Expanded capability!

We are in the process of setting up a small-scale molecular lab out here in the entomology division (extraction thru PCR cleanup). The first of a steady stream of boxes of equipment and supplies arrived outside my office this morning (containing a $2000 centrifuge, two sets of pipettes, and a vortexer). Hopefully we'll be doing our test runs by the end of January.

Catching up: ESA 2009

The annual Entomological Society of America meeting (ESA) was in Indianapolis this year. It ended about two weeks ago, but I'm playing catch up with the blog anyway. The lab was well-represented at the meeting by Taro, Grey, and myself. Grey presented a poster on his work on the genus Guyanobius. I gave the keynote lecture at the Coleopterists Society meeting on some of the new discoveries in Myxophaga and other wet rock beetles (insert: title slide).

Side Project: Spangler's Tropisternus

Once upon a time Paul Spangler, Godfather of Neotropical Waterbeetleology and curator of Coleoptera at the Smithsonian compiled perhaps the most exhaustive treatment of a water scavenger beetle group ever written: a 1000+ page tome on the genus Tropisternus. It is a beast (see photo of the binders that collectively hold just about every piece of information known on this common group). Sadly, after 40 years in the making and 70,000 specimens it never quite crossed the finish line that is "publication" before his retirement. Having borrowed the raw drafts and disks from the Smithsonian, I have been working on and off (mostly off) for the last two years trying to coax/shove it across that finish line. I've recently started making a more concerted effort to get it done. This group is one of the most commonly encountered water beetles in the Americas, and deserves its do, as does Paul. Stay tuned!

Free press

University relations put together a little educational clip following a public lecture I gave in the spring:

More collaboration...

As referenced before, Adriana Oliva from the Buenos Aires museum is also visiting for a few weeks. Adriana is the authority in Neotropical Berosini (a large group of hump-backed shaped beetles with well over 100 species in South America). She is working on reviewing some of the material we have here in the collection of this group. Not sure how many new species we will wind up with from this group, but I think so far it is 15 or so.

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.

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.

TLC for the Gyrinidae

One of the undergrads working in the lab (Grey Gustafson) has taken a strong interest in the water beetle family Gyrinidae (beloved my most people as the 'Whirligig beetles', those black things spinning around on the surface of ponds and streams). Among other projects this summer, he has taken up the full recuration of our holdings of this family (ca. 6500 specimens, ca. 160 species). We also arranged a very generous exchange of some synoptic material from the Smithsonian, which has enhanced our taxonomic representation. The newly loved gyrinid collection now contains fully updated taxonomy, header cards, and has been inventoried to the species level. We'll get the PDF of the holdings up eventually.

Visitors

Charles Bartlett and one of his graduate students, Lawrence, from the University of Delaware visited the collection for a couple days this week. Charles works mostly with Fulgoroid families (plant hoppers), notably Delphacidae. We have an excellent and globally important collection of these groups due to prior curatorial emphasis by Beamer and others. In addition to looking for material of note, they also did a good amount of basic sorting in our undetermined "Homoptera" section. Historical note: Charles was the one responsible for guiding me into aquatic beetles during my undergrad days at Delaware.

Species of the Month: June

Our very first species of the month is a new species of water scavenger beetle in the genus Oocyclus. It doesn’t have a name yet, so feel free to suggest one! This little iridescent green sphere lives in rock seeps and the spray zones of waterfalls in the Venezuelan Andes (in this case, near Trujillo). I’ll take this opportunity to note the blog title refers to the lab’s research interest in insects that live in these kinds of habitats. So far, our work in Venezuela has found 15 new species in this genus. Based on this and preliminary data from elsewhere, it would not be surprising if northern South America was home to 50 or more species. These guys tend to be relatively localized to regional mountain chains, with 2 to 4 species endemic to each chain. I don't have a good up-close habitus photo yet. I'll post one when I do; they look cooler in their element anyway.

Welcome

Welcome to the nascent blog of the Short Lab Group in the Division of Entomology [Biodiversity Institute] and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. Most of our research focuses on aquatic beetles: their evolution, biology, ecology, morphology, and distribution. We dare not try to contain their coolness to the confines of our lab (nor would we want to!) so we hope to use this forum to post periodic happenings and discoveries on a more or less regular basis. Stay tuned!