By Ward Strong, Research Scientist (Entomology), B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations, Kalamalka Forestry Center
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Syrphid head (Merodon equestris) Photo by Ward Strong
Are you a shutterbug? In love with your macro lens? Show off your favourites at the prestigious 8th Annual ESC Photo Contest! The submission deadline is July 31, so get your latest photos in soon. You too could win prestige, honour, and the admiration of your friends and peers. Top winners will grace the covers of The Canadian Entomologist and the ESC Bulletin for all 2013 issues. A selection of all submissions will be displayed on the Photo Contest website.
Contest rules are posted below:
• Photos of insects and other arthropods in all stages, activities, and habitats are accepted. To represent the scope of entomological research, we also encourage photos of field plots, laboratory experiments, insect impacts, research activities, sampling equipment, etc. Photos should, however, have a clear entomological focus.
• Digital images must be submitted in unbordered, high-quality JPG format, with the long side (width or height) a minimum of 1500 pixels. Entrants may submit up to five photographs. A caption must be provided with each photo submitted; photos without captions will not be accepted. Captions should include the locality, subject identification as closely as is known, description of activity if the main subject is other than an insect, and any interesting or relevant information. Captions should be a maximum of 40 words.
• The entrant must be a member in good standing of the Entomological Society of Canada. Photos must be taken by the entrant, and the entrant must own the copyright.
• The copyright of the photo remains with the entrant, but royalty-free use must be granted to the ESC for inclusion on the cover of one volume (6 issues) of The Canadian Entomologist, one volume (4 issues) of the Bulletin, and on the ESC website.
• The judging committee will be chosen by the Chair of the Publications Committee of the ESC and will include a member of the Web Content Committee.
• The Photo Contest winners will be announced on the ESC website, and may be announced at the Annual Meeting of the ESC or in the Bulletin. Winning photographs, and a selection of all entries, will be exhibited on the website.
• There is no cash award for the winners, but photographers will be acknowledged in each issue the photos are printed.
• Submission deadline is 31 July 2012. Entries should be submitted as an attachment to an email message; the subject line should start with “ESC Photo Contest Submission”. Send the email message to: photocontest@esc-sec.ca.
By Laura Timms, Postdoctoral Researcher (McGill University), Chair of ESC Common Names Committee
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I’ve just come back from a weekend at my parents’ house, celebrating my Dad’s birthday and enjoying the beautiful early summer weather. My parents live on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario – they have a gorgeous piece of property they’ve named Hawksview because of the panoramic vistas you get from on top of a large pile of old glacier scrapings.
View from my parents’ house – on clear days you can see all the way to Lake Ontario. Photo: Kathleen Timms
Coming from my shamefully barren urban yard, I am always amazed at the diversity of insect life on my parents’ property. Saturday morning I went outside with a cup of coffee to sit and enjoy the gardens, and within minutes was amazed at the amount of flower visiting taking place in front of me. I did a quick and unscientific count and came up with at least four species of big bees, six species of butterfly and who knows how many smaller flies and sundries buzzing in and out of the Weigela, Salvia, and Allium flowers.
My husband has done research on Bayesian learning in bumblebee foraging, and so the two of us often get caught up in watching bees drink nectar and thinking about their decision-making. As we were doing so this time, he noticed that one of the bee species was acting as a nectar robber – in other words, it was cutting a hole in the bottom of the flower and drinking the nectar through this hole instead of entering the flower in the usual way.
A carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica, sitting on a Weigela flower and taking nectar through a hole it has cut in the base of the corolla. Photo: Laura Timms
This kind of interaction is referred to as nectar robbing because the bee is getting what it is after – the nectar – without paying the price of taking pollen along with it to the next bloom. Nectar robbing is often used as an example of how a mutualism like pollination, where both parties are supposed to benefit, can be subject to cheating. Charles Darwin speculated on the harm that nectar robbing must cause to plant fitness in his book The effects of cross and self-fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom (1877). I have to admit I didn’t know much about nectar robbing beyond the basics, and I also didn’t know what the species of bee was doing the robbing. A quick online search gave me answers on both counts.
The bee had a big, shiny black abdomen and a black spot on a fuzzy yellow thorax – had to be the eastern carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica. It turns out carpenter bees are among the most common nectar robbers out there – they have short tongues, and can’t reach the nectar in flowers with long corollas, like my mother’s Weigela. But, it also turns out that nectar robbing isn’t necessarily always cheating, and may not be bad for the plant. Maloof and Inouye (2000) reviewed the literature on nectar robbing and found that there was more evidence for positive or neutral effects of nectar robbing on plant fitness than for negative effects. This is because other pollinators may still visit robbed flowers, some nectar robbers do actually pollinate, and nectar robbing can actually result in greater amounts of pollen flow between different plants and thus increase outcrossing. Fascinating!
I passed on this information to my parents, and resumed my garden sitting and coffee drinking. My attention was soon diverted again, this time by a bright red beetle on my Mom’s lilies. I didn’t need the internet to identify this beetle – it is an old friend of mine from when I worked in Switzerland at the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International. The lily leaf beetle, Lilioceris lilii, is an invasive species in North America and a voracious consumer of lilies. While the adult beetles are quite attractive the larvae have the gross habit of carrying around their frass on their backs, using it as a shield to deter predators and parasitoids (which is not always effective – see Schaffner and Müller 2001 for example).
A lily leaf beetle, Lilioceris lilii, surveys the garden. Photo: C. Ernst
I started scanning the lilies for beetles and larvae and removing them by hand – by far the best control method for a home gardener. I started squishing beetles and tossing them aside, when I remembered a recent email from a graduate student at the Université de Montréal. Alessandro Dieni is a student in Jacques Brodeur’s lab, and his research involves reconstructing the path of invasion of the lily leaf beetle using population genetics. Alessandro is looking for samples of the beetle from all over North America for his analysis, and so I stopped throwing the beetles away and started putting them in a jar of rubbing alcohol – the best collecting supplies I had on hand. I included the larvae too, after removing their fecal shields (for which my Mom made me wash my hands outside before coming in the house). It turns out that Alessandro can only use adults for his analysis, so the larvae aren’t much help. If you have lilies and have noticed these beetles in your garden, Alessandro would appreciate samples of adult beetles. You can contact him at alessandro.dieni-lafrance@umontreal.ca, and he will send you all the information you need, including a kit for collecting and preserving them.
One of the side effects of being an entomologist is being frequently asked the question: “What is this on my plant?” My dad asked me a few weeks ago about some galls he had noticed an oak tree, but I told him I couldn’t help him much without seeing them. So, one of my final tasks of the weekend was to check out the tree. This is what I saw:
Galls on a red oak, Quercus rubra, tree. Most are at the base of a branch. Some of the galls have had lots of adults emerge (note the emergence holes), and some have not. Photo: Laura Timms
My basic knowledge of oak galls told me that these galls were probably caused by cynipid wasps, but I wasn’t sure. We cut one open, and sure enough there was an almost fully developed wasp inside a chamber. Gall wasps lay their eggs in plant tissue, and the presence of the eggs induces the plant to produce the special types of highly nutritious cells that make up the gall. Larvae feed in chambers inside the gall, pupate, and then emerge out of small holes like the ones in the picture. I haven’t gotten very far with the identification of exactly which species of wasp is affecting my parents’ tree, although I’ve promised to look into it further and let them know if their tree is in serious trouble. I’m also curious to know if there are any other species inside the gall – oak galls are a fascinating system for work in community ecology, with a cast of cynipid wasps, parasitoids, predators and inquilines (e.g. Stone et al. 2002).
I’ve always said that my parents’ place would be a great field station. I’ve only mentioned three of the ecological tidbits that caught my eye this weekend, but I could go on about the way that dog-strangling vine is taking over the meadow and forest floor, our observations of caterpillars brought to the nest by purple martins, or the cool moths that show up at night by the outside lights. For the sake of brevity, I think those will all have to wait. In the mean time, now that my weekend entomology is over, I’m going to return to my regularly scheduled entomology and hit the microscope!
Literature cited
Darwin, C. 1877. The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. D. Appleton and Co., New York.
Maloof, J.E., & Inouye, D.W. (2000). Are nectar robbers cheaters or mutualists? Ecology, 81, 2651-2661 DOI: 10.2307/177331
Schaffner, U., & Müller. C. (2001). Exploitation of the Fecal Shield of the Lily Leaf Beetle, Lilioceris lilii (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), by the Specialist Parasitoid Lemophagus pulcher (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) Journal of Insect Behavior, 14 (6), 739-757 DOI: 10.1023/A:1013085316606
Stone GN, Schonrogge K, Atkinson RJ, Bellido D, & Pujade-Villar J (2002). The population biology of oak gall wasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae). Annual review of entomology, 47, 633-68 PMID: 11729087
Scientists are taught to remain objective about their study organisms and not anthropomorphize behaviours or biology. Sure, this might be useful for preventing bias in results, but it can suck the fun right out of day to day work!
Here’s your chance to act less like a scientist and have some fun with the insect world. Every 2 weeks we’ll post a new photo of an insect (or other arthropod), and your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to come up with a witty/funny/clever caption.
Although being given the chance to showcase your witticism and comedic chops for everyone on the internet to see should be award enough, we know people really like prizes, so here’s how it’s going to work:
Take a look at the photo and submit your best caption ideas in the comments (Please keep your captions PG-13. If this is your first time leaving a comment on this blog it will need to be approved by an ESC Admin before showing up. Once we’ve recognized you’re not spam and approved your comment, all your subsequent comments will be visible immediately after posting. Any captions or comments judged by the ESC admins to be derogatory, denigrating, or discriminatory will result in you being banned from commenting further effective immediately)
Crystal & I will select up to 5 of our favourite captions for each week’s photo
You’ll then get the chance to vote for your favourite nominated caption
The authors of the Top 3 voted captions will score points (5 points for first, 3 points for second, 1 point for third)
After 8 photos (4 months) we’ll tally the points and award some yet-to-be-determined prizes (don’t worry, we’ll make sure they’re awesome and entomological) to the caption-creators with the highest accumulated scores!
Think of it as American Idol meets The New Yorker, but with more insects and less Simon Cowell.
Also, if you took an insect photo which you think is just begging to be captioned, send it in to us and we’ll be happy to use it in the contest.
Without further ado, here’s photo #1! Good luck & have fun!
ESC Caption Contest C1 P1 – Photo by Morgan Jackson
The ESC Blog is off to a fantastic start, and we admins couldn’t be more proud of our amazing bloggers. The response from the Canadian entomology community has been tremendous – which is really no surprise, but still wonderful! Readers have been joining us from all over the world (59 countries!) and we’re so pleased that some of you are engaging with us by leaving comments.
We thought that it would be a good time to introduce ourselves, so you know who’s working away behind the scenes: today you’ll meet Crystal.
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Hi! I’m a PhD candidate in Chris Buddle’s Arthropod Ecology lab at McGill University. My current research interests include beetle assemblages in Arctic Canada and functional ecology. My earlier research at Carleton University (I did a BSc and MSc under the supervision of Naomi Cappucinno) involved plant-insect relationships in the context of biological invasions.
In addition to my academic pursuits, I love to teach, take pictures of insects, and spend time outdoors exploring the natural world.
I’m also very interested in science education and outreach, which is why you’re finding me here at ESC Blog.
Online science communication is a big part of who I am and what I do, in addition to my normal grad student research activities. I have been blogging as “TGIQ” at www.thebuggeek.comsince 2009. There, I write posts about insect natural history, insect photography, my own entomological research, and more broadly about my experiences as a graduate student interested in a career in academia. I am also an administrator at the research blog of The Northern Biodiversity Program (NBP), of which I am a student member, and I am a contributing authour at the Grad Life blog, where I write about the graduate student experience at McGill University.
Some people have tried to tell me that these activities are a waste of time, professionally. My personal experiences have shown this to be anything but true: I’ve established incredible networks of students, academics and other professionals; I’ve been exposed to fascinating cutting-edge science; and I’ve gained tangible professional benefits (think “publications” and “funding” and “collaborations”). None of these would have been possible without my online activities.
I also think that science outreach is an activity that all academics should make time for – after all, we are doing science for the general public, not just for our fellow researchers! Our knowledge of and passion for entomology is something that deserves to be shared with others. Blogs are wonderfully accessible outlets; they represent an unparalleled opportunity for folks from different sectors and backgrounds to participate and exchange their knowledge and experiences – something that is not often achieved through traditional venues such as conferences and journals.
I’ll leave you with some quotes from a talk that I attended in March, by researcher and science outreach proponent Nalini Nadkarni. I invite – and strongly encourage – you to join the incredible online science community and consider participating here as an ESC blogger.
By Ian Maton, Member of the The Alberta Lepidopterists’ Guild and the Altaleps discussion list, BugGuide editor and contributor to the Moths Photographers Group (MPG)
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Great Tiger (Arctia caja)
My two light traps
My journey into live moth trapping started a relatively short time ago towards the end of 2007. My brother, who lives in the UK and has been live moth trapping since 1999, frequently encouraged me to buy a light trap and in August of 2007 I finally gave in and purchased a small 12V portable, 6W Heath trap at the British Birdfair while on vacation in the UK. As this point I should explain that live moth trapping has become quite popular amongst bird watchers in the UK (my other hobby), to the extent that you can now purchase quite a lot of entomological paraphernalia at the annual Birdfair.
My backyard photographic setup
So it was, with some trepidation, that I put my light trap out for the first time in Lethbridge, Alberta, at the end of August 2007. My camera equipment was fairly basic but I did manage a few photographs and I think it is safe to say that I was completely hooked from that point on. I was able to identify a few of the moths but, although the situation has improved in recent years, identification guides were hard to find. In the UK there were already a good number of handbooks to help with moth identification but this did not appear to be the case in North America. I did buy some of the “Moths of North America North of Mexico” series and the Peterson guide “Moths of Eastern North America” but initially, my main aid to identification was BugGuide.net. Not being able to separate the moths into their respective families meant that identifying any moth could take me several hours and sometimes involved my scanning through 300 plus pages of Noctuids on BugGuide! This was not all bad as it forced me to become somewhat familiar with the family names and gave me a great sense of achievement when I did identify a moth. However, in April of 2010, something happened which dramatically changed all this.
Delphinium Leaftier (Polychrysia esmeralda)
I had started to submit one or two photographs to BugGuide and one of these was Delphinium Leaftier (Polychrysia esmeralda). While there were pinned images of this moth, there were very few live images in North America and I was contacted by Bob Patterson who asked for permission to display my photographs on the Moth Photographers Group (MPG) website. Shortly after this it became apparent that I was photographing some moths that were not yet in BugGuide. Bob created a couple of guide pages for me so that I could upload my photographs to the correct taxonomic spot but quickly suggested that I be given editor privileges on BugGuide. All this was extremely exciting to me and added an entirely new dimension to my hobby. In addition to this, Bob put me in contact with Gary Anweiler who, based in Alberta, is one of the premier experts on Noctuids in North America. Since then Gary has been instrumental in helping me to identify moths. Always patient and quick to respond I can’t thank Gary enough for his help and advice over the last few years.
Bilobed Looper (Megalographa biloba)
2010 was a very big year for me with regards to moth trapping. A major highlight occurred in October of 2010 when my wife (I was then working long hours and had convinced her to help out with the moths) picked a Bilobed Looper (Megalographa biloba) out of the trap. It was immediately identifiable and seemed to be an unusual sighting. Indeed, Gary Anweiler confirmed that there had been only two previous records in Alberta and only two additional records for western Canada. I can’t think of a better way to end the 2010 mothing year!
White-lined-Sphinx-(Hyles-lineata)
Since then I have continued to add photographs to BugGuide and I am pleased to say that a good number of them have been picked up and added to the MPG website. I have also pieced together a database of the moths I’ve seen which now includes 245 species. 2011 was another landmark year when I attempted to record the number of each moth species that had been in my trap. This had been practically impossible until I become familiar with the more common species I was getting. Consequently, I can now say that my most common moth in 2011 was, by far, Thoughtful Apamea, followed by Glassy Cutworm, Olive Arches, Bronzed Cutworm and Bristly Cutworm. This was a very nice personal achievement. Most recently I have started a blog “Moths of Calgary”. I have to admit that I got the idea from my brother who created a blog “Moths of Boughton-under-Blean”. Apart from the enjoyment I get from posting my latest sightings, I’m hoping that it may help to advertise live moth trapping as an interesting hobby in Canada.
So far, the highlight of 2012 was my first Silkmoth seen in the Twin Butte area of Southern Alberta while on a short vacation. Glover’s Silkmoth (Hyalophora gloveri) is a species that I’ve been trying to see for a number of years and there they were, in daylight, perched on the side of our cabin when we arrived! Other colourful and unexpected species that I’ve seen include my first backyard Sphinx moth, a White-lined Sphinx (Hyles lineata) and a Great Tiger Moth (Arctia caja).
Glover’s Silkmoth (Hyalophora gloveri)
For me there are two things which make live moth trapping a really great hobby. Firstly, you never know what you are going to get! It may be a while before you see some of the more eye-catching moth species but that’s all part of the appeal. Secondly, it’s something that you can do without venturing further than your own backyard!
While, at first, identification was a bit of a struggle, the sense of achievement gained when I did identify a new moth, for me, more than compensated for the time spent getting there. Live moth trapping is a fascinating hobby and it is my hope that, over time, it will become a more popular, eventually contributing to the knowledge of moth movements and distribution throughout Canada.
https://esc-sec.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/8166-great-tiger-arctia-caja-2.jpg393700Adrian D. Thyssehttp://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ESC_logo-300x352.pngAdrian D. Thysse2012-07-04 13:46:532019-11-14 20:21:11Backyard moth’er
ESC Annual Photo Contest
By Ward Strong, Research Scientist (Entomology), B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations, Kalamalka Forestry Center
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Syrphid head (Merodon equestris) Photo by Ward Strong
Are you a shutterbug? In love with your macro lens? Show off your favourites at the prestigious 8th Annual ESC Photo Contest! The submission deadline is July 31, so get your latest photos in soon. You too could win prestige, honour, and the admiration of your friends and peers. Top winners will grace the covers of The Canadian Entomologist and the ESC Bulletin for all 2013 issues. A selection of all submissions will be displayed on the Photo Contest website.
Contest rules are posted below:
• Photos of insects and other arthropods in all stages, activities, and habitats are accepted. To represent the scope of entomological research, we also encourage photos of field plots, laboratory experiments, insect impacts, research activities, sampling equipment, etc. Photos should, however, have a clear entomological focus.
• Digital images must be submitted in unbordered, high-quality JPG format, with the long side (width or height) a minimum of 1500 pixels. Entrants may submit up to five photographs. A caption must be provided with each photo submitted; photos without captions will not be accepted. Captions should include the locality, subject identification as closely as is known, description of activity if the main subject is other than an insect, and any interesting or relevant information. Captions should be a maximum of 40 words.
• The entrant must be a member in good standing of the Entomological Society of Canada. Photos must be taken by the entrant, and the entrant must own the copyright.
• The copyright of the photo remains with the entrant, but royalty-free use must be granted to the ESC for inclusion on the cover of one volume (6 issues) of The Canadian Entomologist, one volume (4 issues) of the Bulletin, and on the ESC website.
• The judging committee will be chosen by the Chair of the Publications Committee of the ESC and will include a member of the Web Content Committee.
• The Photo Contest winners will be announced on the ESC website, and may be announced at the Annual Meeting of the ESC or in the Bulletin. Winning photographs, and a selection of all entries, will be exhibited on the website.
• There is no cash award for the winners, but photographers will be acknowledged in each issue the photos are printed.
• Submission deadline is 31 July 2012. Entries should be submitted as an attachment to an email message; the subject line should start with “ESC Photo Contest Submission”. Send the email message to: photocontest@esc-sec.ca.
A little weekend entomology
By Laura Timms, Postdoctoral Researcher (McGill University), Chair of ESC Common Names Committee
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I’ve just come back from a weekend at my parents’ house, celebrating my Dad’s birthday and enjoying the beautiful early summer weather. My parents live on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario – they have a gorgeous piece of property they’ve named Hawksview because of the panoramic vistas you get from on top of a large pile of old glacier scrapings.
View from my parents’ house – on clear days you can see all the way to Lake Ontario. Photo: Kathleen Timms
Coming from my shamefully barren urban yard, I am always amazed at the diversity of insect life on my parents’ property. Saturday morning I went outside with a cup of coffee to sit and enjoy the gardens, and within minutes was amazed at the amount of flower visiting taking place in front of me. I did a quick and unscientific count and came up with at least four species of big bees, six species of butterfly and who knows how many smaller flies and sundries buzzing in and out of the Weigela, Salvia, and Allium flowers.
My husband has done research on Bayesian learning in bumblebee foraging, and so the two of us often get caught up in watching bees drink nectar and thinking about their decision-making. As we were doing so this time, he noticed that one of the bee species was acting as a nectar robber – in other words, it was cutting a hole in the bottom of the flower and drinking the nectar through this hole instead of entering the flower in the usual way.
A carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica, sitting on a Weigela flower and taking nectar through a hole it has cut in the base of the corolla. Photo: Laura Timms
This kind of interaction is referred to as nectar robbing because the bee is getting what it is after – the nectar – without paying the price of taking pollen along with it to the next bloom. Nectar robbing is often used as an example of how a mutualism like pollination, where both parties are supposed to benefit, can be subject to cheating. Charles Darwin speculated on the harm that nectar robbing must cause to plant fitness in his book The effects of cross and self-fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom (1877). I have to admit I didn’t know much about nectar robbing beyond the basics, and I also didn’t know what the species of bee was doing the robbing. A quick online search gave me answers on both counts.
The bee had a big, shiny black abdomen and a black spot on a fuzzy yellow thorax – had to be the eastern carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica. It turns out carpenter bees are among the most common nectar robbers out there – they have short tongues, and can’t reach the nectar in flowers with long corollas, like my mother’s Weigela. But, it also turns out that nectar robbing isn’t necessarily always cheating, and may not be bad for the plant. Maloof and Inouye (2000) reviewed the literature on nectar robbing and found that there was more evidence for positive or neutral effects of nectar robbing on plant fitness than for negative effects. This is because other pollinators may still visit robbed flowers, some nectar robbers do actually pollinate, and nectar robbing can actually result in greater amounts of pollen flow between different plants and thus increase outcrossing. Fascinating!
I passed on this information to my parents, and resumed my garden sitting and coffee drinking. My attention was soon diverted again, this time by a bright red beetle on my Mom’s lilies. I didn’t need the internet to identify this beetle – it is an old friend of mine from when I worked in Switzerland at the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International. The lily leaf beetle, Lilioceris lilii, is an invasive species in North America and a voracious consumer of lilies. While the adult beetles are quite attractive the larvae have the gross habit of carrying around their frass on their backs, using it as a shield to deter predators and parasitoids (which is not always effective – see Schaffner and Müller 2001 for example).
A lily leaf beetle, Lilioceris lilii, surveys the garden. Photo: C. Ernst
I started scanning the lilies for beetles and larvae and removing them by hand – by far the best control method for a home gardener. I started squishing beetles and tossing them aside, when I remembered a recent email from a graduate student at the Université de Montréal. Alessandro Dieni is a student in Jacques Brodeur’s lab, and his research involves reconstructing the path of invasion of the lily leaf beetle using population genetics. Alessandro is looking for samples of the beetle from all over North America for his analysis, and so I stopped throwing the beetles away and started putting them in a jar of rubbing alcohol – the best collecting supplies I had on hand. I included the larvae too, after removing their fecal shields (for which my Mom made me wash my hands outside before coming in the house). It turns out that Alessandro can only use adults for his analysis, so the larvae aren’t much help. If you have lilies and have noticed these beetles in your garden, Alessandro would appreciate samples of adult beetles. You can contact him at alessandro.dieni-lafrance@umontreal.ca, and he will send you all the information you need, including a kit for collecting and preserving them.
One of the side effects of being an entomologist is being frequently asked the question: “What is this on my plant?” My dad asked me a few weeks ago about some galls he had noticed an oak tree, but I told him I couldn’t help him much without seeing them. So, one of my final tasks of the weekend was to check out the tree. This is what I saw:
Galls on a red oak, Quercus rubra, tree. Most are at the base of a branch. Some of the galls have had lots of adults emerge (note the emergence holes), and some have not. Photo: Laura Timms
My basic knowledge of oak galls told me that these galls were probably caused by cynipid wasps, but I wasn’t sure. We cut one open, and sure enough there was an almost fully developed wasp inside a chamber. Gall wasps lay their eggs in plant tissue, and the presence of the eggs induces the plant to produce the special types of highly nutritious cells that make up the gall. Larvae feed in chambers inside the gall, pupate, and then emerge out of small holes like the ones in the picture. I haven’t gotten very far with the identification of exactly which species of wasp is affecting my parents’ tree, although I’ve promised to look into it further and let them know if their tree is in serious trouble. I’m also curious to know if there are any other species inside the gall – oak galls are a fascinating system for work in community ecology, with a cast of cynipid wasps, parasitoids, predators and inquilines (e.g. Stone et al. 2002).
I’ve always said that my parents’ place would be a great field station. I’ve only mentioned three of the ecological tidbits that caught my eye this weekend, but I could go on about the way that dog-strangling vine is taking over the meadow and forest floor, our observations of caterpillars brought to the nest by purple martins, or the cool moths that show up at night by the outside lights. For the sake of brevity, I think those will all have to wait. In the mean time, now that my weekend entomology is over, I’m going to return to my regularly scheduled entomology and hit the microscope!
Literature cited
Darwin, C. 1877. The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. D. Appleton and Co., New York.
Maloof, J.E., & Inouye, D.W. (2000). Are nectar robbers cheaters or mutualists? Ecology, 81, 2651-2661 DOI: 10.2307/177331
Schaffner, U., & Müller. C. (2001). Exploitation of the Fecal Shield of the Lily Leaf Beetle, Lilioceris lilii (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), by the Specialist Parasitoid Lemophagus pulcher (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) Journal of Insect Behavior, 14 (6), 739-757 DOI: 10.1023/A:1013085316606
Stone GN, Schonrogge K, Atkinson RJ, Bellido D, & Pujade-Villar J (2002). The population biology of oak gall wasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae). Annual review of entomology, 47, 633-68 PMID: 11729087
ESC Caption Contest – Cycle 1, Photo 1
Scientists are taught to remain objective about their study organisms and not anthropomorphize behaviours or biology. Sure, this might be useful for preventing bias in results, but it can suck the fun right out of day to day work!
Here’s your chance to act less like a scientist and have some fun with the insect world. Every 2 weeks we’ll post a new photo of an insect (or other arthropod), and your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to come up with a witty/funny/clever caption.
Although being given the chance to showcase your witticism and comedic chops for everyone on the internet to see should be award enough, we know people really like prizes, so here’s how it’s going to work:
Think of it as American Idol meets The New Yorker, but with more insects and less Simon Cowell.
Also, if you took an insect photo which you think is just begging to be captioned, send it in to us and we’ll be happy to use it in the contest.
Without further ado, here’s photo #1! Good luck & have fun!
ESC Caption Contest C1 P1 – Photo by Morgan Jackson
Meet the ESC Blog admins (Part 1)
The ESC Blog is off to a fantastic start, and we admins couldn’t be more proud of our amazing bloggers. The response from the Canadian entomology community has been tremendous – which is really no surprise, but still wonderful! Readers have been joining us from all over the world (59 countries!) and we’re so pleased that some of you are engaging with us by leaving comments.
We thought that it would be a good time to introduce ourselves, so you know who’s working away behind the scenes: today you’ll meet Crystal.
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In addition to my academic pursuits, I love to teach, take pictures of insects, and spend time outdoors exploring the natural world.
I’m also very interested in science education and outreach, which is why you’re finding me here at ESC Blog.
Online science communication is a big part of who I am and what I do, in addition to my normal grad student research activities. I have been blogging as “TGIQ” at www.thebuggeek.com since 2009. There, I write posts about insect natural history, insect photography, my own entomological research, and more broadly about my experiences as a graduate student interested in a career in academia. I am also an administrator at the research blog of The Northern Biodiversity Program (NBP), of which I am a student member, and I am a contributing authour at the Grad Life blog, where I write about the graduate student experience at McGill University.
In addition to blogging, I can usually be found posting tidbits of entomo-goodness on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Networked Blogs, Nature Blog Network, and Research Blogging. I also have a YouTube channel that I use for teaching an undergraduate zoology lab.
Some people have tried to tell me that these activities are a waste of time, professionally. My personal experiences have shown this to be anything but true: I’ve established incredible networks of students, academics and other professionals; I’ve been exposed to fascinating cutting-edge science; and I’ve gained tangible professional benefits (think “publications” and “funding” and “collaborations”). None of these would have been possible without my online activities.
I also think that science outreach is an activity that all academics should make time for – after all, we are doing science for the general public, not just for our fellow researchers! Our knowledge of and passion for entomology is something that deserves to be shared with others. Blogs are wonderfully accessible outlets; they represent an unparalleled opportunity for folks from different sectors and backgrounds to participate and exchange their knowledge and experiences – something that is not often achieved through traditional venues such as conferences and journals.
I’ll leave you with some quotes from a talk that I attended in March, by researcher and science outreach proponent Nalini Nadkarni. I invite – and strongly encourage – you to join the incredible online science community and consider participating here as an ESC blogger.
Backyard moth’er
By Ian Maton, Member of the The Alberta Lepidopterists’ Guild and the Altaleps discussion list, BugGuide editor and contributor to the Moths Photographers Group (MPG)
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Great Tiger (Arctia caja)
My two light traps
My journey into live moth trapping started a relatively short time ago towards the end of 2007. My brother, who lives in the UK and has been live moth trapping since 1999, frequently encouraged me to buy a light trap and in August of 2007 I finally gave in and purchased a small 12V portable, 6W Heath trap at the British Birdfair while on vacation in the UK. As this point I should explain that live moth trapping has become quite popular amongst bird watchers in the UK (my other hobby), to the extent that you can now purchase quite a lot of entomological paraphernalia at the annual Birdfair.
My backyard photographic setup
So it was, with some trepidation, that I put my light trap out for the first time in Lethbridge, Alberta, at the end of August 2007. My camera equipment was fairly basic but I did manage a few photographs and I think it is safe to say that I was completely hooked from that point on. I was able to identify a few of the moths but, although the situation has improved in recent years, identification guides were hard to find. In the UK there were already a good number of handbooks to help with moth identification but this did not appear to be the case in North America. I did buy some of the “Moths of North America North of Mexico” series and the Peterson guide “Moths of Eastern North America” but initially, my main aid to identification was BugGuide.net. Not being able to separate the moths into their respective families meant that identifying any moth could take me several hours and sometimes involved my scanning through 300 plus pages of Noctuids on BugGuide! This was not all bad as it forced me to become somewhat familiar with the family names and gave me a great sense of achievement when I did identify a moth. However, in April of 2010, something happened which dramatically changed all this.
Delphinium Leaftier (Polychrysia esmeralda)
I had started to submit one or two photographs to BugGuide and one of these was Delphinium Leaftier (Polychrysia esmeralda). While there were pinned images of this moth, there were very few live images in North America and I was contacted by Bob Patterson who asked for permission to display my photographs on the Moth Photographers Group (MPG) website. Shortly after this it became apparent that I was photographing some moths that were not yet in BugGuide. Bob created a couple of guide pages for me so that I could upload my photographs to the correct taxonomic spot but quickly suggested that I be given editor privileges on BugGuide. All this was extremely exciting to me and added an entirely new dimension to my hobby. In addition to this, Bob put me in contact with Gary Anweiler who, based in Alberta, is one of the premier experts on Noctuids in North America. Since then Gary has been instrumental in helping me to identify moths. Always patient and quick to respond I can’t thank Gary enough for his help and advice over the last few years.
Bilobed Looper (Megalographa biloba)
2010 was a very big year for me with regards to moth trapping. A major highlight occurred in October of 2010 when my wife (I was then working long hours and had convinced her to help out with the moths) picked a Bilobed Looper (Megalographa biloba) out of the trap. It was immediately identifiable and seemed to be an unusual sighting. Indeed, Gary Anweiler confirmed that there had been only two previous records in Alberta and only two additional records for western Canada. I can’t think of a better way to end the 2010 mothing year!
White-lined-Sphinx-(Hyles-lineata)
Since then I have continued to add photographs to BugGuide and I am pleased to say that a good number of them have been picked up and added to the MPG website. I have also pieced together a database of the moths I’ve seen which now includes 245 species. 2011 was another landmark year when I attempted to record the number of each moth species that had been in my trap. This had been practically impossible until I become familiar with the more common species I was getting. Consequently, I can now say that my most common moth in 2011 was, by far, Thoughtful Apamea, followed by Glassy Cutworm, Olive Arches, Bronzed Cutworm and Bristly Cutworm. This was a very nice personal achievement. Most recently I have started a blog “Moths of Calgary”. I have to admit that I got the idea from my brother who created a blog “Moths of Boughton-under-Blean”. Apart from the enjoyment I get from posting my latest sightings, I’m hoping that it may help to advertise live moth trapping as an interesting hobby in Canada.
So far, the highlight of 2012 was my first Silkmoth seen in the Twin Butte area of Southern Alberta while on a short vacation. Glover’s Silkmoth (Hyalophora gloveri) is a species that I’ve been trying to see for a number of years and there they were, in daylight, perched on the side of our cabin when we arrived! Other colourful and unexpected species that I’ve seen include my first backyard Sphinx moth, a White-lined Sphinx (Hyles lineata) and a Great Tiger Moth (Arctia caja).
Glover’s Silkmoth (Hyalophora gloveri)
For me there are two things which make live moth trapping a really great hobby. Firstly, you never know what you are going to get! It may be a while before you see some of the more eye-catching moth species but that’s all part of the appeal. Secondly, it’s something that you can do without venturing further than your own backyard!
While, at first, identification was a bit of a struggle, the sense of achievement gained when I did identify a new moth, for me, more than compensated for the time spent getting there. Live moth trapping is a fascinating hobby and it is my hope that, over time, it will become a more popular, eventually contributing to the knowledge of moth movements and distribution throughout Canada.