Tuesday, October 14, 2003, at 7:30pm
Cynthia Akabante nominated for membership.
Club Treasurer and Managing Editor of Psyche, Kathy Horton, announced her intent to step down as managing editor of Psyche (the club journal), and it may cease to exist if no others take up the role. Psyche was last published in 2000. Executive Committee member Gary Alpert suggested a meeting occur with the editors and members of the executive of the club, in order to discuss the possible future of Psyche. Jonathan Rees introduced a new website for entomology discussions. It contains forums and other community offerings. Jennifer Liu of MIT, working with other designers at MIT as part of a course project, walked through elements of the site, including profiles, photos, a calendar and a virtual insect collection. It can be found at http://web.entclub.org , though it is still a work in progress.
Club President Piotr Naskrecki then presented some pictures from a recent trip to the Okavango Delta, part of his ongoing work with Conservation International. Piotr's slides included a sun scorpion, termites, various termite predators and desert grasshoppers. Piotr then introduced the speaker, Corrie Saux. Ms. Saux is a graduate student at Harvard University, working with Professor Naomi Pierce.
Ms. Corrie Saux presented a talk entitled "Dracula Ant Relations and Implications for Systematics." Unlike most ants, Dracula ants (here used as a description of a behaviour, not as a clade) practice "nondestructive cannibalism," wounding their larvae and feeding on the hemolymph. They also carry their larvae to their food, rather than vice-versa. These behaviors are scattered across the ant phylogeny. Interestingly, there is a genus of these ants on Madagascar that lack a normal set of ant petioles, having instead a wasp-like waist. If this genus is demonstrated to represent primitive ant morphology and behavior, it would help explain much about the evolution of ants as a whole. Ms. Saux went into some detail about her work on these ants, done while at San Francisco State and the Cal Academy. After her talk, the meeting was adjourned for refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Christopher Elzinga,
Club Secretary
Tuesday, November 11, 2003, at 7:30pm
No new business or old business.
Club Secretary Christopher Elzinga presented a talk similar to one that he had presented at the Entomological Society of America this past October, on the population genetics and ecology of the genus Crossidius, a longhorn beetle. Those species that are more restricted to local habitats, or feed on more ephemeral hosts, are found to have lower effective population sizes compared to a relative generalist species, or those that feed on longer-lived hosts.
After his rather short talk, the meeting was adjourned for refreshments.
Respectfully Submitted, Christopher Elzinga Club Secretary
Tuesday, December 9, 2003, at 7:30pm
No old business. New business: Corrie Saux nominated for membership.
Jonathan Rees and Jennifer Liu demonstrated web.entclub.org website, a community entomological web site (now online!), so that comments could be offered prior to it going online.
Club President Piotr Naskrecki announced that he will no longer be able to properly fulfill his duties as club president, and has asked Vice-President Bruce Archibald to step in as President. Without objection, Bruce Archibald assumes the title of Club President, and Piotr Naskrecki as Vice-President.
Club Vice-President Piotr Naskrecki presented a talk entitled: Little Known Fauna of West African Orthoptera, in which he presented many slides of insects and other fauna of West Africa, photographed while he was in Guinea as part of a survey by Conservation International.
The meeting was then adjourned, after which Piotr presented for show-and-tell some live arachnids (Giant Tailless Whipscorpions) he collected in Africa.
Respectfully submitted, Christopher Elzinga, Club Secretary
Tuesday, January 13, 2004, at 7:30pm
34 members and guests were present.
Old business: Corrie Saux approved for membership.
President, Bruce Archibald, introduced the speaker, Stefan Cover.
Stefan Cover presented a talk titled "Ant Taxonomy in the 21st Century".
The past: The history of ant taxonomy beginning with Linnaeus. Next, Gustof Meyer, Auguste Forel, and Carlo Emery began extensive work on ants, followed by William Morton Wheeler, former curator of Harvard's collection, who laid the foundation for future ant taxonomists. In 1950 Willian Steele Creighton published "The Ants of North America", a monumental work in the field of ant taxonomy. William Brown and Edward Wilson then revolutionized ant biology by doing away with trinomial names by standardizing the use of the binomial naming system. Brown and Wilson also took on a world view of ant groups, not just individual descriptions. Phil Ward pioneered the use of morphological and phylogenetic systematics in myrmecology.
The present: The year 1990 was the beginning of a new era in ant biology when Holldobler and Wilson published "The Ants". New collecting techniques (via Winklers) allowed the pouring in of lots of new material. Biodiversity became a focus with the publishing of Barry Bolton's books in the mid-1990's. Gary Alpert pioneered the improvement and ease of gathering ant images using the auto-montage technique and hardware. Web based taxonomy tools originated by Jack Longino and are now becoming increasingly common. Also, the Ant Course has provided a new forum for training future ant taxonomists.
The future: Ant faunas are richer than we ever thought possible. Both large scale (the birth of industrial collecting methods) and fine-scale (the rebirth of natural history as a taxonomic tool) events have contributed to this rebirth. A true world inventory of the ants is not possible using the methods of "business as usual" taxonomy. A new approach is necessary.
Alpha taxonomy, faunistics, regional monographs, and phylogenetics are playing a vital role. Web publications speed progress and promote worldwide access. Access is critical. Training is critical.
The meeting was then adjourned for refreshments.
Respectfully Submitted,
Corrie Saux Secretary pro tem
Modified by Christopher Elzinga, Club Secretary
Tuesday, March 9th, 2004, at 7:30 pm
No old business.
New business: Mario Muscedere, Daniel Calleri, Amy Mertl, and Marcio Pie nominated for membership.
Joe Warfel showed some live boreids (Mecoptera: Boreidae), and Gary Alpert showed a pinned Bulldog Ant Queen. Club President Bruce Archibald introduced the speaker, Ms. Zofia Ada Kaliszewska. Ms Kaliszewska is a graduate student in Professor Naomi Pierce's lab at Harvard University, and presented her work on whale-associated crustaceans (Cyamidae), entitled "Whale Lice: Looking at the phylogenetic and population-genetic relationships of right-whale cyamids to learn about the histories and behaviors of right whales."
Cyamids are crustaceans that live on the callosities of whales, and Ada studied cyamids on right whales. Callosities are areas on the whale where hair follicles are present, and are homologous to eyebrows and other facial hair in other mammals. These areas appear white due to the large numbers of cyamids present. Cyamids have high host fidelity, and retain their young in maternal pouches. Cyamid phylogeny and population genetics offers another look into whale history, which is especially useful because whales have comparatively little intraspecific variation in molecular markers. Using cyamid mitochondrial sequence (from the control region), it was demonstrated that Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere right whales have indeed been separate for a long time, since their respective cyamids form distinct clades. Within these hemispheres, however, the cyamid phylogeny indicates that there has been a good deal of migration (in the population-genetic sense) between known right whale groups.
Following her talk, the meeting was adjourned for refreshments.
Respectfully Submitted,
Christopher Elzinga,
Club Secretary
Tuesday, April 13th, 2004, at 7:30 pm
[The webmaster has not yet received minutes - did anyone record any?]
Speaker: Nikolai Kandul
Does karyotype diversification drive speciation in the genus
Agrodiaetus (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae)?
Abstract. Butterflies in the large Palearctic genus Agrodiaetus (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) are extremely uniform and exhibit few distinguishing morphological characters. However, these insects are distinctive in one respect - as a group they possess amongst the greatest interspecific karyotype diversity in the animal kingdom, with chromosome numbers ranging from n = 10 to n = 134. The monophyly of Agrodiaetus and its systematic position relative to other groups within the section Polyommatus have been controversial. Characters from the mitochondrial genes COI and COII, and the nuclear gene EF1-_, were used to reconstruct the phylogeny of Agrodiaetus using maximum parsimony and Bayesian phylogenetic methods. Our data indicate that Agrodiaetus is a monophyletic taxon. Representatives of the genus Polyommatus (sensu stricto) are the closest relatives. The sequences of the Agrodiaetus taxa in this analysis are tentatively arranged into twelve clades, only one of which corresponds to a species-group traditionally recognized in Agrodiaetus. According to our data, the genus originated between 2.51 and 3.85 MYA. During this time, there was heterogeneity in the rate and direction of karyotype evolution among lineages within the genus. Karyotype instability has evolved independently three times in the section Polyommatus, within the lineages Agrodiaetus, Lysandra and Plebicula.
Officer nominations: Corrie Saux president, Bill Stubblefield VP, Andrea Golden secretary, Kathy Horton and Jonathan Rees treasurer, Gary Alpert and Edward Plekavich executive committee.
Tuesday, May 11th, 2004, at 7:30 PM
MCZ 101, 26 Oxford Street at Harvard University
President Bruce Archibald called meeting to order.
Old/new business:
Discussion of the future of Psyche
One more issue (Volume 103 No. 3-4) will be printed, after that, the
future of Psyche is uncertain. One possible option is to make
Psyche an
online journal. Jonathan Rees has prepared notes on Psyche's
future to be found at
http://psyche.entclub.org/options/.
[IIRC, Kathy Horton gave a report on the club's financial condition. Also, someone asked whether back issues of Psyche were available. Kathy answered that there are none as they were all recycled. -JAR]
Speaker: John LaPolla, Rutgers University
The Ant Genus Acropyga and the Evolution of Trophophoresy
John received his Ph.D. in spring 2004 from Rutgers University in the
Entomology Department. His research interests cover ant
systematics, revisionary taxonomy, insect conservation biology,
systematic theory and practice, and evolution of trophobiosis.
John spoke on his work with the ant genus Acropyga, formicine ants found in warmer areas of the world. Ants in this genus are subterranean, living in large nests with no central chamber. The ants rely on mealybugs (Pseudococcidae) for their nutritional needs, tending the mealybugs on roots in their underground nests. This relationship is called trophobiosis. The ants are obligate coccidophiles and depend on the mealybugs for survival. They will not accept substitute foods such as sugar water or honey.
In addition, Acropyga ants and mealybugs have evolved a relationship called trophophoresy, where queen ants leaving to establish new colonies will carry a mealybug in their mandibles to establish a new population of mealybugs for the colony. This is a longstanding relationship, found in Dominican amber dating back 15-20 million years. John's research goals include revising other formicine genera, and for genus Acropyga, continuing his investigation of the phylogenetics of the genus and the particulars of the ant/mealybug relationship.
Election of officers
Officers proposed and approved, there were no contested positions.
| President: | Corrie Saux |
| Vice-President: | Bill Stubblefield |
| Secretary: | Andrea Golden |
| Treasurer: | Kathy Horton |
| Executive Committee: | Gary Alpert, Edward Plekavich |
Following Dr LaPolla's presentation and election of officers, the meeting was adjourned for refreshments.
Respectfully submitted,
Andrea Golden, Club secretary[-elect]
Last modified: Nov 7 2004