Fall '09 Lab Group

The lab posed for our first group photo. L to R: Elijah Burton, Grey Gustafson, Andrew Short, Taro Eldredge, Jarod Hutcherson.

Mini-hydrophilid conclave begins....

The lab will be hosting two other hydrophilid workers for extended stays in the next couple months: Martin Fikacek from the Czech National Collection and Adriana Oliva from the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires. Each will be staying for 3-4 weeks to work on some collaborative projects. Martin arrived back on 17 August and has been busy sorting and describing all kinds of neat new terrestrial hydrophilids in our collection. Adriana arrives in early September. Will the museum be able to contain this much water scavenger beetle energy at one time? We shall see. Welcome Martin and Adriana!

Three week summary...

Everyone arrived safely back from Venezuela, and gears in the lab have been churning away on various projects. Hopefully we'll get back on the ball with regular updates.

Endgame: Caracas for a course on biodiversity

The last week has been a bit hairier than normal. Joined by another Colombian water beetle student, we flew down to Puerto Ayacucho in southern Venezuela to scope out some new sites. No need for details at this point but things did not go quite as planned. The fact that an American and a Colombian were traveling together along the boarder with Colombia the day after Venezuela shut down all relations with Colombia because of percieved US military agression (likely) played a role, if you are curious. But, enjoy the two landscape photos of this area below that make it one of my favorite places in the world. After a very (very) long, 13 hour bus ride, I'm now in Caracas to participate in a Neotropical Biodiversity course put on by IVIC (the national Venezuelan Instiute of Scientific Investigation). My 30 minute talk tomorrow will be the first full-length presentation I attempt to give entirely in Spanish...we shall see how that goes. This marks the final phase of the trip...I return to Kansas on 6 August.