showing off our student research
The Entomology Graduate Student Association here had its annual Research Symposium last Friday, which served to showcase research by students and postdocs in the Department of Entomology. There was an impressive array of speakers that included four students associated with the Museum:
An example of Matt's taxon of interest - the crane flies. Tipulidae s.s. exhibits extraordinary taxonomic, ecological, and morphological diversity. Thanks to Gilles Gonthier for capturing this image.
Looks like we need to update our Museum's research webpage!
- Michelle Trautwein discussed her dissertation work, which, as part of the FlyTree initiative, seeks to elucidate the sister-group to Eremoneura (which includes the vast majority of fly diversity, from dance flies, to Drosophila, to the common house fly). The most widely held hypothesis holds that Asiloidea (robber flies and their relatives; see Keith's post) is the sister to Eremoneura, but finding robust support for this is a difficult phylogenetic problem.
- Matt Bertone described his project - an attempt to sort out relationships near the base of the fly tree, mainly involving Tipulidae s.s. Matt's work, which is also part of FlyTree attempts to answer the age old taxonomic question: Is Tipulidae one family or four? Turns out it might be twenty.
- Keith Bayless, a Master's sudent on the Tabanidae PEET grant, is revising Dasychela (a genus of South American horse flies) and looking into evolutionary questions concerning ecological specialization in relation to proboscis length and antenna morphology.
- Whitney Swink is looking into the diversity of dance flies in Madagascar. She sorted through a huge number of samples and will be describing numerous new species as no species in her group have ever been described from Madagascar.
An example of Matt's taxon of interest - the crane flies. Tipulidae s.s. exhibits extraordinary taxonomic, ecological, and morphological diversity. Thanks to Gilles Gonthier for capturing this image.
Looks like we need to update our Museum's research webpage!
