ESA!

We have arrived in Knoxville for the Annual Entomological Society Conference. There is much to do! Mary is speaking today and the students have their talks tomorrow.

Best of luck to all the OSU graduate students who are competing in the student competition!

Ben Phillips Wins DeLong Award!

The Ohio State University Entomology department held it's DeLong award competition yesterday afternoon, an event that takes place every year before our national meeting (ESA). It not gives the students a chance to practice their presentations for ESA, and provides travel money to the winners! 

Today we found out that an ALE lab graduate student, Ben Phillips, won the first place award! 

The judges were very pleased with the quality of the student presentations, and could not decide on second place. The second award was split equally between Jacob Wenger (Michel Lab) and Larry Long (Herms Lab).

Congratulations Ben, Jake, and Larry!!

Sample sorting

Field season has come and gone, leaving us graduate students with many samples to sort and identify. We also have a few undergraduates helping us out, possibly reconsidering their life choices as they do so.

I collect spiders in my field sites primarily with pitfall traps.

Soapy water breaks the surface tension, drowning anything that falls in :(

After leaving those out for 7 days and collecting oftentimes an obscene amount of arthropods, we store the samples for later sorting.

Next, the spiders need to be sorted out from the rest of the gunk. To reduce the amount of such debris, I recommend using some sort of trap cover while it's in the field.

Spiders, ants, beetles, etc. set aside on the left.

The use of a microscope is necessary for spiders - some are surprisingly tiny!

Camera pic, apologies for the blur.

Those little blobs to the left of the big orange spider? Yup, each a spider. Ants are on the right side of the photo for size reference. The big orange one by the way is Dysdera crocata: The Woodlouse Hunter (my future movie title), an exotic species from Europe which has made its way around much of the world.

Finally, I can actually identify the specimens. It takes time and repeated efforts to learn how to identify a spider to even just family, but I'm now pretty quick at identifying to genus. In the future, I may write a post about how to identify spiders, but for now here are some good links:

http://www.cirrusimage.com/spider.htm

http://www.arachnology.org/Arachnology/Pages/Identification.html

Insect in the Spotlight: Beech Blight Aphid

The beech blight aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator) can be commonly seen this time of year on American beech trees. This species of woolly aphid forms dense colonies on the branches and leaves of the trees. Last weekend they were very noticeable at Wooster Memorial Park where we were hiking. At the time I was not sure what species of aphid they were and we kept ourselves amused for some time poking and shaking the branches to watch the aphids "dance". What we were actually observing was defensive behavior in which they raise their abdomen and sway from side to side when disturbed.

(c) Joe Boggs ( http://bygl.osu.edu/content/return-engagement-boogie-woogie-aphid-0 )

Check out the video posted below (source: YouTube):

These aphids are not a significant risk to the health of the tree, and often deposits of sooty mold will form where the aphids have left honeydew behind.

Sources: bygl.osu.edu, extension.umass.edu, wikipedia.org

Insect in the spotlight: Agenioideus nigricornis

Australians have a tiny wasp to thank for keeping the population of a dangerous spider in check. The redback spider hunting wasp (Agenioideus nigricornis) attacks...wait for it...redback spiders. Bites by redback spiders, which are closely related to black widows, cause severe pain, sweating, weakness, vomiting, and in rare cases can result in death.

A redback spider-hunting wasp dragging its paralyzed prey back to its nest. Photo by Florian and Peter Irwin.

The wasp, described in 1775, had only been known by it's scientific name until just recently when a 9 year old boy (budding entomologist perhaps??) observed a wasp dragging a redback spider to it's nest. The boy's father photographed the event, collected the organisms and sent them off to be analysed. The wasps sting and paralyze their prey then drag the spider back to it's nest where it lays an egg on the live spider. The egg soon hatches and the larvae feeds on the spider (watch Alien if you would like another example of this behavior with other species) This newly discovered behavior led to the common name of the wasp, and has also been very interesting to entomologists. The redback spiders have spread from Australia to Japan and New Zealand, and perhaps these wasps could be introduced to control the populations of the spiders in those areas. Though I am sure there is MUCH research to be done before those options can be considered.

Citations:
huffingtonpost.com
ouramazingplanet.com

Done with fieldwork...

The ALE lab is done collecting data for the summer and fall is almost here!

 

The end of summer doesn't mean we get to slow down though! It's time to sort our samples, run statistical analyses, and complete everything we have be putting to the side for the past four months. There is much to do!

Keep checking our blog for updates about our findings, conferences we attend, news about current and future projects, and anything else the ALE lab wants to share with you!

New student!

Hello all!  I’d like to introduce myself as the newest member of the ALE Lab!  My name is Andrea Kautz and I am excited to be a part of this wonderful group of entomologists.  I am a Master’s student with specific interest in biocontrol.  Originally from the small town of Monroeville, Ohio, I grew up on a farm catching insects as a favorite hobby.  I completed my undergraduate career here at OSU with a B.S. in Zoology and a minor in Entomology. 

Now I am not entirely new to the lab necessarily; I was hired on about a year ago as an undergrad to help sort through last season’s data for Ben… and Caitlin… and Scott….. and Chelsea of course!  So needless to say, I am pretty familiar with the current research going on in the lab.  I guess I did an okay job as an undergrad assistant because Mary decided to take me on as her new student.  Ben even elected me to be his right-hand (wo)man this summer with his pumpkin project!  It was a busy and fast summer, but I definitely learned a great deal about all of the effort that goes into a successful field season.

This first semester, the plan is to come up with a sweet project idea and plan PLAN PLAN for the 2013 field season!  Details to come…