NC State University Insect Museum

Here's a great image of a Polyglypta sp. (Hemiptera: Membracidae) mom guarding her brood-to-be on a leaf. Notice the small, yellow fairyfly (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae) creeping up from behind, looking to convert the tree hopper's egg mass into her own brood-to-be. Motherhood's a tough job.

Happy mother's day to all you moms out there from the Insect Museum.

Today was our Mike Duke Memorial Seminar, and our speaker was Jim Costa of Western Carolina University, author of The Other Insect Societies. Jim spoke about the various ways in which insects are "social," moving beyond the classic examples we see in termites (Dictyoptera) and ants, bees, and vespid wasps (Hymenoptera), and venturing into realm of abstract sociality - e.g., provisioning of young by some Heteroptera, cooperative resource sequestration by dung/carrion beetles (Coleoptera), caterpillar processions (Lepidoptera; see below), and defensive aggregations by various larvae.


My new favorite word, cycloalexy, describes that last behavior (which, in turn, is described here) - defensive aggregations. An example I found on flickr (below) reveals an amassment of spiny caterpillars that have "circled the wagons" (Jolivet et al., 1990) to protect themselves from predators.


Cool stuff for sure. We'll undoubtedly uncover aberrant (and yet relevant!) behaviors amongst our parasitoid Hymenoptera that might add to the dialog. Stay tuned.

Looks like our long time nemeses in the museum world - the dermestid beetles (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) - have been making an impact on specimen carcasses for a looooooong time: >148 million years. Check out this news item (and the original article) about researchers at BYU, who described traces of dermestid feeding (i.e., what we in the curation biz call "damage") on dinosaur bones. Cool stuff. It's also cool that there is a scientific journal, Ichnos, dedicated to the "ethologic and ecologic significance of tracemaking organisms." I have to admit that I did not know that.

The European Distributed Institue of Taxonomy (EDIT) issued a recent  report on the future of taxonomy that's definitely worth a read. Several passages are relevant to the Museum (emphasis mine):

• "Specimens, or vouchers, will remain a critical part of taxonomic science as hypotheses are based on them..." (page 3)
  
• "Collecting will remain an essential component of taxonomy, though emerging technologies (e.g. digital imaging, bioacoustics) might automate collection of ‘specimens’ and make field trips more productive. There is a pressing need for ‘pocket identifiers’ (digital, molecular, bioacoustic) for use in the field." (page 4)
• "...Open access sources of geographical data will need to be developed with and agreed structure so that collection data from diverse sources can be viewed as a whole." (page 4)
• "There will be a continuing need to train students in taxonomy, focusing on exploring and understanding biodiversity." (page 4)
  
• "Virtual research environments and collections will increasingly enable the public use of taxonomy as human populations become more urbanised and may be their primary contact with Nature" (page 5)
• "It will be critical for the large museums [indeed all museums! -ARD] and herbaria, the major long-term players, to clearly articulate how they will integrate collections, biodiversity informatics provision and research capability." (page 5)
• "The criteria for continued collection development and management should be based on gap analysis, risk assessment and future scoping of usage." (page 6)
  

Actually, thow whole document is relevant to the Insect Museum. Good stuff.

I just got back from a Morphbank workshop in Tallahassee, FL that covered issues with ontology use and development for evolutionary biology; it was both inspiring and instructional (more on this later). The meeting was also an opportunity to engage fellow museum-based researchers, who are interested not only in ontologies but also specimen imaging, curation techniques, databasing, funding, etc. My brain is now overflowing with their brilliance, and I hope to get organized (and mobilized!) about some of these ideas soon.

My first order of business, however, is to make sure we are up to date with our various museum memberships. The Insect Museum's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) membership renewal forms have been submitted, so that we can safely and legally foster research on endangered arthropods. We also joined the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC), so that we can keep up with curation best practices and the latest IPM for museum pests. NC State is already an institutional member of the Natural Science Collections Alliance (NSCA), which advocates for our future and alerts us about funding sources and legislation that affects our collection.

And, to complete the set, the Insect Museum is now (or will be when the check is issued, sent, and cleared) an institutional member of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG). This will keep us in the loop with respect to the latest bioinformatics standards for structuring and exposing our data. Phew. Time to get back to curating...

I came across this fascinating read last week from the lab of Dmytro Gladun (Ethology and Sociobiology of Insects Department, Schmalhausen-Institute of Zoology, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences). It's the kind of morphology classic that motivates me to take my data beyond phylogenetics and into that unexplored (by me, at least), da Vincian realm of biomechanics.

Dymetro built models of the pretarsus (essentially the arthropod "foot") using plastic and metal in an effort to truly understand form and function (true morphology!) of these structures in sawflies. These appendages are important to sawfly adults as they help one evaluate substrates, like stems and leaves, for oviposition - i.e., they can smell through their feet - and they help the sawflies gain purchase on slippery surfaces. Through large-scale modeling one gains a greater understanding of how the various parts (sclerites) inside the pretarsus interact with one another during movement.


I don't recognize too many differences in the pretarsal morphology of wasps that I study, but there are definitely other character systems that I would label as variable and informative - especially wing venation in ensign wasps and wing base sclerites (pteralia) in Hymenoptera. And these character systems would likely benefit from large-scale modeling. That is, we should be able to articulate more accurate character states if we understand how these veins affect flight and how the wing base sclerites interact during wing (un)folding. Time for me to dive back into the literature...

While I was searching yesterday for that great article by Michael Locke about caterpillar "lungs"  I came across this fascinating one about "faecal firing" in Calpodes ethlius - yet another reason to celebrate the Brazilian skipper larvae feeding on your cannas; they're a model system for research on the physics of frass flingin'!


As you can imagine, caterpillars have numerous reasons for ejecting frass (i.e., digested canna) away from their covered domains. Have you ever unraveled a shelter of the distantly related pyralid moth, Geshna cannalis (the lesser canna leaf roller)? They do not shoot their ummm...turds...away from the "nest," and it gets pretty nasty in there. Now look at a Calpodes ethlius shelter. Nice and clean. Which one do you think is more attractive to potential parasites and predators? That is, which leaf roll provides the strongest odor for my parasitic wasps to use as cues?

Martha Weiss has a great review of defecation behavior in insects if you need to dive deeper into this subject.

That little gem was part of the Hexapod Haiku challenge last month. Desiree earned honorable mention as "most alliterative," and the judges loved the post-Thanksgiving-meal image she conjured with those words - the fat caterpillar, after eating so much tasty fodder, lays herself down for a nap. A warm, comfortable nostalgic scene, for sure!

This haiku reminded me of the Brazilian skipper (Hesperiidae: Calpodes ethlius), a species famous for consuming canna (Cannaceae: Canna spp.) from within leaf rolls. [not to be confused with the lesser canna leaf roller, Geshna cannalis (Pyralidae)] Brazilian skipper larvae, with their transparent cuticles, are also famous for being a model organism in physiological experiments.

My favorite observation revealed through Calpodes ethlius is that some insects evolved lung-like structures to facilitate gas exchange (Locke, 1997). As most of you probably know, insects don't respire like you and me, with O₂ entering our lungs, diffusing into our blood, and being carried to the rest of our bodies by red blood cells with the O₂-transporting protein hemoglobin.

Instead, insects evolved a network of tubes (tracheae/tracheoles) that connect to the atmosphere through openings in the cuticle (called spiracles), branch throughout their bodies and carry O₂ directly to their tissues. Because of the transparent cuticle in Calpodes ethlius one can see a dense cluster of tracheae near the posteriormost spiracle that doesn't obviously penetrate any densely cellular tissue. The dense puff of tubules does, however, penetrate and oxygenate the hemolymph - a loosely cellular tissue. Cool stuff!


Having a transparent cuticle also means one can often see parasitoid larvae dining on a hapless caterpillar's innards. I did my master's work on the braconid wasp genus Alphomelon (Braconidae: Microgastrinae), which parasitizes skipper species, including Calopodes ethlius. Maybe I should get some colonies going...

Relevant to our recent post about the kinds of types - I received word today that Neal Evenhuis' fantastic list of types is now available online (Thanks Neal!) This comprehensive account of what Neal appropriately refers to as "the hobby of coining type terminology" includes some of the most outrageously funny concepts I've ever seen. Check these out, and keep in mind that these terms are backed up by references:

Abruptotype

Type of a taxon hastily described to meet a project, grant, or publication deadline.

Atypicotype

A type stated by the author not to be characteristic of the taxon.

Boobootype

A holotype that should not have been described. For example, a specialist fails to recognize his own earlier described species; the museum technician or the star graduate student does, however.

Crickotype

A holotype and only known specimen of a taxon that has been completely ground up for DNA analysis

Dermestotype

A specimen of a type series so badly eaten by dermestids that its identity cannot be confirmed. Usually accompanied by large frass.

E-type

Digital image of a holotype. [definitely relevant!]

Hallucinotype

The type of a taxon described while the author was under the influence of drugs.

Mythicotype

A type specimen of a mythological taxon.

Pollutotype

A type specimen so badly encrusted with pollutants as to be no longer recognizable.

Profanotype

The type of a taxon, the name of which cannot be mentioned in mixed company.

And there's plenty more where these came from...

My colleague Dave Stephan pointed me towards a fascinating news item today - the Royal Mail is issuing a set of beautiful stamps featuring endangered British insects. They come out on Tuesday and feature images of specimens housed in Britian's premier insect collection, the Natural History Museum in London. I am especially impressed that a couple hymenopterans warranted recognition as being endangered. Usually you see ants (and vespids for that matter) listed as scourges to be isolated and eradicated, rather than recognized and protected - but there it is, the red barbed ant:


What a great way to bring attention to threatened insects and to recognize underappreciated species! These stamps also help raise awareness of the importance of natural history collections, albeit subtly, and it's refreshing to see this kind of interaction by a major research institution with the public it serves. This isn't the first time specimens from the NHM have been exposed to a broader audience, and I hope we see more of these kinds of creative efforts.

I am very excited to report that the Museum now has its very own LSID [link] thanks to the folks at TDWG (particularly Roger Hyam) as part of the Biological Collections Index. Great! What does that mean, and why is it cool? Lets say someone maintains a database of insect taxonomy, and archived within this conglomeration of data is information on the type specimens we house and protect here at NCSU. How does this database refer to our collection? As the North Carolina State University Insect Museum? The NC State University Insect Museum? By our coden, NCSU?

What if another database archives images of type specimens, and they refer to us the NC State University Insect Collection (which is part of the Museum)? And, to confuse this situation even more, what if we decide to change our name, thanks to the limitless generosity of the world's richest man, to the Dairy Queen® Museum of Insects?

Well, any of these scenarios (and synonyms) could potentially lead to miscommunication down the line - e.g., the taxonomy database calls on the image database to serve up photos of the 'NC State University Insect Museum' types, and the image database responds with a "ummm...we don't have any of those" message because they're all archived as being at 'NCSU'. When the data entry folks try to sort out the situation they see that no such entity exists in Raleigh, NC - only the curious (and delicious) DQ Insect Museum resides there.

By using globally unique identifiers (GUIDs; an LSID is a GUID) we can prevent these kinds of useless and frustrating interactions. Both databases (in fact all databases) would simply refer to us as urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:1024, so that they are assured that they point to the same collection of insects. Those databases would also, in an ideal world, use LSIDs for other objects, including taxon names, taxon concepts, references, publications, author names, etc. Check out examples at the LSID resolver. Here's how ours looks at the moment. Expect a more fully developed resource to be unveiled this summer. Sweet!

Rod Page (University of Glasgow) has an excellent paper in press that explains GUID utility and sructure. Very cool stuff.

To break up the monotony of your day (of mine at least; I've been writing species descriptions for what seems like an eternity) here are some fantastic haiku we got from Leroy L. Wood Elementary School (Grade 3, Mrs. Hunt) in Fairhaven, MA (gallery here). These drawings and poems were just too precious not to share:



Actually, I learned that these are technically haiga, not haiku, since they each include an associated image. Several people (kids and adults) included photos or drawings with their entries last month. Perhaps we need a Hexapod Haiga contest?

Check out the latest post on ScienceNews - filed, of course, under "insects AND butterflies." It's about mason bee (Megachilidae) nesting sites! The only taxon mentioned is the blue orchard bee (Osmia lignaria), but I suspect that the bee lab's research reaches far beyond that one species.

Anyway, this is the story that got me thinking...about the prohibition on using illustrations as type "specimens." The article discusses a new species of booklouse (Psocodea) from caves in the Grand Canyon (see the new millipede and cave cricket from the same study). That's fairly exciting news, actually, especially given the fact that Psocodea, as a whole, largely skate through life unappreciated and with little fanfare (excluding lice, of course). And yet here they are on a science news website. Cool!


The text mentions that it's a new bug species, currently undescribed, in the "family" Sphaeropsocopsis. (Ok, we know that taxonomy is wrong; I'm pretty sure there's no such family called Sphaeropsocopsis, and it's certainly not a "bug") The article also includes an image. In another world some enterprising charlatan could pick up this knowledge and run with it - knowing that this is an undescribed species (that's half of the taxonomist's battle right there), s/he could write a description, publish it in some unscrupulous journal, and designate that image as the type "specimen." Perhaps that is one of the many reasons we don't currently allow images as types in zoology? What would make an image "good enough" to serve as a representative of the species? I could probably be creative and stitch together a reasonable description from this image:


I think I'll call it Crazypsocopsis grandcanyonensis and publish my description in the Annals of the Crazy Entomologist.

That was a question I got for a Q & A news brief in the next issue of the North Carolina Entomological Society newsletter. ¡Que difícil! I happen love all insects, and to pick one as my least favorite seems unfair. The best answer I could deliver in the short turnaround time (i.e., without intense, reflective deliberation) was the Madeira cockroach (Blaberidae: Rhyparobia maderae (Fabricius, 1781)). I know, I know, cockroaches already get a bum rap; why reinforce that bias? Why not choose some dangerous spider or an insect with a painful bite or sting?

Originally from Africa, the Madeira cockroach has now spread throughout the tropics and even reaches into temperate North America (typically in specialized urban environments, like greenhouses). This species has served us well so far as a model in physiological experiments, recently appearing in a PNAS article that demonstrated night and day (literally) differences in learning abilities. Google Scholar retrieves >3,500 hits for the old combination, Leucophaea maderae, and 172 more hits for the current valid combination. It also happens to be a beautiful insect, bespeckled with freckles of sepia and sienna, that possesses intriguing life history strategies (e.g., parental care of developing eggs). Obviously this is a popular and captivating species.

So why would I not want to work with them on a regular basis? I think they produce one of the most offensive defensive (oxymoron?) odors known to man - a cross between stale horse perspiration and fresh skunk discharge - that burns into your olfactory receptors and stays there...festering for what seems like an eternity. Maybe that should make them even more interesting as a research subject!

Which insect would you choose if asked that same question?

Neal Evenhuis sent out an interesting email to us folks on the ICZN emailing list about the insect sculptures in my last post - just what type of type are those 3D representations? And do/should they have any status regarding the code. This specimen hiding in the amber is the holotype. My colleague Matt referred to the oversized figures as "plastotypes", which is a somewhat accurate interpretation. At this point plastotypes don't have any official status at the ICZN as anything other than an illustration (i.e., one of these figures could not replace the actual specimen as an official representation of that taxon), and they could not, as the BBC said, "be deposited as part of the holotype". Frizzell (1933) has the most complete list of the types of types that I've seen, and there are some precious ones in there:

adelfotype

A topotype obtained by the original collector of the species.

aedoeotypus

The first specimen of a species to have the genitalia studied, together with the genital preparation; useful in entomology. [indeed!]

chirotype

A specimen upon which an unpublished name (nomen nudum, chironym) is based. [yikes]

chorotype

A fossil specimen collected from the same stratum as the type, but from a neighboring locality.

holoparalectotype

A specimen from the original material, later established as a paratype, that belongs to the sex described by the author.

Ah, here it is on pg. 661 -

plastotype

Any artificial specimen moulded directly from a type.

According to Neil this method was used a lot for fish specimens before we had sufficient means to preserve tissues for eternity. It's certainly a useful practice, but we'll see if any adjustments are made to the Code regarding these "specimens".

One last noteworthy observation: as of this morning, the Wikipedia holotype page includes this little nugget (emphasis mine):

A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to be used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype.

I assume the author(s) refers to organisms not covered by the ICZN (plants then? or viruses?), which does not include illustrations as eligible "specimens" for typification (Chapter 16, Article 72.5). Interestingly enough the code does allow "in the case of fossils, a natural replacement, natural impression, natural mould, or natural cast of an animal or colony, or part of either" (72.5.3) to represent the taxon as a type.