Carolyn: This week, I’ve been looking at several of the original descriptions for Conostigmus species to see what diagnoses each species and where the holotype specimens were found. But several descriptions are in different languages; Alekseev wrote in Russian, and Kieffer and Dessart wrote in French. Even recent species descriptions in English can be difficult to interpret. Conostigmus neotubifer was described in 2014 and the publication includes pictures of the male genitalia, but the male genitalia are damaged in the picture. Male genitalia differences are one of the best ways to distinguish between species, and the damaged genitalia of this holotype specimen makes it difficult to know if this species is different from the species it was named after and closely resembles, Conostigmus tubifer.
I also read Randy Olson’s Houston, we have a narrative: why science needs story. This is a book about science communication that stresses the importance of having a narrative or a story to your research, since storytelling is such a universal method of human communication. He also stresses the importance of simplicity and writing in a clear and concise manner. Though the book does contain some useful advice, the author tends to ramble and focus on himself instead of the topic at hand (the writing is peppered with mentions of his degree, his training, his movies, famous people that he knows and works with, etc.). I feel that this book would have been much more effective as a short essay.
Kyle: I read a recent article by Renner (2016), in which she discusses the pros, cons, and differences between species diagnoses and descriptions and how molecular data fit in with these concepts. She argues that molecular diagnoses (the difference between the genetic code of two taxa) should serve to name a species, and she draws a lot of inspiration from bacteria and fungal systematists and taxonomists.
Andy: I’m always on the hunt for exemplars of research based on natural history collections, and I was excited to see specimen digitization featured in Science (Rogers 2016) last week. I am especially interested in research on phenotypes and have been looking for research that exploits the massive number of micrographs and photos that are now available for collections. Rogers (2016) points to a paper by Fenberg et al. (2016), in which, among other things, they measure wings of Hesperia comma (Silver-spotted Skipper; Hesperiidae), using images from the NHM’s digitization process, to understand how global warming impacts body size. I think the latent potential of museum images is huge.
Our Penn State Museums Consortium listserv lit up last week with questions and suggestions about loan and other policies. This topic has been on my mind for awhile, as we try to bring the Frost back online with the latest best practices. I’ll be at the ECN’s collections workshop this summer and expect to have a lot more to say soon about our own various policies. Until then I will be reading any and all policies I can find on the Web, starting with … (Googles “natural history museum policies“) … the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Emily: Using 8 nuclear & mitochondrial genes, Letsch et al. (2016) construct the phylogenetic relationships and divergence time estimates for all families of dragonflies, comparing the effects of lentic and lotic habitats on speciation. It had been proposed that lentic habitats increase speciation due to the fact that they are more transient in nature than that of lotic water bodies, causing higher dispersal. However, ancestral state reconstruction analysis in this study showed that the Anisoptera evolved from lotic habitats and had three independent shifts to lentic environments. Lentic species were also found to have higher extinction rates, contradicting the former ‘habitat-stability’ hypothesis that lotic waters were associated with higher diversification.
István: “Smooth and shiny” is an expression that bothered me for a some time, when I would review a manuscript. What is the sense in writing “shiny”? Of course the cuticle of many hairless insects is shiny if no light diffuser is used(!), but why not use a light diffuser? Without a Mylar sheet basically nothing can be properly described due to the extreme high reflectance “shininess” of the specimen obscuring finer surface sculpture.
Well, I have recently learned (by working with ant and Cynipini specialists) that some taxonomists, indeed, are actually using reflectance as an important property of morphological descriptions. But really, why is something shiny and something matte? Of course the answer is, as usual, in the cuticular hydrocarbon profile. An extreme case reflectance and cuticular hydorcarbon profile was published by da Hora et al. (2010).
Jonah: Reading this paper—Dew et al. (2016)—stemmed from a discussion I had with István over the need for not only sociobiology but social evolution as a science to begin to update itself and try to intertwine with the other sub disciplines of biology. Dew et al. discuss not only a need for new terminology in the field but a more defined protocol for what we know and how to improve on the practices that have brought us to this point in understanding social behaviour. So many terms in the field are outdated and its very difficult to incorporate new concepts without great resistance from peers. This not only segregates us from the other branches and prevents collaboration and further understanding but stifles our own progress. Dew et al. provide an example of how a new system of taxon specific terms could allow for not only better in house understanding but create a more solid foundation for further experiments and ideas. A systematics approach is given as the best way to categorize all the nuances and caveats that are seen in social insects and develop a ‘social tree’ to see where this concept evolved from and how its still evolving rather than the current rulings of clumping groups together simply on pattern recognition and not on an analytical base.
More and more people in the field are feeling this way and breaking away from the traditional methods of describing social evolution. And while the field is still young compared to others its never too early to develop a plastic mentality and allow much needed change and communication in a field that seeks to understand these very traits.
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