Empanadas and a batido

I flew to Maracaibo, Venezuela on Thursday for the next aquatic insect survey expedition. Yesterday I had some meetings at the Universidad del Zulia, and today I am at the collection. Tomorrow I take an 8 hour taxi ride to Maracay. I still await to have my favorite Venezuelan food (cachapas), but having a few cheese empanadas and a fresh strawberry shake in the morning is not far behind. I don´t have my laptop on this trip, so I may not be able to post many photos unfortunately.

Old Field Notes

About a year ago, Paul and Phyllis Spangler entrusted me with their field logs and notes from their lifetime of fieldwork around the world (the earliest notes are from 1958, the most recent the mid-90's). This giant pile of notebooks provides the raw data and supporting information for the more than 1 million prepared water beetle specimens that they added to national collection during their tenure at the Smithsonian. We are working to digitize and capture the data in these logs to make it accessible to anyone who is interested, as well as facilitate future databasing activities. (via assinging collecting event codes). Right now, we're focused on the South American logs. They have already helped us plan collecting activites and provided insights into the habitat nuances of a number of species.

More Oocyclus

I spent some time over the last few weeks playing with our imaging system here in the division. I'm still learning, but so far I'm pleased with the results. Here is a composite of some of the new Oocyclus from Venezuela I am describing with Mauricio Garcia. I've just finished the photos for all 15 species. Next up: tackling the 35+ species of Berosus. The time it takes to take the actual photos is not really that long (I take as stack of about 15-25 images and then use CombineZ to smash them together)--the tedius time-involved process is selected a presentable specimen that is CLEAN (or, as clean as you can get it) and positioning it just so.