NC State University Insect Museum

I just got back from the Willi Hennig Society annual meeting at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Rudolf Meier, fly systematist extraordinaire and organizer of this year's event, invited me to present on ontologies in evolutionary biology. The venue was visually stunning (see above), and the program was absolutely chock-a-block with entomology - of the 65 presentations (including 11 posters) 24 (37%) focused on insects and/or spiders. I was especially heartened to see so many researchers talking about practical and realistic applications of DNA barcoding, and Frank Friedrich et al.'s talk on micro computer-tomography (μ-CT) included some of the most amazing illustrations of insects I've ever seen (including a synchrotron radiation-based micro computed tomograph of a hymenopteran: Tenthredo vespa - note to self: we need to do this for the (forthcoming) Hymenoptera Anatomical Atlas!).

My entomological experiences, of course, were not limited to slides in the meeting room. Walking through the Botanic Gardens revealed singing cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) and swarms of stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini), and my hike through the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve included observations of nesting wasps (Vespidae: Stenogastrinae), dancing dragonflies (Libellulidae), resting plant hoppers (Hemiptera: Flatidae), GIGANTIC patrolling ants (Formicidae: Camponotus gigas), swarming pomace flies (Drosophilidae), and nervous ant-mimicking jumping spiders (Salticidae: Myrmarachne maxillosa). Here's a taste, from my efforts with a point and shoot:

Just a reminder to be thinking about insect vids. I know we've got some kooky ideas for potential entries...


See the Entomological Society of America's YouTube channel.

Twitter is awash in tweets (requires that you're logged in) about this video that demonstrates Barack Obama's ninja-like fly-killing skillz.


If I have one complaint (and I never have just one) it's that the Christian Science Monitor spelled house fly as housefly. By excluding the space between those words the implication is that this insect isn't a true dipteran! It sure looks like one (quite possibly to me Muscidae), and it most certainly is not a mosquito (Culicidae), as labeled in YouTube.

Am I the only one that feels bad about seeing that innocent hexapod bite the dust on national television?! It's funny how many people are converging on jokes about PETA, the Onion, and how the President is now resurrecting the fly. Oh you crazy twitterers!

My colleague Antonius van Harten recently made the news for his extraordinary efforts to study the insect fauna on the United Arab Emirates. Tony's been collecting there for several years now, compiling two volumes already of the Arthropod Fauna of the UAE, an edited series of articles about arthropods (mostly insects) found in - you guessed it - the UAE. The project has revealed at least 167 new insect species, which is just awesome.

He's been kind enough to send me several packages of vials filled with UAE Ceraphronoidea, and I've been dreadfully slow to respond with a manuscript (though I have sorted the specimens to morphospecies, identifying described species for this group of wasps is a painfully slow process). Something's in the works now, though, in collaboration with István Mikó, and we expect a manuscript to be submitted this summer - finally.

He's made it to various Web channels before (earlier article here), but what prompted me to write something is the fact that he now apparently describes himself as a professional etymologist! A change in careers? Way to go Tony!

Resistance is futile, as they say. We are now using twitter to report random observations that are entomologically interesting and yet not quite blog-worthy (at least given our current time constraints and general mayhem).

I'll probably incorporate our twitter feed here somewhere or replace our "news" box on the index page with a twidget-esque contraption. Until then you can follow us at http://twitter.com/ncsuinsects. I've also started to add other natural history museums and relevant entities to our feed. So...much........information. More soon!

UPDATE: Today I replaced the news section on our Insect Museum home page, which was just static HTML and a pain to update, with our twitter feed. Check it out: http://insectmuseum.org/
It'll be the Museum's microblog!

The Entomological Society of America announced a YouTube entomology video contest today. The rules and theme seem fairly straightforward:

1. entries should be less than 2 minutes long
2. entries should fit one of four categories:
   • Discovery (research-based)
   • Instruction (teaching-based)
   • Outreach (extension-based)
   • Open category (anything goes, for the uber-creative entomologist)
3. entries will be displayed on the ESA YouTube Channel (available somewhere at entsoc.org
4. email your videos to rlevine@entsoc.org. If files are too large to email, write for instructions on alternative ways to send videos. [why not upload the vids and add them to the ESA group?]

Sounds cool! I think this contest would definitely help the current array of "entomology videos" on YouTube. They're not terrible, they're just not all that interesting (to me, anyway). Searching for insects is a bit more fruitful. My current favorite stars a native North Carolina, insect-devouring plant (Dionaea muscipula (Droseraceae) - the venus fly trap, of course):


One minor quibble - right around 00:38-00:45 there is reference to the "beetle's struggles." I'm pretty sure that hopeless insect is a pentatomoid bug (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) and not a beetle.

While playing catch-up I came across the "buzz of the week" for March 23, posted over at the Entomological Society of America website. The associated text refers to a video "made by Justin Schmidt" about the most painful insect stings. Two things tell me that this video was not made by Justin: 1) that first image is not a stinging insect, and I think he of all people would know that(!), and 2) all stinging insects (with one exception that I can think of, which is not included in that "video") are in Hymenoptera, so shouldn't this be labeled as Most Painful Hymenopteran (or Aculeate) Stings?


If you have a strong constitution and a good sense of humor you will also enjoy the ongoing discussion of YouTube users' negative/painful interactions with insects and other arthropods (see comments below the video).

This month's National Geographic has a small piece on declining fireflies (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) that piqued my interest - another example citizen scientists working together to accrue critical distributional data. The main site for recording these observations is Boston's Museum of Science Firefly watch (covered by many already).

I mentioned a couple of projects like this before (e.g., in my Lost Ladybug Project post) and even have one of my own in development that involves North Carolina insects (it'll be awhile though!). With so many examples to peruse I thought it would be worthwhile to list what I think are successful components of my favorite insect-related citizen science projects:

• Emphasize taxa that people can see, identify, and relate to. The Lost Ladybug Project certainly does this. Everyone knows what a coccinellid is, and their conspicuous nature (the bright red/white/black ones, anyway) and associated folklore make them easy subjects for citizen scientists. Ladybird beetles also perform important environmental services that most people can appreciate. The same statement could be made about Firefly Watch, BeeSpotter (collecting data on the storied honey and bumble bees), and the Great Pollinator Project (collecting data on "honey bees, bumble bees, large carpenter bees, and metallic green bees"). There are several projects that observe and count Odonata and Papilionoidea, which are good targets to draw people in. Alas, I think a Chalcidoidea count should probably be reserved for those citizens who crave an extraordinary challenge, and any conceived Aphid Watch should be reserved for criminal punition.
• Clearly define your mission. Discuss the problem (invasive? declining?) or research question (affected by global warming?) and how my observations will help science understand and maybe solve the problem or otherwise address the question. Too many projects - and even one is too many, in my opinion - forget to explain why these data are needed. These are missed opportunities to garner appreciation for the relevance of science.
• Make data submission easy. Spider WebWatch excels in this department - just look at this magnificent data upload demo page, with its point-and-shoot Google Map and a free text (with WYSIWYG editor!) observation notes box. Unrivaled.
• Make it fun. The Encyclopedia of Life knows exactly how to do this with the EoL flickr group. Flickr is loaded with fantastic biological observations, and the EoL group knows how to draw these photographers in with fun photo contests (current theme is 'nocturnal'). Your photos reach a broad audience and help illustrate taxon pages, and the information associated with your images (tags, where and when you took the image, etc.) provide critical data that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Other projects (though it's not clear how active they are) that include elements of competitive fun include Discover Life's Golderod Challenge and Ant Hunt.
• Provide instant gratification. I want to see my contributions - photos and data points - easily and immediately. I also want to see data that my citizen colleagues submitted on the main page or otherwise readily linked from the index. Something like the EoL flickr images map, Firefly Watch's view and explore data, or BeeSpotter's bee spottings.

We're featured on the cover of this week's Bulletin, which is a magazine about the various happenings at NC State. Yes, that's my hand in that photo holding Phrictus tripartitus Metcalf plant hopper. I should have found one of our Pepsis specimens for that shot!

My favorite line from the PDF version of that story is the caption under the first photo of me holding and staring at a pinned insect: Dr. Craig Harms gives Willy a medical check-up upon her arrival at RDU. I think that was a holdover from a past story about the Vet School's Craig Harms examining a sea turtle at the Raleigh airport, but somehow it also works for my picture.

Anyway, it's fun to get some recognition. We might even make it onto the ncsu.edu soon, so keep your eyes peeled...

It's been an eventful semester here in the Insect Museum, as evidenced by the lack of any recent posts (seems weird that a dearth of activity actually signals an abundance of activity, but I promise it's true!). Here's an update about some of the manuscripts we've been crankin' on these last couple months:

• One of us (me) contributed to a review (Janzen et al. 2009 - it's open access!) of how DNA "barcoding" - that is, using a ~650 nt fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene to help understand species limits and diagnose taxa - is proving to be a critical part of the taxonomic process (see image below) for some groups. One of my recent grants (DEB-0842289) will incorporates a large-scale test of DNA barcoding in Evaniidae, including an exploration of alternative markers. We're still looking for a student if you know anyone who's interested!
• István Mikó and I also had a manuscript accepted recently, where we use three ontologies from the OBO Foundry, in combination with our Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology (HAO), to describe a whacky (that is, a very cool looking) new genus and species of Ceraphronidae. I'll definitely make time to explore this topic further - ontologies in biodiversity and evolutionary biology - but I need to catch my breath first. We secured funding recently (DBI-0850223) to develop the HAO and some tools to exploit existing ontologies, but it might be another month or two before the team's settled in and the posts start rolling.
• I read close to 300 articles (2005-2009) last month as part of a review of Bayesian approaches and their impact(s) on insect phylogenetics. More details on that manuscript later, but two attributes of my literature perusal are worth mentioning here (since they weren't part of the MS in review):
  1. Entomologists are terrible at citing software. PAUP* is the most fequently used package for estimating phylogenies, at least in my sample, and it was referred to by FIFTY-THREE (53) different names - e.g., 4.0b10 of paup*, PAUP, PAUP 4.0 b, PAUP 4.0 b10, paup 4.0b10*, paup 4*b10, PAUP* version 4.0b10, paup*4 version beta 10, PAUP4.0b10, Paup* b10 - and variably cited as Swofford 1998, Swofford 1999, Swofford 2000, Swofford 2001, Swofford 2002, or Swofford 2003. Ummmm...riiiiight. Perhaps I am too nitpicky (we get the gist of what they used, right?), but there is a "how to cite" section of the PAUP* website.
  2. Less than 50% of this published research is repeatable - and I am being generous with that estimate and strict with my definition of "repeatable." Sure the sequences are invariably deposited in GenBank, and the morphological characters and scorings were always added as a table in the appendix or as a supplement. But where are the DNA alignments? Most datasets include rR(D)NA genes/fragments, whose alignments were "manually tweaked" and the "hypervariable regions were excluded." Other datasets had nuclear protein encoding genes with intron issues. Too many of these authors did not explicitly avail their alignments. Repeatability is a fundamental tenet of science, and yet these examples of science are not repeatable. Also, where are the command blocks? Too many papers were not explicit in how they implemented their models, how they determined their burn-in, how many generations they ran their analyses for, or they excluded critical details about other analysis variables. Some authors even claimed to implement models of sequence evolution in MrBayes that are impossible.
  There must be similar rantings already in the literature or on various science blogs. If not, it's definitely worth an opinion piece (after a MUCH more thorough literature review). Anyone interested?

More on the way as I come out from under it. Up next: student insect collections.

Research responsibilities (yeah!) and budget issues (ugh) have has us preoccupied this and next week. I do feel compelled, though, to report on a couple exciting insect events coming up this weekend:

• The UC Davis Department of Entomology leads several entomological activities during the annual Picnic Day this Saturday (April 18, 2009). If you're in Davis go watch maggots paint and cockroaches race!
• Purdue University's Department of Entomology holds its Bug Bowl, as well, this weekend. Look at insect art (in cake form!) and challenge your friends in the cricket spitting contest. I especially love this picture of a giant katydid (but labeled as a grasshopper!) maneuvering to consume some poor insect fanatic.

Seeing these announcements motivated me to spend almost an hour searching for other festivals of entomological fun: my alma maters, the University of Arkansas and University of Illinois, each have a version, as do NC State (in combination with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences), the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, Iowa State University, the University of Georgia, and at least a few others. If I had the time it'd be fun to explore the commonalities between these festivals - e.g., they all seem to have cockroach races (either between slow, deliberate Gromphadorhina portentosa runners or involving one of the world's fastest running insects, Periplaneta americana), and there's also usually some activity that encourages entomophagy. Alas, it'll have to wait for now.

If you go to either of these festivals this weekend, though, let us know what you learned! I have an idea to combine the cockroach races and the insect eating into a single activity for next Bugfest...but maybe it would be better to hear about what works at other festivals, first.

UPDATE: This position has been filled. A postdoctoral position is available at North Carolina State University (NCSU) for someone with interests in molecular evolution and phylogenetics. The selected applicant will be associated with the NCSU Insect Museum, working closely with Dr. Andrew R. Deans on an NSF-funded project that touches many other aspects of evolutionary biology: divergence time estimation to address biogeographic and host/parasite questions, DNA barcoding to test hypotheses of mimicry and beta diversity, new informatics to manage/incorporate morphological and fossil data, and novel methods for revisionary systematics. This position is an opportunity to join a growing lab of enthusiastic and approachable biologists with a broad array of expertise.

As a vertex of North Carolina's Research Triangle NCSU benefits from close proximity to a large community of evolutionary biologists at NCSU (e.g., in the Entomology, Genetics, and Biology departments) and our affiliation with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent).

Required: PhD in Biology or related field. Experience in primer design, PCR, molecular data analysis. Excellent written and oral communication skills.

Desirable: Experience with insects, informatics, and ontologies, penchant for international travel and field work.

Details: The position is available from July 1, 2009 (negotiable) and is offered for one year, with the possibility of reappointment for another year.

Applicants must apply online - http://jobs.ncsu.edu/ (position # 01-07-0902) for instructions. Proper documentation of identity and employability will be required before the hiring process can be finalized. Applicants should upload a two-page (maximum) statement of research interests, a CV, and contact information for three references. Review of applicants commences May 1, 2009 and continues until the position is filled.

PI contact information:
Andrew R. Deans
Department of Entomology
North Carolina State University
Campus Box 7613
2301 Gardner Hall
Raleigh, NC USA 27695-7613

ncsu.edu email: andy_deans@
phone: +1 (919) 515-2833
fax: +1 (919) 515-7746
skype: ardeans

More information:
http://ncsu.edu/
http://deanslab.org/
http://insectmuseum.org/
http://gsl.cals.ncsu.edu/
http://entomology.ncsu.edu/

/AA/EOE. ADA Accommodations: Dr. Andrew R. Deans andy_deans@ncsu.edu 919-515-2833.// NC State welcomes all persons without regard to sexual orientation./

Judges' notes: What a clever arrangement of words. We can feel the annoyance coming out. Nice twist - cozy/comfy becomes creepy.






Judges' notes: Definitely most traditional. The vibrant green time of cherry trees and caterpillars everywhere; a bird's dream is exactly right - the feast!






Judges' notes: We can each point to that exact moment. Technical but easily understood. Love the use of 'decibel,' which brings a tinge of science to this common scene. Hurt my ear drums to read this haiku!






Judges' notes: Great imagery, and it almost rhymes. We love the reference to "ancient signals" in what can be interpreted as a love poem (though the protagonists could be Photuris!); nothing is more ancient in poetry than love. The slow burn of cinders on and off correlates to flashes of passion. Simple but symbolic, and just states the facts...or does it allude to different? The burning embers of desire?






Judges' notes: Great reference to Japanese culture, and so appropriate with respect to the taxon (Vespidae, probably; we envision Vespa mandarinia, of course!).






Judges' notes: Siphonaptera is a great word for poetry - entomological, euphonious. Layers of irony - truly likes flesh and blood!






Judges' notes: The poetic imagery here is one of the best in this selection of haiku. Strong images of life vs. death, shadow to light. Good model for transitions.






Judges' notes: We loved the riddle-like quality of this haiku (even though the answer's in the title!). The poet focuses on the unique aspects of cicada biology to challenge our intellect. The near rhyme with lines 1 and 2 was effective.

Now that the haiku contest is over and the winners have been announced (and my manuscript's finished!) I can get back to reporting on miscellaneous museum news and on interesting stories about insects. One article in particular caught my attention last week, but I never had time to post on it. The Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) team at the Instituto de Apicultura y Biologia de Polinización (IABP) in Trucito, Spain has been working on revealing the causes of CCD (high levels of Israeli acute paralysis virus were found recently that correlate with dying colonies) and also on exploring alternative insect pollinators should the old, reliable Apis mellifera decline to critically low levels over the next decade.

This line of research isn't especially novel, as several other researchers are also tackling alternatives: Osmia and Megachile (Megachilidae) successfully pollinate alfalfa and a variety of fruits and vegetables, Bombus spp. (Apidae) take care of our tomatoes, blueberries, and cranberries, and the USDA has a whole lab dedicated to developing non-Apis bees...as crop pollinators. Very few people, however, are exploring pollinators from other insect orders, or even other hexapod orders. Enter Fábula Cuento, Manojo Mentiras, and their army of grad students...

Most IABP products focus (predictably) on Lepidoptera, with a few students tackling pollination projects involving Diptera and Coleoptera. None of these taxa, though, provide the same level of precision, fidelity, and efficiency in their pollination behaviors as honey bees. And none of these other taxa provide honey, pollen balls, propolis, wax (not in large amounts, anyway), and royal jelly. At least one other taxon does a few of these things, and Rodriguez et al. (2009) and Cuento et al. (2009) report on the successful employment of springtail colonies (Collembola) as substitutes for Apis mellifera.


It's amazing to me that no one has thought of this before. Though most species of springtails are solitary, two lineages - Gregarioistominae (Isotomidae) and Apisminthurini (Sminthuridae) - have been documented as being sub-social. These collembolans live and forage gregariously, similar to honey bees, and actually partition nest duties between individuals via largely unknown mechanisms. These arthropods will even collect pollen, which they pack onto specialized hind leg setal patches (pseudocorbiculae) in order to provision group nests. Gregarious species also have workers that collect nectar (see below), which is fed to "guards" back at the nest by their suckling from the worker's collophore (see tube-like structure at the center of this image).


We're a looooong way off from establishing collembiculture as a popular hobby and undergrad course, but the two springtail species explored by IABP show tremendous promise as honey bee replacements: they don't sting, they're not susceptible to Israeli acute paralysis virus, and they collect pollen and nectar. As this video of pollen-gathering collembolans shows, though, we haven't yet found the perfect replacement for honey bees. Nor are beekeepers seriously considering making the switch to collembolans...yet.

These three haiku arrived as part of a longer poem-story composed of 10 haiku (the three above represent the first, second, and final tercets) and five images sent to us by Ms. Cory Raymond of McAllen, Texas. The judges were impressed with the ambition of this set, and the love story (a classic poetic theme) of two beetles in an exotic land was wonderful. The story was biologically interesting because in that part of Texas Cissites auriculata (Coleoptera: Meloidae) is just spilling over from the northern end of its range. We also loved that these images also available on BugGuide!