Graduate school has a funny way of sucking up all your time. I had so many other hobbies (including a relationship!) the first few years of grad school, and as they continually slip by, I wonder how I ever had time for them at all (though of course, I do still find plenty of ways to waste time…) So we shall see if I can scrounge up a few minutes here and there for this blog again. Here is a quick update on what I’ve been up to, and what I hope to write about soon…

First of all, speaking about hobbies – I’m no longer running my sewing business, but still try to find time to sew things for myself once a month or so. I will put up a post soon with some of the moth and caterpillar dresses I have made.

I’m also, against all better judgement, accumulating more animals. My apartment now contains two rabbits, three snakes, one gecko, one black widow, four tarantulas, four cockroach colonies, two fish, and a shrimp. As well as about 100 caterpillars for my research, since they were getting viruses in the lab. The new additions will make an appearance once I get some good photos of them (the cockroaches and tarantulas mostly hide during the day).

Ok, onto the science!

My second paper has been published! Well, I am third author, but I am proud to have been a part of this project. It was a great collaborative effort incorporating basic life history observations, morphology, and phylogenetics.

Schmidt C, Wagner D, Zacharczenko B, Zahiri R, Anweiler G (2014) Polyphyly of Lichen-cryptic Dagger Moths: synonymy of Agriopodes Hampson and description of a new basal acronictine genus, Chloronycta, gen. n. (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae). ZooKeys 421: 115-137

I helped with rearing the caterpillars, taking photos, describing the caterpillar morphology, arranging plates for publication, and of course editing. I will put up a longer post with a summary of the paper and a bit about its implications for my project.

I have also been doing more of my ant/caterpillar behavior experiments, and I should have some good videos of that to share soon. I have expanded trials to include earlier instars, as well as a forceps “pinch test” to compare to the ant interactions.

Lots of blacklighting trips, lots of moth catching, lots of paper reading. The life of an entomologist.

This is also the start of National Moth Week, with a lot of events planned.

I have lots of fun stories accumulated, fingers crossed I find the energy to share them!

When I was younger I had a pink toe tarantula named Tip Toe. She was a wonderful spider, very calm, and she was absolutely gorgeous. I loved watching her grow, and I kept all of her molted skins. Unfortunately she passed away while I was in college, at about 8 years old, during what appeared to be a bad molt.

Somehow I have been able to resist the temptation to bring home another tarantula since then. That is, until I saw the BioQuip table at the ESA (Entomology Society of America) conference in November. They had a multitude of live invertebrates for sale, and a very knowledgeable staff.

I hemmed and hawed and browsed the beautiful tarantulas, scorpions, and other inverts. But I simply couldn’t resist the Avicularia species. Tip Toe was a common pink toe, and I found another little girl who reminded me so much of her. So I decided to take her home, and named her Edith. She is currently about 3 years old.

But some little spiderlings also caught my eye. Spiderlings can be difficult to care for, and they are prone to dying for apparently no reason. You can’t know the sex until they are a couple years old, so you are also taking a chance on whether it will be a male (live about 5 years) or female (live about 20 years). But I decided to go for it, and brought home a little Avicularia versicolor. His name is Austin (I’m calling it a boy until I can determine otherwise). He was about 4 months old when I took him home in November. He started quite small, but he is growing and is probably due for a molt soon. He has a ferocious appetite and has created a wonderful system of webs and tunnels in his vial.

Here is Austin having lunch: a flightless fruit fly. For reference, the vial is 15drams, about 3cm across.

This brings the number of animals in my apartment to… 10. That’s a nice number.

Here are a few of my favorite entomological valentines. Enjoy! And if you come across any others, please link to them in the comments.

“Gimme some sugar, baby” by Bird and Moon

Praying mantis fabric

“Will you be my val-ANT-ine?” by Alex Wild

There are also some great twitter hashtags happening, such as #academicvalentines and #sciencevalentines.

Now that I’m single, it’s just me and my pets and my specimens. But when you have a specimen collection, you’re never really alone. I will probably spend much of today working with moth genitalic dissections – romantic, eh?

The last few months have been tumultuous, but with the spring semester has come a fresh start. I’ve been learning how to knit, I’ve started an additional weight-lifting program, I have a couple new pets, and my energy for my research has been renewed. I’m working on re-gaining my focus and resetting my priorities. One of those priorities is to keep up with this blog to track my research progress and share tales of science (and cute bunnies).

The biggest wake-up call I have received recently was the publication of my first paper. It is a species description that my advisor and I have been working on for several years now. It was meant to be a semester-long side project. And boy, was that wishful thinking. I talk about the project in this post from nearly a year ago.

The paper is in ZooKeys, an online open-access publication.

A new cryptic Sympistis from eastern North America revealed by novel larval phenotype and host plant association (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae, Oncocnemidinae)

One set of figures from the paper, my larval illustrations of Sympistis forbesi

I learned so much from this process, and I am incredibly thankful to my advisor for giving me this opportunity. It was a childhood dream of mine to name a new species. I didn’t discover this species or choose the name, and it’s not exactly a flashy organism, but to do the taxonomic work has been quite satisfying. Since the adults of the new species and its sister species are very difficult to distinguish, it was a fun sort of detective story, sorting out the larval characters we considered convincing enough to make our case.

I learned how many people it really takes to collaborate on a project like this, how many revisions need to be made on every drawing and photo, how many times specimens need to be reexamined, and how easily one small task can take months to complete. For this paper I reared multiple caterpillars, performed caterpillar and adult dissections, photographed live and dead specimens, illustrated larval and pupal characters, learned how to describe the features of caterpillars and adults (including genitalia), learned how to obtain SEM images, and dealt with the tedious task of typing and triple-checking the locality data for each specimen. Nothing ever went right on the first try. And then of course there was my first experience with the peer-review process, edits, panic while my advisor was away on a trip, page proofs, and the final real-deal publication.

At first I felt glad it was over, but it may never really be over. We found another potential cryptic species from a different locality that may be mixed within these species in collections. I won’t be tackling this project now, but perhaps someday. I would love to get my hands on another new species to describe, and the ultimate satisfaction would come from finding one of my own.

So there you have it, I’m back to blogging, and feeling like a real scientist. For a while I was really doubting my path, but this is where I belong.

I’m back! Hurray!

I have about a million things to talk about, so I’ll spend the next couple weeks trying to catch up on the last few months.

Here are some important updates, in no particular order, all of which will be explained in later posts…

1. I passed my general (oral) exam for my PhD.
2. I adopted another rabbit.
3. My boyfriend moved in with me.
4. Somehow managed to grade the entomology student collections.
5. Actually had a relaxing break at home and in the Bahamas.
6. Visit to the Cornell entomology collection.
7. Started sewing again.
8. At one point, all the guys in the lab grew a mustache.
9. Read “Stranger in a Strange Land” – first fiction book I’ve read in years.
10. Started a daily burpee challenge.

I’m really excited for this semester – less intense TA position, no “real” classes (just seminars and projects). But lots of research and fun work, like working on my illustrations and curating the teaching entomology collection. Trying to get two papers submitted soon. Fingers crossed that I get more publishable work done this semester.

Meanwhile, enjoy this caterpillar on a stick.

(The word of the day is taken from the Torre Bueno Glossary of Entomology)

Mystax, hair on upper lip; in certain adult Diptera (e.g., Asilidae), a patch of stiff setae above the mouth, on the lower part of the median facial plate, above the vibrissae.

I chose this word because our class saw a lot of robber flies (Asilidae) yesterday. The first thing I thought of, in terms of a distinguishing feature, was their “mustache”. Now I know there is a technical term!

This is the only photo I have taken of an asilid, you can sort of see that the front of its face is fuzzy.

Check out this link for a great side shot of robber fly mystax.

A friend of mine who works in the lab (the one who let a moth puddle in his mouth) is looking to start a blog. He wants to write about Irish music, and nature (mostly insects and amphibians).

Anyone have catchy ideas for a blog name?