The 1006th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Mark Moffett on Tuesday, October 11, 1994 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the May 1994 meeting were read by the secretary, and approved without correction. There was no old business. Under new business, there were four new nominations for membership:
Zachary A. Prusak, of Clermon, FL, interested in Ant Ecology; Allan D. Dufoe, of Portsmouth NH, interested in Industrial and Urban Entomology; Debi Miller, from the MCZ, interested in Diaspids associated with Septobasidium; Pamela Arnofsky, from Northeastern Univ., interested in Crustacean Systematics.
President Moffett then introduced the speaker for the evening, Dr. David Wagner, from the University of Connecticut, whose talk was whimsically titled: "Survival Tips For The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Natural History, Predation, and Evolution".
Dr. Wagner presented a large variety of little-known aspects of larval life of Lepidoptera, well illustrated with spectacular slides. He described his work as the backyard natural history of the approximately 3000 species in southern New England. These larvae have very diverse feeding habits, including external and boring feeders, leaf rollers, leaf miners, gall formers, seed feeders, case bearers, moss, clubmoss, and fungus feeders, and litter decomposers. As a rule of thumb, the macrolepidoptera tend to be external feeders, while the microlepidoptera are almost all internal feeders.
The main rule of caterpillar life was presented as: eat and don't get eaten, while the climate is right. A huge array of causes of mortality was described: visual predators including birds, lizards, spiders, and wasps; and other causes such as pathogens, parasitoids, nematomorpha, predation between caterpillars, plant defenses, etc. Indications of how heavy predation pressures are included Regal Fritillary production of up to 2500 eggs to achieve replacement, and birds measured to eat their body weight daily in caterpillars. This main rule was broken down into two subsets of rules: edible rules and inedible rules. A large array of strategies for hiding, including seldom mentioned ones such as clean feeding, and frass dispersal were described. And finally, Dave presented a reprise of his presentation on corimata, male pheromone dispersing organs.
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned for refreshments at 8:45 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary
The 1007th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Mark Moffett on Tuesday, November 8, 1994 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. 45 members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the October 1994 meeting were read by the secretary, and approved without correction. Under old business, new members were elected by acclamation:
Zachary A. Prusak, of Clermon, FL, interested in Ant Ecology; Allan D. Dufoe, of Portsmouth NH, interested in Industrial and Urban Entomology; Debi Miller, from the MCZ, interested in Diaspids associated with Septobasidium; Pamela Arnofsky, from Northeastern Univ., interested in Crustacean Systematics.
Under new business, there were three new nominations for membership:
Niccole D. Rech of Ashland, MA, interested in Coleoptera; Tom Hayden of Winchester, MA, interested in Insect and Plant Chemistry; Alan Grant of Watertown, MA, interested in Insect Sensory Systems.
President Moffett then introduced the speaker for the evening, Ted Schultz from Cornell University, whose talk was titled: "The Natural History and Phylogeny of Fungus-Growing Ants and their Fungi".
The 202 described species of the Subfamily Myrmicinae, Tribe Attini cultivate fungus gardens. All their larvae eat fungi exclusively, though adults feed on some other carbohydrate sources as well. All are new world, most are tropical, and some reach the southern US. In some parts of the neotropics, they are the dominant herbivores.
Ted examined the last instar larvae of 51 of the 202 species in 11 of 12 genera, and 9 of 12 proposed sister groups for 44 characters. He concluded that the Tribe Attini is monophyletic, that fungus growing had a single origin, and that the genus Blepharidatta is the sister group of the Attini.
Ted examined the fungi cultivated by these ants with his collaborator, Rudolph Meier. Examination of the fungi revealed that all of them (including the yeast-like fungi) are Basidiomycetes, mostly in the family Lepiotaceae, near relations to the common mushroom Agaricus that we eat. Ancestral Attines probably cultivated a Lepiotaceous species which has evolved with them, and only the genus Apterostigma has switched to a different host species of fungus.
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned for refreshments at 8:40 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary
The 1007th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Mark Moffett on Tuesday, December 13, 1994 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. __ members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the November 1994 meeting were reconstructed by the secretary, who had forgotten to bring them, and approved without correction. Under old business, new members were elected by acclamation:
Niccole D. Rech of Ashland, MA, interested in Coleoptera; Tom Hayden of Winchester, MA, interested in Insect and Plant Chemistry; and Alan Grant of Watertown, MA, interested in Insect Sensory Systems.
Under new business, there were two new nominations for membership:
Manuel Morales of the U. of Conn. Storrs, interested in Ant Ecology; and John Powell, also of the U. of Conn. Storrs, interested in Odonate Phylogeny.
President Moffett then introduced the speaker for the evening, Michelle Scott from the University of New Hampshire, whose talk was titled: "Conflict and Cooperation among Burying Beetles".
Professor Scott described her elegant experimentation with one of the few Nicrophorus species that cooperatively rear brood. She used trap carcasses placed over large pots that were covered. Adult beetles were introduced in various combinations to study their interactions. Fat soluable dyes were fed to females so that the parentage of eggs could be determined.
Cooperation was most common when there was more than one female on medium to large carcasses. Intruders were generally chased away after the carcass was buried. In group situations, the dominant female does most of the work of carcass preparation and larval care, and drives off intruders. Subordinate females probably stay (rather than find their own carcass) because it they are unlikely to find an unclaimed carcass for themselves. They might be permitted to stay to aid in the competition with flies for the carcass.
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned at 8:35 PM for refreshments. Upon the discovery that the secretary had forgotten to bring refreshments, we adjourned to tar and feather the secretary.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary
The 1009th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by Vice President Stephen Cover on Tuesday, January 10, 1995 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. __ members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the December 1994 meeting were read by the secretary, and approved without correction. Under old business, new members were elected by acclamation:
Manuel Morales of the U. of Conn. Storrs, interested in Ant Ecology; and John Powell, also of the U. of Conn. Storrs, interested in Odonate Phylogeny.
Under new business, there were two new nominations for membership:
Jeffrey C. May, of Cambridge, MA, interested in insect allergens; Patricia Huckery of Bolton, MA, interested in Odonates; and Donna Fernandez of the Franklin Park Zoo, interested in zoo displays of invertebrates.
Vice President Cover then introduced the speaker for the evening, Jim Costa from the MCZ, whose talk was titled: "A Tent Caterpillar Primer: Ecology, Evolution, and Social Biology of Malacosoma Species."
Jim, a disciple of the legendary Terry Fitzgerald, introduced us to the peculiarities of caterpillar sociality. Unlike eusocial insects, caterpillars live in annual larval cohorts, without continuity or overlap of generations. They exhibit reciprocal communication of a cooperative nature that can include resource location and recruitment, group cohesion and boundary marking, and behavioral defenses such as alarm signaling.
Jim introduced the North American species, and then concentrated on Malacosoma americana, the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. He described their life cycle, which is critically dependent on synchrony of egg hatching with bud break; their instars and metamorphosis; their predators; and their food preferences-- Roseaceous hosts such as apple and cherry.
Tents serve as information centers for recruitment trails of silk and pheromones. The pheromones are secreted by a gland between the anal prolegs, which is dragged along the trail on the return from a high-quality food source.
Relatedness studies show no significant inbreeding: while caterpillars that hatch from the same egg mass are usually full siblings, there is no relatedness at the tree level, and colonies on the same tree seem to mix freely as the season progresses.
Jim has future plans for reconstructing the phylogeny of the genus, incorporating data about variation of sociality of the different species.
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned at 8:35 PM for refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary
The 1010th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Mark Moffett on Tuesday, February 14, 1995 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. __ members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the January 1995 meeting were read by the secretary, and approved without correction. Under old business, three new members were elected by acclamation:
Jeffrey C. May, of Cambridge, MA, interested in insect allergens; Patricia Huckery of Bolton, MA, interested in Odonates; and Donna Fernandez of the Franklin Park Zoo, interested in zoo displays of invertebrates.
Under new business, there were two new nominations for membership:
Steve Reppert, of Newton, MA, interested in Saturniidae; and Ivo Sauman, of Brighton, MA, interested in Saturniidae and Parnassidae.
The speakers for the evening were Jim Carpenter and Ward Wheeler from the American Museum. Their talk was titled "Dialogues On The Phylogeny Of The Insect Orders".
Jim Carpenter provided a review of some of the historical attempts at phylogenetic trees for the insect orders, which he described as primarily based on single character systems. He then described his own efforts, modeled on a study of Dictyoptera by Bambi Thorne. Using 150 characters scored by Quentin Wheeler and a hundred more that he added, Jim came up with 4 interesting results:
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned at 8:40 PM for refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary
The 1011th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Mark Moffett on Tuesday, March 14, 1995 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. 45 members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the February 1995 meeting were read by the secretary, and approved without correction. Under old business, two new members were elected by acclamation:
Steve Reppert, of Newton, MA, interested in Saturniidae; and Ivo Sauman, of Brighton, MA, interested in Saturniidae and Parnassidae.
There was no new business.
The speaker for the evening was Paul Goldstein, late of Harvard and now at the University of Connecticut. His talk was titled "Invertebrate Conservation and Faunal Change on a New England Island: The Moths of Martha's Vineyard".
Paul presented a clear and passionate argument for the importance of insects to conservationists based his studies on Martha's Vineyard. He started by describing the specificity, sensitivity and reliability of insects as indicators of environmental change. He described how comparisons of his studies to historical collections correlated with historically documented changes in land usage, such as destruction of sandplain grasslands, fire suppression, and pesticide usage.
Paul also had some sharp criticisms of some methodologies for directing conservation, such as biodiversity, gap analysis, phylogenetic diversity, and indicator species. He illustrated these criticisms with the example of frostbottom habitats, where frost controls the vegetative pattern much as fire does for pine barrens. Paul concluded by reviewing some criteria for organisms' tendency to rapid extinction.
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned at 8:35 PM for refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary
The 1012th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Mark Moffett on Tuesday, April 11, 1995 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. __ members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the April 1995 meeting were read by the secretary, and approved without correction. There was no old business.
There was no new business, though nominations for Club offices SHOULD have been announced.
The speaker for the evening was Nathan Erwin, of the Smithsonian Museum. His talk was titled "What's New at the Insect Zoo".
Nathan described the extensive labor that goes into creating and maintaining an insect zoo exhibit. Two staff members create the displays and manage 40 volunteer interpreters. Design, measurement of effectiveness, and revision of the exhibits is a continual process. Small changes in presentation can radically affect the amount of information visitors retain. Many innovative programs have been tried, such as walk-through termite mounds, tarantula week, and live broadcast tours with interactive questions.
The results are that the insect zoo competes with the dinosaurs as the most popular exhibit in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned at 8:35 PM for refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary
In keeping with VERY recent tradition, the annual report (which should be read
now) is late, but should be ready for next month's meeting.
The 1013th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order by President Mark Moffett on Tuesday, May 9, 1995 at 7:35 PM in the Main Lecture Hall of the Harvard Biolabs. 54 members, guests, and visitors signed our attendance book.
The minutes of the April 1995 meeting were read by the secretary, and approved without correction. Under old business, the nominations for the officers were read, in verse, and without further ado, the officers were elected. They are:
President Dave Wagner
Vice Presidents Mark Moffett and Stephen Cover
Treasurer Jay Shetterly and
Secretary Mike Huben.
There was no new business, and no nominations for Club membership.
The speaker for the evening was our very own President Mark Moffett, of Harvard University and National Geographic fame. His talk was titled "Stories From Afield: Rambles of a Tropical Entomologist."
Mark conclusively demonstrated that if you don't mind unbearable tropical conditions, he indeed has the job we should all be jealous of. Parading around with a blowgun and other souvenirs of his innumerable travels, Mark told stories that we wouldn't have believed from Baron Von Munchausen: except that he had the pictures to back them up. Most incredible of all was that he had stooped to photographing those slimy vertebrate thingies: in particular poison arrow frogs. But we were willing to forgive his heresy after he returned to our one, true, entomological faith, and spiritually uplifted us with slides of Attine ants and tarantulas performing the miracle of walking on the water to catch frogs.
After discussion, the meeting was adjourned at 8:35 PM for refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Huben, Secretary