Department of Entomology

Kathryn Sullivan goes to Washington: Snout Moths & Synonyms

Kathryn Sullivan is an undergraduate student in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland. Every Thursday she travels from College Park, MD to the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC to curate snout moths.

 

Kathryn Sullivan working in the Lepidoptera collection at NMNH

 

FAQ's

What are snout moths and why are they important?  Snout moths are in the superfamily Pyraloidea in the Lepidoptera, the moth and butterfly group. There are many species of snout moths and they are found  all over the world. Of the over 160,000 species of Lepidoptera in the world, snout moths are just a little less than a tenth in number with 16,000 species.  Many species are pests of forest trees, farm crops, and edible stored products such as seeds and nuts. One species, for example, is Herpetogramma phaeopteralis, that is a grass or turf pest and is commonly known as the tropical webworm.

 

Herpetogramma phaeopteralis specimens

Why do you sort specimens by U.S. states and by country?

Kathryn sorted specimens into groups by locality such as country or, in the case of specimens from the United States or Canada, into groups by states or provinces.  She has sorted FOUR drawers of specimens in the single species Herpetogramma phaeopteralis and three drawers of specimens in the genus Siga found in the Western Hemisphere. This is one step of a larger process called curation that includes identifying the moths to the correct species, applying labels to each tray, and databasing the moth specimens.  

This is important because I often get questions about the distribution of pest species, mostly regarding a quarantine issue important to United States agricultural resources or someone wishes to borrow specimens for study. In the long run, it pays to be prepared to provide specific, correct answers quickly or provide loans of specimens as quickly as possible.

 

Herpetogramma phaeopteralis specimens sorted by country

Why do you need so many specimens? A large number of specimens tell me much more about variation within a species than one or two specimens. Some species can vary a lot, for example, in size and/or color.  Some males and females look so different they have been described as different species in the past. The more information I have about variation within the species, the more I know about its evolution and relationship to other closely related species.

Are all snout moths small, brown, and shiny?  No, the external diversity of the snout moths is immense. Species vary in size, color,  brightness or shininess. Siga, the other group Kathryn curated, have large, bright green wings with clear areas that look like “windows.” One species, Siga liris, is often mistaken for a silk moth. Big, showy insects have often been described earlier in history.  Siga liris was described by someone named Cramer in 1775 before the U. S. Declaration of Independence was written! Despite being elegant, charismatic moths, the other species, called Siga pyronia, was not described until 1895, 120 years later, by someone named Druce. Kathryn's work has resulted in an increase in knowledge about the distribution of these species, and therefore where they occur. Amazingly, NOTHING IS KNOWN about their biology still.

 

Siga liris specimens

I found the names Siga thalassarcha and Siga saturniana (Meyrick, 1936) on several websites; does that mean there are four species, not two?  No, Siga thalassarcha is a name created by someone named Meyrick in 1936 who didn’t know Siga liris already had a name. We call this a junior synonym and occurs more often than we would like. Fortunately, we have  rules of scientific nomenclature that help us clarify these issues. In this case, the person who gave the species the name first, gets the credit. Since Siga liris was described considerably earlier in history, this name has priority. The same is true for Siga saturniana. Meyrick mistakenly or unknowingly also created this name for the species Siga pyronia. In this case, Druce’s name has priority. Currently, the only two valid names in this group are S. liris and S. pyronia.

 

M. Alma Solis

Curator of Pyraloidea, NMNH, SI

Research Scientist, Systematic Entomology Lab., ARS, USDA

All photos by Alma Solis

Intern for a Day

The Museum of Natural History loomed up before me. As I entered, I noticed visitors sitting outside, waiting for the museum's opening at 10 am. I, however, got to pass right through because I was part of the Intern for a Day Program at University of Maryland at College Park.

My name is Yaroslava Kuzina and I am a freshman at UMD right now. I am doing a General Biology and English double degree and when I heard of the Intern for a Day Program, my curiosity was immediately piqued. In this program, students are matched with employees of various industries, whom they get to shadow for a day. This provides a glance at the sort of work various professions actually do, without the obligations of an actual long term internship.

 

Intern for a Day Yaroslava Kuzina

 My Intern for a Day match was Erin Kolski of the Entomology department at the Museum. She met me as I entered the Museum and took me straight up to the Coleoptera (Beetle) collections. Here I met a longtime volunteer, Gary Hevel. Gary showed me many colorful specimens and introduced me to some different types of beetles- such as the longhorn and the scarab beetles. He also showed the largest beetle in the world- the Goliath beetle of Africa- and the longest- the Stick Insect. Some stick insects from the neo-tropics can grow to 18 inches in length!

Afterwards, Gary talked about his own work, which mostly involves preparing and mounting insect specimens.

Next, we headed to the Lepidoptera (Butterfly and moth) collections where I met museum specialist Brian Harris . He acquainted me with the lustrous blue Morphos. The tiny scales on the wings of beautiful butterflies reflect light differently, thus causing the unique sheen that characterizes them. I also saw some Dead Leaf butterflies- which look just like dead leaves when they rest with their wings folded up! While we were examining these specimens, Brian also pointed out some wing slides that a previous employee had made. Wing slides are slides with butterfly (or moth) wings mounted on them. However, prior to being mounted, all the scales are scraped of the wings so that the veins on the wings are revealed. It turns out that the pattern of veins on butterfly wings is extremely important and that some species  are even differentiated by the pattern of veins that they have on their wings.

At 11 am, Erin took me to meet Jennifer Strotman of the Paleobiology department. Here, on the lower floor of the building, I got to peruse some of the museum's fossil collections. The specimen that I liked the most was a piece of bone with scars from Megalodon teeth on it. Megaladons were the largest species of shark to ever inhabit the oceans. They lived. 15.9 to 2.6 million year ago, during the Cenozoic Era, and could get up to 59 ft in length. The fossilized teeth of some of these monsters can be as large as the hand of a grown man! I also, got to see fossilized star fish, brachiopods, leaves, seeds, trilobites and more. However, the biggest treat was getting a peek at some behind-the-scenes work of the Dinosaur Exhibit which is closed and under renovation now, scheduled to be reopened in 2019. I got a chance to look at some truly amazing fossils- the skeletons of a plesiosaur, a Giant Bird and others. Plus, I got to see some Mammoth tusks and a mummified bison!

After thanking Jennifer, we moved on and got to talk with many more experts in the entomology field, including researcher Torsten Dikow, data manager Jessica Bird, acting collections manager Floyd Shockley, collections information officer Patricia Gentili-Poole and emeritus researcher Oliver Flint. Each of these people gave me some insight to working at a museum and advice on how to continue my education and start my career in the biological field.

Erin Kolski, my Intern for a Day match, showed me some of the work that she does, too. Erin started out as an intern in the Anthropology department and gradually migrated over to entomology. Right now, she is working on cataloging holotypes of Diptera (flies) into a publicly accessible database. Holotypes are specimens of species that are used as a reference point for a species. Unknown specimens can be compared against holotypes and as Erin said herself, if the Museum caught on fire, the holotype collections will be saved first. In fact, some of them are over 100 years old!

It is needless to say that as my Internship for a Day experience came to a close, I had seen but a fraction of the entire insect collections. After all, the Museum of Natural History has about 30 million insect specimens which puts it in the top three museums of the world with the largest insect collections. The only two other museums that rival it are the Paris and the British Museums. Over all, I really enjoyed my day at the museum and the chance to see everything that goes on behind the scenes, and I hope to be back soon! Perhaps, as a long-time intern!

 

Yaroslava Kuzina, University of Maryland, College Park

Meet the Scientist: Dr. Ted Schultz

With the upcoming release of the "Ant-Man" movie, we decided to talk to the the Department of Entomology's resident ant-man, Dr. Ted Schultz, about his long-time passion for ants. He may not be able to communicate with ants, but his research on fungus-farming ants, both in the field and the department's AntLab, has contributed greatly to our understanding of these fascinating insects!

 

Dr. Ted Schultz, Smithsonian Institution. Photo: Ana Jesovnik.

 

Q: What made you decide to study entomology, and specifically ants?

A: Ever since I was a kid I have loved animals, especially insects.  Like a lot of kids, I liked to catch animals and keep them for pets.  At one time or another I had pet box turtles, a pet tree frog, pet lizards, pet salamanders, a hamster, a mouse, a rabbit, even a bat.  I also caught insects and kept them in jars.  I punched holes in the metal jar lids with a hammer and nail so my bugs could breathe.  I experimented with giving them different things to eat.  I read as much as I could about them, but I had no adult guidance for any of this except that my Dad helped me make terrariums and cages and my Mom put up with two big box turtles living in a kiddie pool in our dining room.  Then one day when I was 7 or 8 years old my Mom gave me a book called The World of Ants and I discovered that ants lived in societies and had behaviors so complicated that they rival those of humans.  They have wars, they enslave other ant species, they tend aphid "cattle," they sacrifice their lives to defend their nestmates, and -- the one that impressed me the most -- they grow fungi for food.  Some ants are farmers!

 

Sometime in high school I stopped thinking I was destined to be a "zoologist" and years went by in which I studied art and computer science and worked as a dental technician, printer, cab driver, proofreader, paste-up artist, freelance writer, and editor, among many other things, but I was always reading about insects and especially about social insects and ants.  Riding back and forth on buses from San Francisco, where I lived, to a job as a printer in Oakland, I read E.O. Wilson's The Insect Societies and I started to think: "Maybe I should study this!"  And then I did and here I am studying fungus-farming ants, the ants I read about in The World of Ants way back when I was eight years old.

 

Leaf-cutter ants (Atta sp.) on fungus colony. The queen is in the upper-right corner. Photo: Karolyn Darrow.

 

Q: What is the AntLab?

A: In 1991 when I was a graduate student at Cornell University, I went off on the OTS (Organization for Tropical Studies) Course in Costa Rica, where I learned to dig up nests of leaf-cutter ants, which are a kind of fungus-farming ant.  Then, in 1992, I went on a four-month trip to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Brazil, during which I dug up dozens of nests of "lower" fungus-farming ants.  Like leaf-cutting ants, lower fungus-farming ants also grow fungus gardens, but unlike leaf-cutters they are small, inconspicuous, and generally hard to find.  But leaf-cutting ants evolved from lower fungus-farming ants and the key to understanding the evolution of agriculture in ants lies in understanding lower fungus-farming ants.  I returned to my advisor's lab with dozens of live colonies of lower and higher fungus-farming ants and proceeded to take care of them, just like I took care of lots of animal pets when I was a kid.  I've been doing it ever since.  Currently we have over 150 fungus-farming ant colonies in the lab.  I could never take care of all of those by myself but, fortunately, I have the help of an extremely capable Museum Specialist, Eugenia Okonski.  And the AntLab has grown to include interns, undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, technicians, and visiting scientists.  Currently, we have a dozen people in the lab, all of whom love ants.

 

AntLab colonies are housed in plastic containers such as these. Tubing is used to link chambers and allow the ants to move between them. Photo: Erin Kolski.

 

Q: How do you excavate an ant nest?

A: First you need to find it.  For lower fungus-farming ants this can take hours or days.  You put down a bait (we use Cream of Rice cereal), then you watch ants that walk off with it.  When the ant you're looking for takes the bait, you follow it home.  Sometimes this can take hours because the little worker ants do not exactly follow a straight path back to the nest and fungus-farming ants are kind of slow walkers.  Finally you may see the worker disappear down a tiny, nondescript hole in the ground and you've done it.  You've located the nest entrance!  You mark it and, if you are not familiar with the nest architecture of that species, you start digging a trench about one meter away from the entrance and about a meter deep.  Then you start removing soil from the edge of the trench toward the nest entrance.  The closer you get to the entrance, the more carefully you shave away the soil.  If you're lucky, eventually you will break into a fungus garden chamber filled with fungus garden, worker ants, baby ants (larvae), and maybe even the queen.  You are the first person in the world ever to see that garden.  Depending on the species, the entire chamber might only be a few centimeters in diameter.  Often there are multiple chambers so, once you've collected the contents of that chamber, you need to keep shaving soil.  If you're lucky, eventually you will get the queen and then you can take care of the colony and bring it back to the lab.

 

Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo, a graduate student in the Department of Entomology, excavates an ant nest in Brazil. Photo: Ana Jesovnik.

 

Q: Where is your favorite place to do fieldwork and why?

A: Brazil, which is a big country, but almost anywhere in Brazil: Amazonian rain forest, Atlantic Forest, southern forest, and, especially, the Cerrado, which is the Brasilian savannah.  I love Brazil: the people, the food, the vastness, the beauty, and the many varied habitats.  The Brasilian Cerrado is an ecosystem -- a number of ecosystems, actually -- on par with the Amazon.  A tremendous amount of organismal evolution took place in Cerrado and today's Cerrado is a biodiversity hotspot.  Unfortunately, it is more endangered than Amazonian rain forest.  In 1992 on my first trip to Brazil, I walked into the Cerrado near Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.  I remember standing there looking off to the horizon, scanning a seemingly endless expanse of scrubby bushes, occasional small trees, and termite mounds, all under a huge blue sky, and feeling like I could walk off into that landscape and keep walking forever.  There are still places where you could almost do that, although in other places you would quickly stumble across soybeans or sugar plantations, or maybe run into a cow.  Anyway, there are many fungus-farming ant species in the Cerrado.  Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo, my graduate student, and colleagues recently described a new genus of fungus-farming ant from the Cerrado.  Lots of important events in fungus-farming ant evolution happened in the Cerrado rather than, as we have always assumed, in the Amazon.

 

Q: Any new research you are excited about?

A: Lots of stuff.  We are using new genomic methods to more accurately reconstruct the phylogenies (evolutionary histories) of fungus-farming ants and the fungi that they cultivate.  We now have whole genomes of multiple fungus-farming ants and we are starting to get genomes for their fungi.  Maybe something in the genes of the ants and in the genes of their fungi will tell us something critical about how these two partners discovered one another 50 million years ago and how they have co-evolved and changed in various lineages since that time.  What we learn might even help humans get better at managing their own agricultural challenges.

 

Q: Are you a fan of the Ant Man comic?

A: This is going to date me, but I was around when Marvel Comics began.  I owned the first issues of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc.  I read the story "The Man in the Ant Hill" in Tales to Astonish #27 (January 1962), which introduced Dr. Henry Pym, who would later reappear as Ant-Man.  Marvel Comics supplied my entire childhood mythology, my pantheon.  I am absolutely thrilled that, finally, movie technology has achieved the state necessary for capturing the essence of those comics on the screen.  And I am doubly thrilled that an Ant-Man movie is appearing this summer! 

 

Q: If you could be any insect, alive or extinct, what would you be?

A: As much as I love them, I am not sure I'd want to be an insect, but, if I had to choose, I would want to be the very first fungus-farming ant species, which we know lived around 50 million years ago somewhere in South America.  The reason I choose that ant is because I would really, really like to know how the first fungus-farming ant discovered agriculture.

 

 To learn more about Dr. Schultz's research, please visit his page on our department website.

 

Ted Schultz, Jessica Bird, & Erin Kolski, Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.

Pollinator Gardens

  National Pollinator Week is a week in June when organizations, communities, and individuals come together to celebrate the importance of pollinators to agriculture and the ecosystem. Some of the most significant pollinators are insects, including bees, butterflies, moths, flies, and beetles. The recent decline of the domesticated honeybee population has brought much-needed attention to the vital role pollinators play and how people can help populations thrive. 

  One way to help both domesticated and native pollinators is to create a pollinator garden. Here are some tips from the Pollinator Partnership on creating a good pollinator garden:

• Use a variety of different plants to support different pollinators throughout the season. Choose plants with various flower shapes, colors, and scents, as well as different heights and bloom times. Native plants tend to be lower-maintenance and attract native species, but non-invasive non-natives can also be beneficial.

• Create areas in the garden where insects can shelter. Again, variety is key: trees, shrubs, dead leaf piles, hollow stems, and bare, sandy patches all accommodate different insects at different developmental stages.

• If you are not near a natural source of fresh water, consider placing birdbaths, ponds, or pools to provide pollinators with a safe place to drink.

• Minimize or eliminate the use of pesticides.

 

Open sandy area for ground-nesting insects.

 

 

Hollow stems. These make good nesting sites for solitary bees.

 

 A May visit to a suburban Maryland pollinator garden provided sightings of a number of native pollinators. Here are a few:

Bumblebees: With their distinctive fuzzy black-and-yellow bodies, bumblebees (Bombus spp.) are a common sight in gardens. Like honeybees, bumblebees are social insects that feed on nectar and collect nectar and pollen to bring back to their nest. While they are not widely used for honey production, they are increasingly being used as agricultural pollinators, especially for tomatoes.

 

Bumblebee on false indigo (Baptisia australis). The orange spot on the hind leg is accumulated pollen in the bee's "pollen basket", or corbicula.

 

 

Bumblebee on chives (Allium schoenoprasum).

 

 Solitary bees: As their name implies, solitary bees do not live in a communal nest with a caste system. Each female builds her own nest consisting of one or more cells, in which she lays her eggs. The “solitary bees” are comprised of several different families; some nest in soil burrows while others build nests in rotting wood or hollow plant stems. Some species specialize on one or just a few closely related plant species.

 

Solitary bee on golden alexander (Zizia aurea).

 

 

Plant stem cut open to reveal cells in the nest of a solitary bee. Each orange mass is a mix of pollen and nectar collected by the female to feed the larvae.

 

Hoverflies: Hoverflies, also known as flower flies, are members of the family Syrphidae. The adults feed largely on nectar and pollen, and many have black-and-yellow markings that allow them to mimic bees or wasps and avoid predation. They are important pollinators, with some species being generalists and others visiting only a single plant species.

 

Hoverfly on golden alexander (Zizia aurea).

 

Butterflies: Butterflies pick up pollen while feeding on nectar, and their long tongues can even reach into long-necked flowers. Butterflies are attracted to brightly colored clusters of flowers, preferably with suitable space to land and maneuver. If you want to attract butterflies to your garden, don’t forget to include the plants on which the caterpillars feed, which often differ from the plants that appeal to adult butterflies.

 

Eastern Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes asterius) feeding on verbena (Glandularia canadensis 'Homestead Purple')

 

 

Egg and young caterpillar of the eastern Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes asterius). The young caterpillar resembles bird droppings to discourage predation; as it grows, it undergoes a series of molts that dramatically change its appearance.

 

Hummingbird moth: With their rapid wing motion and ability to hover in front of a flower, hummingbird moths (Hemaris sp.) are easily mistaken for their namesake, hummingbirds! They have a plump body and a fan at the end of their abdomen. Like butterflies, hummingbird moths have a long tongue that they can unroll and insert into long-necked flowers.

 

 

Hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe) on verbena (Glandularia canadensis ‘Homestead Purple’). Photo: Lea Ann Mawler

 

 

Soldier Beetles: The Pennsylvania leatherwing (or goldenrod soldier beetle) is a species of solider beetle that somewhat resembles its close relatives, the lightning bugs. They are a welcome sight in most gardens: not only are they pollinators, but they also feed on aphids, which are notorious garden pests.

 

A Pennsylvania leatherwing beetle (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus) takes flight.

 

Erin K. Kolski, Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA. 

Sources: Pollinator Partnership (http://pollinator.org/npw_gardens.htm)

               USDA Forest Service (http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/index.shtml)

 

All photos: Erin Kolski (unless otherwise noted.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inventorying the Bombyliidae collection at the Bishop Museum, Honolulu

In February of this year, I had the privilege of being flown out to Honolulu to inventory the USNM Bombyliidae – bee flies – collection currently housed at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum (BPBM) in Honolulu, HI. The Department of Entomology established the Off-site Enhancement Program allowing entire insect families to be curated by experts away from the museum in Washington, DC, and the bee-fly collection is the first and largest off-site enhancement loan. 

The Bernice Puauhi Bishop Museum. Photo credit: Ben Proshek

For the past year and a half I have been working on a contract to inventory the pinned material of the USNM Diptera collection, no small task considering it is the largest Diptera collection in the world. To date I have counted nearly 2.6 million pinned specimens of Diptera in over 46,000 records, a record being either a species or the undetermined material of a family or genus. When finished, it will be the most complete species inventory of a megadiverse insect order, as Coleoptera (beetles), Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps), and Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) have not yet been completely inventoried (although individual projects are underway).

Ben Proshek working on the inventory. Photo credit: James Boone

In addition to counting the number of specimens for each record, I have also been recording the countries represented in each record (and for the USA and Canada, the states and provinces). Sometimes this can be a challenge, as many of the older specimens have hand-written labels, and sometimes only a city or region is written instead of a country. But it’s been a good geography lesson--there are very few countries in the world I have not seen written on the label of at least a few specimens!

The Bombyliidae is a large cosmopolitan family of flies with their greatest diversity found in tropical areas and subtropical arid climates. Many species have elongated proboscides which they use to feed on flower nectar while hovering, much like a hummingbird. The larvae, however, are predators or parasitoids of the eggs or larvae of other insects. The adults have evolved many interesting behaviors to deposit their eggs near a suitable host.  Some species literally shoot eggs through the air into the burrow of a host insect.

A few Australian bombyliids. Photo credit: Ben Proshek

At 80,858 specimens and more than 1,700 records (as it turns out), the Bombyliidae is one of the largest families in the NMNH collection. The family was sent to Hawai’i in 1990 as the first Off-site Enhancement Program loan under the care of Dr. Neal Evenhuis, who is one of the foremost researchers of bee-fly taxonomy in the world and has published numerous scientific articles on this subject.

With the help of the Bishop Museum staff, especially James Boone, the collection manager, I was able to inventory the entire family in just eight working days, which thankfully left a few days free to explore the city of Honolulu and the island of Oahu.

 

Inspecting a drawer. From left to right: Neal Evenhuis, Ben Proshek, James Boone. Photo credit: Keith Arakaki

With a large collection, it’s surprisingly difficult just to arrive at some of the most basic data about it: how many specimens are there, how many species, and where are they from? This inventory is a big step towards the goal of digitizing data about the collection and making it available for researchers world-wide for the inclusion of the USNM specimens in their research projects.

 

 

The Nu’uanu overlook. Photo credit: Ben Proshek

 

Ben Proshek

 

Acknowledgement: Support for travel to the BPBM was provided by the C.W. Sabrosky Fund (with contributions by H. Williams)  

 

Hunting Down a Long-Lost Mystery Ant in Brazil

In September and October of 2014, three members of the Department of Entomology headed to Brazil: Ted Schultz, Ana Jesovnik and Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo. We all work in the department’s Ant Lab, Ted as a curator and Ana and Jeffrey as graduate students from the University of Maryland. We spent 35 days driving a rental car 4700 km (2,920 miles) across the entire country of Brazil. During our travels we collected hundreds of ant species, but our real mission was to track down a rare and elusive fungus-farming ant species.  Fungus-farming ants grow and eat fungus gardens and some of the primitive species are very rare.

From left to right: Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo, Ted Schultz, and Ana Jesovnik. Photo: Ana Jesovnik

One of the places we visited was Chapecó National Forest (Floresta Nacional do Chapecó in Portuguese) in Santa Catarina state.  We were there with a singular goal: To find and collect the elusive fungus-farming ant species Mycetosoritis asper. This species was described in 1887 from a single specimen collected in Santa Catarina. Only two more specimens have been collected since then. Worker ants of Mycetosoritis asper are beautiful and tiny, only 4 mm long, pale yellowish-brown in color, and have spines and hairs on their bodies. Because M. asper looks very different from other fungus-farming ants, no one really knows where it fits into the fungus-farming ant tree of life.  Since nests have never been collected, no one knows what kind of fungus it grows.

 

Mycetosoritis asper on fungus. Photo: Don Parsons

 

Frontal view of M. asper. Photo: Eugenia Okonski

 

Even though we had tried twice before, we had never previously been able to find nests of M. asper.  But this time was different because we had permits to collect inside of Chapecó National Forest.  Although the state of Santa Catarina was once covered by a lush semi-tropical forest, today, sadly, Chapecó National Forest contains one of the last remnants. Within 10 minutes of entering the forest, we got lucky.  We found a nest of M. asper!  It was just a tiny hole in the ground with a tiny ant coming out of it, but we found it.  Over the next few days we were able to dig up 20 nests of this no-longer rare ant. 

Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo excavating a nest. Photo: Ana Jesovnik

Each nest had a chamber containing a fungus garden, a queen, workers, and larvae (baby ants) around 30-60cm (1-2 ft) below the surface. The colonies we excavated in October (Brazilian spring) did not contain winged males or winged daughter queens, which are only produced once each year. However, we were able to obtain permits to bring live colonies back to the Ant Lab in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Last week (Brazilian autumn) some of the nests produced males and alate (winged) queens here at the Smithsonian. Males of this species have never been seen before, so we are eager to describe them for the first time.

Fungus extracted from M. asper nest. Photo: Ana Jesovnik

 

Ana Jesovnik, Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo, and Ted Schultz. Ant Lab, Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.

John T. Polhemus Aquatic Bug Collection comes to NMNH

In August 2014, a three-person team from the Department of Entomology went to Englewood, CO, a suburb of Denver, to retrieve the aquatic Heteroptera collection of the late Dr. John T. Polhemus from his home laboratory. Dr. Polhemus worked as an electrical engineer for more than 30 years but throughout his life cultivated an interest in entomology, specifically Heteroptera, earning his Ph.D. later in life and rising to prominence within the aquatic Heteroptera scientific community. He passed away in May 2013.

John T. Polhemus (1929-2013). Photo courtesy of R. Toby Schuh, AMNH.

The team from NMNH sent to retrieve the collection consisted of Dr. Tom Henry, curator of Heteroptera; Dr. David Furth, Collections Manager; and myself. We were met at Dr. Polhemus’ home by his widow, Irma Polhemus, and one of their two sons, Dr. Dan Polhemus. Dan, himself a heteropterist, was a former Entomology staff member at NMNH, and is now working with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Hawaii. 

     
The JTP aquatic bug collection was housed in hundreds of Schmidt boxes on shelves and in 9 cabinets, including 14,000+ vials.

The retrieval was part of a prior arrangement between Dr. Polhemus (JTP) and SI wherein we agreed to purchase part of his collection using money from an endowment earmarked for purchasing Heteroptera collections to build the national collection. The purchase came with the stipulation that Dr. Polhemus (JTP) could retain the collection until such time as he could no longer work on it, at which point the museum would retrieve all specimens collected prior to June 1, 1991 and all those received as exchanges/gifts, with the option of separately purchasing specimens collected after that date. A synoptic collection would also be returned to his son Dan as a long-term open exchange.

The team spent 3 days preparing the collection for transport. This included preparing the specimens by brace pinning, making repairs where needed, boxing, and wrapping/cushioning vials/jars, etc., and then packing and loading the moving truck. The truck was then driven cross country to DC over 2 long days by two of the team members. In total, the team processed nearly 500,000 specimens, including 96 drawers and ~590 Schmitt boxes of pinned specimens (~300,000) and 30 drawers containing 14,000 vials of specimens in ethanol.

   
Preparing and packing the JTP collection for safe transport from Denver, CO to Washington, DC.

Of course, getting the collection moved to DC was only part of the job. Once here, a team of staff and volunteers unloaded, unpacked, and began transferring the collection to USNM trays and drawers, a process which is ongoing due to the size of the collection. Once completely transferred, we will begin the task of separating the collection into pre- and post-June 1, 1991 lots so that we can purchase the remainder, return the synoptic collection as requested, and begin curating/databasing it for incorporation into the main collection.

   
Entomology staff and volunteers unloading, unpacking and transferring the JTP collection into USNM trays and drawers.

The addition of Dr. Polhemus’ collection to our already extensive NMNH aquatic bug collection, which includes the collection of Dr. Carl Drake (100,000+ specimens), makes our holdings of aquatic Heteroptera now the largest and most comprehensive aquatic bug collection in the world in terms of species coverage and number of specimens. Once the collection has been fully curated, we will follow-up with images of the collection itself in its new home and highlight some of the amazing specimens contained within.

Special thanks to Irma and Dan Polhemus for hosting the NMNH team and to Dan Polhemus, Tom & Katy Henry, & Dave Furth for sharing photos of the packing and unpacking process. I also want to acknowledge the small army of NMNH staff and volunteers who participated in the process of moving this collection—David Furth, Katy Henry, Tom Henry, Tom Jones, Dennis Knopp, Erin Kolski, Gary Ouellette, Marjorie Prochaska, Dezmond Smith, Thao-Chi Vo, Sarah Zuehlke and Benjamin Zuehlke.

   
It is with great sadness that we report the untimely passing of Irma Polhemus on January 5, 2015. She was a gracious host during our trip (even allowing us to partially dismantle her basement, kitchen and garage during the packing and loading process), a talented artist, and an all-around wonderful lady who will be missed by all that had the privilege to meet her.

 

Floyd W. Shockley, Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.

From Collector's Net to Internet: Digitizing the National Entomological Collection

With over 35 million specimens in its holdings, the National Entomological Collection, based at the National Museum of Natural History, is one of the largest insect collections in the world.  The collection’s size and diversity make it widely sought after for study by researchers, but not everyone can visit the collection in person. Fortunately, technology is making it easier for us to share specimen data and photos online, making the collection accessible to anyone in the world with an internet connection. Not only is this convenient for the scientific community, but it also reduces the need to ship specimens out on loan, protecting them from possible damage or mishandling. In this post, we will give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we take our insect collection from the cabinets to the online community.

The goal is to get as many specimens as possible digitized; however, the highest priority is given to type specimens. The type specimen is the individual used in the original description of a species, and as such, they are very valuable to researchers. Below is the type specimen of Ommatius alexanderi, a species of robber fly. 

The type specimen of Ommatius alexanderi

A staff member enters data from the specimen into the Research and Collections Information System called EMu, short for Electronic Museum.  Ideally, the record should contain as much information as available from the specimen and labels, including name, stage, preparation, and collection information. The specimen is also given a barcode label with a unique identifier number; this number serves the purpose of linking the specimen with the database record and images as it becomes part of the image name. The information can either be entered directly into EMu or imported from another program, such as Microsoft Excel.

The Catalog tab in EMu

If photos of the specimen are available, they can also be uploaded and attached to the record. For some purposes, high-quality photos of a specimen may suffice as a more convenient alternative to an in-person examination.

The Multimedia tab in EMu, showing images attached to the specimen record

About once a week, the system refreshes the EMu records and updates them on the Entomology Collections website. The collections search page allows you to select fields to make your search results as broad or narrow as you want; for example, you can search for all specimens in a genus, or just those from a certain state collected within a range of years. 

Collections search results

Clicking the plus-sign (+) next to record you want to view will bring it up in a new window.

Record for the type specimen of Ommatius alexanderi

If there are pictures available, you can click on the thumbnail in the record to view the full-resolution image and image data. A complete record with images is not only useful to researchers, but it also allows anyone anywhere to see insects that are usually not available to the public eye!

 

 

Erin K. Kolski, Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA. 

All photos and screenshots: Erin Kolski

 

11,017 Leuschner snout moths fly and land at the NMNH

Since 1997, Ron Leuschner, a Past President of the Lepidopterists’ Society, has been donating portions of his collection to the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Washington, DC. His cumulative donations exceed 26,000 specimens, the most significant of which is 11,017 specimens of Pyraloidea. Most specimens are from California and the western United States and add depth to the NMNH collection from this part of the U.S.  Because of the current environmental degradation across the country, this collection may prove to be one of a kind as habitats disappear. Since many of  the species at NMNH are represented only by the single type specimen, this collection adds more individuals to better document phenotypic and geographic variation within the species and its distribution. This kind of information is crucial to the duties of Alma Solis of SEL (Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA, and Curator of Pyraloidea at the NMNH) who conducts research, and provides identifications and information on economically important snout moth species. 

Obtaining, decanting, and incorporating this donation was a group effort requiring many hours by many staff, interns, and volunteers.  John Brown (SEL) provided Kelly Richers (volunteer in California) with mailer boxes.  Kelly then transferred the specimens at Ron’s house and mailed the specimens to Washington, DC.  At the NMNH Gary Ouellette (SEL), Alicia Hodson (SEL), Nick Silverson (SEL), Alvira Hasan (intern at the NMNH), and Alma Solis (SEL) transferred and sorted them into unit trays.  Alma then incorporated the specimens into the main collection. Staff members at the NMNH and the USDA SEL are very grateful for these additions to the collection and the resources they will provide to lepidopterists for years to come.

 

Snout moths received in mailer boxes.

Nick Silverson and Alvira Hasan sorting snout moths in the Lepidoptera sorting area at the NMNH.

Snout moths sorted into unit trays in a drawer.

 

Nick Silverson, Biological Technician, SEL, and Alma Solis, USDA Research Entomologist and Curator of Pyraloidea, NMNH, Washington, DC 

[Disclaimer: Content and opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of nor are they endorsed by the National Museum of Natural History or the Smithsonian Institution]

Meet the Scientist: Dr. Torsten Dikow

The Department of Entomology is made up of dedicated staff members from the Smithsonian Institution, USDA Systematic Entomology Lab, and Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit. In an effort to introduce these enthusiastic scientists and promote the important work they do, we present our inaugural "Meet The Scientist" post, featuring Smithsonian dipterist Dr. Torsten Dikow. We asked Dr. Dikow some questions about how he became an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History, and the flies that he works on.

Dr. Torsten Dikow, Smithsonian Institution

 Q: Why did you decide to become an entomologist?

A: When I was finishing up my high school equivalent in Germany, where I am originally from, I met up with local naturalists as I had always been interested in biology and was planning to study biology at university. The majority of these amateur scientists were entomologists and I quickly became interested in insects, mostly because of the large number of different species to be found in forests locally. What I liked was that one could easily observe and identify the common species even in the field.

 

 Q: What made you interested in flies, and robber flies in particular?

A: After the second semester at university, I signed up for a field course in systematic botany and zoology where each student had to prepare a collection of plants, aquatic arthropods, or insects. I decided to use this opportunity to enlarge my insect collection, but to not focus on beetles, which I had done so far, and rather collect other insects to broaden my knowledge of the local fauna. By chance, I collected a few robber flies and after identifying them to family and talking to my professor about them I got immediately hooked and decided that I would focus on assassin flies from now on. Luckily, a web-site with a wealth of information on these flies (http://robberflies.info) had just been posted by a German entomologist who helped me to get started with literature and with whom I am collaborating to this day.

A robber fly, Chysopogon albopunctatus, with its prey, a bee. Photo: Jean Hort

Q: What are robber flies and where do they live?

A: Robber flies, or assassin flies and scientifically Asilidae, are predatory flies that catch other insects on the wing as food. The flies are very good flyers and can even catch prey insects much larger than themselves. They have very large eyes as visual predators and range in body size from 5–60 mm (0.2–2.4 inch). Today we know of more than 7,500 different species found throughout the world in temperate regions like DC, in deserts such as those found in Arizona and southern California, and in tropical rainforests. Interestingly, assassin flies are absent from Hawai’i, where other insects are known from many species, but they live on other Pacific islands such as Fiji or French Polynesia. Every entomologist knows what an assassin fly is because they are usually easily seen in the field (at least the bigger species) and everybody likes to catch them because it’s a challenge to get these fast flying flies in your net.

A robber fly, Alcimus sp. Photo: Rob Felix

 

Q: How did you come to work at the National Museum of Natural History?

A: During my university years in Germany I decided I wanted to study abroad to improve my English and to do this somewhere where there was going to be a much larger diversity of insects and life in general. So I enrolled at a university in South Africa and took every entomology course I could. While there I learned about the then called Research Training Program (now Natural History Research Experiences http://www.mnh.si.edu/NHRE/) here at the museum and applied for the 10-week summer internship. Luckily, I was selected and was able to work with Dr. Wayne Mathis in the Diptera collection on a small taxonomic revision of a shore-fly genus, which we published a few years later (see http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/pdf2/001809600054767.pdf). During my internship I obviously met many other fly researchers and among them Dr. David Grimaldi from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City who later became my advisor of my Ph.D. After finishing my Ph.D. and spending 4 years at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL as a postdoctoral fellow, I applied for my current position as Research Entomologist of Diptera that in a way was filling the vacant spot that Dr. Mathis had left after he retired. I am extremely happy and honored to have this position here at the NMNH and this is my dream job.

 

Q: What does your research focus on and what kinds of methods/techniques do you use?

A: My research focuses on deciphering the diversity and evolutionary history of asiloid flies. This includes assassin flies, but also their most closely related families called flower-loving flies and mydas flies, which are not predators, but feed on pollen and nectar (http://asiloidflies.si.edu). I use both morphological and molecular data to decipher the evolutionary relationships. I also describe new species of flies and have so far named 67 new ones.

A mydas fly, Miltinus stenogaster. Photo: Jean Hort

Q: What is the backstory of the amber specimens featured in your recent paper?

A: Insects in Burmese amber, a 100 Million year old amber from northern Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) in south-east Asia, have been known for a long time. My co-author Dr. Grimaldi has described many insects from this amber over the past two decades, but he had never seen any assassin flies, which are always rare in amber. This is most probably so because these flies are very strong and don’t get entrapped in tree resin, in contrast to midges, for example, which can’t escape once stuck. A colleague from the Australian Museum in Sydney contacted me a few years ago about a robber fly in this amber shown to him by a private collector in Australia. I immediately contacted Dr. Grimaldi and asked whether he could purchase the specimen for the extensive amber collection at his museum in New York so that we could study it. He did, and a few months later I started to work on this piece in which a single male specimen was entrapped. I had difficulty finding good features to find out to which other robber-fly species this specimen was related to. Then, Dr. Grimaldi found a second piece with a robber fly in Burmese amber from a collection he had just obtained and this time it was a female. This was great, as we now had both sexes and the particular structures with which the female laid its eggs provided evidence to us to formulate a hypothesis of the most closely related robber flies.

 

Q: Why is this discovery significant?

A: The finding of a robber fly in Burmese amber is by itself already outstanding. This fly with a very unique set of features not found in any existing assassin fly also gives us a window into the past of the family Asilidae that we wouldn’t be able to obtain otherwise. For example, there is an older assassin fly, Araripogon axelrodi, known from the so called Crato Formation of north-eastern Brazil (112 Million years old), but this species is preserved in limestone and a very limited number of features can be observed and none of them in three dimensions. (I should mention though that I am working on examining this fossil with micro-CT scanning techniques so that we can get a three dimensional model of it.) Furthermore, Burmapogon bruckschi will provide a time slice along with other amber fossils I am currently studying with which we can study the diversification of assassin flies with molecular data, which is really exciting.

A male specimen of Burmapogon bruckschi, a new species of Asilidae described by Torsten Dikow. Photo: David Grimaldi

Q: Last question: if you could be any insect, living or extinct, what would you be, and why?

A: Ugh, insects are so diverse and I really enjoy observing them in the field when I am conducting field work. My favorite places to go for field work are deserts so it has to be an insect that lives there. Flower-loving flies, Apioceridae, fit the bill: they are cute looking, resembling assassin flies somewhat, they are only found in the dry environments of western North America, Australia, Chile, and South Africa, and therefore I would want to be one of them.

A flower-loving fly, Apiocera sp. Photo: Jean Hort

To learn more about Dr. Dikow's research, please visit his page on our department website.

 

 

Torsten Dikow, Jessica Bird, & Erin Kolski, Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.