Not really! But… well… yeah really.

Tomorrow is our department’s Graduate Student Symposium, where we volunteer to present in front of our peers/professors/family/random people who wander in. The talks can be formal or informal, scientific or just for fun. Last year I talked about my Acronicta project. And while I have done a lot of work since then, I don’t have any impressive results (other than a much more filled-in data matrix). So instead of rehashing that talk, I will be discussing the experience of describing a species for the first time (not an Acronicta, but a moth in the family Noctuidae).

My advisor and I are this close >< to finishing and submitting the species description we have been writing, we mostly have to deal with little issues like fixing image captions and ensuring we conform to the journal’s format. So I feel confident talking about the work we have done.

I won’t give too much away to the world at large, though, until the paper is actually published. Hopefully that will happen sometime this year. When it does, you can expect much fuss and celebration.

Here is a sneak peak of the new guy!

I am currently practicing my talk to my rabbits, but they keep falling sleep, all snuggled up on the floor like this:

At least Rascal looks like he is listening (on the left), but Appledot likes to ignore me. Oh well. Hopefully the audience tomorrow will be more receptive.