An autumn of bark louse taxonomy

It's a quiet autumn here in Champaign. Between the microscope and the molecular lab, I'm keeping myself busy. In the mornings, I draw insect parts.

The male parts of bark louse from Kauai --->

In the afternoons, I work on getting DNA sequenced. I'm enjoying the routine. I'm also taking a GIS course and working on content for the Tree of Life Web Project.








GIS is a nerdy delight. I'm proud to boast a bronze medal in the "Worst Map in the Class" contest.
<---Here's my entry, typos and all.

Making a map that bad took more tricks than I imagined!

Work in Hawaii then a vacation in Indiana...

Thanks to everyone in Hawaii who made my recent trip a big success and a lot of fun. I'm happy to report that I made it back from the tour of the marine lab on Gilligan's Island right on time, three hours on the nose!

On my way home to Illinois, I'm visiting my friends Laura and Ryan in Goshen, Indiana.


Field shots of bark lice aren't much to look at, so here's some photos from spots I stopped along the way.





Mauna Kea observatory at sunset.

A fiddlehead from a tree fern at Honuaula Forest Reserve on the Big Island.

I'll be home in Illinois until November. Drop by a visit if you're in the Midwest!

July in Hawaii

Aloha!

I'm in Honolulu this week attending the Hawaii Conservation Conference, which just ended today. I met a lot of good people and saw some really inspiring talks on invasive species control and habitat restoration.

Last week, my friend Susan and I went to Molokai to collect bark lice and plants. The folks at The Nature Conservancy and Kalaupapa National Historical Park were incredibly helpful and friendly and our trip was a big success.

The photo above is Susan at the Kamakou Boardwalk on Molokai.


Memorial to Father Damien in Kalaupapa.

Tomorrow I'll take a tour of the marine biology lab on Coconut Island, the original Gilligan's Island! How long is the tour? Three hours!
(Should I be skeptical..?)





Then on Sunday, we'll head to the Big Island for a week of collecting at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and other spots.

Just made it home from the Evolution Meeting and my brain is stuffed.

Some highlights:

• David M. Kidd demonstrated GeoPhyloBuilder, which maps 3D phylogenies onto GIS maps.
• Lucia Lohmann's elegant talk about using 80,000 georeferenced specimen records to study distribution of the plant family Bignoniaceae.
• Lab groups at UC Berkeley, like Patrick O'Grady's, are working on an interesting mix of Hawaiian insect systems.
• Michelle Trautwein talked about resolving relationships in Holometabola, including the ever-fascinating Strepsiptera question.
• After the meeting, I visited my sister Ardath, who's lived in Minneapolis for about a year. We saw the giant spoon with a cherry at the sculpture garden, ate really good ice cream at Minnehaha Falls, and bought a toaster oven at the Mall of America. Sadly, I don't have photos of the indoor amusement park because my camera was out of batteries.
  

For systematics people, the Evolution meeting is really about methods. I use the methods, but I love the organisms, so I usually leave Evolution with my brain full to the brim with methods, contemplating my organismal biologist inferiority complex. Now, I have a dozen new things to try out on my data. I'm boosted by the idea of presenting the results at the Entomological Society of America meeting in November. They love to talk about organisms there.

Mrysidea bessae

Taxonomic Ego Trip!

<-- this is an illustration of a headless Myrsidea bessae, a new species of parasitic louse from a Riverside Wren from Panama.

Roger Price, Kevin Johnson, and Bob Dalgleish named the species for me in a recent paper. This is a sincere honor.

I'm thinking that not just anyone would be flattered to have a parasite named for them, but I'm absolutely tickled. You can probably tell, since I'm bragging about it!

Welcome to my bark lice blog.
My old website was outdated, so I thought I'd try something new.

On this website, you'll find info about my PhD thesis work on the bark louse genus Ptycta.
Very soon, I'm going to synonymize Ptycta with the genus Copostigma. Then I'll have to start saying "On this website, you'll find info about my PhD thesis work on the bark louse genus Copostigma."

This is what's been keeping me busy...

• I'm headed to Minneapolis on June 20 for the Evolution meeting. I'll present a talk called "Repeated Colonization by Hawaiian Bark Lice."
• In Jan and Feb, 2008, I worked in the insect collection of the Australian Museum in Sydney.
• In March and April, 2008, I collected bark lice in Hawaii on the islands of Maui, Kauai, and Lanai. Kevin, Mary, and I collected more than 5000 Ptycta in 4 weeks. That's a lot of Ptycta. Photos of Hawaii.

For the summer, I'm home in Champaign. I'm spending lots of time at the microscope trying to figure out how many species of Ptycta I have on my hands.