Living in metal-contaminated lakewater is just another day’s work for phantom midge larvae.
In the lakes surrounding Sudbury, Ontario and Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, over 75 years of smelter operations have left their mark by contaminating soil and water with the trace metals cadmium, nickel, copper, and zinc.
This contamination led Maikel Rosabal, Landis Hare, and Peter Campbell, all from the Institut national de la Recherche scientifique in Québec, to study how aquatic animals tolerate these contaminants. To do so, they needed a study organism that was abundant, easy to collect, and could accumulate and tolerate trace metals. The best option turned out to be larvae of the phantom midge Chaoborus.
“The lakes in the area, and their watersheds, have been contaminated by the deposition of atmospheric aerosols and particles. Metal concentrations in lake water tend to be higher in the lakes that are downwind from and close to the smelters, than in lakes that are upwind and distant from the smelter stacks,” says Dr. Peter Campbell. “The presence of Chaoborus in lakes with high metal concentrations implies that they are highly metal tolerant.”
The researchers chose a total of 12 lakes around Sudbury and Rouyn-Noranda with differing concentrations of trace metals, and collected water samples, using diffusion samplers that excluded particles, and midge larvae using a plankton net. After homogenizing the larvae, the researchers used a series of centrifugation, heating, and sodium hydroxide digestion steps to separate the subcellular components of the larvae. They then measured the amount of metal in each fraction as well as the concentrations of dissolved metals in samples of lake water. This allowed them to relate the concentrations of each trace metal in lake water to the concentrations in larvae.
They found that the majority of each metal accumulated in the cytosolic heat-stable protein fraction that they isolated from the larvae—a fraction that contains large amounts of metal-binding proteins. And while other fractions also contained small amounts of metals, it was in the heat-stable protein fraction that metal concentrations responded most obviously to the increasing metal concentrations in lake water. This suggests that the Chaoborus larvae were able to bind and detoxify increasingly large amounts of these potentially toxic metals.
“This suggests an important role for these metallothionein-like proteins in the detoxification of metals,” says Dr. Campbell. “Presumably this contributes to the presence of this insect in highly metal-contaminated lakes.”
While laboratory studies usually focus on the effects of exposure to a single trace metal (usually dissolved in the water), animals in this study were exposed in the field to many trace metals both in the water and in their planktonic food. The researchers suggest that Chaoborus larvae would be effective “sentinels” for estimating trace-metal exposure to lake plankton, which is a key component of ecological risk assessments.
“Rough estimates of trace metal exposure are often obtained by measuring total metal concentrations in the water or the sediment. Such values usually overestimate metal exposure because much of the metal present is not available for uptake by organisms because they are bound to substances such as organic matter or iron oxides,” explain the researchers. “For these reasons, measurements of trace metals in organisms are increasingly used to estimate exposure in risk assessments.”
Rosabal, M., Hare, L. & Campbell, P.G.C. (2012). Subcellular metal partitioning in larvae of the insect Chaoborus collected along an environmental metal exposure gradient (Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn), Aquatic Toxicology, 120-121 78. DOI: 10.1016/j.aquatox.2012.05.001
Jeffrey Higgins has enjoyed the same 2 mile stretch of the Thames River in London, Ontario for ~50 years. He traded his fishing rod for a camera about 5 years ago to celebrates the natural world, and enjoys sharing his photos on his website and on Facebook. Jeffrey submitted the following photos and asked for suggestions about the species ID. If you have a suggestion, please let Jeffrey know in the comments.
———————————
I was out for a walk in the field, but actually stepping into the woods to photograph spiders, when I noticed a tiny critter on my chest. It was crawling up my camera strap and getting closer to my face so I put down the camera and coaxed the critter onto a stick. This caterpillar was very interesting. It had a small floating body hovering over it’s head that seemed more like a pet on a leash than part of the caterpillar itself. I observed this caterpillar for several minutes and took a good number of photos.
I am writing to you in the hope that someone there can identify this bug for me and provide some insight about this strange thing attached to it’s head. It was not merely bobbing about on a pair of hairs but rather, it was raised, lowered, and twisted about in a seemingly voluntary fashion. So cool!
Dear Buggy is the the alter-ego of Dr. Chris MacQuarrie, a research entomologist with the Canadian Forest Service. You can ask Buggy questions of your own on Twitter @CMacQuar.
—————————-
Hello all,
Writing your first manuscript can be difficult. I remember spending a ridiculous amount of time preparing the first draft of my first paper. I thought I had produced something pretty good. So imagine my surprise when the file came back from my supervisor dripping in red ink (digital red ink, that is).
I had two big problems. First, like many new students, I didn’t make a particularly convincing argument in my introduction, my methods were confusing, the results were a mess and the discussion was meandering. My second problem confounded the first. I wasn’t a good writer.
Solving the first problem was easy. I had two very patient supervisors who taught me how to write a scientific paper. Solving the second problem is taking a little longer, because the only way to become a better writer is to practice. That is, you need to write. I write as much as I can, but I still have a lot of work to do. I’m lucky that I’ve had the good fortune to work with good writers and good editors from whom I’ve managed to learn some good habits (and break some bad ones).
The rest of my education has come from books. I thought I’d share some of these with you.
This is an excellent primer on how to write a scientific paper and should be on the bookshelf of every grad student.The 6th edition is a bit pricey, but you might be able to pick up a copy of the 4th or 5th edition at a good used bookstore. I own the 4th edition, it’s a bit dated but more than adequate for everyday use.
I was introduced to this book during my undergrad where it was on the required reading list (in part, I think because the author is also an alumni of the University of Saskatchewan’s biology department) I’ve carried it with me ever since. McMillan focuses on writing term papers and lab reports with less attention paid to writing journal articles, so this might be a better choice for undergrads. That said, there are good sections on formatting and citing that also apply to graduate level work. The current edition also covers the formatting of posters.
These two were recommended to me by Cedric Gillot, editor of the Bulletin (Cedric is one of those good editors I mentioned earlier. He’s been editing my work, on and off, for over 15 years).
Moore’s book looks to be out of print but many copies are available from online used book stores (as are most of the books in this post). Pechenik’s book is well reviewed on Amazon. I’ll track down a copy and report back. If you’ve read this book let me know what you thought.
Books on writing in general:
These three books are not about writing in science, but are all excellent guides on how to write well.
Perhaps the granddaddy of all grammar guides. While it’s a bit dated (Devlin goes into detail on the proper use of ‘shall’ and ‘thou’), writers should still find it relevant. In particular, those, like me, that were never taught the rules of english grammarl. One other plus, since it was published in 1910, the copyright has expired and it can be had for free! The Elements of Style 4th ed. by W Stunk and E.B. White.
The classic guide to writing in english. Buy this. Read it. Then put it on your bookshelf and read it again every year for the rest of your life. The best $12 you can invest towards becoming a better writer.
Zinsser focuses on guiding the writer to telling a compelling story. A great resource if you fancy becoming a writer about science (in addition to a writer of science). Regardless, science is about telling stories and the advice in this book about constructing a narrative can be applied to writing in the peer-reviewed literature.
And two for the road…
These last two books are on the art and craft of writing. Both are fun reads and worth checking out.
Yes, that ‘S King’. King has much good advice to offer to all writers. If you ever wondered how King could be such a prolific writer, consider this: he writes at least 1000 words a day, six days a week. Anyone who has spent that much of their life writing should have good advice to offer. Set any doubts that you may have about King as a fiction writer and read this book. Probably one of his best.
A fun little book about exercising verbosity from your writing. Clearly, I need to read it again.
I’d also love to hear your recommendations. What books influenced you as a writer?
Cover images in this post are from the Open Library project. Links are to Amazon.ca, but you should be able to find many of these in your local used bookstore, university bookstore or library.
http://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.png00Morgan Jacksonhttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngMorgan Jackson2012-08-24 06:00:282019-11-14 20:22:25Dear Buggy: Writing your first manuscript
Chris Buddle, Editor-in-Chief, The Canadian Entomologist
________________________________
I’ve been involved with the Entomological Society of Canada for a long time. It’s a wonderful community of Canadian entomologists sharing an interest and enthusiasm for arthropods. The ESC’s activities are mostly centered around its annual conference, its range of publications, and it offers a suite of awards and scholarships. The society’s website also hosts career opportunities, photo contests, and a range of other rich and varied entomological content. The latest, big news for the society is that on 1 June, the ESC officially launched its own blog. This blog was the brainchild of a few members of the society.
So…why does a scientific society need a blog? What’s the benefit to members of the society, to the society itself, and what’s the benefit for the broader entomological community? Here are some thoughts about this:
1) Visibility: it’s a tough time for scientific societies – funding is tight, and for a lot of people, the value of memberships to societies may seem less important than it once was. Therefore, increased visibility though an on-line presence is important. A static website is essential, but a blog has a fluidity and dynamic presence that is hard to match with a website. An active blog with well-written and interesting content will do a lot to increase a society’s visibility. The visibility from an active blog is also global in its reach.
2) Opportunities to contribute: the ESC blog will have dozens of contributors – means anybody with an interest in entomology (regardless of their profession and educational background) has an opportunity to write something for a broader audience. Blog posts are often easier to write, they are shorter than research papers, and the content need not be vetted through a peer-review process. It’s a forum for creative ideas, stories, photographs, and fun facts about insects. The blog already has a couple of nice examples to illustrate this point. For example, Chris Cloutier, a naturalist at the Morgan Arboretum on the Island of Montreal, just wrote a lovely post about the Hackberry Emperor. Chris is an example of a different kind of entomologist – he’s not a research scientist, nor is his primary profession Entomology. However, he does outreach, has a wealth of expertise and talent, and he has a lot to offer the entomological community. These kind of opportunities create an environment of inclusion for a society – members have a voice and can share their ideas and expertise. Non-members can also contribute and recognize that there is a strong community associated with the ESC (…and perhaps some of the non-members will see the value of the society and join).
3) Economics: more than ever before, scientific societies are struggling to maintain members, and balance their books. A blog is a cheap and effective way to promote their science to the world and the cost can be as little as a domain name. I can think of no other method by which a society can promote itself at this cost point. You could even argue that the time for static websites may be coming to a close since they are costly to host, require people with specific technical skills, and require a lot of back-end support. The good blog sites can be administered by people with relatively few of these skills (I’m proof of that!!).
4) Marketing and branding: a high quality blog helps a society get its brand to a broad audience, and helps to market the society to the world. The ESC has a long and wonderful history, but its main audience over the years has mostly been academics, research scientists, and students of entomology. The ESC brand has excellence and quality behind it and that kind of brand should be shared, expanded, and through this process, the society will hopefully gain positive exposure and more members.
5) Communication: At the end of the day, knowledge is something to be shared. Scientific communication is a fast-changing field and one that is making all of us reconsider how we talk and write about our interests. I think we all have a responsibility to do outreach. There is so much mis-information out on the Internet, and people with specialized and well-honed skills must be heard and must have a means to share accurate information in a clear and effective manner – e.g., a society blog. I also think many entomologist are perfectly positioned to do effective outreach (I’ve written about this before). Part of the ESC’s mandate is dissemination of knowledge about insects and social media is a key piece of any communication strategy.
What do you think? Can you think of other reasons why scientific societies need to embrace social media? Please share your ideas!
I will finish with a stronger statement: scientific societies are perfectly positioned to have the BEST blogs on the Internet. A scientific society is a community, a community with history, and a community built on high level of expertise. A scientific society also provides a structure and framework for bringing together high quality knowledge about a particular topic. A blog can be amazingly strong with this kind of support. A society is also about people and these people work tirelessly behind the scenes to facilitate the dissemination of high quality content. These people, structured in committees, and with oversight from an executive committee, can provide tangible support that will help to keep a blog from becoming unidimensional. The ESC’s blog administrators (Crystal and Morgan) know how to keep the content of high quality, and know how to put all the pieces together – and they know they can do this because they have an entire community behind them. The society is committed to supporting the blog and for that reason, there is reason to be optimistic about its long-term success.
http://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.png00Crystal Ernsthttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngCrystal Ernst2012-08-20 07:30:052019-11-14 20:22:24Why a scientific society needs a blog
Time to meet another ESC Blog Admin, but first an update.
The ESC Blog has been going strong all summer, and is quickly becoming established within the “Bug-o-Sphere”; sometime today we’ll hit a total of 5,000 visits from 85 different countries, just 2.5 months after launching! For comparison, that’s about half the number of athletes and the same number of nations that took home at least one medal from the 2012 Summer Olympics! None of this would be possible without the support of the entomologists and insect enthusiasts from across the country who have taken the time to share a story, advice, or a snapshot of their research with us.
As the insect season starts to wind down and the entomology conference season approaches, we encourage you to share your favourite photos, stories from the field, or even introduce yourself, your work or your lab to the world. Feel free to email us at entsoccanada@gmail.com with your ideas and stories because we can’t wait to hear from you!
As the ESC Blog Admins, we figured we’d break the ice and tell you a little bit about ourselves before we start bugging each of you to do the same. You met Crystal last month, so I guess it’s time you got to know me, Morgan.
———————————————————
Growing up in a semi-rural, mid-sized city with a strong interest in zoology, I went to the University of Guelph with the intention of becoming a veterinarian, which, other than farming, was the only career I was exposed to in which I’d get to work with animals. By my second year at university I realized there were way more options for an animal geek like myself, so I took as many zoology courses as I could fit into my schedule.
In my third year I signed up for an insect diversity & natural history course on a whim, and the rest, as they say, is history. Of course I had known about insects before this course, but I hadn’t taken the time to look at them closely, to realize the many ways in which they had evolved to survive, the morphological differences that revealed whether a species was the diner or the dinner, or even realized the shear number of species that had literally been around me my entire life! It was like I had stumbled into a secret world that hardly anyone else knew about, but which was filled with so much to discover that I knew I could never look away again.
This first entomology course also taught me how many insects were out there waiting to be discovered, named, and placed onto the tree of life. The prospect of travelling and exploring the world, catching flies, and then being the one to give them names captured my imagination, and when I realized I could actually get paid to do all this, I joined Dr. Stephen Marshall’s lab and started my career as an insect taxonomist.
Working with Steve at the University of Guelph Insect Collection, I completed my Masters of Science last year studying the taxonomy and phylogenetics of stilt-legged flies (family Micropezidae), and I’ll soon be starting my PhD to continue my work on this group.
When I’m not working with flies, I spend my time promoting entomology and trying to make the world’s insect fauna more accessible to the public. I’m the technical editor for the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification, an ESC journal developed to publish illustrated keys for insects and other arthropods, and am a co-author on a soon-to-be-released field guide to Northeastern Jewel beetles (family Buprestidae). I developed an interest in macro photography in 2007 (working with Steve I suspect this was probably inevitable) so I could show my friends and family why I thought insects were so cool, and in 2010 I started my blog, Biodiversity in Focus, to share my passion for entomology even further afield. Like Crystal, I feel that social media has the potential to revolutionize not only the way in which scientists go about their day-to-day research, but also their interactions with each other and the public.
Physiology Fridays: Trace-metal phantoms
Living in metal-contaminated lakewater is just another day’s work for phantom midge larvae.
In the lakes surrounding Sudbury, Ontario and Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, over 75 years of smelter operations have left their mark by contaminating soil and water with the trace metals cadmium, nickel, copper, and zinc.
This contamination led Maikel Rosabal, Landis Hare, and Peter Campbell, all from the Institut national de la Recherche scientifique in Québec, to study how aquatic animals tolerate these contaminants. To do so, they needed a study organism that was abundant, easy to collect, and could accumulate and tolerate trace metals. The best option turned out to be larvae of the phantom midge Chaoborus.
“The lakes in the area, and their watersheds, have been contaminated by the deposition of atmospheric aerosols and particles. Metal concentrations in lake water tend to be higher in the lakes that are downwind from and close to the smelters, than in lakes that are upwind and distant from the smelter stacks,” says Dr. Peter Campbell. “The presence of Chaoborus in lakes with high metal concentrations implies that they are highly metal tolerant.”
The researchers chose a total of 12 lakes around Sudbury and Rouyn-Noranda with differing concentrations of trace metals, and collected water samples, using diffusion samplers that excluded particles, and midge larvae using a plankton net. After homogenizing the larvae, the researchers used a series of centrifugation, heating, and sodium hydroxide digestion steps to separate the subcellular components of the larvae. They then measured the amount of metal in each fraction as well as the concentrations of dissolved metals in samples of lake water. This allowed them to relate the concentrations of each trace metal in lake water to the concentrations in larvae.
They found that the majority of each metal accumulated in the cytosolic heat-stable protein fraction that they isolated from the larvae—a fraction that contains large amounts of metal-binding proteins. And while other fractions also contained small amounts of metals, it was in the heat-stable protein fraction that metal concentrations responded most obviously to the increasing metal concentrations in lake water. This suggests that the Chaoborus larvae were able to bind and detoxify increasingly large amounts of these potentially toxic metals.
“This suggests an important role for these metallothionein-like proteins in the detoxification of metals,” says Dr. Campbell. “Presumably this contributes to the presence of this insect in highly metal-contaminated lakes.”
While laboratory studies usually focus on the effects of exposure to a single trace metal (usually dissolved in the water), animals in this study were exposed in the field to many trace metals both in the water and in their planktonic food. The researchers suggest that Chaoborus larvae would be effective “sentinels” for estimating trace-metal exposure to lake plankton, which is a key component of ecological risk assessments.
“Rough estimates of trace metal exposure are often obtained by measuring total metal concentrations in the water or the sediment. Such values usually overestimate metal exposure because much of the metal present is not available for uptake by organisms because they are bound to substances such as organic matter or iron oxides,” explain the researchers. “For these reasons, measurements of trace metals in organisms are increasingly used to estimate exposure in risk assessments.”
Rosabal, M., Hare, L. & Campbell, P.G.C. (2012). Subcellular metal partitioning in larvae of the insect Chaoborus collected along an environmental metal exposure gradient (Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn), Aquatic Toxicology, 120-121 78. DOI: 10.1016/j.aquatox.2012.05.001
Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22647479
Photo: Maikel Rosabal
Reader Photos – Jeffrey Higgins
Jeffrey Higgins has enjoyed the same 2 mile stretch of the Thames River in London, Ontario for ~50 years. He traded his fishing rod for a camera about 5 years ago to celebrates the natural world, and enjoys sharing his photos on his website and on Facebook. Jeffrey submitted the following photos and asked for suggestions about the species ID. If you have a suggestion, please let Jeffrey know in the comments.
———————————
Photo by Jeffrey Higgins (Click to enlarge)
Photo by Jeffrey Higgins (Click to enlarge)
Photo by Jeffrey Higgins (Click to enlarge)
Photo by Jeffrey Higgins (Click to enlarge)
Dear Buggy: Writing your first manuscript
Dear Buggy is the the alter-ego of Dr. Chris MacQuarrie, a research entomologist with the Canadian Forest Service. You can ask Buggy questions of your own on Twitter @CMacQuar.
—————————-
Hello all,
Writing your first manuscript can be difficult. I remember spending a ridiculous amount of time preparing the first draft of my first paper. I thought I had produced something pretty good. So imagine my surprise when the file came back from my supervisor dripping in red ink (digital red ink, that is).
I had two big problems. First, like many new students, I didn’t make a particularly convincing argument in my introduction, my methods were confusing, the results were a mess and the discussion was meandering. My second problem confounded the first. I wasn’t a good writer.
Solving the first problem was easy. I had two very patient supervisors who taught me how to write a scientific paper. Solving the second problem is taking a little longer, because the only way to become a better writer is to practice. That is, you need to write. I write as much as I can, but I still have a lot of work to do. I’m lucky that I’ve had the good fortune to work with good writers and good editors from whom I’ve managed to learn some good habits (and break some bad ones).
The rest of my education has come from books. I thought I’d share some of these with you.
Books about writing in science:
This is an excellent primer on how to write a scientific paper and should be on the bookshelf of every grad student.The 6th edition is a bit pricey, but you might be able to pick up a copy of the 4th or 5th edition at a good used bookstore. I own the 4th edition, it’s a bit dated but more than adequate for everyday use.
I was introduced to this book during my undergrad where it was on the required reading list (in part, I think because the author is also an alumni of the University of Saskatchewan’s biology department) I’ve carried it with me ever since. McMillan focuses on writing term papers and lab reports with less attention paid to writing journal articles, so this might be a better choice for undergrads. That said, there are good sections on formatting and citing that also apply to graduate level work. The current edition also covers the formatting of posters.
Writing to Learn Biology by R Moore
These two were recommended to me by Cedric Gillot, editor of the Bulletin (Cedric is one of those good editors I mentioned earlier. He’s been editing my work, on and off, for over 15 years).
Moore’s book looks to be out of print but many copies are available from online used book stores (as are most of the books in this post). Pechenik’s book is well reviewed on Amazon. I’ll track down a copy and report back. If you’ve read this book let me know what you thought.
Books on writing in general:
These three books are not about writing in science, but are all excellent guides on how to write well.
Perhaps the granddaddy of all grammar guides. While it’s a bit dated (Devlin goes into detail on the proper use of ‘shall’ and ‘thou’), writers should still find it relevant. In particular, those, like me, that were never taught the rules of english grammarl. One other plus, since it was published in 1910, the copyright has expired and it can be had for free!
The Elements of Style 4th ed. by W Stunk and E.B. White.
The classic guide to writing in english. Buy this. Read it. Then put it on your bookshelf and read it again every year for the rest of your life. The best $12 you can invest towards becoming a better writer.
Zinsser focuses on guiding the writer to telling a compelling story. A great resource if you fancy becoming a writer about science (in addition to a writer of science). Regardless, science is about telling stories and the advice in this book about constructing a narrative can be applied to writing in the peer-reviewed literature.
And two for the road…
These last two books are on the art and craft of writing. Both are fun reads and worth checking out.
Yes, that ‘S King’. King has much good advice to offer to all writers. If you ever wondered how King could be such a prolific writer, consider this: he writes at least 1000 words a day, six days a week. Anyone who has spent that much of their life writing should have good advice to offer. Set any doubts that you may have about King as a fiction writer and read this book. Probably one of his best.
When you catch an adjective. Kill it. by B. Yagoda
cover photo [ http://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/528568-M.jpg ]
A fun little book about exercising verbosity from your writing. Clearly, I need to read it again.
I’d also love to hear your recommendations. What books influenced you as a writer?
Cover images in this post are from the Open Library project. Links are to Amazon.ca, but you should be able to find many of these in your local used bookstore, university bookstore or library.
Why a scientific society needs a blog
Chris Buddle, Editor-in-Chief, The Canadian Entomologist
________________________________
I’ve been involved with the Entomological Society of Canada for a long time. It’s a wonderful community of Canadian entomologists sharing an interest and enthusiasm for arthropods. The ESC’s activities are mostly centered around its annual conference, its range of publications, and it offers a suite of awards and scholarships. The society’s website also hosts career opportunities, photo contests, and a range of other rich and varied entomological content. The latest, big news for the society is that on 1 June, the ESC officially launched its own blog. This blog was the brainchild of a few members of the society.
So…why does a scientific society need a blog? What’s the benefit to members of the society, to the society itself, and what’s the benefit for the broader entomological community? Here are some thoughts about this:
1) Visibility: it’s a tough time for scientific societies – funding is tight, and for a lot of people, the value of memberships to societies may seem less important than it once was. Therefore, increased visibility though an on-line presence is important. A static website is essential, but a blog has a fluidity and dynamic presence that is hard to match with a website. An active blog with well-written and interesting content will do a lot to increase a society’s visibility. The visibility from an active blog is also global in its reach.
2) Opportunities to contribute: the ESC blog will have dozens of contributors – means anybody with an interest in entomology (regardless of their profession and educational background) has an opportunity to write something for a broader audience. Blog posts are often easier to write, they are shorter than research papers, and the content need not be vetted through a peer-review process. It’s a forum for creative ideas, stories, photographs, and fun facts about insects. The blog already has a couple of nice examples to illustrate this point. For example, Chris Cloutier, a naturalist at the Morgan Arboretum on the Island of Montreal, just wrote a lovely post about the Hackberry Emperor. Chris is an example of a different kind of entomologist – he’s not a research scientist, nor is his primary profession Entomology. However, he does outreach, has a wealth of expertise and talent, and he has a lot to offer the entomological community. These kind of opportunities create an environment of inclusion for a society – members have a voice and can share their ideas and expertise. Non-members can also contribute and recognize that there is a strong community associated with the ESC (…and perhaps some of the non-members will see the value of the society and join).
3) Economics: more than ever before, scientific societies are struggling to maintain members, and balance their books. A blog is a cheap and effective way to promote their science to the world and the cost can be as little as a domain name. I can think of no other method by which a society can promote itself at this cost point. You could even argue that the time for static websites may be coming to a close since they are costly to host, require people with specific technical skills, and require a lot of back-end support. The good blog sites can be administered by people with relatively few of these skills (I’m proof of that!!).
4) Marketing and branding: a high quality blog helps a society get its brand to a broad audience, and helps to market the society to the world. The ESC has a long and wonderful history, but its main audience over the years has mostly been academics, research scientists, and students of entomology. The ESC brand has excellence and quality behind it and that kind of brand should be shared, expanded, and through this process, the society will hopefully gain positive exposure and more members.
5) Communication: At the end of the day, knowledge is something to be shared. Scientific communication is a fast-changing field and one that is making all of us reconsider how we talk and write about our interests. I think we all have a responsibility to do outreach. There is so much mis-information out on the Internet, and people with specialized and well-honed skills must be heard and must have a means to share accurate information in a clear and effective manner – e.g., a society blog. I also think many entomologist are perfectly positioned to do effective outreach (I’ve written about this before). Part of the ESC’s mandate is dissemination of knowledge about insects and social media is a key piece of any communication strategy.
What do you think? Can you think of other reasons why scientific societies need to embrace social media? Please share your ideas!
I will finish with a stronger statement: scientific societies are perfectly positioned to have the BEST blogs on the Internet. A scientific society is a community, a community with history, and a community built on high level of expertise. A scientific society also provides a structure and framework for bringing together high quality knowledge about a particular topic. A blog can be amazingly strong with this kind of support. A society is also about people and these people work tirelessly behind the scenes to facilitate the dissemination of high quality content. These people, structured in committees, and with oversight from an executive committee, can provide tangible support that will help to keep a blog from becoming unidimensional. The ESC’s blog administrators (Crystal and Morgan) know how to keep the content of high quality, and know how to put all the pieces together – and they know they can do this because they have an entire community behind them. The society is committed to supporting the blog and for that reason, there is reason to be optimistic about its long-term success.
___________________________
Originally posted at: http://arthropodecology.com/2012/06/13/why-a-scientific-society-needs-a-blog/
Meet the ESC Blog Admins (Part 2)
Time to meet another ESC Blog Admin, but first an update.
The ESC Blog has been going strong all summer, and is quickly becoming established within the “Bug-o-Sphere”; sometime today we’ll hit a total of 5,000 visits from 85 different countries, just 2.5 months after launching! For comparison, that’s about half the number of athletes and the same number of nations that took home at least one medal from the 2012 Summer Olympics! None of this would be possible without the support of the entomologists and insect enthusiasts from across the country who have taken the time to share a story, advice, or a snapshot of their research with us.
As the insect season starts to wind down and the entomology conference season approaches, we encourage you to share your favourite photos, stories from the field, or even introduce yourself, your work or your lab to the world. Feel free to email us at entsoccanada@gmail.com with your ideas and stories because we can’t wait to hear from you!
As the ESC Blog Admins, we figured we’d break the ice and tell you a little bit about ourselves before we start bugging each of you to do the same. You met Crystal last month, so I guess it’s time you got to know me, Morgan.
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In my third year I signed up for an insect diversity & natural history course on a whim, and the rest, as they say, is history. Of course I had known about insects before this course, but I hadn’t taken the time to look at them closely, to realize the many ways in which they had evolved to survive, the morphological differences that revealed whether a species was the diner or the dinner, or even realized the shear number of species that had literally been around me my entire life! It was like I had stumbled into a secret world that hardly anyone else knew about, but which was filled with so much to discover that I knew I could never look away again.
This first entomology course also taught me how many insects were out there waiting to be discovered, named, and placed onto the tree of life. The prospect of travelling and exploring the world, catching flies, and then being the one to give them names captured my imagination, and when I realized I could actually get paid to do all this, I joined Dr. Stephen Marshall’s lab and started my career as an insect taxonomist.
Working with Steve at the University of Guelph Insect Collection, I completed my Masters of Science last year studying the taxonomy and phylogenetics of stilt-legged flies (family Micropezidae), and I’ll soon be starting my PhD to continue my work on this group.
When I’m not working with flies, I spend my time promoting entomology and trying to make the world’s insect fauna more accessible to the public. I’m the technical editor for the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification, an ESC journal developed to publish illustrated keys for insects and other arthropods, and am a co-author on a soon-to-be-released field guide to Northeastern Jewel beetles (family Buprestidae). I developed an interest in macro photography in 2007 (working with Steve I suspect this was probably inevitable) so I could show my friends and family why I thought insects were so cool, and in 2010 I started my blog, Biodiversity in Focus, to share my passion for entomology even further afield. Like Crystal, I feel that social media has the potential to revolutionize not only the way in which scientists go about their day-to-day research, but also their interactions with each other and the public.
And this is why I think the ESC Blog is such a great resource for entomology in Canada. With the support of the Entomological Society of Canada and researchers from across the country, we can raise awareness about insect-related issues, share exciting research being done in Canadian labs, and expose students to the many opportunities and careers in entomology. The Entomological Society of Canada is breaking new ground with its ESC Blog, and I’m proud to be associated with it.
Who knows, if the ESC Blog was around while I was growing up, I may have gotten a head start on my fly collecting!
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If you’re interested in learning more about my work, you can follow along on a variety of social media websites: Twitter, Google+, Mendeley, YouTube, FourSquare, Pinterest, Project Noah, and iNaturalist.