Okay, we … more like I … got off track a bit on our weekly reads (weakly reads?), so here’s a catch-up post.
Carolyn: A couple weeks ago I read up on Gondwanan species distributions. The general idea behind this is that the two supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana joined to form Pangaea, then separated and drifted apart. Gondwana then separated into Antarctica, Africa, Madagascar, Australia, India and the Arabian Peninsula. When species are found in these areas but not on the landmasses that were a part of Laurasia (North America, Europe except the Balkans, and Asia except India), the species are said to have a Gondwanan distribution. It seems that there is a lot of discussion about whether species distributions are caused by this or not. Raxworthy et al. (2002) relied on molecular and morphological data, and found that chameleon radiation was facilitated by oceanic dispersal, not Gondwanan separation. Davis et al. (2002) also found that the distribution of angiosperms within the clade Malpighiaceae is due to patterns of migration through Laurasia onto Gondwanan continents after Gondwana broke apart. Upchurch (2008) gives a good overview of the topic, and points out that true Gondwanan species distributions can be distorted by factors including geodispersal and extinction events, as well as sampling error.
While trapped in the airport last month, I also read a book called Networking for Nerds. I heard the author speak a few months ago at the Voices conference hosted by the Penn State Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) , but I didn’t get to read the book until getting stuck with airplane travel and layovers. What makes this book great is that it’s a book for people in STEM fields, written by someone in a STEM field (the author has a PhD in mathematics). The author stresses that most jobs are not advertised, and that the best way to find jobs is by *gasp* talking to people, a simple thing that most people take for granted. The author shows the reader the skills that people in STEM disciplines have and how they can be applied to careers outside of academia. I’ve read other books about networking and finding jobs, but this is the only one I’ve found that is geared towards people in the sciences, as well as the only one that is actually helpful for people in the sciences. Its an encouraging, helpful and hopeful book, perfect for helping anxious grad students escape crushing self doubt about their future, at least for a while anyway.
Emily: After a week where I saw many Pantala flavescens attempting to oviposit on cars throughout the State College area, I decided to check into why that would be. Fortunately there is a paper by Kriska et al. (2006) in which they examined what is driving aquatic insects to be attracted to particular colors of vehicles. Using shiny test surfaces of different colors, they placed them close to water and sampled the species that were found at each surface over a 3-hour window. With videopolarimetry, the researchers were able to measure the polarized spectra that resulted from each surface, which varied in shininess. The reflectance of the cars draws the insects to it, as though it is water, particularly when there is a “sea” of cars. White and other lighter colored cars provide less of a draw for aquatic insects, as they are reflecting back a lower level of horizontal polarization. If one wants to prevent odonates from attempting to oviposit on one’s car, keeping a car dirty would reduce the reflectance that is drawing them in in the first place.
Andy: I spent a bit more than a week last month researching collection management policies (CMP) and writing our own CMP document. The first draft of our CMP is now available if you’re interested, as are two of our new Standard Operating Procedures (Collection environment and etiquette, Social media). We have a long way to go, with respect to discussing and modifying these policies and then getting them approved at various levels, but I learned a LOT from the process. See Malaro (2005) for a good overview of CMPs.
I’ve also worked feverishly on the materials for my Insect Biodiversity and Evolution course. My latest (dumb?) idea: incorporate a taphonomy experiment into the unit on fossils, which is currently quite thin on exercises. Well, really it would be a necrology / biostratinomy experiment. I read this paper by Martínez-Delclòs and Martinell (1993) [Update 16 Aug 2016: This paper by Duncan et al. (2003) was the one I was thinking of originally] ages ago and was inspired. Could something be set up a week or two ahead of time, so that my students could document the positions and dispositions of body parts? Could they toss live insects into aquaria and watch them float, sink, swim, … and die? I’d have to sort of the ethics of that one! But I like the idea of my students really coming to terms with biases and conditions of insects in the fossil record.
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