• New spiders! Two new species of burrowing spiders from Uruguay.

• Run and hide everyone in the UK RUN AND HIDE! MILLIONS OF SPIDERS ON THE LOOSE. (but seriously folks, relax. This is not journalism.  (thanks to my UK friend, e.g., Graham Scott, for tweeting me this story)

• A moth that mimics a spiders. Nature is wonderful.

• Something small. That is all.

• Congrats to Daniel Llavaneras on finding something very special.

• Twig tethered to a twig: a caterpillar has Ted a wee bit stumped. 

• Bugshot was down in Belize – some lovely buggy & spidery images are posted here. 

• Speaking of bugshot, here’s one of Nash Turley‘s pics from that adventure (Thanks, Nash, for letting me post it here!)

• Students in my intro Entomology class are teaching me a lot (they are lecturing on the Insect Orders). Last week, I learned of Desert Locusts that can swim, underwater. (note: they ‘can’ but they don’t necessarily ‘do’ the swimming.)

• My students also told me of the hip, cool family of Orthoptera called…. Cooloolidae. Yeah, that’s awesome.

• Diesel exhaust screws up the ability of honeybees to forage. I’m not surprised by this, but still glad the study was done.

• Bees hop between green roofs. 

• Weather forecasting by insects……

• Why are there no ants north of the treeline? It seems that should have been answered by myrmecologists already…. discussions on twitter suggest this may not be the case…? Or perhaps Francoeur’s ideas are spot-on…?

• Speaking of Ants – how about thinking of Universities like Ant colonies – a fascinating post by Terry McGlynn over at small pond science.

• You like ants?  What about a jumping spider that looks like an ant? Here you go:

A species of jumping spider in the genus Peckhamia (photo by Alex Wild, reproduced here with permission)

• Got the sniffles? Maybe you’ve got a tick… maybe it’s a new species…?

• Beware of the warble fly... yikes! (thanks H. Stiles!)

• Heading the the Entomological Society of Canada’s annual meeting in a couple of weeks?  Check out the AWESOME (and free!) workshops.

• Fly regurgitation and Art. Yeah, I’m serious –> check this out (Thanks Claudio Gratton for that link)

• More on insects and art: here is something ridiculously interesting – bee and beetle models.

• Over at the Boreal Beetle – an eloquent post about finding, reading and appreciating ‘old’ literature

• Centipede venom might be a pretty good painkiller! 

• Bug Girl is now posting over at Wired Science… “Charismatic Minifauna“. Worth a follow!

• Beetles collected by Darwin! Have a look…

• Tweet of the week goes to …  Erin McKiernan. This is awesome. Don’t worry: My neighbours think I’m crazy too. I’ve been caught running up and down the street with a sweep net.

• Animal animal. Totally tautonyms. (thanks Heidi for tweeting that!)

• Cowardice in Academia: a very important message for those who sit on tenure review board (thanks to Alan Townsend for writing that post)

• Science reporter spoofs hundreds of Open Access journals with fake papers. 

• Um, fix all your lectures, people: new fossils push the origin of plants back 100 million years.

• Underdogs: the them of a new Malcolm Cladwell book. Here’ s nifty interview with the author.

• So many reasons to love Patrick Stewart. However, here’s another one.

• Communicate this: Science has a special issue devoted to communication in science. 

• What exactly is a doctorate? 

• Why are there still so few women in Academia. An excellent piece.

• XKCD has a good one:  Penumbra. I learned something new.

• Hobbit fans! Some never-before-seen art by Tolkien.

• Robotic jungle - a wired woodland. 

• On robots: here’s a Wild Cat: This is both terrifying and amazing:

A species of jumping spider in the genus Peckhamia (photo by Alex Wild, reproduced here with permission)

So, what does this species do? What are its behaviours? Where does it live?

I started digging around to see what literature exist on this species. There are certainly many publications that discuss its distribution – it is on many checklists (see here for a relatively complete list), and I was aware that it was originally described as Synemosyna picata (by Hentz, in 1846).

I did a search of Web of Science for publications with the species name, and came up with two hits. One was a systematics papers on a related genus of jumping spider, and the second was a paper by Durkee et al. in 2011*.  They did some laboratory studies of the species, to assess whether or not its ant-like appearance helped it avoid being eaten by predators (spoiler: the answer is yes). A little more digging on-line took me to various sites, and in some cases, I came across this statement:  “almost no information on them“

What?  Really?

A Peckhamia picata, from Quebec (Photo by J. Brodeur, reproduced here with permission)

Peckhamia picata is a widespread species, with an incredible appearance, and it’s a jumping spider!  Salticids are the darling of the arthropod world –> the panda bears of the invertebrates: big eyes, furry, fascinating courtship behaviours, and truckloads of ‘personality’.  Surely we know SOMETHING about what I declared as my favourite species.

Thankfully, in a filing cabinet in my laboratory, I have a series of older publications on the Salticidae, including “A Revision of the Attidae of North America” by Peckham & Peckham (1909) [available here as a PDF download - note: big file!]. The George and Elizabeth Peckham did an incredible amount of work on the Salticidae (called Attidae, previously). The Peckhams are themselves a fascinating story – some details are on their Wikipedia page  and I’ll summarize briefly: they were teachers (in Wisconsin), natural historians, behavioural ecologists and taxonomists, notably with jumping spiders.  The bulk of their work was done in the late 1800s, and they often cited and discussed Darwinian concepts. They were awesome and I would have liked to meet them.

Another stunning Peckhamia species, this one from Thomas Shahan.

So, back to Peckamia picata: Their 1909 tome states the following about the species “We have described in detail its mating and general habits in Vol. II, Part 1 of the Occ. Pap. Nat. Hist. Soc. Wis. pp. 4-7)”.

So, apparently 1909 does not take us far enough back in history to learn about Peckhamia picata. Their paper from 1892 had all the details, and thankfully was fully accessible on the biodiversity heritage library.

Here is some of the lovely writings about Peckhamia picata, from the Peckhams, in 1892 (transcribed from their papers):

About appearance:

“While picata is ant-like in form and colour, by far the most deceptive thing about it is the way it which it moves. It does not jump like the other Attidae [Salticidae], nor does it walk in a straight line, but zig-zags continually from side to side, exactly like an ant which is out in search of booty. This is another illustration of which Wallace has shown in relation to butterflies ...”

(note: The Peckhams give a node to that Wallace guy….)

About feeding behaviour:

“Spiders commonly remain nearly motionless while they are eating; picata, on the other hand, acts liks an ant which is engaged in pulling some treasure-trove into pieces convenient for carrying I have noticed a female picata which, after getting possession of a gnat, kept beating it with her front legs as she ate, pulling it about in different directions, and all the time twitching her ant-like abdomen“

Regarding courtship:

From the Peckham’s 1892 publication.

“His abdomen is lifted vertically so that it is at right angle to the plane of the cephalothorax. in this position he sways from side to side. After a moment he drops the abdomen, runs a few steps nearer the female, then then tips his body and begins to sway again. Now he runs in one direction, now in another, pausing every few moments to rock from side to side and to bend his brilliant legs so that she may look full at them.”

In sum, this journey of discovery has made me fall in love with Peckhamia picata even more. It’s also reminded me that OLD literature is essential to our current understanding of the species we identify. There is a wealth of information in these “natural history” papers – although the writing is in a different style, it is scientific, it is the foundation of current biodiversity science.  We cannot ignore these older books and “Occasional papers”. We can’t rely on quick internet searches and we certainly can’t rely on literature indexed on Web of Science.

We must dig deep and far into the past. There are ‘treasure-troves’ aplenty.

—————–

*The oldest paper cited in Durkee et al. is from 1960. They did not cite the Peckhams.

Another Peckhamia species, courtesy of Matt Bertone (reproduced here, with permission)

References:

Durkee, C. A. et al. 2011. Ant Mimicry Lessens Predation on a North American Jumping Spider by Larger Salticid Spiders. Environmental Entomology 40(5): 1223-1231

Peckham, G.W., and E.G. Peckham. 1892. Ant like spiders of the family Attidae Occ. Pap. Nat. Hist. Soc. Wis. II, 1 .

Peckham, G.W., and E.G. Peckham. 1909. Revision of the Attidae of North America. Trans. Wis. Academy of Sci., Arts & Letters. Vol. XVI, 1(5), 355-646.

This is a great exercise: it forces concise writing, and allows for help and feedback in the development of a good research question.

Here are the tweets – please feel free to direct comments to the groups! (the research projects are officially starting today, 1 October) [click on the tweet to get to the group’s twitter accounts)

And yes, these groups DID receive help from people outside of the course (and from around the world) as they developed their research question. For example, the group studying medicinal plants discussed some ideas over twitter with a biologist in Germany:

And in the following conversation, the Chickadee group received some reinforcement from Prof. Margaret Rubega, at the University of Connecticut, about the need to develop a solid research question:

SO… what do YOU think?  Could you tweet your research question? Can you help these students improve their questions? Feedback, as always, is welcome!

Here’s what I stumbled across this week:

• Ah, Botflies. Gross or cool? For entomologists, this is some pretty amazing stuff.

• Spiders on the move? An influx of poisonous spider bites.  Hmm – btw, spiders are not poisonous, although some are venomous…

• Lying for sex, spider style. An older post, but one that was relevant this week when I was teaching about nuptial gifts.

• Spider web evolution – a storify from Morgan Jackson, after tweeting a talk by Todd Blackledge.

• Remarkable spiders from Israel.

• Jumping spiders… jumping. Great videos and ideas on the physics behind these critters.

• Are you an aspiring artist AND arachnologist? Make sure you look at this guide for drawing spiders! (some important dos and don’t, e.g., make sure the legs are not emerging from the abdomen, a common mistake!)

• The amazing Ainsley Seago knows how to draw spiders. Here is one of her pieces; perfect for Archnophiles:

A male peacock spider (Maratus amabiis), doing his dance. [by A. Seago, reproduced here with permission]

• Ghosts of the cloud forests. Amazing summary of new species of Diptera.

• Honey bees can distinguish between Monet and Picasso paintings. 

• Bad news on the beetle front: Asian long-horned beetle found in a new part of Ontario

• Better beetle news: here’s a nice wood-boring beetle, and one that is sexual dimorphic.

• Bioinspiration 1: springtails & super materials.

• Bioinspiration 2: a creeping robot for colonoscopy based on earthworms.

• Bioinspiration 3: synthetic spider silk.

• Ant sniffers. The odor of the odorous house ant (blue cheese, anyone?)

• A big win for McGill & Entomophagy: Insects to feed the world

• A lovely image from Sean McCann, showing a moulting Opiliones. (Thanks, Sean, for allowing me to share it here)

• Red food dye from potatoes NOT bugs.

• Ecological periodic tables. 

• Back to Nature: The ever-talented Malcolm Campbell hits a home run again with a wonderful post about field work and connections to nature. Lovely.

• War, space and the evolution of old world complex societies. Neat paper – very useful example for teaching population ecology.

• Please watch this: A murmation of hunted starlings. 

• There’s hope for all aspiring authors: Kurt Vonnegut (one of my favourite authors) got rejected too.

• Good news for Montreal – the Ecomuseum receives a major donation - its doors open the world of local wildlife to so many people.

• Tweet of the week goes to Paul Manning (Rhodes Scholar, and guy with a good sense of humour!)

• MOOCs & more: Questioning Higher Education.

• Dear students (part 2).

• Climate change: how hot will it get in my lifetime? An interactive (sobering) guide.

• From Business Insider: why you should care about Twitter. Some good ideas in there, including the fact that the learning curve is steep.

• String theory explained through Bohemian Rhapsody. Wow, some people are so talented.

• Our kids need to play: now, more than ever before. I agree.

• 13 little-known punctuation marks we should be using… 

• Some hairy photographs: top entries for the 2013 beard & moustache championship. 

• Grabbing your attention, with science: Creative advertising from Science World.

• Science Fiction fans: one giant poster comparing all kinds of starships. I want one.

• To finish, more on the peacock spiders (last week I was teaching about courtship behaviours in arthropods, and that discussion is not complete without viewing this video!):

To delegate means to entrust (a task or responsibility) to another person, typically one who is less senior than oneself.

The issue of how to delegate is, of course, common and widespread in the business community but academia is a bit peculiar. Let me explain my perspective: In some cases, delegation is straightforward, especially if a staff member is paid to do a particular job and if roles and responsibilities are well defined. Although these kinds of hierarchies exist in Universities and research institutes, these environments often include a high amount of volunteerism and some aspects of Universities (and research more generally) are run on collegiality and community-minded thinking.  Scientific societies would disintegrate if people didn’t share the work-load, and if society president’s weren’t able to delegate work to (often unpaid!) treasurers, web-masters and scholarship committees.  Universities wouldn’t operate effectively if Professors didn’t agree to sit on committees, often delegated by the Chairperson. Research laboratories would be unhappy places if some of the chores weren’t delegated, from making sure coffee supplies are well stocked, to ordering supplies – sometimes a paid technician does this work, but not always….

Academia is also full of “reverse hierarchies” – sometimes a more junior person has to ask a more senior person do take on a responsibility or task – this happens all the time: from seeking help putting together a symposium at a conference, to getting people to agree to sit on an editorial board.  Bottom line: there are COUNTLESS tasks in Academia that depend on delegation and often the tasks, roles and responsibilities don’t fit neatly into one person’s formal (paid) job description, and often the ‘senior to junior’ hierarchy isn’t straightforward .

And perhaps the most important point of all….  one of the biggest obstacles to delegation is the fact that many Academics are perfectionists. Academics, by in large, like to be in control of ALL THE THINGS, from preparing a CV, to setting up committee meetings, to driving a car to a field site. Professors, in general, have got to their position because of their ability to DO ALL THE THINGS and do them well. You can’t publish good papers without knowing how to write; you can’t publish papers without solid research funding, so you have to perfect the art of writing grants; you can’t get a post-doc position of tenure-track position without being able to put together a top-notch presentation and deliver it with the skills of a seasoned orator; you can’t get good teaching scores without investing time and energy into perfecting Powerpoint slides and learning the content….  etc., etc., etc.

However, as Peter Adler wrote over at Dynamic Ecology recently, it doesn’t get any easier. In fact, the job gets more demanding on time, expectations on productivity remain, teaching can be time-intensive, and the Academics are expected to do some administration. From a personal perspective, I am far busier now than I have ever been in the past (but I try not to complain about it).  Good time management skills are not enough to get everything done. What’s needed is an ability to delegate. Again, without effective delegation, burnout is inevitable.

With that backdrop, how do you delegate?

1) Know the players. Delegation requires knowing your community and knowing the skills and abilities of people within your community, whether it be a graduate student secretary, the treasurer of a scientific society, or a colleague down the hall. Before you can even think of delegation, realize that delegating any kind of work has a real, profound affect on somebody and on how they spend their time. It’s about people, so you must get to know these people! This means networking, whether it be around a coffee maker at work, over twitter, or attending a poster session at a conference.  Pay close attention to everyone you interact with, listen to them, learn their passions, learn what they like to spend their time doing.

2) Play nice. In addition to knowing your community, don’t be a jerk to your community! I mentioned Morgan Jackson at the start of this post; he’s an example of someone who is always willing to lend a hand, say a kind word, and be a team player. He plays nice. I am always happy to help Morgan in return, even though I am (in academic terms) his ‘senior’. This seems SO obvious, but I also know that not everyone plays nice. Some people are selfish, ignore those they deem as ‘inferior’, and require you to grovel to get an answer to an email.  It’s a tough world, and there are big personalities in Academia, and everyone has their own agendas.  This can be difficult to navigate, and politics in Academia can be fierce. However, a strategy that always wins is to play nice. Be collegial, polite, and try not to burn bridges. It’s hard to delegate if there’s nobody left that respects you.

3) Prioritize. Delegation is an art, and one of the trickiest parts is learning what to delegate and what to keep on your own plate. It’s also important to avoid delegating everything. Some things are too close to your own expertise, part of your job description and/or are tasks that you just love too much to give up. However, some tasks can be shared effectively among others, and can move away from your to-do list. Write down ALL that you have to do, and put a star beside those that you cannot see anyone else doing (ahem, if there are stars next to all of the tasks, you will burn out. Start again, and see point #6, below). If your are lead-author on a paper, you sure ought to read over those final page proofs! However, maybe your co-author could do a final check over all references, especially if s/he hasn’t contributed as much to the paper..?

4) Have a vision (& communicate it!). Delegation will not be successful if those you delegate to are not sure what role they are playing in the ‘big picture’.  No matter the size of the task, it is being done for some reason. Having someone give a guest lecture is pretty obvious: the guest lecture helps achieve the learning objectives of the class and gives students a new perspective on the content. Sure, that makes sense. But did you communicate that to both the students and the person giving the lecture? EVERYONE involved needs to understand the ‘why’ behind the jobs and tasks at hand. This means effective delegation requires carefully assessing why tasks are being done, and working to communicate this. If people are part of a vision (even one they may not 100% agree with), it’s a lot easier to get them to take part.

5) Ask and Explain. Sometimes it’s as easy as asking (nicely). This goes much smoother if you have a vision and that you have communicated this vision, as mentioned above. In addition to asking, it’s essential that the tasks you are delegating are clearly defined. A volunteer might agree to sort specimens if you ask them. However, a simple ask may result the job getting done, but perhaps with a lot of mistakes. Asking, and then giving someone a 1 hour tutorial and access to resources on-line will result in fewer errors. Preparing a living document that explains your protocols for sorting and letting them refine and improve the document is even better!  All tasks, regardless of their size, need to be defined. Just because you think it’s easy to do, straightforward, and simple doesn’t mean everyone else will.

6) Let go. (TRUST) I have noticed that many Academics (myself included!) don’t delegate because they say “Ah heck, I already know how to do that, it’ll take too much time to explain or show them how to do it…” or “I’ll do that myself, it’ll be faster“. There are a few problems here. First, if you say this about everything, burnout is inevitable. Second, as an Academic / Researchers/ Post-doc, etc, you are responsible for sharing knowledge and training others, and this takes time. In the time it takes you to ‘just do the task’ five times, you could have trained someone else. Third, this may indicate that you don’t ‘trust’ anyone else to do the job. You must let go of this! Be a perfectionist at the right times, but let some things go. There are errors in everything we do, so sharing them around is fine, for some tasks.  Remember, you have developed a network, you are team player, and you have shared your visions and prioritized, and defined the tasks. It’s time to let go.

7) Verify. Letting go does not mean letting go forever. There must be follow-up and discussion to ensure the job is done well. Accountability is key. Review the job, first on your own, and then with the person to whom the work was delegated. You must provide constructive feedback, but also listen to ideas, complaints and comments. This will help you redefine the task in the future, and they will feel more responsibility and ownership over the task. This also starts the amazing process of creating someone who can later become a delegator of tasks. This is what mentoring is all about… in your laboratory or classroom, you want people to walk away with confidence in what they do, and with an ability to take their skills sets and pass them along to others.

8) Reward. It’s absolutely essential that you reward those to whom you have entrusted a task or responsibility. If people do not feel their work is valued, and that they have not contributed in an important way, you have failed in effective delegation. If you reward, your vision will grow, your team will respect you, your (positive) network will increase. Rewards can be small or big: A few kind words, a big “THANK YOU”, some homemade cookies, a promotion, or a letter of reference. Here’s an example: I often get graduate students to give guest lectures in my courses. This saves me time, and helps me out when I’m overwhelmed. When students do these lectures, I offer to write them letters or recommendation specifically about their abilities in the classroom. Most take me up on this, and it’s a kind of reward. I also ensure to pass along kind words from the students in the class.

9) Get some training. The art of delegation is seldom on an Academic’s CV. It’s often learned by trial and error, and sometimes never really perfected. Like any skill, training is required. In some cases, informal training is enough. This can be via sitting on committees in scientific societies, learning from effective mentors, or just practicing. However, I think that most Academics are not very good at delegation, and more formal training is required. This could be in the form of workshops, perhaps for all incoming Profs at a University, or as part of a research conference. I would like to see these kinds of ‘management’ skills as part of EVERY graduate student’s program, as perhaps part of the seminar/course work often required during a graduate degree. WE MUST DELEGATE ergo WE MUST HAVE TRAINING.

10) Be a leader. Don’t shy away from leadership. Everything mentioned above is about leadership.  Professors are leaders, perhaps a leader in front of the classroom, as a research leader within your institution, a leading expert in an op-ed piece, or a leader on a committee about academic programs. Effective leaders are effective at delegation; in fact, I might argue it’s impossible to be a leader without being effective at delegation.  Behind every good leader is an even better team. It’s so cliché, but also so very true.

In sum, delegation is about empowerment and leadership. It’s about giving someone else ‘ownership’ over a task that is part of something bigger. Delegation will help you work on things that YOU need to work on, and help you avoid burnout. It’s a required skill for success in Academia.

(BIG thanks to twitter-folks to took part in the conversation about delegation, especially Morgan, Terry, Chris, Staffan, and others)

Here are some things I stumbled across this week:

• Bites from black widows.. a worthy read on the topic.  Note these important sentences: “But despite their fearsome reputation, black widows are surprisingly shy and retiring. Over the course of your life, you have probably walked past hundreds of black widows without even realizing it“

• Many Entomologists are Arachnophobic. (yes, two more legs can make a big difference)

• For the Arachnophobic entomologists: here’s a field guide for you (thanks Bug Girl for tweeting this!!)

• Why don’t spiders stick to their webs? Here’s a video that gives you the answer….

• Jumping spider poster! Jumping spider poster! Jump for joy!

• Some jumping spiders are amazing mimics of ants. Some jumping spiders snatch food from the mandibles of ants.

• Right, so now you are ready for a jumping spider photograph, courtesy of Tom Houslay (thanks, Tom, for permission to post it here!)

Phidippus regius having lunch, by T. Housley

• Tast-testing with your study organisms. “Not all aphids taste the same”. How about that!

• You can also let your study organisms bite or sting you. Sheesh!

• New species of bee named after Canadian bee expert, Cory Sheffield. Congrats, Cory!

• Wallace’s butterflies were lost. And found again. In a museum, by a 17 year old student. Awesome.

• Pest resistance to Bt corn – a paper out of Africa.

• Termite mounds and a (not-quite-true) bioinspirational story.

• A beautiful collection of insects. Wow.

• Want another beautiful insect, here’s a photo of Megalopyge opercularis [YES, THIS IS A CATERPILLAR!] courtesy of Matt Bertone. Um, despite its cute, furry and cuddly appearance, don’t play with it, please. (thanks Matt, for allowing me to post your image here)

• Sick pets make us think about why we empathize with animals. Malcolm Campbell wrote an excellent post on the topic. And he even quotes E.T. in the blog post (I remember that movie well…)

• How birds got their wings. Great story from McGill researchers!

• Another reason I love McGill University – my employer.

• Montreal’s Ecosystems at your service… an official launch happening this week!

• What scientists should talk about: their personal stories.

• On the topic of personal stories, a very lovely post over at the boreal beetle: “My Voyage(er)”

• Attention grad students: Get those papers out during your PhD - it’s the number 1 factor determining 10-year publication rate.

• A “refreshingly simple” guide for twitter. Aimed at teachers, but relevant to many…

• Is twitter making our kids smarter?

• More on twitter – here’s how to cite a tweet in an academic paper.

• Tweet of the week to… Amy Brown – I like this idea!

• Follow the money: what really matters when choosing a journal. Excellent post over at Dynamic Ecology.

• Sigh. Woman stabs roommate for refusing to stop listening to the Eagles. 

• When a garden ornament is a bit too realistic…

• Peripheral vision is weird. Don’t believe me? Go here.

• For some laughs, and for cats, check this out.

• To finish, so proud of my son, aspiring guitarist. Here he is, rockin’ out (with one of his friends on drums, and his guitar instructor on bass):

As is now traditional for my laboratory, here’s a plain-language summary of the paper:

Tree canopies, including those in deciduous forests in southern Quebec, are important for many different animals, including insects and spiders. These small, marvelous creatures crawl up and down trees with regularity, feed upon the leaves of trees, feed upon each other, and are food for animals such as birds and bats. Past research has shown that many species of insects and spiders live in tree canopies, and in general, more insects and spiders are found closer to the ground compared to the very tops of the trees. This makes sense, since deciduous tree canopies often need to be recolonized each spring, and tree canopies are relatively harsh environments – they are windy, hot, and often-dry places as compared to the forest floor.  What we don’t know, however, is whether the insects and spiders avoid the tree canopies because they may be eaten more frequently in the canopy as compared to the understory. The objective of this research was to test this question directly, and find out whether insects and spiders are arranging themselves, vertically, because predators may be preferentially feeding on them along this vertical gradient. This is a very important area of study since biodiversity is highly valued and important in forests, but we cannot fully appreciate the status of this diversity without discovering what controls it.

Our mobile aerial lift platform. TO THE CANOPY!

We did this work by using two experiments that involved manipulating different factors so we could get at our question in the most direct way possible. In the first experiment, we made ‘cages’ out of chicken wire and enclosed branches of sugar maple trees in the cages. We did this at the ground level all the way to the tops of trees, using a ‘mobile aerial lift platform’. These cages acted to keep out large predators, such as birds, but allowed insects and spiders to live normally on the vegetation. We counted, identified, and tracked the insects and spiders both within these cages, and in adjacent branches that did not have cages (the ‘control’). By comparing the control to the cage, we could find out whether feeding activity by larger vertebrate predators affected insects and spiders, and whether this differed when comparing the ground to the top of the trees. In the second experiment, we used small pins and attached live mealy worms (larvae of beetles) to the trunks of trees, and we did this in the understory all the way up to the canopy. We watched what happened to these mealy worms, and compared what happened during the day and overnight. This is called a ‘bait trial’, and let us figure out what sort of predators are out there in the environment, and in our case, whether they fed more often in the canopy compared to the ground-level. This second experiment was designed for seeing the effects of insect and spider predators along a vertical gradient whereas the first experiment was focused more on vertebrate predators (e.g., birds).

Munch munch. Carpenter ants feeding on mealworms.

Our results from the first experiment showed that the cages had an effect: more insects and spiders were found when they were protected from predation by birds. Birds are playing a big role in forest canopies: they are feeding on insects and spiders, and in the absence of vertebrate predators, you might speculate more insects and spiders would occupy trees. Our second experiment showed that ants were important predators along the tree trunks, and overall, the most invertebrate predators were found in the lower canopy. Both experiments, together, confirmed that the understory contained the most insects and spiders, and was also the place with the highest amount of predation pressure.  The take-home message is that there is an effect of predation on insects and spiders in deciduous forests, and this effect changes if you are in the understory as compared to the top of the canopy. We also learned and confirmed that insects and spiders remain a key element of a ‘whole tree’ food web that includes vertebrates such as birds, and that predators in trees tend to feed on insects and spiders along a gradient. Where there is more food, there is more predation pressure! Our work was unique and novel because this is the first time a study of predation pressure was done along a vertical gradient in deciduous forests. It will help better guide our understanding of forest biodiversity, and the processes that govern this diversity.

A more detailed discussion of this work is posted on the PeerJ blog.

• Perhaps the best entomology story of last week is… the insects with gears in its legs by Ed Yong

• That being said, a close runner-up is this one: sometimes poop happens if you are persistent.

• Don’t believe me? Well here’s a photo from that blog post (reproduced here, with permission)
  

  (photo copyright C. Ernst)

• Tarantula venom & insecticides.

• Harvestman munching on a mushroom!

• Arachnophobic Entomologists. Yup, it’s true! Entomology today reports…

• Sea spiders! Nope – not arachnids… but rather Pycnogonids! These are really fascinating animals – here’s a nice paper about them, from Matthew Cobb.

• Speaking of oceans and arthropods, check out this neat post over at Why Evolution is True.  Twitter is at its best with these kinds of science discussions.

• We know so little. A mystery about mites with feathery legs. 

• Bug spray 2.0

• Great looking paper about forest tent caterpillars in eastern Canada, by Chris MacQuarrie & coauthors.

• On the relationship between the pacific ‘garbage patch’ and insects. (thanks Cay!)

• On the relationship between grizzly bears and moths….

• Entomological methods: Derek Hennen explains Berlese funnels.

• The path of least resistance. A wonderful post about evolution, from Malcolm Campbell. I love this quote:  ”Evolution shows us that, contingent on the forces that shape them, paths of least resistance can lead to stunning innovation“

• Ok, I know you are now ready for a spider photograph, courtesy of Thomas Shahan (reproduced here, with permission)

Jumping spiders are the best.

• My favourite Scientist.

• Travel to the Galapagos…. with Google Street View.

• Natural History & desk-based ecology. 

• On writing well – terrific post by Sarah Boon (something I missed in last week’s Expiscor – oops!)

• For ecologists… A conversation with Bob Paine. Amazing!

• Navigating personal-professional boundaries in science.

• And the tweet of the week is courtesy of Meghan Drrns:

• Speaking of twitter – please follow along with my field biology class! Tweets starting this week, watch for #ENVB222

• On the topic of teaching – do students learn more from non-Tenure-track staff?

• Attention undergraduate students: Some thoughts about emailing your Profs 

• Are we too busy and overworked to think creatively? Terry McGlynn offers a perspective on this.

• How Chris McCandless died - a more scientific take on some of the mystery surrounding his death in Alaska.

• In praise of Buddleia - the butterfly bush names in honour of the Reverend Adam Buddle. I must see if I’m related to this botanist!

• And a spidery video to finish things off. So awesome:

This year things will be a little different: Students will again be completing natural history projects in the course, and will be doing so after assembling in groups early in the term. Projects will be focused on specific species found in our region, from trees to beetles, to mushrooms and mammals. Each week, students will be tweeting facts, anecdotes, and observations about their study species (and some of these tweets should come directly from the field)

Tweeting from the field!

So, this raises the question: why Twitter? 

1. Open. Twitter allows the conversation to go out to the world, to whomever is interested. It allows ANYONE with an interest in the topic to follow along, reply, interact and collaborate. It provides an opportunity for experts on the topic to comment and improve the quality of the content and information. As an instructor in a general field biology course, I cannot be an expert on all things, and thus twitter can bring in the experts.

2. Collaboration: Twitter is terrific at fast, easy collaboration. It allows quick commentary, discussion, and is immensely user-friendly. I am especially fond of the reply features in Twitter that allow a conversation to maintain some elements of open-ness for all to see, but the direction and flavour of the conversation can be  focused. Experts external to the course can quickly view the conversation and take part regardless of their geography. The quality of the ideas and content are what matters, not whether someone has a PhD, or attends a certain institution. Its requirement of 140 characters is an asset, making sure that users get to the point quickly, and thus allow opportunity for the careful construction of a sentence. It’s more difficult to write concisely and twitter presents an extreme example of this.

3. Tracking: The use of a hashtag allows easy archiving of content, including conversations, and it’s also possible to track who (outside of the course) engages with students, and has an interest in the topics. Students can monitor the activity occurring in other groups, and can learn about who to follow, who to engage with, and that can improve the quality of their own twitter use.  They can track related hashtags, and find content more specific to their own project.

4. Academic value: In my experience, twitter is not fully appreciated for its academic use. Twitter has serious value, and in some circles, twitter is embraced as a teaching tool (e.g., see this & this). Education is about people, communication and collaboration as much as it is about facts and content.  ANY tools that help us better connect, discuss and debate are good tools, and when we can engage a community beyond the institution’s boundaries, everyone wins. Sure, twitter can be fun and social, but its value is much deeper and more significant.

5. Validation: we all need to feel that things we do are valuable and valued.  In most University classes, students write for a Professor or Teaching Assistant, sometimes for peers, but seldom for an audience beyond the institution’s walls. Last year, one of the most significant ‘A-Ha!’ moments was when students talked with delight about how they interacted with people from other countries about their natural history projects – interactions facilitated by social media tools such as twitter.

A tweet from one of last year’s groups.

So, are you sold, now?  Make a twitter account and follow along!  Carly Ziter (incidentally, a TA for the class this term!) wrote an excellent ‘how to’ guide for social media (accessible from this page).  Follow the hashtag #ENVB222 and take part in this class, whether you live in Brisbane, Medicine Hat, or Dublin. If you like Natural History, you’ll enjoy the experience.

We are both overworked. We say “yes” to things when we should say “no”. Our to-do lists never end. We are distracted during dinner, and check our email or twitter feed obsessively. We want to slow down, but it’s easier said than done.

Here’s a proposal: if you and I stopped complaining to each other about how busy we were, I think we could start to wrestle back some control.

As Barbara Frei stated in a tweet yesterday, there seems to be some cultural context to this complaint: it’s some kind of badge of honour – bragging rights – self-importance:

“I’m busier than you are, look how important I am”. 

How very troubling.

Stop. Please stop. You are not busier than I am. I am not busier than you are. We are in this together. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others: it is unfair, makes us question what we are doing, and whether we are ‘busy enough’.

Complaining about how busy we are adds fuel to an already out-of-control fire. It adds to frenetic behaviour. It makes me feel bad and anxious, and I make you feel bad and anxious when I complain.

Fine, then. We agree? Good. Let’s shake on it.

But what do we do about our out-of-control lives?

Here are some ideas (and, by the way, I do all of these very, very poorly. Maybe by writing them down, it will help?):

1. Small things: Let’s take some moments to enjoy the little things that make us happy, be it strumming a mandolin, going for a run, or watching a sitcom.

 2. Priorities: I think we can prioritize more carefully, and think about what’s really important and deal with those things. Let’s stop using ‘I’m too busy’ as an excuse and be more honest about why we have or have not followed through on a commitment.

 3. Say no. If we don’t start saying no, it will never get better. Let’s say yes to things that are either required as part of our job, or things that bring us much personal satisfaction and joy.

4. Deflate that self-importance.  Um, sorry, but we are not *that* important. The world won’t stop if we stop or slow down. We are fortunate to be busy. Many people need a job, can’t find food for their family, or are sick. Let’s keep things in perspective.

 5. Lower expectations: time is the most limiting of resources, and the current state of instantaneous communication, and rapid access to everything is creating unreasonable expectations on time.  Let’s work to lower expectations on how quickly things ought to be done, by us and by others.

This post was inspired by recent writings about time, by Terry McGlynn and David Maddison. And by discussions I have with colleagues (and my wife), almost every day.