Sunday, April 2, 2023
Diary of Thomas Stratford, coal miner, great grandfather
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Wilkes University Arthropod Collection 2022 Summary
When I arrived at Wilkes University in 2007, we had a collection of about 250 insects, arranged in orders in drawers. Unfortunately, none of the specimens had labels so many were tossed. Around 2011, we inherited hundreds of insects from Mike, a friend of the university that took care of the university and also a school teacher. These insects were also without any collection information and many were thrown out. Heart breaking but what is the value of a specimen without any data?
In the meantime, we were collecting arthropods as part of study of grassland restoration (see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rec.12202), then as a study of the effects of grassland management on diversity in fifteen grasslands (accepted in Ecosphere). Those samples were sorted to order. Many were photographed and data were entered into Biota. I'm still trying to find the images - my worry is that the file was created by someone that graduated and no longer accessible. Lesson learned.
More recently, I became interested in the effects of prescribed burning on pollinators and food webs more largely. In the last two years, I must have collected, I'm estimating, about 10,000 insects and we have sorted about 4200 insects so far. There are another 20,000 insects that are still in jars, envelopes, etc. so be sorted. Yep, I have quite the work load ahead of me. I'm sending many samples off to be analyzed for the food web study and we are focusing on omnivores - because their trophic position can tell us about the productivity of a site.
I wanted to run some summary statistics to both create a benchmark for tracking progress of the collection and quality control. Simply by producing tables, I can catch spelling mistakes and other typos.
We had 529 collection events entered. That's a pitfall, sweep, or pollinator pan. We do have a few collection entries that are single bird captures and a blood and feather sample is part of the collection. Moving forward, a collection involving birds will be all birds captured at a site during one effort (mist-netting/box check). We also have a few plants - this is different from the plants in the herbarium. These are samples to be isotoped for the food web study. Whole plants will go into the herbarium but tissue samples go into our collection. Not sure if this is best practice but this is where I'm at.
Here's the summary of our collection
Entries
4241 entries
Megan O. entered 970 lines
Tyler S. entered 948 lines
Cally E. entered 586 lines
Becca K. entered 398 lines
There were about 10 other people that entered data - all less than 300 lines.
I entered 238 lines - wow, I have a lot to do to catch up (consider it takes 5 - 10 minutes per insect to enter).
Taxa
- 23 unknown phyla (this is an error - unless I really can't identify something to phylum)
- 2 annelids (worms)
- 4125 arthropods (no surprise there)
- 68 chordates (feather/blood, hair, scales)
- 16 flowering plant samples (should be many many more)
- 6 mollusks (all snails)
- 1 fern (a bracken fern, a common field fern)
Of the arthropods
- 185 spiders
- 88 collembola (springtails)
- 14 millipedes (this number seems really low but it's odd how few go into pitfalls compared to how many you see in the forest)
- 4 snails
- 3828 insects
- 3 Malacostraca (rolly-polly)
Of the insects
- 2 cockroaches (much much lower than expected)
- 428 Coleoptera (beetles)
- 1201 Diptera (flies)
- 574 Hemiptera (true bugs)
- 1239 Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants - most of these are ants and tiny wasps)
- 88 Lepidoptera (most were hand captures but also include a number of micromoths that are a few mm)
- 17 Odonata (dragonflies - all are hand captures)
- 138 Orthoptera (grasshoppers and crickets, mostly older samples from sweepnets)
- 50 mistakes (wrong orders listed with Insecta as the class, space added in front of the name or after)
- identified to species 320 (not awesome)
Moving forward
- add many more species identities
- fix all the errors
- send hundreds of samples off to be isotoped (~ 850 samples have isotope data)
- sort and enter thousands of insects!
I do need a bunch of https://www.forestry-suppliers.com/p/53598/52861/cornell-university-insect-cabinet-drawer. And time.. lots of time.
Monday, December 26, 2022
Flash back and slow forward to 2023
I haven't posted in over a year. Remarkable. It recently dawned on me how little time I seem to have for anything. The College of Science and Engineering was dissolved while I was away in the Galapagos so my position as dean (and associate dean) ended. Despite not having extra responsibilities (because I was teaching full-time as well) I feel like I have less time. Haven't been to the gym at all (and I feel and look it), I haven't sat down to do stamp stuff, and I haven't read a book.
I did
- get to the Galapagos and Ecuador in May with a number of students and that well very well.
- have pretty good research field seasons. In 2021, we focused on pollinator pans in burned, cut, and reference forests. In 2022, we focused on collecting specimens for an isotope study
- have a paper get accepted into Ecosphere - this was originally rejected from Ecological Application
- get promoted to full professor
- Finish off the three chapters for the coffee book
- Submit an old data paper and a new data paper. Old data = my dissertation research from GA. New data is the yellow pollinator pan data. Would be great to get a third paper out but I don't want to be greedy
- Push to have a big STEM event at Wilkes in May
- Sort, sort, sort, and sort bugs. We're sitting on thousands of insects from dozens of samples. At worst, we will have samples for a food web study. At best... well... good question. Many jars are dried up. Not sure what the best scenario is.
- Apply for a sabbatical. Because, man, am I due.
- Start doing those things I miss doing - like this blog!
Monday, May 31, 2021
Summer 2021 Plans
Here are my summer plans... this is like posting New Year's Resolutions
- Submit a manuscript on weevil biogeography (done - took 750 lines of code)
- Submit an opening essay on a virtual volume on Neotropical ornithology (needs to be finished ASAP - read all the papers - a dozen or so - write a collective intro)
- Submit a revised manuscript of the clay caterpillar paper - rejected from Urban Ecosystems
- Submit a manuscript to Ecological Applications on our grassland research (lots of authors - about 80% done)
- Analyze the prescribed burning bird stuff (will require the fanciest of statistics - distance, random effects (site), detection probabilities)
- Submit a manuscript to Northeastern Naturalist on prescribed burning and the effects on pollinators - only yellow pans used so not a very complete paper but still - cool stuff)
- Add State Game Land 300 to the survey list (has rattlesnakes and is burned)
- Apply for all permits needed to catch birds
- Deploy red, blue, yellow, white pollinator pans in burned and unburned game lands (ideally 30-40 total samples in each at a bunch of game lands)
- Get weevil DNA barcoding protocols finalized
- Get the Ecology course prepped for Fall
- Get a data analytics certificate proposal together
- Get a trip to Ecuador organized
- Check out Fulbright\Smithsonian sabbatical support
- Apply for Full Professor
- Keep my mind in one piece
2021 Field Season Kick Off - week 1
young Garter Snake |
Wooly adelgid on hemlock |
Cinnamon Fern |
Interrupted Fern |
Dwarf ginsing |
Gaywings |
Red-backed Salamander |
Tupperware containing an Audiomoth unit that was never turned on :\ |
Tree Swallow eggs |
That's it though. One day. A good day. But one day in the field for the whole week. Rain and a hospitalized family member kept me in. Had graduation Sunday and today was Memorial Day. But here's a good week ahead.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Planning 2021
One of the great things about a break is the down time to reflect and plan. I really haven't done either. I did one article review and my brain is not engaging fully. Still, I need to plan.
Teaching
This spring I'll be teaching BIO 347 Biostatistics and Experimental Design and BIO 298 Economics of Conservation with a colleague from the Poli Sci department. As of now we're scheduled to teach in person but COVID rates are higher than they were in spring. Although vaccines have been approved I don't see widespread vaccine availability until mid-Spring. Just a guess though. One student in Biostats has requested remote teaching so I'll be recording lectures - live or otherwise. Live recordings ("synchronous") are easy because the camera is just recording me talking and I use my notes that are all ready to go. Asynchronous recordings require much more time - usually about 5 hours of work for 50 minutes of lecture time.
I'd also like to teach Field Zoology this summer but I'm skeptical it could happen. I haven't thought about it that much. Probably should soon. Also, I'd like to change it to Wildlife Techniques.
The fall semester is still up in the air. I will possibly teach Ecology. If not, I think Archosaurs again.
Research
This spring I need to focus on DNA barcoding insects. It's gone horribly slow and it just comes down to following directions. We are also sorting insects from this summer's pollinator pan experiment.
This summer I need to survey birds in burned and unburned sites on gamelands. If I can have students we'll work at the same sites and catch bugs, birds, and mammals to work out food webs. I'll need to renew a zillion permits. My least favorite thing to work on.
I'd like to keep with the pollinator study. I started the pollinator project last August and it went exceedingly well. This coming summer I'll add a blue and white plate to the yellow plate I was putting out. Hopefully, by next summer I'll have better wasp ID skills and the barcoding will be down pat.
Publishing
Clay caterpillar paper is in review. This has four or five students on it (all graduated). This was rejected the first time around and now resubmitted.
I have Ph.D. data I could try to publish on urbanization and birds. I have a ton of post doc data on bluebirds across an urban gradient. Those data are 15 years old. I have the pollinator data we're working on now - that won't be ready for weeks or a few months. There's the prescribed burning data - if anything that needs serious organizing.
Then there's the Wilson Ornithological Society. I'm the chair of the conservation committee and we've been struggling to come up with some initiatives. It looks like most of us want to publish. But what do we publish? Threats to birds? I think I'll put coffee growing forward as a topic and see if this gets some support.
Thursday, December 10, 2020
Reflections on 2020
Academics
Research
I just ordered an acoustic vent, which is a membrane that transmits sound but not water. I have small tuperware containers that I'll drill a hole in and place the vent over the hole. I'll post a pic when completed.