Saturday, April 24, 2010

Rock Pools

Here is a new species of Berosus from Venezuela that will appear in a forthcoming paper. It has a very specific habitat: it lives in "pothole" pools in the large granite outcrops in the Guiana Shield region. Despite our sampling efforts, this species has only been found in these pools, where it can be fairly common--but nowhere else...not even in nearby forest pools or ditches! Another example of the high habitat specificity in the region.

Monday, April 19, 2010

UAE Hydrophilids

Ever want to identify your water scavenger beetles from the United Arab Emirates, but frustrated by lack of a good key? No more! See the latest volume of the "Arthropods of the UAE" for the complete reference.

Monday, April 12, 2010

And then there was molecular data...

Our molecular lab is finally set up, tested, and getting kicked into high gear! We had our first successful extractions and PCRs about two weeks ago and are about ready to launch into a fast and furious phase of data generation. Right now we're running a screen of 7 genes through a test set of 13 hydrophiloid taxa before settling on a final gene set for our next set of projects. Now we're doing "real" science (kidding!)