The ash leaf cone roller, Caloptilia fraxinella (Ely) (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae) (Fig. 1) started to get noticed in the cities of the Western Canadian prairies in 1998, well, in Saskatoon, SK at least. I know this because that summer the green ash, Fraxinus pennsylvanica (Oleaceae), in my front yard was covered in cone rolled leaflets and had not been prior to that year. I had just started working for the City of Saskatoon’s Pest Management Program that year and one of our mandates was urban forest insects…not that there was any budget to control them, but it piqued my interest in urban forest entomology.
Fig. 1 – The ash leaf coneroller, Caloptilia fraxinella (Ely) (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae) adult, pupal exuvium and cocoon.
The following year, Chris Saunders with the City of Edmonton’s Pest Management Program, contacted us in Pest Management and asked if we had seen this cone roller on our ash trees because they had just noticed it on the ash trees in Edmonton. Greg Pohl had identified this leaf miner/leaf roller that year on all species of horticultural Fraxinus in Edmonton and published the identification and some life history of the moth in a 2004 paper (Pohl et al. 2004) along with a brief identification of several parasitoids that were reared from larvae and pupae. The lone braconid, identified to the genus Apanteles and found to be all one species by Darryl Williams of the Canadian Forest Service in Edmonton seemed to be the dominant parasitoid in this complex, but without a species designation not much else about the wasp could be gleaned from the literature.
Chris Saunders suggested that I study the ash leaf cone roller as a master’s project but I digressed from urban forest entomology for a few years into pollination of a nutraceutical/agricultural crop. By this time, the ash leaf cone roller had spread to every ash tree in both cities and often rolled 100% of the leaflets on a single tree. I finally followed Chris’ advice and started a PhD project in Maya Evenden’s lab at the University of Alberta, which was the only lab in Canada that was working on the ash leaf cone roller problem (Evenden 2009). The Apanteles sp. was still the dominant parasitoid and so, along with studies on the chemical ecology of the moth (Wist et al. 2014), I also studied the third trophic level in this system (Wist and Evenden 2013). Of course, I couldn’t go through my studies without knowing what the species designation was for the dominant parasitoid wasp. Fortunately, Jose Fernandez-Triana had just begun his study of the genus Apanteles at the CNC in Ottawa and once Henri Goulet passed along the Apanteles specimens that I had sent for identification he quickly determined that this parasitoid was Apanteles polychrosidis Viereck (Hymenopetra: Braconidae) (Fig. 2).
Apanteles polychrosidis kills the ash leaf cone roller larvae before they can chew their emergence “window” that they use to escape the cone rolled leaflet as adults. This behaviour gives a fairly reliable visual cue that a cone rolled leaflet without a “window” has been parasitized by A. polychrosidis because the other parasitoids in the complex emerge after the cone roller has pupated and created its escape route “window”. Unrolling the leaflet confirms the presence of A. polychrosidis if its telltale “hammock-like” cocoon is present (Fig. 3). This type of cocoon is thought to be a defense against hyper-parasitism but as we found (Wist and Evenden 2013) it doesn’t always work out for A. polychrosidis!
Fig. 3 – Apanteles polychrosidis Viereck (Hymenopetra: Braconidae) adult above its cocoon and beside the leaflet cone rolled by Caloptilia fraxinella (Ely) (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae). Note the emergence hole in the side of the leaflet that the wasp chewed to escape.
To assess the percentage of parasitism by this dominant parasitoid I adapted a method that Chris Saunders and I had discussed years earlier for assessing the parasitism of Apanteles sp. on individual trees. For the initial experiment in our paper (Wist et al. 2015) I sampled leaflets to estimate the density of cone rollers on the tree and estimated the percentage of parasitism by A. polychrosidis on two of the common urban species of ash in Edmonton. Apanteles polychrosidis parasitism was higher on black ash, F. nigra, at all sites than it was on green ash, F. pennsylvanica, which can be called differential parasitism and it seems to be common when host larvae develop on two or more host plants, but had not been well studied on trees. When host density and parasitism were graphed, the relationship of parasitism to host density could be visualized by the slope of the regression line, and on black ash, parasitism was independent of host density on black ash, but was negatively density dependent on green ash. In other words, on black ash parasitism is always high but on green ash, parasitism declines as the density of C. fraxinella increases. I ran the same experiment on green and black ash trees in Saskatoon with the same results but we chose to leave them out of the final version of the manuscript.
I was already studying the chemical ecology of C. fraxinella so this was where we looked for an answer to the differential parasitism in the field. I ran a y-tube olfactometer experiment with black and green ash plant material as the attractive source of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) and this turned out to be rather tricky. I had three treatments that I wanted to test; undamaged leaflets, leaflets damaged by C. fraxinella and leaflets that were mechanically damaged.
First, I tried to bag small seedlings as the source of the plant smell but I couldn’t seal the system well enough to get reliable airflow through the y tube chamber. I had to switch to using leaflets alone which raises the issue of the smell of the leaflets changing once they have been removed from the tree which could be a problem especially in the “undamaged” treatment. I also needed enough female A. polychrosidis hunting for hosts to give me a decent sample size so I had to collect and emerge as many “un-windowed” cone-rolled leaflets as I could in the summer, and hope that they would actually mate and want to oviposit into host larvae at this point in their lives. Another issue was that I couldn’t coax my summer emerged C. fraxinella to lay eggs on ash seedlings to create leaf-mined treatments. Fortunately, a subset of the local population of C. fraxinella had developed a second generation on the new ash leaves that a dying ash tree puts out in July in an effort to save itself. These leaflets became my leaf-mined treatment. Over two seasons with a lot of juggling and timing of three species I was able to gather enough experimental data with the olfactometer to discover that female A. polychrosidis were differentially attracted to the volatile odour cues from each ash species. In green ash tests, they were attracted to the smell of green ash alone but in black ash tests, they were not attracted unless the leaflets were attacked by its host. The “icing on the manuscript cake” was the GC-EAD results by co-authour Regine Gries that showed that 13 compounds in the volatile profile of ash could be sensed by the antennae of A. polychrosidis, and some of them are known to increase in response to herbivore damage.
I’d say that this manuscript is a starting point for further studies on this interesting parasitism system and could accommodate projects from chemical ecology and landscape ecology perspectives at the very least. In fact, Danielle Hoefele and Sarah McPike have already begun projects in Maya’s lab on the Fraxinus–Caloptilia-Apanteles system. In case you’d like to know more, here is the link to our manuscript published in Arthropod-Plant Interactions.
https://esc-sec.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/banner4.jpg4001491escstudentshttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngescstudents2015-10-14 09:43:312019-11-14 21:33:37Differential parasitism and ash tree volatile organic chemicals
This year’s 2015 Joint Annual Meeting in Montréal, Québec includes a free lunchtime workshop sponsored by Cambridge University Press that tackles the topic of publishing scientific papers.
Discussion will be led by a three-member panel examining the publication process through the eyes of an author (J. Saguez), a journal editor (K. Floate) and a publisher (D. Edwards). Following short presentations by each panelist, the floor will be opened for general questions and discussion.
Send us your questions and we will do our best to address them in our presentations.
What makes for a good paper? Who should I include as co-authors? How important is the cover letter? Why is the review process so long? How can I best respond to reviewer comments? What journal should I publish in? What is hybrid open access? What are predatory publishers? Why don’t journals make publications freely available? Knowing the answers to these and other questions can take some of the frustration out of the publication process.
Our goal is to ensure that everyone leaves with a full stomach and new insights to simplify the publication of their next paper! You can help us by sending your questions to Kevin Floate (Kevin.Floate@agr.gc.ca) by October 23rd.
See you in Montréal!
Julien Saguez – Independent Researcher/Author
Kevin Floate – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Editor-in-Chief, The Canadian Entomologist
Daniel Edwards – Senior Commissioning Editor, Journals, Cambridge University Press
http://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.png00Bloghttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngBlog2015-10-05 16:23:112019-11-14 21:33:36Questions About Scientific Publishing? Come to #ESCJAM2015!
The field course in Arctic Ecology (BIOL*4610), offered periodically by the University of Guelph, explores ecological relationships in a sub-arctic environment. Based out of the Northern Studies Research Center, the 2-week course takes place in Churchill Manitoba and the surrounding area. That was what we, the students, knew going into the course. What we didn’t know was that course would be, for many of us, a once in a lifetime experience!
Students in the Arctic Ecology field course learning from hymenopterist extraordinaire Alex Smith. (Photo by Eric Scott)
There are only three ways of travelling to Churchill, Manitoba: by boat, by plane or by train. Since we wouldn’t be taking the boat route, two options were left: an hour and forty-minute flight, or a three-day journey by rail. The latter is where most of our adventures began (particularly when some of us didn’t purchase a sleeper ticket). There is much to be learned from a long northward trek, from changing ecosystems and changing cultural environments to increasing price tags. Eventually though, the journey’s end came with a comfortable bus ride and an incredibly delicious meal at the Northern Studies Centre. From there on out, it was down to business.
The first week of our course was spent roaming the rugged landscape, learning about the diverse ecosystems the region has to offer while simultaneously trying to prevent ourselves from being carried off by the swarms of (seemingly) abnormally-sized horse flies. We visited sphagnum bogs, fens, the coast (which may have involved kayaking with belugas), a cranberry-laden moraine and the northern extent of the boreal forest. We explored Krummholtz and bluffs, learned that sedges have edges and learned to always be on the lookout for polar bears (at least 2 bear guards please!). The second week however, allowed us the liberty of designing and conducting our own studies.
As a real world example of scientific research in action, the first day of week-two was spent sampling in the footsteps of Robert E. Gregg and collecting ants from his original 1969 study sites (Gregg 1972). Armed with basic instructions on the identification of the 1969 sampled ant species and genera, we visited a total three sites: Cape Merry, the Churchill Welcome Sign, and Goose Creek Bog. At each site, we spent approximately three hours actively searching for ants, breaking open woody debris and digging into moss hummocks. This was true for all but the Goose Creek site where our (brand new bus) tire sprung a leak and we had no choice but to wait there (which may have resulted in a thoroughly sampled population of Odonates) until Alex Smith, one of the instructors walked into town to radio the Churchill Northern Studies Centre for Plan-B transportation. From there it was back to the lab for a crash course on identifying ants to morphospecies, and for many of us, a valuable lesson that all individuals of a species do not look the same (due to individual variation and cryptic diversity). The rest of week-two was spent with groups of students at every site chasing a variety of six-legged, sub-arctic mysteries. Of course, as students of the natural world, no curiosity was overlooked and no opportunity for fun either! Many an hour was spent bluff jumping, polar bear sighting, investigating the Ithaca shipwreck, and in the case of some students, completing a partial reconstruction of an arctic fox skeleton. Needless to say, it was a very short two weeks that passed with discovery and awe.
One of the many species collected – an ant in the Leptothorax muscorum complex, collected at Cape Merry (Photo by Chelsie Xavier-Blower)
Going into our field course, I’m not sure any of us thought we would come out of it as published authors. For many of us that participated, the Arctic Ecology field course provided the first real opportunity to actively participate in research outside of the university. The idea that a few days’ worth of collections could be turned into a scientific paper was almost unimaginable. The resulting paper was the first publication that any of us had contributed to. It was exciting to receive the manuscript drafts, and then paper proofs and to know that even aspiring researchers like us could contribute to the knowledge of the scientific community.
During the course, we took high-resolution panoramic GigaPan photographs of the areas we sampled (Smith et al 2013) – you can explore those here. All the DNA barcodes we generated during the course are publicly available for download and exploration. Finally, we wrote about using GigaPans in our Churchill adventures in an article for GigaPan Magazine.
Students of the Arctic Ecology Field course (now published authors!)(Photo by Eric Scott)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank LeeAnn Fishback and the staff of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (https://www.churchillscience.ca/) for all their hospitality and help in Churchill. Support from the CREATE Lab Outreach Program at Carnegie Mellon University, the Learning Enhancement Fund of the University of Guelph (http://www.lef.uoguelph.ca/) and the Fine Foundation helped provide funds for GigaPan-ing and DNA barcoding during the course. Support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to Alex Smith and Sarah Adamowicz provided support and infrastructure.
References
Gregg, R.E. 1972. The northward distribution of ants in North America. The Canadian Entomologist, 104: 1073–1091
Smith, M. Alex, S. Adamowicz, Amanda Boyd, Chris Britton-Foster, Hayley Cahill, Kelsey Desnoyers, Natalie Duitshaever, Dan Gibson, Steve James, Yurak Jeong, Darren Kelly, Eli Levene, Hilary Lyttle, Talia Masse, Kate Pare, Kelsie Paris, Cassie Russell, Eric Scott, Debbie Silva, Megan Sparkes, Kami Valkova (2013) “Arctic Ecology” GigaPan Magazine Vol 5 Issue 1. www.gigapanmagazine.org/vol5/issue1/ (students ordered alphabetically)
Smith, M. Alex, Amanda Boyd, Chris Britton-Foster, Hayley Cahill, Kelsey Desnoyers, Natalie Duitshaever, Dan Gibson, Steve James, Yurak Jeong, Darren Kelly, Eli Levene, Hilary Lyttle, Talia Masse, Kate Pare, Kelsie Paris, Cassie Russell, Eric Scott, Debbie Silva, Megan Sparkes, Kami Valkova S. J. Adamowicz (2015) The northward distribution of ants forty years later: re-visiting Gregg’s 1969 collections in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. The Canadian Entomologist. http://dx.doi.org/10.4039/tce.2015.53
00escstudentshttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngescstudents2015-09-29 16:02:472019-11-14 21:33:34From inquiring students to published authors: an adventure in the Arctic
This is a guest post by Dr. Laurel Haavik, post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University.
—-
I am a post-doc. I’ve been one for nearly six years. Like many other post-docs, I have been working for over a decade towards my goal: a tenure-track position at a research-intensive academic institution. I enjoy research and teaching, and so a career including both seemed like a logical pursuit. I must be good enough to succeed in this pursuit, otherwise someone would have told me to opt for a different path by now. After all, only a small percentage of Ph.D.s actually become professors. I must be pretty close to achieving this goal, because lately I’ve had several interviews – no offers yet. By now, most of my peers have secured permanent positions, although some have gone on different paths. It must be my turn soon. I had faith in the system; confidence in myself.
Earlier this summer, I was invited to give a talk at a conference, in a session on women in science. I accepted willingly; the subject seemed challenging and relevant. As I began to prepare, I realized I knew nothing about it. So, I did what any scientist would do: I turned to the primary literature on women in science. What I found changed my whole perspective on academia, my career, and most importantly: my life.
I learned that the tenure system is outdated, and filters out many creative and talented people. It was established ca. 1940, when those entering academic careers were mostly men. Assistant professors were expected to live on campus, and work intensively, around-the-clock, on establishing themselves until achieving tenure. Sounds a lot like graduate school, or a post-doc, doesn’t it? There’s not much room in that scenario for having a life outside of this pursuit. It turns out that not much has changed about this in the intervening 70+ years. To make it worse, there are now few jobs and too many of us with graduate degrees competing to fill them. It turns out that women, more often than men, are willing to forgo their academic dreams because of this ridiculousness, in favor of something better – probably a happier life. It seems that there are two issues. One: is it even possible? Women are confronted with the complications of basic biology at the very same time as they would be embarking on a demanding academic career. Most of us are well into our thirties, near the end of our child-bearing years, by the time we’re on the job search. Two: they’re exhausted, wondering if an academic career is akin to never-ending graduate school. In the academic atmosphere, there is intense pressure to do more; for example, publish or perish, fund or famish. Talent and creativity that science badly needs is undoubtedly lost as women and men continue to opt out of this outdated system, and for very reasonable grounds.
I took a long, hard look at my career so far. I’m on my third post-doc. I’ve had two failed relationships and a third that might not make it if I have to move again. I’m not married. I don’t have children. I’m in my mid-thirties, meaning that if I want to have children, I better get situated and do it soon. Maybe academia isn’t for me after all, even though my interests, teaching and research, are so well-aligned with the academic mission. I realized that my adult life so far, 90% career and 10% life outside of work, is a direct product of what I like to call our broken academic system. We need to better understand and voice our discontent with the broken academic system, or it won’t change.
I wondered if others feel the same way. In my field, had others thought of leaving science? And if so, why? Has the disparity in numbers of women and men graduates vs. those occupying professional positions actually changed in recent decades? Most importantly, what allows people to cope with such a rigorous career? I’ve been lucky to have had some great mentors, support from my family, and support and encouragement from the scientific community in my field. Have others had the same kinds of emotional support systems?
My study pursues these questions among three related fields: Forestry, Entomology, and Forest Entomology. In all three of these fields women are not historically well-represented, but this has changed in recent years, especially in Entomology. There are still few women in Forestry. Forest Entomology is a small field with a very inter-connected community, which I hope will provide an interesting contrast to its two larger, sister fields.
Please follow the link below to participate in my study, by completing my survey.
I invite men and women at all stages in their careers, as well as those who are no longer in science, to participate. Please forward this invitation to anyone you know who is no longer in science, but completed graduate school (M.S. or Ph.D.). The results of this study will be published in the primary literature.
Please follow the link below to complete the brief, 28-question survey by September 30, 2015
It may take 10-15 minutes to complete. I apologize for any cross-posting of this survey. No personal identifying information will be collected as part of the survey, and your participation will be completely anonymous. Answering questions in the survey will indicate consent. Participation is voluntary and you may withdraw at any time without penalty, and there are no incentives to participate. Participation will have no effect upon your relationship with the Entomological Society of Canada. This study has been determined Exempt from IRB review.
Please contact me if I can provide any additional information regarding the aims of or your participation in the survey (Laurel Haavik, 479-422-4997, haavik.1@osu.edu). For questions about your rights as a participant in this study or to discuss other study-related concerns or complaints with someone who is not part of the research team, you may contact Ms. Sandra Meadows in the Office of Responsible Research Practices at 1-800-678-6251 or hsconcerns@osu.edu.
http://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.png00Bloghttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngBlog2015-09-08 12:15:072019-11-14 21:33:32Entomologist Survey: Life & Living in Academia
Next September, the largest-ever scientific meeting of entomologists will take place at the International Congress of Entomology (ICE) in Orlando, Florida. For graduate students and early-career entomologists, it will be a fantastic opportunity to meet your peers from all over the world, present your research in a high-profile setting, and scout out potential study or career opportunities.
While you might be thinking that it’s an awful long time from now, and that there’s that pesky thesis that you have to get written, there are two important deadlines coming up soon that you should be aware of:
1. Travel Awards for Students and Early-Career Professionals
The international branch of the Entomological Society of America is giving a total of $50,000 worth of awards to students from outside the USA to attend ICE 2016.
Find detailed information about these awards here. Note that you need to be a member of the ESA to apply, that and membership will cost you between $50 and $150. If you plan to apply, you need to act fast – the deadline for application is September 1st, 2015.
Also note that the Entomological Society of Canada will also have a student and early-career professional travel awards program to assist with attendance at ICE. Information about these awards will be available soon!
2. The International Graduate Student Showcase (IGSS)
The Graduate Student Showcase, which has become a staple of ESC annual meetings, is coming to ICE 2016! Don’t miss this opportunity to present your finished research project alongside the top graduate students in entomology from around the world.
To apply, you need to be defending your MSc or PhD thesis between September 30, 2015 and September 30, 2016.
00escstudentshttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngescstudents2015-08-20 09:20:462019-11-14 21:33:31Student opportunities at the 2016 International Congress of Entomology
Differential parasitism and ash tree volatile organic chemicals
By Tyler Wist
The ash leaf cone roller, Caloptilia fraxinella (Ely) (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae) (Fig. 1) started to get noticed in the cities of the Western Canadian prairies in 1998, well, in Saskatoon, SK at least. I know this because that summer the green ash, Fraxinus pennsylvanica (Oleaceae), in my front yard was covered in cone rolled leaflets and had not been prior to that year. I had just started working for the City of Saskatoon’s Pest Management Program that year and one of our mandates was urban forest insects…not that there was any budget to control them, but it piqued my interest in urban forest entomology.
Fig. 1 – The ash leaf coneroller, Caloptilia fraxinella (Ely) (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae) adult, pupal exuvium and cocoon.
The following year, Chris Saunders with the City of Edmonton’s Pest Management Program, contacted us in Pest Management and asked if we had seen this cone roller on our ash trees because they had just noticed it on the ash trees in Edmonton. Greg Pohl had identified this leaf miner/leaf roller that year on all species of horticultural Fraxinus in Edmonton and published the identification and some life history of the moth in a 2004 paper (Pohl et al. 2004) along with a brief identification of several parasitoids that were reared from larvae and pupae. The lone braconid, identified to the genus Apanteles and found to be all one species by Darryl Williams of the Canadian Forest Service in Edmonton seemed to be the dominant parasitoid in this complex, but without a species designation not much else about the wasp could be gleaned from the literature.
Chris Saunders suggested that I study the ash leaf cone roller as a master’s project but I digressed from urban forest entomology for a few years into pollination of a nutraceutical/agricultural crop. By this time, the ash leaf cone roller had spread to every ash tree in both cities and often rolled 100% of the leaflets on a single tree. I finally followed Chris’ advice and started a PhD project in Maya Evenden’s lab at the University of Alberta, which was the only lab in Canada that was working on the ash leaf cone roller problem (Evenden 2009). The Apanteles sp. was still the dominant parasitoid and so, along with studies on the chemical ecology of the moth (Wist et al. 2014), I also studied the third trophic level in this system (Wist and Evenden 2013). Of course, I couldn’t go through my studies without knowing what the species designation was for the dominant parasitoid wasp. Fortunately, Jose Fernandez-Triana had just begun his study of the genus Apanteles at the CNC in Ottawa and once Henri Goulet passed along the Apanteles specimens that I had sent for identification he quickly determined that this parasitoid was Apanteles polychrosidis Viereck (Hymenopetra: Braconidae) (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2 – Female Apanteles polychrosidis Viereck (Hymenopetra: Braconidae)
Apanteles polychrosidis kills the ash leaf cone roller larvae before they can chew their emergence “window” that they use to escape the cone rolled leaflet as adults. This behaviour gives a fairly reliable visual cue that a cone rolled leaflet without a “window” has been parasitized by A. polychrosidis because the other parasitoids in the complex emerge after the cone roller has pupated and created its escape route “window”. Unrolling the leaflet confirms the presence of A. polychrosidis if its telltale “hammock-like” cocoon is present (Fig. 3). This type of cocoon is thought to be a defense against hyper-parasitism but as we found (Wist and Evenden 2013) it doesn’t always work out for A. polychrosidis!
Fig. 3 – Apanteles polychrosidis Viereck (Hymenopetra: Braconidae) adult above its cocoon and beside the leaflet cone rolled by Caloptilia fraxinella (Ely) (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae). Note the emergence hole in the side of the leaflet that the wasp chewed to escape.
To assess the percentage of parasitism by this dominant parasitoid I adapted a method that Chris Saunders and I had discussed years earlier for assessing the parasitism of Apanteles sp. on individual trees. For the initial experiment in our paper (Wist et al. 2015) I sampled leaflets to estimate the density of cone rollers on the tree and estimated the percentage of parasitism by A. polychrosidis on two of the common urban species of ash in Edmonton. Apanteles polychrosidis parasitism was higher on black ash, F. nigra, at all sites than it was on green ash, F. pennsylvanica, which can be called differential parasitism and it seems to be common when host larvae develop on two or more host plants, but had not been well studied on trees. When host density and parasitism were graphed, the relationship of parasitism to host density could be visualized by the slope of the regression line, and on black ash, parasitism was independent of host density on black ash, but was negatively density dependent on green ash. In other words, on black ash parasitism is always high but on green ash, parasitism declines as the density of C. fraxinella increases. I ran the same experiment on green and black ash trees in Saskatoon with the same results but we chose to leave them out of the final version of the manuscript.
I was already studying the chemical ecology of C. fraxinella so this was where we looked for an answer to the differential parasitism in the field. I ran a y-tube olfactometer experiment with black and green ash plant material as the attractive source of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) and this turned out to be rather tricky. I had three treatments that I wanted to test; undamaged leaflets, leaflets damaged by C. fraxinella and leaflets that were mechanically damaged.
First, I tried to bag small seedlings as the source of the plant smell but I couldn’t seal the system well enough to get reliable airflow through the y tube chamber. I had to switch to using leaflets alone which raises the issue of the smell of the leaflets changing once they have been removed from the tree which could be a problem especially in the “undamaged” treatment. I also needed enough female A. polychrosidis hunting for hosts to give me a decent sample size so I had to collect and emerge as many “un-windowed” cone-rolled leaflets as I could in the summer, and hope that they would actually mate and want to oviposit into host larvae at this point in their lives. Another issue was that I couldn’t coax my summer emerged C. fraxinella to lay eggs on ash seedlings to create leaf-mined treatments. Fortunately, a subset of the local population of C. fraxinella had developed a second generation on the new ash leaves that a dying ash tree puts out in July in an effort to save itself. These leaflets became my leaf-mined treatment. Over two seasons with a lot of juggling and timing of three species I was able to gather enough experimental data with the olfactometer to discover that female A. polychrosidis were differentially attracted to the volatile odour cues from each ash species. In green ash tests, they were attracted to the smell of green ash alone but in black ash tests, they were not attracted unless the leaflets were attacked by its host. The “icing on the manuscript cake” was the GC-EAD results by co-authour Regine Gries that showed that 13 compounds in the volatile profile of ash could be sensed by the antennae of A. polychrosidis, and some of them are known to increase in response to herbivore damage.
I’d say that this manuscript is a starting point for further studies on this interesting parasitism system and could accommodate projects from chemical ecology and landscape ecology perspectives at the very least. In fact, Danielle Hoefele and Sarah McPike have already begun projects in Maya’s lab on the Fraxinus–Caloptilia-Apanteles system. In case you’d like to know more, here is the link to our manuscript published in Arthropod-Plant Interactions.
Questions About Scientific Publishing? Come to #ESCJAM2015!
This year’s 2015 Joint Annual Meeting in Montréal, Québec includes a free lunchtime workshop sponsored by Cambridge University Press that tackles the topic of publishing scientific papers.
Discussion will be led by a three-member panel examining the publication process through the eyes of an author (J. Saguez), a journal editor (K. Floate) and a publisher (D. Edwards). Following short presentations by each panelist, the floor will be opened for general questions and discussion.
Send us your questions and we will do our best to address them in our presentations.
What makes for a good paper? Who should I include as co-authors? How important is the cover letter? Why is the review process so long? How can I best respond to reviewer comments? What journal should I publish in? What is hybrid open access? What are predatory publishers? Why don’t journals make publications freely available? Knowing the answers to these and other questions can take some of the frustration out of the publication process.
Our goal is to ensure that everyone leaves with a full stomach and new insights to simplify the publication of their next paper! You can help us by sending your questions to Kevin Floate (Kevin.Floate@agr.gc.ca) by October 23rd.
See you in Montréal!
Julien Saguez – Independent Researcher/Author
Kevin Floate – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Editor-in-Chief, The Canadian Entomologist
Daniel Edwards – Senior Commissioning Editor, Journals, Cambridge University Press
From inquiring students to published authors: an adventure in the Arctic
by Amanda Boyd and Kate Pare
The field course in Arctic Ecology (BIOL*4610), offered periodically by the University of Guelph, explores ecological relationships in a sub-arctic environment. Based out of the Northern Studies Research Center, the 2-week course takes place in Churchill Manitoba and the surrounding area. That was what we, the students, knew going into the course. What we didn’t know was that course would be, for many of us, a once in a lifetime experience!
Students in the Arctic Ecology field course learning from hymenopterist extraordinaire Alex Smith. (Photo by Eric Scott)
There are only three ways of travelling to Churchill, Manitoba: by boat, by plane or by train. Since we wouldn’t be taking the boat route, two options were left: an hour and forty-minute flight, or a three-day journey by rail. The latter is where most of our adventures began (particularly when some of us didn’t purchase a sleeper ticket). There is much to be learned from a long northward trek, from changing ecosystems and changing cultural environments to increasing price tags. Eventually though, the journey’s end came with a comfortable bus ride and an incredibly delicious meal at the Northern Studies Centre. From there on out, it was down to business.
The first week of our course was spent roaming the rugged landscape, learning about the diverse ecosystems the region has to offer while simultaneously trying to prevent ourselves from being carried off by the swarms of (seemingly) abnormally-sized horse flies. We visited sphagnum bogs, fens, the coast (which may have involved kayaking with belugas), a cranberry-laden moraine and the northern extent of the boreal forest. We explored Krummholtz and bluffs, learned that sedges have edges and learned to always be on the lookout for polar bears (at least 2 bear guards please!). The second week however, allowed us the liberty of designing and conducting our own studies.
As a real world example of scientific research in action, the first day of week-two was spent sampling in the footsteps of Robert E. Gregg and collecting ants from his original 1969 study sites (Gregg 1972). Armed with basic instructions on the identification of the 1969 sampled ant species and genera, we visited a total three sites: Cape Merry, the Churchill Welcome Sign, and Goose Creek Bog. At each site, we spent approximately three hours actively searching for ants, breaking open woody debris and digging into moss hummocks. This was true for all but the Goose Creek site where our (brand new bus) tire sprung a leak and we had no choice but to wait there (which may have resulted in a thoroughly sampled population of Odonates) until Alex Smith, one of the instructors walked into town to radio the Churchill Northern Studies Centre for Plan-B transportation. From there it was back to the lab for a crash course on identifying ants to morphospecies, and for many of us, a valuable lesson that all individuals of a species do not look the same (due to individual variation and cryptic diversity). The rest of week-two was spent with groups of students at every site chasing a variety of six-legged, sub-arctic mysteries. Of course, as students of the natural world, no curiosity was overlooked and no opportunity for fun either! Many an hour was spent bluff jumping, polar bear sighting, investigating the Ithaca shipwreck, and in the case of some students, completing a partial reconstruction of an arctic fox skeleton. Needless to say, it was a very short two weeks that passed with discovery and awe.
One of the many species collected – an ant in the Leptothorax muscorum complex, collected at Cape Merry (Photo by Chelsie Xavier-Blower)
Going into our field course, I’m not sure any of us thought we would come out of it as published authors. For many of us that participated, the Arctic Ecology field course provided the first real opportunity to actively participate in research outside of the university. The idea that a few days’ worth of collections could be turned into a scientific paper was almost unimaginable. The resulting paper was the first publication that any of us had contributed to. It was exciting to receive the manuscript drafts, and then paper proofs and to know that even aspiring researchers like us could contribute to the knowledge of the scientific community.
During the course, we took high-resolution panoramic GigaPan photographs of the areas we sampled (Smith et al 2013) – you can explore those here. All the DNA barcodes we generated during the course are publicly available for download and exploration. Finally, we wrote about using GigaPans in our Churchill adventures in an article for GigaPan Magazine.
Students of the Arctic Ecology Field course (now published authors!)(Photo by Eric Scott)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank LeeAnn Fishback and the staff of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (https://www.churchillscience.ca/) for all their hospitality and help in Churchill. Support from the CREATE Lab Outreach Program at Carnegie Mellon University, the Learning Enhancement Fund of the University of Guelph (http://www.lef.uoguelph.ca/) and the Fine Foundation helped provide funds for GigaPan-ing and DNA barcoding during the course. Support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to Alex Smith and Sarah Adamowicz provided support and infrastructure.
References
Gregg, R.E. 1972. The northward distribution of ants in North America. The Canadian Entomologist, 104: 1073–1091
Smith, M. Alex, S. Adamowicz, Amanda Boyd, Chris Britton-Foster, Hayley Cahill, Kelsey Desnoyers, Natalie Duitshaever, Dan Gibson, Steve James, Yurak Jeong, Darren Kelly, Eli Levene, Hilary Lyttle, Talia Masse, Kate Pare, Kelsie Paris, Cassie Russell, Eric Scott, Debbie Silva, Megan Sparkes, Kami Valkova (2013) “Arctic Ecology” GigaPan Magazine Vol 5 Issue 1. www.gigapanmagazine.org/vol5/issue1/ (students ordered alphabetically)
Smith, M. Alex, Amanda Boyd, Chris Britton-Foster, Hayley Cahill, Kelsey Desnoyers, Natalie Duitshaever, Dan Gibson, Steve James, Yurak Jeong, Darren Kelly, Eli Levene, Hilary Lyttle, Talia Masse, Kate Pare, Kelsie Paris, Cassie Russell, Eric Scott, Debbie Silva, Megan Sparkes, Kami Valkova S. J. Adamowicz (2015) The northward distribution of ants forty years later: re-visiting Gregg’s 1969 collections in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. The Canadian Entomologist. http://dx.doi.org/10.4039/tce.2015.53
Entomologist Survey: Life & Living in Academia
This is a guest post by Dr. Laurel Haavik, post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University.
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I am a post-doc. I’ve been one for nearly six years. Like many other post-docs, I have been working for over a decade towards my goal: a tenure-track position at a research-intensive academic institution. I enjoy research and teaching, and so a career including both seemed like a logical pursuit. I must be good enough to succeed in this pursuit, otherwise someone would have told me to opt for a different path by now. After all, only a small percentage of Ph.D.s actually become professors. I must be pretty close to achieving this goal, because lately I’ve had several interviews – no offers yet. By now, most of my peers have secured permanent positions, although some have gone on different paths. It must be my turn soon. I had faith in the system; confidence in myself.
Earlier this summer, I was invited to give a talk at a conference, in a session on women in science. I accepted willingly; the subject seemed challenging and relevant. As I began to prepare, I realized I knew nothing about it. So, I did what any scientist would do: I turned to the primary literature on women in science. What I found changed my whole perspective on academia, my career, and most importantly: my life.
I learned that the tenure system is outdated, and filters out many creative and talented people. It was established ca. 1940, when those entering academic careers were mostly men. Assistant professors were expected to live on campus, and work intensively, around-the-clock, on establishing themselves until achieving tenure. Sounds a lot like graduate school, or a post-doc, doesn’t it? There’s not much room in that scenario for having a life outside of this pursuit. It turns out that not much has changed about this in the intervening 70+ years. To make it worse, there are now few jobs and too many of us with graduate degrees competing to fill them. It turns out that women, more often than men, are willing to forgo their academic dreams because of this ridiculousness, in favor of something better – probably a happier life. It seems that there are two issues. One: is it even possible? Women are confronted with the complications of basic biology at the very same time as they would be embarking on a demanding academic career. Most of us are well into our thirties, near the end of our child-bearing years, by the time we’re on the job search. Two: they’re exhausted, wondering if an academic career is akin to never-ending graduate school. In the academic atmosphere, there is intense pressure to do more; for example, publish or perish, fund or famish. Talent and creativity that science badly needs is undoubtedly lost as women and men continue to opt out of this outdated system, and for very reasonable grounds.
I took a long, hard look at my career so far. I’m on my third post-doc. I’ve had two failed relationships and a third that might not make it if I have to move again. I’m not married. I don’t have children. I’m in my mid-thirties, meaning that if I want to have children, I better get situated and do it soon. Maybe academia isn’t for me after all, even though my interests, teaching and research, are so well-aligned with the academic mission. I realized that my adult life so far, 90% career and 10% life outside of work, is a direct product of what I like to call our broken academic system. We need to better understand and voice our discontent with the broken academic system, or it won’t change.
I wondered if others feel the same way. In my field, had others thought of leaving science? And if so, why? Has the disparity in numbers of women and men graduates vs. those occupying professional positions actually changed in recent decades? Most importantly, what allows people to cope with such a rigorous career? I’ve been lucky to have had some great mentors, support from my family, and support and encouragement from the scientific community in my field. Have others had the same kinds of emotional support systems?
My study pursues these questions among three related fields: Forestry, Entomology, and Forest Entomology. In all three of these fields women are not historically well-represented, but this has changed in recent years, especially in Entomology. There are still few women in Forestry. Forest Entomology is a small field with a very inter-connected community, which I hope will provide an interesting contrast to its two larger, sister fields.
Please follow the link below to participate in my study, by completing my survey.
I invite men and women at all stages in their careers, as well as those who are no longer in science, to participate. Please forward this invitation to anyone you know who is no longer in science, but completed graduate school (M.S. or Ph.D.). The results of this study will be published in the primary literature.
Please follow the link below to complete the brief, 28-question survey by September 30, 2015
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/forestry-entomology
It may take 10-15 minutes to complete. I apologize for any cross-posting of this survey. No personal identifying information will be collected as part of the survey, and your participation will be completely anonymous. Answering questions in the survey will indicate consent. Participation is voluntary and you may withdraw at any time without penalty, and there are no incentives to participate. Participation will have no effect upon your relationship with the Entomological Society of Canada. This study has been determined Exempt from IRB review.
Please contact me if I can provide any additional information regarding the aims of or your participation in the survey (Laurel Haavik, 479-422-4997, haavik.1@osu.edu). For questions about your rights as a participant in this study or to discuss other study-related concerns or complaints with someone who is not part of the research team, you may contact Ms. Sandra Meadows in the Office of Responsible Research Practices at 1-800-678-6251 or hsconcerns@osu.edu.
Student opportunities at the 2016 International Congress of Entomology
Next September, the largest-ever scientific meeting of entomologists will take place at the International Congress of Entomology (ICE) in Orlando, Florida. For graduate students and early-career entomologists, it will be a fantastic opportunity to meet your peers from all over the world, present your research in a high-profile setting, and scout out potential study or career opportunities.
While you might be thinking that it’s an awful long time from now, and that there’s that pesky thesis that you have to get written, there are two important deadlines coming up soon that you should be aware of:
1. Travel Awards for Students and Early-Career Professionals
The international branch of the Entomological Society of America is giving a total of $50,000 worth of awards to students from outside the USA to attend ICE 2016.
Find detailed information about these awards here. Note that you need to be a member of the ESA to apply, that and membership will cost you between $50 and $150. If you plan to apply, you need to act fast – the deadline for application is September 1st, 2015.
Also note that the Entomological Society of Canada will also have a student and early-career professional travel awards program to assist with attendance at ICE. Information about these awards will be available soon!
2. The International Graduate Student Showcase (IGSS)
The Graduate Student Showcase, which has become a staple of ESC annual meetings, is coming to ICE 2016! Don’t miss this opportunity to present your finished research project alongside the top graduate students in entomology from around the world.
To apply, you need to be defending your MSc or PhD thesis between September 30, 2015 and September 30, 2016.
Find more information about the IGSS here.
The deadline for IGSS applications is October 31, 2015.