The Cambridge Entomological Club

Founded 1874

Next meeting: Tuesday, May 13th, 2008, at 7:30 PM

Emma Vitikainen
Department of Bio- and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland
will speak on
Studying inbreeding in a natural population of the ant Formica exsecta

Human induced habitat destruction and fragmentation may lead to loss of genetic diversity and increase inbreeding. While inbreeding depression reduces the viability of most studied organisms, data from natural populations remain scarce particularly in groups such as insects, where measures of fitness are hard to obtain in the field. Ant colonies, however, offer a tractable system for long-term field studies. Furthermore, due to their sociality, inbreeding effects in ants may differ from those seen in solitary organisms. We study the effects of inbreeding in the narrow-headed ant Formica exsecta, in a natural population located in the coast of Finland. Results show that inbreeding affects colonies both through queens and workers. In my talk, I will also discuss inbreeding effects on the immune defence of ants, and the relationship between inbreeding and dispersal behavior.

MCZ 101, 26 Oxford Street at Harvard University (directions)

Please join us for dinner at the Harvard Law School cafeteria, second floor of Harkness Commons, at 6:15pm.

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News:

*Image © 2006 Andrea Golden*

Psyche relaunched by Hindawi Publishing

Discussion of open access for journals, journal economics, and the (recently vetoed) bill requiring open access to articles coming out of federally funded research. (2007-11-14)

We have a discussion group at Google Groups. This is a low traffic forum limited, for now, to members and friends of the CEC. You may participate either by email or by visiting the forum's web site. It is meant for online discussion of anything that one might discuss at a CEC meeting, including both science and club projects and business. Upcoming discussion topics might include the post card project, possible summer outings, the and the transfer of Psyche to a new publisher. You do not need to have a Google login to participate. To join, send email to entclub@entclub.org. (2007-05-20)

Bolton's Catalogue of Ants of the World 1758-2005 by Barry Bolton, Gary Alpert, Philip S. Ward, and Piotr Naskrecki has been issued on CD-ROM by Harvard University Press. (flyer, 1-page PDF) (2007-02-05)

Almost all Psyche back issues, from 1874 to 2000, are available online at the Psyche web site. (2007-05-23)

Please visit the CEC group at flickr.com. (2006-07-17)

Psyche is now indexed by Google Scholar. For example, if you enter the search terms "frank carpenter fossil", many Psyche articles turn up.

Harvard's David Lohman has prepared the complete archives of the Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society for online access. (2006-02-20)

History of the Ent Club - Janice R. Mathews 1974, complete article, 35 pages, illustrated, is among the articles available on the Psyche site. 3.7 megabyte PDF file download. (2006-02-25)

Some of the things you can find on this site:

	Images contributed by Gary Alpert (2006-04-19)
	Images from Corrie Saux-Moreau's South America trip (2004-09-24)
	Images contributed by Andrea Golden (2004-03-01)
	From the mailbag: A local sighting of Noctua pronuba (2002-06-19)
	Lantern slides from the CEC archives (2001-10-26)

Mike Huben has contributed his officer nomination poems from 1995 and 1996. (2001-10-26)

The club provides "email for life" as a service for members who choose to sign up for it. This is a durable address <yourname@entclub.org> that redirects messages to an email address of your choice. You can change this redirection whenever your email service changes through change of employer or ISP. This gives others a way to reach you without having to track you down. Contact webmaster@entclub.org for more information.

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Last modified: 22 January 2008