As I’m sure you’ve noticed things have been awfully quiet around here for the last two months. Most of January I was busy with a move, from San Francisco to Chicago. Unfortunately the foundation that was supporting my work at the California Academy of Sciences had some tough financial calls to make and my position was discontinued. Additional layoffs at the CAS only meant there wasn’t any way for me to stay at the museum – such is the ephemeral world of research funding. I’ll miss the amazing friends that I made and the beautiful California landscape, four years sure flies by in a flash. Without a doubt I’ll find something in the not too distant future (if you know of anything let me know!). In the meantime I can focus on experimenting with my photo gear and getting those manuscripts done that have been hanging around for far too long.
Spring/tornado season is just around the corner here in Chicagoland and I think it’s safe to say scenes like this are a thing of the past. Stay tuned for regular updates, new photographs, and where I might be moving to next!
The first annual National Moth Week will be this summer, July 23-29, 2012! This is the first event of its kind in the US (it has been popular in the UK for quite some time) and is an attempt to encourage people to head outside and explore their often overlooked moth fauna. The US has an impressive moth diversity with over 11,000 described species, most of which people can’t name two of. As a citizen science project there will be teams of people submitting their records (photographs or lists) of moths found in yards across the country. If you read this blog you probably have enough interest to participate! This map lists events that are currently registered – have one in your area? Contact that person and join in! There is also lots of room to set up your own event. I’ll register in a few months when I figure out where I’ll be, but you can count on it being BYOB (beer is a critical field supply).
Coincidentally the Moth Week corresponds with the Lepidopterists’ Society National Meeting being held this year in Denver, Colorado. Naturally, everyone will be headed out at night to look for moths. If you’re in Denver and want to see what it is we do, please get a hold of me, I will probably be attending the meeting this year.
Fellow network blogger David Shiffman is in the final laps of a $10,000 scholarship challenge. The money will not only support David’s blogging at Southern Fried Science, but shark conservation research (including a contest to name the shark he will tag with the funds). Take a moment and vote for him, once every 24 hours! He is currently in the lead with a decent %3 margin, let’s keep it that way.
For all intents and purposes this looks like a blue butterfly (as in subfamily Polyommatinae)… it’s very, very blue after all. But assumptions based on color would lead you down the incorrect road; as it turns out this butterfly is actually a species copper. There are subtle difference in wing shape and probably venation, but when I first saw these butterflies I assumed they were a sub-species of Plebejus icarioides (which werealso flying at this location on the Kaibab Plateau). But then I began seeing female butterflies (below) interacting with these blues and then it dawned on me – blue copper – Lycaena heteronea austin (Lycaenidae: Lycaeninae)!
This subspecies was originally described in 1998 by the late, great George T. Austin as L. heteronea rutila. Given however that rutila more or less = rutilus, it was later determined rutila was actually unavailable and the subspecies name was changed to austin in honor of George.
I’ve just returned from the annual Entomological Society of America conference in Reno, Nevada! It’s the largest meeting of its kind in the world, with over 4,000 attendees from all walks of insect research life. My interests are in the systematics, evolution and biodiversity talks – and I’ll try to recap a few of the fascinating presentations I attended over the next few weeks.
Of particular note was a wonderful talk given by the acclaimed bug blogger, Bug Girl! It was wonderful to meet her in person and hear about her own experiences as a blogger. I encourage you to watch the draft of her talk yourself, if you haven’t already!
We should all celebrate this day with an act of science or skepticism. Plant the seed of inquiry and critical thinking, or take a moment to broaden your own horizons. I was up before dawn this morning and watched the morning stars fade behind the light of the rising sun. It brought to mind my elementary school science classroom and the scratchy VHS recordings of Cosmos we frequently watched. I have since been rapt by the wonder of our universe and our place amongst the stars.
Everyone is likely familiar with the standard model for a moth or butterfly – a straw-like proboscis to reach nectar hidden within flowers. The vast majority of the Lepidoptera have diversified alongside the radiation of angiosperm plants, becoming one of the most diverse and abundant orders of life on earth. This paradigm however does not apply to the Micropterigidae, which represent not only the most basal lineage of the Lepidoptera, but are one of three families that have retained mandibles for grinding pollen or spores and rely on bryophytes, decaying organic matter or fungi as a larval host. Prior assumptions as to the diversity of this group were based on the vast age of the lineage (110 million years) and a buildup of ancient genera. A recent paper on the Japanese species of Micropterigidae by Yume Imada and her colleagues at Kyoto University provides evidence to the contrary and applies molecular techniques to test the hypothesis of allopatric speciation without niche shift.
The authors traveled to 46 localities across the Japanese archipelago and collected all 16 known endemic species, a few new species, and quite possibly a new genus. Finding these moths in the wild is not all that difficult if you know how to find the habitat and how not to fall off slippery rocks; but once you do find the spot the moths can be abundant. Micropterigidae are unsurprisingly associated with their bryophytes, which occur in moist habitats along streams and rivers. The very nature of a minute and slow moving animal in isolated pockets lends itself to allopatric speciation. Many microlepidoptera barely fly off of their host plant and even when they do they are not known for long distance dispersal. While the majority of genera and species are completely isolated across Japan there are a few instances where the genus Paramartyria occurs within populations of Issikiomartyria. While it is unknown precisely how these species might partition their host resources it is very likely to be a temporal difference in life-cycles. Here in California there is a vastly confusing complex of Apodemia butterflies that comprise a handful of species and (of course) subspecies that are partitioned on the same plant by spring and fall breeding seasons.
Impressively, every micropterigid collected as larvae were found only on the Conocephalum conicum species of liverwort, in spite of there being up to fourteen other bryophyte species available in the same habitat. It had been long understood that the Asian Micropterigidae fed on liverworts, but the extent of their host specificity had never been quantified. Feeding behavior appears to be the same across all of the surveyed species, with caterpillars grazing along the top of the bryophytes consuming the upper tissue layers.
Phylogenetic analysis of the COI, 18S and EF-1α genes generated highly congruent trees using multiple analytical methods. It appears that the endemic Japanese genera and the Conocephalum feeding strategy form a well supported monophyletic clade (in green). In short, the radiation of the host-specific Micropterigidae coincide with the separation, uplift, and isolation of the Japanese landmass roughly 20 million years ago. It could not have been difficult to propose the hypothesis that the diversity of the Japanese Micropterigidae could only be as old as the island itself; and it’s also an accepted fact today that allopatric speciation happens more commonly than once thought. But quantifying these theories and explaining how and why this happens is exactly what science is about.
Literature Cited
Imada Y, Kawakita A, & Kato M (2011). Allopatric distribution and diversification without niche shift in a bryophyte-feeding basal moth lineage (Lepidoptera: Micropterigidae). Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 278 (1721), 3026-33 PMID: 21367790
Scoble, MJ. (1992). The Lepidoptera: Form, function, and diversity. Oxford Univ. Press.
That’s how the saying goes, right? Two weeks ago I participated in the 5th annual National Geographic BioBlitz over in Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona. It was a great excuse to get back into the field and it was the first time I collected Arizona in the fall. Temps were still pushing the mid 90’s but things had been dry and the impressive abundance of the monsoon season was long gone. In total my moth colleagues and I collected around 140 species of Lepidoptera, 56 of which were microleps! Sadly though it seems that either other insects were far and few inbetween, or other entomology teams didn’t carefully tally everything they saw. Only 190 arthropods were counted in total – we lost to vascular plants (325 species) and even fungi (205)!
Here is a short interview with me in a really hot tent with lots of kids (who must have given me this cold I now have). Perhaps my wild estimate of a possible 15,000 species in the US is on the high side, but it’s not impossible.
Another huge Australian “microlep”, (probably) Maroga setiotricha: Xylorictidae – measuring in at 60mm. With wings like this they must make formidable fliers. According to the Xyloryctinae Moths of Australia blog the larvae are stem borers into Acacia sp. (Mimosaceae). This specimen was collected in November of 1962 by Ed Ross in Canoona, Queensland.
CNN has now jumped on the bandwagon of FOX-esque bashing of scientific funding. Reporter Erin Burnett “reports” on the federal funding of $5.7 million dollars to help fight the invasive Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys). Burnett’s sarcasm is nearly thick enough to break into SNL levels of ridiculousness, but she seems genuine in her distain for this story. It’s clear that in her mind the $5.7mil has been wasted on methods to keep these bugs away from overly sensitive suburbanites and out of your hair. A quick Google search for this insect yields a very informative page from PennState as result #1, and it even has great images of the damage these bugs can cause to crops. Back in reality, it is not surprising that the government would fund research on a potentially critical new invasive species, one that has already proven to be highly destructive to some of our nations most important (and lucrative) crops.
