HtmlToText
curation desired taxa expeditions art fun about expeditions costa rica photo gallery march 31, 2018 i posted a photo gallery of our latest expedition. feel free to check it out and make comments. overall it was quite a successful trip, though we still await the final tally of insects collected. costa rica 2008 well, we made it back to raleigh a couple days ago with quite the haul of insects. one of our quests (not so much for us, but for our colleagues on the platygastroidea pbi) was a tiny (1 mm long) scelionid wasp… continue reading → fun hexapod haiku 2017 – runners-up (poet over 13) march 20, 2018 laboratory flies watching graduate students gathering data martha love gastonia, nc read judges’ comments: deceptively simple, this poem left us wondering just who is collecting the data? we saw parallels between the worlds of model organisms (e.g., drosophila melanogaster) and model graduate students: untold millions of flies sacrifice their lives daily to provide data, while untold thousands of students sacrifice their (social) lives to interpret and disseminate those data. in this scene the student becomes the studied… the researcher,… continue reading → curation profiling the pinned collection march 20, 2018 as i mentioned a few days ago, we spent a week last spring — almost exactly a year ago, actually — profiling our holdings of pinned insects, using a system modified from mcginley (1989, 1993). this process, pulling out each drawer, evaluating the condition of its contents, and then publishing our conclusions, was one of our 2010 new year’s resolutions. we did end up profiling the pinned material but failed to publicly avail the results! so here they are. note… continue reading → expeditions microceraphron! who are you? (part 2) march 18, 2018 i focused on yellow pan traps (ypt), mostly, for my collecting because the material we get is relatively easy to sort, with numerous parasitoids, like ceraphronoidea and quite easy to install and control them. i started with 300 ypt at the first site, the number of the traps decreased, though, for different reasons. collecting sites are marked below, and i am giving just short descriptions of main collecting sites and events in this post. probably you will hear some nice… continue reading → desired taxa nc insects of the week march 9, 2018 hemiptera: hebridae: hebrus concinnus uhler, 1894 thinking about that spongillafly last week reminded me of other interesting and somewhat rare species i’ve come across, so this week i cover another uncommon insect i collected during my tenure as a masters student: the velvet water bug, hebrus concinnus. actually, i don’t know if the individuals i collected were this species, but they were definitely hebrus. i found them crawling across the surface of a pool at the bottom of a waterfall… continue reading → expeditions the latest news march 3, 2018 i haven’t posted any news about the museum in what seems like forever. so here’s what’s been happening, in short snippets, during the last couple months: in march i traveled to south australia to talk about ongoing projects (and hash out future research ideas) with my colleagues john jennings and andy austin. we traveled 1200 km or so through eastern sa and western vic, collecting along the way. i’ll write a separate post about this adventure, complete with pictures and… continue reading → curation fall 2017 update, part 3 – (near) future directions march 2, 2018 we have a rather full schedule for the next few months, with respect to some of our scheduled goals. one of our new year’s resolutions was to finish profiling the collection. i doubt we’ll be able to finish the slides (or even start), but we’re making progress towards determining our wet collection metrics. we’ll write them up and describe our results soon. we’ll follow this process with tests of methods we think will be useful for digitizing wet collections (imaging… continue reading → desired taxa nc insect of the week – number 10 february 26, 2018 mecoptera: meropeidae: merope tuber newman, 1838 merope tuber is the only representative of the family meropeidae in north america. the australian earwigfly, austromerope poultoni killington and the extinct species boreomerope antiqua novokschonov, known from the middle jurassic in siberia, are the only other known species in the family (1). the first specimen of merope tuber was collected in 1837 by edward doubleday in trenton falls, new york. in 1838, a contemporary of charles darwin, edward newman, described the species. the… continue reading → art found insects as a medium for art february 22, 2018 katja seltmann sent me the link to this awesome video, which shows how insect collections can inform and inspire art. gavin broad was just here a couple weeks ago. i wish i had a chance to ask him about this! an example of tessa farmer’s amazing art (lots of hymenopterans represented, which certainly inspires me): public display revitalization project and the artists in entomology series this friday october 22nd is the public opening for the new public display cases located… continue reading → fun hexapod haiku 2018 – best in show (poet over 13) february 20, 2018 slowly falling down, insecticides stole my prime. death by lack of breath. brian wood edmond, ok judges’ comments: the poem paints a heartbreaking portrait of physical suffering and premature death, serving, perhaps, as a modern silent spring. we see dual, overlapping protagonists — one human, one hexapodous — each suffering at the hands of some unnamed chemical, until, inevitably, they are each robbed of their vitality. the irony is that toxins intended to promote human health, e.g., by extirpating insect… continue reading → fun hexapod haiku 2011 – honorable mention, poets under 13 february 18, 2018 i’ve been slow to announce the honorable mention entries from this year’s hexapod haiku challenge, mainly because we had a fairly large number of high quality poems. here are five honorable mentions (in no particular order) from poets under the age of 13 that resonated with the judges: dragonfly are big time fly’s they can fly through the night skytime all through the night time brecannna berrios baltimore, md judges’ comments: we liked the iterations of «fly» and «night,» which… continue reading → desired taxa nc insect of the week – number 15 february 9, 2018 mantodea: mantidae: brunneria borealis, scudder 1896 as a kid, i was always outside exploring the great outdoors, which for me usually consisted of chasing and catching any insect within sight (even wasps, which i usually ended up regretting)! but i remember, as many of us probably do, catching and trying to feed one of the most bizarre of insects, the praying mantis. i thought they were fascinating – after all, they are the only insects that can look over their… continue reading → expeditions microceraphron! who are you? (part 1) february 7, 2018 i am back from hungary without posting anything during my trip (although i did promise this to andy!). internet connections, however, were not the best in the places we spent most of our time, but perhaps the main reason for this «blogless» period is that i haven’t and never will be the winner of a blogitzer prize. anyway, now i am back and andy tells me at least 25 times a day, that i promised to write something about the… continue reading → fun ticks on a plane february 4, 2018 yesterday, i flew the exhausting, bone-stiffening 10 hour flight from north carolina to london, england. i’m here to visit the beautiful natural history museum to image type specimens of evaniidae for my graduate work. i was expecting the only trouble i might have was getting through security at the airport with the imaging system i am carrying (there was no trouble!), but sometimes you just can’t plan ahead for certain… peculiar… events while traveling. i was sitting on the plane… continue reading → art our first nano gigapan january 29, 2018 we’ve been quietly portaging our drawer images to
domainedesforets.com rapport :
Visitez le site