Registration and Housing is Now Open for Vancouver!
Make your plans now to be in Vancouver for the 2018 ESA, ESC and ESBC Joint Annual Meeting November 11-14. Register and book your hotel roomto stay close to the Vancouver Convention Centre or reserve the lowest rate. View our exciting list of tours and workshops you can add to registration and make the most of your time in British Columbia! With 120+ symposia and workshops, 1300+ papers and 575+ posters, you won’t want to miss this meeting in Canada!
Can’t make it to Vancouver? Submit a virtual poster to be part of the meeting, including the student competition! View the requirements and fees.
This post is the first in a series featuring ‘cool’ and ‘cruel’ (pest) insects in Canada. If there’s an insect that you’d like to write a post about, please get in touch with us!
by John Acorn
The beautifully camouflaged under surface of a Mourning Cloak butterfly.
How long do butterflies live? For most, the answer is “not very long,” after what may have been many months as an egg, caterpillar, and chrysalis. For the Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa), however, life as a butterfly can stretch over an entire year. Mourning Cloaks spend the winter in hibernation, under bark for example, and they are often the “first butterfly of spring,” along with their close relatives, the tortoiseshells and commas. Since Mourning Cloaks are widespread in North America and Eurasia, they are probably the most oft-encountered spring butterflies in the north temperate world. After feeding on various trees (elm, willow, and poplar are all acceptable fare) as caterpillars, Mourning Cloak butterflies emerge from their pupae in mid to late summer. They sometimes live as long as twelve months as adults. In springtime, they typically emerge from hibernation before the first flowers are in bloom, and they feed on everything from sap flows to dung to mud, in order to obtain the nutrients necessary for such a long life.
On an older Mourning Cloak, the bright yellow wing edges have faded to pale white, and the maroon of the wings becomes a more generic shade of brown. The wing pattern of Mourning Cloaks has been the inspiration for speculation among entomologists. Most agree that the underside of the wings is camouflaged, looking like a dried leaf, or tree bark. But the upper side has been interpreted as a depiction of a yellow, black, and blue-spotted caterpillar, walking along a brown-maroon surface. Birds might peck at the fake caterpillar, thereby missing the delicate body of the butterfly, and indeed we do find Mourning Cloaks with bird bill marks along the edges of their wings (“cloak and dagger,” one might ask?). On the other hand, Mourning Cloaks are agile fliers, and at least one other insect, the Carolina Locust grasshopper (Dissosteira carolina), appears to mimic the Mourning Cloak, perhaps to convince birds that it is difficult to capture in flight.
A freshly emerged Mourning Cloak with bird bill marks along its wing margin. Wingspan approximately 7 cm.
In any event, the wings of Mourning Cloaks are similar to a traditional style of clothing worn when in mourning, but maroon or purplish mourning dresses with dull yellow trim were a matter of “half mourning” in Victorian England, whereas full mourning clothing was all black. In the UK, this species is known as the Camberwell Beauty, in remembrance of two migrant individuals (yes, this species will sometimes undergo “irruptive” migrations, in years when they are especially common) that made their way from the European mainland to Camberwell, a part of London. In French, the name is Morio, a word that also refers to starlings, birds that share a dark ground colour with yellow accents. As for the scientific name, Nymphalis means “nymph,” and refers to the forest nymphs of Greek mythology, while Antiope was the name of one of the mythical Amazons. You will find, however, that if you Google the word “antiopa,” almost all of the hits will refer to the butterfly, which has now eclipsed its namesake.
This post is the first in a new series featuring interviews with Canadian women working in or studying entomology.
Left: Heather looking through one of their lab’s colony cages, which hold around 200 mosquitoes. Right: Heather blood feeding their lab’s mosquito colony. Since Aedes aegypti are extremely anthropophilic, the colony remains much healthier if fed human blood!
Q: What are you studying or working on right now?
HC: I am currently finishing up my PhD at Simon Fraser University. I use a mixture of molecular biology, bioinformatics and ecology to tease apart virus transmission dynamics in mosquitoes. Specifically, I am attempting to identify, characterize and mimic dengue refractory mechanisms in Aedes aegypti, with the ultimate goal of creating genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the burden of dengue.
Q: What led you to your specific field of study or work?
Heather solution solving with a good friend, Dr. Ramírez Martínez, from Universidad de Guadalajara.
HC: Growing up, I was curious about medical careers and had (still do!) an extreme interest in and fondness for animals. During that time, I also suffered from an irrational fear of blood (haemophobia), which put a large damper on continuing in a medical field. Sticking with my love for animals, I completed my BSc at the University of Guelph in Zoology and gained indispensable research experience in Dr. Alex Smith’s molecular ecology lab. I took some time off after completing my undergraduate degree and found myself drawn to the field of medical entomology. This led me to my current position at Simon Fraser University under the supervision of Dr. Carl Lowenberger, an entomologist and parasitologist with a keen interest in insect immunity.
Q: When did you first become interested in science and entomology?
HC: As a child I loved collecting insects and keeping them as short-term friends and pets. I loved how interconnected science was with nature and how my curiosity was rewarded and encouraged in science classes. My analytical, detail-oriented mind enjoyed the consistent process by which science was often conducted. Although I knew by the end of high school that I wanted to pursue a career in science, it took me many more years to fully realize my interest and passion for the field of entomology.
Q: What do you enjoy most about your research or work?
HC: I love the multidisciplinary nature of my work, the international collaborations it has spawned, and its larger connectivity to the public.
First meet and greet with the lab mascot, Acorn, Heather’s dapple wiener dog.
Q: What are your interests outside of academic life or work?
HC: I’m a sports enthusiast, both watching (I’m an obsessive Detroit Red Wings fan) and playing (ice hockey, tennis, and soccer). I love being in nature in any form possible – walking, hiking, camping, lounging etc. I also enjoy training my wiener dog, Acorn; listening to rap and hip-hop music; and drinking all the craft beers Vancouver has to offer.
Q: What are your future plans or goals?
HC: I would love to continue arbovirus genomics research in an academic environment and learn more about computer science and bioinformatics. I would also love to build and live in my own portable tiny house.
Q: Do you have any advice for young students that may be interested in science and/or entomology?
HC: Never stop exploring, reading, and asking questions. Join clubs and forums that interest you, and reach out to people who are doing things you think are cool and interesting. Keep an open mind, and take some time to get to know the insects around you.
https://esc-sec.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Coatsworth-1-Cage.jpg31203236Bloghttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngBlog2018-05-08 19:06:412019-11-14 21:37:09Women in Entomology Series Heather Coatsworth
Exotic species that establish, spread, and cause substantial damage are demonized as foreign invaders that charge with menacing force across the landscape. Rightly so; those pests threaten to displace or eliminate native species and alter ecosystem functions. Chestnut blight, emerald ash borer, and hemlock woolly adelgid are all excellent examples. What about invaders that aren’t so destructive? Or, at least don’t seem to be at the moment? At what point do we stop monitoring a seemingly innocuous invasive species, especially one that has proved itself a serious pest elsewhere? To make this decision, it’s helpful to know how much the species has affected its new habitat, and whether this impact already has or is likely to change over time. That is exactly what we set out to do with the European woodwasp, Sirex noctilio, in Ontario.
Nearly a decade after the woodwasp was first found in a trap near the Finger Lakes in New York (and then a year later across Lake Ontario in Sandbanks Provincial Park), it still hadn’t killed pines in noticeable numbers, either in the US or Canada. Native to Europe and Asia, this woodwasp has been introduced to several countries in the Southern Hemisphere, where it has been a serious pest in forests planted with exotic pines. By contrast, in North America, it seems that only the weakest trees, those that are already stressed by something else, are killed by the woodwasp. Would forests with many weakened trees allow populations of the woodwasp to build up enough that they could then kill healthy trees in well-maintained forests? Could we find any evidence that this had already happened or would likely happen in the future?
Our goal was to measure the impact the woodwasp has had in Ontario, and whether that has changed over time, by closely examining the same trees in pine forests every year. First, we had to find sites where the woodwasp could be found, which wasn’t every pine forest, and where landowners would allow us to work. We were not interested in sites that were well-managed, because research had already confirmed that the woodwasp was not present in those forests. We used records of positive woodwasp captures from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources trap survey as a guide. We visited 50 potential sites, and eventually selected eight for close scrutiny in our long-term study. These sites were areas where there was likely to be intense competition among trees for resources, with plenty of stressed trees for the woodwasp.
The European woodwasp was probably absent from a well-managed red pine forest (left), but likely to be found in an un-managed scots pine forest (right).
We visited all eight sites every fall from 2012 to 2016, after woodwasps had the opportunity to attack trees. Adult woodwasps mate and lay eggs, attacking trees in the process, in mid-summer. Attack was visible as distinctive resin beads scattered over the trunk. We recorded which trees had been attacked, and later (usually the following year) killed by the woodwasp.
The woodwasp population was considerable at some of our sites, having killed about one-third of the trees within five years. Though at other sites, the population was much smaller, having killed only a small percentage of trees. We’re not exactly sure what caused this variability. It’s possible that the woodwasp arrived at some of our sites years before it arrived at others, and the most vulnerable trees were long dead at the sites it invaded earlier. We have no record of time since woodwasp invasion at any of our sites. It’s also possible that local environmental conditions, which we did not measure, could in some way have affected tree resistance or the woodwasp population.
Most curious, though, was that over the five years many trees attacked by the woodwasp did not die – around 50 to 80%. At least half of these trees were attacked again and again in successive years. We had captured an interesting part of the woodwasp’s ecology, its way of essentially priming trees to become better habitat for its young. When laying eggs, female woodwasps also inject a self-made toxic venom along with a symbiotic fungus into the tree, to help kill it. If the tree is sufficiently resistant to attack, the female may not lay eggs, only the fungus and venom. The fungus and venom then work in concert to weaken (prime) the tree for re-attack – and hopefully successful colonization – in subsequent years.
Female woodwasps sometimes die while laying eggs. Survival of the fittest?
Two-thirds of trees that were attacked by the woodwasp at some point in our study (one or more times) did not die, which shows that most trees selected by the woodwasp as suitable habitat are at the moment resistant to its advances. This also shows, along with the variability in woodwasp impact among sites, that this invader is active in the forest. Should environmental conditions change (say, if a drought occurs), woodwasp populations could quickly rise to outbreak levels, which could kill large numbers of healthy pines. This has happened in other places.
Long-term study of these sites, and hopefully others, is needed so that we can be aware of changes that arise in woodwasp impact. This will allow us to be proactive about what steps to take to manage this invader, should it become a problem. It will also help us better understand and predict what causes exotic species to vacillate on the spectrum between aggressive invader and innocuous resident.
Want to read more? Check out the original article published in The Canadian Entomologist, which is freely available for reading & download until May 14, 2018.
https://esc-sec.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/sirex.killed.jack_.pine-16x9.jpg22504000Bloghttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngBlog2018-05-01 15:56:092019-11-14 21:37:07When should a non-aggressive exotic species be demoted to a harmless naturalized resident?
http://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.png00Jordan Bannermanhttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngJordan Bannerman2018-03-23 14:49:152019-11-14 21:37:07Invertebrate Seminars at Eagle Hill 2018
2018 ESA, ESC, and ESBC Joint Annual Meeting
Registration and Housing is Now Open for Vancouver!
Make your plans now to be in Vancouver for the 2018 ESA, ESC and ESBC Joint Annual Meeting November 11-14. Register and book your hotel room to stay close to the Vancouver Convention Centre or reserve the lowest rate. View our exciting list of tours and workshops you can add to registration and make the most of your time in British Columbia! With 120+ symposia and workshops, 1300+ papers and 575+ posters, you won’t want to miss this meeting in Canada!
Can’t make it to Vancouver? Submit a virtual poster to be part of the meeting, including the student competition! View the requirements and fees.
Cool Insects
The Mourning Cloak Butterfly
This post is the first in a series featuring ‘cool’ and ‘cruel’ (pest) insects in Canada. If there’s an insect that you’d like to write a post about, please get in touch with us!
by John Acorn
The beautifully camouflaged under surface of a Mourning Cloak butterfly.
How long do butterflies live? For most, the answer is “not very long,” after what may have been many months as an egg, caterpillar, and chrysalis. For the Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa), however, life as a butterfly can stretch over an entire year. Mourning Cloaks spend the winter in hibernation, under bark for example, and they are often the “first butterfly of spring,” along with their close relatives, the tortoiseshells and commas. Since Mourning Cloaks are widespread in North America and Eurasia, they are probably the most oft-encountered spring butterflies in the north temperate world. After feeding on various trees (elm, willow, and poplar are all acceptable fare) as caterpillars, Mourning Cloak butterflies emerge from their pupae in mid to late summer. They sometimes live as long as twelve months as adults. In springtime, they typically emerge from hibernation before the first flowers are in bloom, and they feed on everything from sap flows to dung to mud, in order to obtain the nutrients necessary for such a long life.
On an older Mourning Cloak, the bright yellow wing edges have faded to pale white, and the maroon of the wings becomes a more generic shade of brown. The wing pattern of Mourning Cloaks has been the inspiration for speculation among entomologists. Most agree that the underside of the wings is camouflaged, looking like a dried leaf, or tree bark. But the upper side has been interpreted as a depiction of a yellow, black, and blue-spotted caterpillar, walking along a brown-maroon surface. Birds might peck at the fake caterpillar, thereby missing the delicate body of the butterfly, and indeed we do find Mourning Cloaks with bird bill marks along the edges of their wings (“cloak and dagger,” one might ask?). On the other hand, Mourning Cloaks are agile fliers, and at least one other insect, the Carolina Locust grasshopper (Dissosteira carolina), appears to mimic the Mourning Cloak, perhaps to convince birds that it is difficult to capture in flight.
A freshly emerged Mourning Cloak with bird bill marks along its wing margin. Wingspan approximately 7 cm.
In any event, the wings of Mourning Cloaks are similar to a traditional style of clothing worn when in mourning, but maroon or purplish mourning dresses with dull yellow trim were a matter of “half mourning” in Victorian England, whereas full mourning clothing was all black. In the UK, this species is known as the Camberwell Beauty, in remembrance of two migrant individuals (yes, this species will sometimes undergo “irruptive” migrations, in years when they are especially common) that made their way from the European mainland to Camberwell, a part of London. In French, the name is Morio, a word that also refers to starlings, birds that share a dark ground colour with yellow accents. As for the scientific name, Nymphalis means “nymph,” and refers to the forest nymphs of Greek mythology, while Antiope was the name of one of the mythical Amazons. You will find, however, that if you Google the word “antiopa,” almost all of the hits will refer to the butterfly, which has now eclipsed its namesake.
Links:
http://www.cbif.gc.ca/eng/species-bank/butterflies-of-canada/mourning-cloak/?id=1370403265696
http://entomology.museums.ualberta.ca/searching_species_details.php?fsn=nymphalis+antiopa&sb=1&r=2&o=1&c=2&s=2652&sn=Nymphalis+antiopa
Photos supplied by John Acorn
The Mourning Cloak Butterfly
Women in Entomology Series
Heather Coatsworth
This post is the first in a new series featuring interviews with Canadian women working in or studying entomology.
Left: Heather looking through one of their lab’s colony cages, which hold around 200 mosquitoes. Right: Heather blood feeding their lab’s mosquito colony. Since Aedes aegypti are extremely anthropophilic, the colony remains much healthier if fed human blood!
Q: What are you studying or working on right now?
HC: I am currently finishing up my PhD at Simon Fraser University. I use a mixture of molecular biology, bioinformatics and ecology to tease apart virus transmission dynamics in mosquitoes. Specifically, I am attempting to identify, characterize and mimic dengue refractory mechanisms in Aedes aegypti, with the ultimate goal of creating genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the burden of dengue.
Q: What led you to your specific field of study or work?
Heather solution solving with a good friend, Dr. Ramírez Martínez, from Universidad de Guadalajara.
HC: Growing up, I was curious about medical careers and had (still do!) an extreme interest in and fondness for animals. During that time, I also suffered from an irrational fear of blood (haemophobia), which put a large damper on continuing in a medical field. Sticking with my love for animals, I completed my BSc at the University of Guelph in Zoology and gained indispensable research experience in Dr. Alex Smith’s molecular ecology lab. I took some time off after completing my undergraduate degree and found myself drawn to the field of medical entomology. This led me to my current position at Simon Fraser University under the supervision of Dr. Carl Lowenberger, an entomologist and parasitologist with a keen interest in insect immunity.
Q: When did you first become interested in science and entomology?
HC: As a child I loved collecting insects and keeping them as short-term friends and pets. I loved how interconnected science was with nature and how my curiosity was rewarded and encouraged in science classes. My analytical, detail-oriented mind enjoyed the consistent process by which science was often conducted. Although I knew by the end of high school that I wanted to pursue a career in science, it took me many more years to fully realize my interest and passion for the field of entomology.
Q: What do you enjoy most about your research or work?
HC: I love the multidisciplinary nature of my work, the international collaborations it has spawned, and its larger connectivity to the public.
First meet and greet with the lab mascot, Acorn, Heather’s dapple wiener dog.
Q: What are your interests outside of academic life or work?
HC: I’m a sports enthusiast, both watching (I’m an obsessive Detroit Red Wings fan) and playing (ice hockey, tennis, and soccer). I love being in nature in any form possible – walking, hiking, camping, lounging etc. I also enjoy training my wiener dog, Acorn; listening to rap and hip-hop music; and drinking all the craft beers Vancouver has to offer.
Q: What are your future plans or goals?
HC: I would love to continue arbovirus genomics research in an academic environment and learn more about computer science and bioinformatics. I would also love to build and live in my own portable tiny house.
Q: Do you have any advice for young students that may be interested in science and/or entomology?
HC: Never stop exploring, reading, and asking questions. Join clubs and forums that interest you, and reach out to people who are doing things you think are cool and interesting. Keep an open mind, and take some time to get to know the insects around you.
A rare sighting of a formal mosquito.
All photos supplied by Heather Coatsworth.
Heather Coatsworth
When should a non-aggressive exotic species be demoted to a harmless naturalized resident?
By Dr. Laurel Haavik, US Forest Service
Exotic species that establish, spread, and cause substantial damage are demonized as foreign invaders that charge with menacing force across the landscape. Rightly so; those pests threaten to displace or eliminate native species and alter ecosystem functions. Chestnut blight, emerald ash borer, and hemlock woolly adelgid are all excellent examples. What about invaders that aren’t so destructive? Or, at least don’t seem to be at the moment? At what point do we stop monitoring a seemingly innocuous invasive species, especially one that has proved itself a serious pest elsewhere? To make this decision, it’s helpful to know how much the species has affected its new habitat, and whether this impact already has or is likely to change over time. That is exactly what we set out to do with the European woodwasp, Sirex noctilio, in Ontario.
Nearly a decade after the woodwasp was first found in a trap near the Finger Lakes in New York (and then a year later across Lake Ontario in Sandbanks Provincial Park), it still hadn’t killed pines in noticeable numbers, either in the US or Canada. Native to Europe and Asia, this woodwasp has been introduced to several countries in the Southern Hemisphere, where it has been a serious pest in forests planted with exotic pines. By contrast, in North America, it seems that only the weakest trees, those that are already stressed by something else, are killed by the woodwasp. Would forests with many weakened trees allow populations of the woodwasp to build up enough that they could then kill healthy trees in well-maintained forests? Could we find any evidence that this had already happened or would likely happen in the future?
Our goal was to measure the impact the woodwasp has had in Ontario, and whether that has changed over time, by closely examining the same trees in pine forests every year. First, we had to find sites where the woodwasp could be found, which wasn’t every pine forest, and where landowners would allow us to work. We were not interested in sites that were well-managed, because research had already confirmed that the woodwasp was not present in those forests. We used records of positive woodwasp captures from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources trap survey as a guide. We visited 50 potential sites, and eventually selected eight for close scrutiny in our long-term study. These sites were areas where there was likely to be intense competition among trees for resources, with plenty of stressed trees for the woodwasp.
The European woodwasp was probably absent from a well-managed red pine forest (left), but likely to be found in an un-managed scots pine forest (right).
We visited all eight sites every fall from 2012 to 2016, after woodwasps had the opportunity to attack trees. Adult woodwasps mate and lay eggs, attacking trees in the process, in mid-summer. Attack was visible as distinctive resin beads scattered over the trunk. We recorded which trees had been attacked, and later (usually the following year) killed by the woodwasp.
Most curious, though, was that over the five years many trees attacked by the woodwasp did not die – around 50 to 80%. At least half of these trees were attacked again and again in successive years. We had captured an interesting part of the woodwasp’s ecology, its way of essentially priming trees to become better habitat for its young. When laying eggs, female woodwasps also inject a self-made toxic venom along with a symbiotic fungus into the tree, to help kill it. If the tree is sufficiently resistant to attack, the female may not lay eggs, only the fungus and venom. The fungus and venom then work in concert to weaken (prime) the tree for re-attack – and hopefully successful colonization – in subsequent years.
Female woodwasps sometimes die while laying eggs. Survival of the fittest?
Two-thirds of trees that were attacked by the woodwasp at some point in our study (one or more times) did not die, which shows that most trees selected by the woodwasp as suitable habitat are at the moment resistant to its advances. This also shows, along with the variability in woodwasp impact among sites, that this invader is active in the forest. Should environmental conditions change (say, if a drought occurs), woodwasp populations could quickly rise to outbreak levels, which could kill large numbers of healthy pines. This has happened in other places.
Long-term study of these sites, and hopefully others, is needed so that we can be aware of changes that arise in woodwasp impact. This will allow us to be proactive about what steps to take to manage this invader, should it become a problem. It will also help us better understand and predict what causes exotic species to vacillate on the spectrum between aggressive invader and innocuous resident.
Want to read more? Check out the original article published in The Canadian Entomologist, which is freely available for reading & download until May 14, 2018.
Haavik, L.J., Dodds, K.J. & Allison, J.D. (2018) Sirex noctilio (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) in Ontario (Canada) pine forests: observations over five years. The Canadian Entomologist, 1–14. doi: 10.4039/tce.2018.18
Invertebrate Seminars at Eagle Hill 2018
The Eagle Hill Institute in Maine has announced its insect and arachnid related summer seminars. You can view the full seminar schedule here.