Main expedition complete...

The main expedition is now complete and we are all now back in Maracaibo doing some post-expedition sample sorting and prep. Not a whole lot of time to write at this moment so hopefully some pictures will suffice:

Dunes and lagoons

From San Cristobal: The last week has been a whirlwind of different habitat types (as normal). We zipped across from Maracaibo to Coro in Falcon state where we stayed for a few days to work the region. This part of Venezuela is mostly dry semi-desert. Lots of cactus. Among the more striking feature is a dune region which is large enough to make you think you were in lost somewhere in the Sahara. Of course, there are oases of sorts that were full of beetles. We crossed the Sierra San Luis and headed south to Barquisimeto and made our first foray into the Andes nearby, climbing up to just over 6000 feet. Heading down the Andes a bit to Biscucuy and Bocono we stopped at a number of rivers and lagoons with mixed success. We dropped out of the Andes yesterday near Guanare, went south to hit the exiting streams, and today eventually climbed back up into them in the state of Tachira. We will collect here tomorrow before heading up the main Andean chain to Merida and Trujillo later in the week. There has been regular rain but usually only part of a day or at night, and it has had minimal impact on our actual collecting...although it has made some rivers either a bit too swift for our taste or pretty gauged out and not much to collect.

Species of the Month: July

The Gyrinidae are a family of charismatic aquatic Coleoptera commonly known as whirligig beetles, for their gyrating swimming style. Gyrinids are peculiar for having completely divided eyes giving them the appearance of having four eyes: two that peer above the water and two that peer below the water. They swim about on the surface tension of the water kicking with two pairs of paddle-like legs. The species selected for this month is a whirligig beetle in the genus Gyretes. Gyretes can be characterized by a furry pubescence that usually outlines most of the beetle´s body. However, the Gyretes selected here is nearly completely covered in this hairy pubescence. It also happens to be one of the largest known Gyretes. It is found here in Venezuela and I (Grey) am hoping that I will have the opportunity to collect this charismatic gyrinid on this trip.

The Perija

We left for a quick 2-day trip to the small village of Tukuko, an outpost at the foot of the Serrania de Perija (see photo at left)--the mountain range that forms the northwestern boarder with Colombia. It has become almost a tradition to visit this area on the first few days of each trip...in fact, all five trips have now started with a visit to this area. It takes about 4 hours to make the trip from Maracaibo...two hours to Machiques by car or bus (or a carrito in our case...), and then another 1.5 hours in the back of a pickup truck or similar transport over dusty dirt roads. It rained during the second half, and that made things a bit muddy. Upon arrival we spent a few hours searching out various Zingiberales that might have some interesting beetles living in the micropools. I had collected them here last July, and was eager to get more....and we did. The second day also brought rain in the morning and we scratched it for collecting, but the afternoon was great and we were able to get into one of the local rivers to do some work. Got some space in an outgoing pickup truck around 3:30 and headed back to Maracaibo.

Arrival

We arrived safely in Maracaibo yesterday. Today is for errands and setting up other logistical details for the trip. Stay tuned for an actual update...

Venezuela Expedition #5...

After seeing Kelly off this afternoon, attention turned to getting the last things packed for our fifth Venezuela expedition (and my 6th trip overall). We leave at 4:30 am tomorrow- yikes! One of my undergrads, Grey, will be joining myself as well as Bob Sites (University of Missouri) and Bill Shepard (Essig Museum of Entomology, UC-Berkeley) down for several weeks to collecting and collaborating with our Venezuelan counterparts. This trip will be entirely in the Northwest--mostly in the Andes and the dry regions of Falcon State. I'm hopefully of keeping the blog updated during the trip. We'll see how that works.

Hydrophilid/Hydradephaga mingling

Kelly Miller (University of New Mexico) has been visiting the lab for the last three days to help make some sense of all the diving beetles that we've been prepping from Venezuela and flesh out some other water beetle collaborations. Kelly is CoPI on our Venezuela Aquatics survey project, focusing mostly on the Adephagan families (Dytiscidae, Gyrinidae, Noteridae, etc.). We've now got almost all the specimens we've prepared so far (15,000 plus) sorted to at least genus. Looks like Kelly has uncovered a few (or more than a few) unexpected gems. I was also very pleased to learn that my quick and dirty attempt to pull out a synoptic set of Noteridae was successful (or, at least all my morphospecies were good). Our Venezuelan noterid diversity so far is at about 30 species.