7th Hymenoptera Congress
Looks like details of the next Hymenoptera Congress (the 7th!) are starting to emerge. It'll be hosted in Kőszeg, Hungary from June 20-26, 2010. Kőszeg is in the western part of the country, near the border with Austria. It's a quaint little town (István Mikó's hometown, in fact), and I am especially excited about collecting opportunities throughout the country - alkaline steppe, loess, forest, juniper-poplar sand dunes. We have a year and a half to plan this expedition, but István has already mapped out possible sites and habitats to target:
Why get so excited about a part of the world (Europe) whose insect fauna is (relatively speaking) extremely well known? Why not head to the tropics where 90% of the wasps are new to science?! Well, we'd love to do that as well, and we will! But Hungary is an important part of the world for ceraphronoid wasps, as it holds the type localities for two rare species - Elysoceraphron hungaricus Szelényi, 1936 and Microceraphron subterraneus Szelényi, 1935 (or is it 1980? Check this species page) that in turn typify rare genera. Below are a couple pictures I took three years ago of the holotypes. These insects are quite small, partially covered in glue (though that situation is recoverable), and likely have highly degraded tissues (little hope of extracting, amplifying, and sequencing DNA - not that we would do that necessarily with a holotype!)
Elysoceraphron hungaricus Szelényi, 1936
Microceraphron subterraneus Szelényi, 1935
Having recently collected specimens means we can sequence nuclear protein-encoding genes for phylogenetics and we can do our dissections to look at internal structures for phylogenetics and for diagnosis. We'll be armed with at least eight Malaise traps (probably not too useful for these taxa), sweep nets (better), Winkler litter extractors (even better), and 500 yellow pan traps (probably the best!)
I'm getting way ahead of myself here, of course, but I can't help it. In the meantime, if you want to stay abreast of congressional developments fire off an email to my colleague George Melika (melikageorge at gmail dot com).
Why get so excited about a part of the world (Europe) whose insect fauna is (relatively speaking) extremely well known? Why not head to the tropics where 90% of the wasps are new to science?! Well, we'd love to do that as well, and we will! But Hungary is an important part of the world for ceraphronoid wasps, as it holds the type localities for two rare species - Elysoceraphron hungaricus Szelényi, 1936 and Microceraphron subterraneus Szelényi, 1935 (or is it 1980? Check this species page) that in turn typify rare genera. Below are a couple pictures I took three years ago of the holotypes. These insects are quite small, partially covered in glue (though that situation is recoverable), and likely have highly degraded tissues (little hope of extracting, amplifying, and sequencing DNA - not that we would do that necessarily with a holotype!)
Elysoceraphron hungaricus Szelényi, 1936
Microceraphron subterraneus Szelényi, 1935
Having recently collected specimens means we can sequence nuclear protein-encoding genes for phylogenetics and we can do our dissections to look at internal structures for phylogenetics and for diagnosis. We'll be armed with at least eight Malaise traps (probably not too useful for these taxa), sweep nets (better), Winkler litter extractors (even better), and 500 yellow pan traps (probably the best!)
I'm getting way ahead of myself here, of course, but I can't help it. In the meantime, if you want to stay abreast of congressional developments fire off an email to my colleague George Melika (melikageorge at gmail dot com).
