Collecting trips: One short visit to see Arizona (out of Sierra Vista) after serving on a focus group for Prentice Hall Publishing: screen sweeping in canyon, along stream; modest results, but didn't have much time. For the past two years we have been running malaise and FIT in second growth deciduous forest in southeastern Ohio (Hocking Hills); catch dominated by belytines, but some interesting scelionids showed up (including one species of telenomine that doesn't fit in any of the known genera. Henri Goulet also picked this species up in southern Illinois). For this year, we've moved the traps to a nature preserve called Cedar Bog in west central portion of the state (near Urbana). This site has true white cedar (in southern Ohio hemlocks are called cedars) and a number of relict northern plants and animals. Looking forward to seeing what kinds of proctos are here too.
Museum: Nothing much.
Miscellaneous news: As of about 1.5 years ago I took over as Director of the OSU Insect Collection. Historically, the collection has been strong in Coleoptera, owing to the first two Directors, J. Knuil and C.A. Triplehorn, and Homoptera, resulting from the efforts of D. DeLong, R. Davidson, D. Johnson Knull. We have received an NSF collection improvement grant that allowed us to purchase replacement cabinets (also allowing for an increase in overall storage capacity) and to hire a full-time associate curator: Dr. Andrey Sharkov (an encyrtid specialist). I have three students at the moment, two working on Coleoptera (histerids, ptinids) and one, just beginning, to work on parasitics (she is also interested in encyrtids). That, combined with the recent hire of John Wenzel as a faculty member, means we are rapidly becoming "heavy" with hymenopterists. No harm there! Many of you are aware of the pressures in the university environment to be doing research on the so-called "cutting edge". Molecular systematics is a popular area, but I decided that I would not be able to do that. I am interested, though, in the application of the technologies and tools of geographic information systems to systematics and biogeography. A lot of the activities that systematists have traditionally done, for example, overlaying distributions of species to find areas of high diversity and/or high endemism, or looking for correlations between environmental factors and distributions, are precisely some of the spatial analyses that GIS is designed to do. And one of the job opportunities for systematists is in the area of conservation. More and more of these openings have familiarity with GIS as a requirement. To be honest, I'm not sure where this will lead me, but its been quite interesting so far.
Click on image to return to
the Ohio State University Insect Collection's home page.