphid population that could be pursued as long as we could walk trails and count aphids. Our goal was to figure out why aphid populations seem to be so unstable. Eventually we wrote up our findings on the stability of one native species over the first 10 years of a study we hope will go on for at least another 10 years. A few years ago we realized we needed comparative data, but were too old to start on a 20-year study of another aphid species. The solution was to write to colleagues who also had long-term data sets, to see if they were interested in looking at their data from this perspective. So far the colleagues we have contacted have been enthusiastic collaborators. The first was Andrei Alyokhin our coauthor on the current paper. He gave us access to 60 years of data on three aphid species. The first paper on the stability of these aphids was published in the Canadian Entomologist two years ago. The current paper extends that earlier work, looking now at how aphid seasonal biology affects our estimates of stability.

Bob Lamb, sporting "aphid hunting gear"

Bob Lamb, sporting “aphid hunting gear”

What do you hope will be the lasting impact of this paper?

We hope that this paper will help convince other researchers that Joel Heath’s metric, PV, which we use to quantify population variability, is a robust way to quantify one aspect of the stability of populations. If more researchers adopt this metric, ecologists will have a much greater opportunity to apply a comparative approach and identify factors that contribute to stability or instability of populations.

Where will your next line of research on this topic take you?

Pat MacKay and I continue to extend our time series on the abundance of a native aphid, and are now focusing more on the ecological processes that cause our five populations to rise and fall. We also hope to expand our studies of stability to still more aphid species, but also species with very different life histories. At the moment I am working with a colleague, Terry Galloway, University of Manitoba, on several time-series of ectoparasite abundance on birds.

Do you have any interesting anecdotes about this research?

One of the most interesting aspects of the work on aphids from potatoes is the source of the data – 60 years or more of weekly aphid counts. The data for the early years were discovered by Andrei Alyokhin in an abandoned filing cabinet stored in a barn at the University of Maine. Andrei was a new faculty member at the time exploring his research facilities. His predecessors had maintained meticulous records of aphid densities in potato plots since soon after World War II. Andrei was quick to recognize the value of this data, and more importantly recognized the need to go on collecting the data in the same way. The result is an amazing data set, one of the longest continuous records at one location of the dynamics of multi-voltine species.

Lesson 1: newly-hired entomologists should begin their careers by searching old filing cabinets.

Lesson 2: meticulous long-term records can be invaluable, sometime in ways that you might not anticipate.

Andrei discovering data in old filing cabinets

Andrei discovering data in old filing cabinets

Lamb R.J., MacKay P.A. & Alyokhin A. (2013). Seasonal dynamics of three coexisting aphid species: implications for estimating population variability, The Canadian Entomologist, 145 (03) 283-291. DOI:

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Canadian Entomologist Editor’s Pick – March 2013

By Chris Buddle, editor of The Canadian Entomologist

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The Canadian Entomologists’ latest issue is devoted to Arctic Entomology, with guest editors Derek Sikes and Toke T. Høye putting together an excellent suite of papers on this topic.  This is a very timely issue – there is an incredible amount of Arctic entomology happening around the world, and the Arctic is an area that is undergoing rapid environmental change.   It’s good that scientists are paying attention, and that entomologists are doing high quality research in the north.

Deciding on an “editor’s pick” for this issue was difficult as there were many excellent papers to choose from.  However, I ended up selecting Gergely Várkonyi and Tomas Roslin’s paper titled “Freezing cold yet diverse: dissecting a high-Arctic parasitoid community associated with Lepidoptera hosts”.   These authors, from Finland, have presented a very nice study about some food-web dynamics occurring in Zackenberg, Greenland  – a truly high Arctic field site, and one that has a remarkable history of long-term ecological monitoring.  Their work is focused on unraveling some of the amazing interactions between Lepidoptera and their parasitoids, and this paper provides a “systematic effort to characterise the high-Arctic Hymenoptera and Diptera parasitoid community associated with Lepidoptera hosts”.   This is a great paper, and hopefully continues to inspire continued efforts to study entomology at high latitudes.

Greenlandic field station

I asked the authors some questions about their work and they kindly provided in-depth answers:

Q1:  What inspired this work?

TOMAS: What got me interested in Arctic predator-prey dynamics was the work of my friend Olivier Gilg. His exploration of the predator-prey dynamics among collared lemmings and their few and selected enemies of Northeast Greenland made me realize that in a species-poor environment, the impact of individual species on each other will be oh-so-much easier to disentangle than among the zillions of interactions typical of tropical and even temperate communities. Here if anywhere you can actually work out both the structure and inner workings of full food webs – which is the very the idea that we have now realized in our study. (And well, from a less scientific point of view, after visiting Northeast Greenland I also realized that this is the most beautiful area of the globe, and that there is nowhere else that I would rather work.)

GERGELY: I have been interested in northern insects, especially hymenopteran parasitoids, since a very long time. I did my PhD in a subarctic environment in Finnish Lapland, with the main focus on host-parasitoid population dynamics between periodic moths and their enemies. I first encountered Greenlandic ichneumonids when my former teacher in ichneumonid taxonomy – and current friend – Reijo Jussila worked on the descriptions of some new species from the Scoresbysund area in Northeast Greenland. More than a decade later, Tomas asked me to identify some samples from Traill Island (NE Greenland), where he had initiated a pilot project on Lepidoptera-Hymenoptera food webs. The next step was when he invited me to join his project about to be launched at Zackenberg. The rest is history…

Q2:  What do you hope will be the lasting impact of this paper?

TOMAS: What I hope that we have achieved are three things: to expose the importance of versatile biotic interactions even in a harsh arctic environment, to reveal the massive effort needed to convincingly dissect even a simple food web, and to establish the baseline structure of a food web facing imminent climate change.

GERGELY: Could not say it any better. I can only add that I hope our thorough overview of the taxonomy and natural history of individual parasitoid species will contribute to getting a better understanding of who is who and what roles each species play in this arctic scene.

flowers in containers

Q3:  Where will your next line of research on this topic take you? 

TOMAS: While we have now figured out the structure of the Lepidoptera-parasitoid web, we should remember that this is but a small module of the overall food web of the region. Our current work aims at expanding/zooming out from this core web towards the full food web of the region, which should actually be more realistically doable here than anywhere else on the globe (see above). In this work, we try to make maximal use of modern molecular tools, offering new resolution to documenting trophic interactions.

GERGELY: Apart from the community ecology goals of this project, we will further continue to update what is known about the parasitic wasp fauna of Greenland. I am focusing on the Ichneumonidae, the single most species-rich family of Hymenoptera in both Greenland and the entire World. By combining morphology and molecular methods, I attempt to clarify species boundaries and detect potential cryptic species. The ultimate goal of this research is to compile a modern taxonomic overview of the Ichneumonidae of Greenland.

Q4: Any amusing anecdotes about this research?

TOMAS: Gergely used to wear a handy hiking suit of light coloration. One day he was almost shot as a polar bear after sneaking up on an unsuspecting colleague in the field.

GERGELY: Well, first of all I was not sneaking, just looking for adult wasps in a safe distance from this colleague of ours. She thought my net was a giant paw of a polar bear (!) and she was really scared for a short moment. But she was definitely not about to shoot me!

Mountain

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Editor’s Pick: Resins, exotic woodwasps and how a study species picks a researcher.

by Christopher Buddle, McGill University

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As the Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Entomologist, I have the pleasure of seeing all papers move through the publication process, from first submission to approval of the final proof.  This places me in a position to fully appreciate the incredible entomological research occurring around the world.  As one way to promote some of the great papers within TCE, I have decided to start a series of blog posts titled “Editor’s Pick” – these are papers that stand out as being high quality research, and research that has broad interest to the entomological community.  I will pick one paper from each issue, and write a short piece to profile the paper.

For the first issue of the current volume (145), I’ve picked the paper by Kathleen Ryan and colleagues, titled “Seasonal occurrence and spatial distribution of resinosis, a symptom of Sirex noctilio (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) injury, on boles of Pinus sylvestris (Pinaceae)“.   Sirex noctilio is a recently introduced species in Canada, and is a woodwasp that we need to pay attention to.   As Kathleen writes, “unlike our native species of woodwasps, it attacks and kills living pines” and because of this, we must strive to find effective ways to monitor the species.  One potential approach is to look for signs of resinosis, or ‘excessive’ outflow of tree sap and resins from conifers.  The goal of this work was to specifically assess “the spatial and temporal distribution of resin symptoms of attack to optimise sampling“.  The work involved Kathleen spending a LOT of time in the field, observing evidence of damage to trees, and assessing timing of resinosis relative to other damage to pine trees as related to woodwasps.  In the end, Kathleen was able to confirm that in most infested trees, the appearance of resin was a meaningful detection method.  This is a very practical paper, and very useful towards finding the best methods to detect this exotic species.

Sirex noctilio female - Photo by K. Ryan

Sirex noctilio female – Photo by K. Ryan

I asked Kathleen a few questions about this paper and the context of the work.

Q: Kathleen, what first got you interested in this area of research?

A: I became interested in studying Sirex’s interaction with other subcortical insects. Sirex was recently detected in North America at the time and we didn’t know much about it here including how, where and when to find it  – all of which were essential in planning research about insect interactions. So this study was my starting point – my “getting to know Sirex” study.

Q:  What do you hope will be the lasting impact of this paper?

A: This paper is the result of the many hours of field observations that helped me to become more familiar with Sirex. Since its really basic research, I hope that this paper might be a useful starting point for other people beginning to work with Sirex.

Q:  Where will your next line of research on this topic take you?  

A: Currently, I’m studying another invasive wood-borer, but I’d like to work with Sirex again – it’s a really interesting and unique insect biologically and ecologically. I’m especially interested in studying Sirex community ecology in its native, European, range to see how it compares to North America.

This is truly an important area of study, and I do look forward to seeing more of Kathleen’s papers in TCE.

Finally, I asked Kathleen about any amusing anecdotes about the research, and she shared this wonderful story with me:

The first day we worked together, my PhD advisor Peter de Groot, dropped me off at a forest site with instructions to only observe and collect absolutely no data. I had been in the forest for only a few moments, when a female Sirex landed right in front of me. So being an entomologist, naturally I caught her. A couple of hours later, still holding her, I met back up with Peter and sheepishly admitted that I had caught some “data”. Thinking it fantastic, from that point forward he told everyone that Sirex had picked me as her project.

Looking for wood wasps - Photo by K. Ryan

Looking for woodwasps – Photo by K. Ryan

I believe that these kinds of stories behind the research make Entomology more accessible and real, and help us appreciate the human element of scientific research.

As a final note, the entomological community was very saddened by Peter de Groot’s death in 2010.  His legacy to Canadian Entomology is still very strong.

A special thanks to Kathleen for answering a few questions, and sharing insights into the first ‘Editor’s pick’ for The Canadian Entomologist

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Reference:  Ryan, K, P. de Groot, S.M. Smith and J. J. Turgeon.  Seasonal occurrence and spatial distribution of resinosis, a symptom of Sirex noctilio (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) injury on boles of Pinus sylvestris (Pinaceae). The Canadian Entomologist 145: 117-122. Link.

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Reference Output from Mendeley using the custom citation style
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Formatting your references for The Canadian Entomologist using Mendeley

By Chris MacQuarrie, Natural Resources Canada Canadian Forest Service (Sault Ste. Marie, ON)

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Opa Opa Citation Style! *

I recently switched over to the Mendeley citation manager after many years of being a loyal EndNote user. I’m liking Mendeley, but one thing I lost in the switch was the collection of custom citation styles I had put together during my MSc, PhD and Post-doc.

Mendeley Desktop

Mendeley Desktop

This wasn’t a problem until this week when I was preparing final edits on a manuscript for The Canadian Entomologist. Mendeley didn’t have a style for TCE, but what it does have is the ability to modify existing styles and create new ones.

I started with the existing style for the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences because it’s an old stable-mate of TCE from the NRC press days and has a very similar citation style.

I used Mendeley’s Visual CSL Editor:

csl editor
to modify the CJFAS style to output what TCE requires in it’s reference section.The only ‘big’ difference I could find between is that TCE uses a comma after the journal name where CJFAS does not.

I also made a few changes. For instance, the CJFAS style didn’t have a output for theses so I created one for that reference class. I also modified a few of the settings to delete information that CJFAS needs but TCE doesn’t.

Reference Output from Mendeley using the custom citation style

Reference Output from Mendeley using the custom citation style

You can download the finished product from this link:

http://csl.mendeley.com/styles/18621721/TheCanadianEntomologist

Now, what’s neat, is that Mendeley’s citation styles are based on the open-source Citation Style Language so you can use this style in any citation management program that also uses CSL (e.g., Zotero and Papers).

A disclaimer. I hacked this together in a few hours and didn’t check all reference classes, so your milage may vary! As always, check your references section carefully before submission!

If you do spot an error or have a suggestion let me know here, on Twitter (@cmacquar) or at cjkmacquarrie@gmail.com.

*if you don’t get this reference, see here

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ESC Photo Contest results are in!

The results of the Eighth Annual ESC Photo Contest have been announced!  Judges Kirk Hillier, Kenna MacKenzie, and Rick West faced a difficult task, selecting the winners from among 67 high-quality entries.

The top seven selection will be printed on the cover of all issues of Volume 145 (2013) of The Canadian Entomologist.  The photos were chosen primarily for their composition and quality, but judges also tried to spread the winning entries across insect orders, and to have no more than one winning photo per photographer. The final results are:

First Place: Bob Lalonde, “Halictid on fireweed”. A female Agapostemon sp. (Halictidae), foraging on fireweed in June on the UBC Okanagan (Kelowna) campus.

Second Place: Ward Strong, “Stinkbug eggs”. Stinkbug eggs found on the foliage of lodgepole pine, Tappen BC.

Third Place: Julian Dupuis, “Papilio larva on Artemesia”. Larva of Papilio machaon dodi (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae), on Artemesia dracunculus, near Drumheller, AB

Fourth Place: Crystal Ernst, “Stratiomys badia”. An impressive bee mimic, Stratiomys badia (Stratiomyidae) rests in a garden at dusk, in Chesterville, Ontario.

Fifth Place: John McLean, “Honeybee Drone pupae”. Late stage pupae of the honey bee Apis mellifera L. dissected as part of a search for breeding varroa mite (none found). Taken from a hive in the Gisborne area on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand, March 2012.

Sixth Place: Tim Haye, “Pachycoris klugii nymphs”. Nymphs of Pachycoris klugii on Jatropha cucras tree (Tehuacan, Chiapas, Mexico).

Seventh Place: Christa Rigney, “Dakota Skipper on Yarrow”. A gravid female of the Threatened Dakota skipper, Hesperia dacotae (Skinner) (Hesperiidae) perched on Yarrow, Achillea millefolium (L.) (Asteracea) in a tallgrass prairie northeast of Deleau, Manitoba

A slideshow of all of the beautiful photographs entered in this year’s Competition is now displayed on the ESC Website, here. Congratulations to the winners!!!

If you missed this year’s competition, don’t fret! There is still time to submit your own images to another ESC-sponsored photo contest! ESC (or other regional society) members attending this year’s Joint Annual Meeting in Alberta have until October 30th to get their best shots of the year in to the judges of the 2012 JAM Photo Contest.

Thank you one and all for your participation, and keep those shutters clicking!

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