August 2005

Student News

Lindsay Griffin was a major in the College of Business Administration, but she was not happy. Her academic performance was not up to her usual standards. She entered UF with 30 hours of Advanced Placement credits. Lindsay took "Bugs and People" (ENY 1001), a general education biology course for non-majors, to fulfill biology requirements and something odd happened. She fell in love with insects and entomology. She is now a senior entomology major in our pre-professional track.

Ms. Griffin is precisely the type of undergraduate student entomology & nematology wishes to attract. She is tireless, charming, bright and highly motivated. She was elected as a CALS Ambassador for the 2005-2006 academic year, and she will serve as a TA for "Bugs and People" in the Fall 2005 semester. She has been one of the few undergraduates to get involved in ENSO and has represented our department at various CALS events. She was the departmental recipient of the Leland A. Davis Memorial Scholarship for 2004-2005.

Lindsay was one of a few students accepted into the summer 2005 pre-Medical School training program at Columbia University in New York. She finished the course by winning the "Golden Stethoscope Award" as the top performing student among a nationally recruited class. Even better, she was invited by the University of Wisconsin Medical School to apply and has done so as a potential entering student in the Fall 2006 class. Congratulations, Lindsay! Keep up the excellent work. - Dr. Carl Barfield, Undergraduate Coordinator

Staff News

Andrew Puckett, a local high school student, begins his senior year this month. This summer he worked for free in Thomas Fasulo's lab. In return, Tom taught Andrew the concepts of Web site development. Andrew already had a basic knowledge of the code, but wanted to learn how to properly develop Web sites and their content.

Andrew's family is a member of the same Florida Civil War reenacting unit as Tom. Andrew added materials for their company Web site as well as the Battle of Olustee Web site that Fasulo developed for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and its Citizen Support Organization. This Web site, at http://battleofolustee.org/, was listed by the University of Virginia's Center for Digital History as one of the 95 Top Civil War Web sites in the book The Civil War on the Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites.

Andrew worked on two CD-ROMs that are nearing completion. These photographic gallery CDs cover cockroaches and stored product pests. He coded two issues of the newsletter for the Web and gained experience in manipulating images and HTML code as well as how to develop products that deliver content (text and images) in a easy to access but attractive format.

Alumni

Dr. Jaret C. Daniels, of the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, is offering Insect Conservation (ENY 6932). The course provides better understanding of the issues and concepts surrounding the conservation of insects and their ecological services.

Publications

Wilkerson JL, Webb SE, Capinera JL, Fasulo TR. (2005). Vegetable Pests I: Photographs of Coleoptera - Diptera - Hymenoptera. UF/IFAS SW 180.

Wilkerson JL, Webb SE, Capinera JL, Fasulo TR. (2005). Vegetable Pests II: Photographs of Acari - Hemiptera - Orthoptera - Thysanoptera. UF/IFAS SW 181.

Wilkerson JL, Webb SE, Capinera JL, Fasulo TR. (2005). Vegetable Pests III: Photographs of Lepidoptera. UF/IFAS SW 182.

Details on the above CD-ROMs are available at http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/fasulo/pests/software/.

Minno MC, Butler JF, Hall DW. 2005. Florida Butterfly Caterpillars and their Hostplants. University Press of Florida. 360 pp. Contains color photos of 167 species of butterfly caterpillars, 185 species of host plants, 18 life cycles, 19 habitats, and 169 distribution maps.

Halbert SE, Blackman RL. 2004. On the status of "Prociphilus californicus." Pan-Pacific Entomologist 80: 1-3.

Saarinen EV. 2005. Life history and myrmecophily of Neomyrina nivea periculosa (Lycaenidae: Theclinae). Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society 59:112-115.

Grants

Ph.D. student Jennifer M. Zaspel (Dr. Marc Branham's lab) received a $3,500 grant from the Committee of the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research to collect specimens of blood-feeding and fruit- piercing moths in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal (June-July 2005). The specimens collected on this trip will be used to examine phylogenetic relationships of blood-feeding and fruit-piercing moths, and in pathogenic endosymbiont surveys of blood-feeding moths (her dissertation research).

Ph.D. student Ricky Vazquez received a $500 Scholarship, $100 Mini-Grant, and a $100 Travel Grant at the 2005 Annual Florida Entomological Society meeting held at Sanibel Harbour, Ft. Myers.

Ph.D. student Emily Saarinen received a $2,500 scholarship from the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs to continue her dissertation research with the Miami blue butterfly.

Distance Education

The Principles of Entomology (ENY 3005) and Graduate Survey of Entomology (ENY 5006) distance education courses are now being taught as mixed delivery courses. Principles of Entomology is an introductory course designed for students majoring in entomology or other life science majors and Graduate Survey of Entomology is a graduate level introductory course for those who are new to the discipline. Previously, this class was delivered as a distance course using only the World Wide Web and textbook. The distance version portion has been modified and the lectures are now offered on CD-ROM, available through purchase at Orange and Blue Textbooks. The mixed delivery modes include the CD, textbook, and WebCT. This class is taught spring, summer, and fall and the enrollment averages between 40 to 50 students per semester.

Students in this course have participated from Missouri to West Virginia, to Paris, France. Besides traditional students, there are students with occupations including everything from small business owners, pest control operators, pheromone chemists, and plant pathologists. For those out-of-state students, there is also a distance lab, ENY 3005L/5006L. In this lab, students perform virtual and real-time lab experiments and submit worksheets and reports on their findings. Some of the lab highlights include a virtual Berlese collection and an insect vision lab involving colored lights. For more information about the course, please visit the course homepage at http://webbugs.ifas.ufl.edu/. The instructor for the course is Ph.D. student Rebecca Baldwin and the technical advisor is James Kocher.

Meeting and Presentations

Drs. Jim and Ale Maruniak are attending the Society for Invertebrate Pathology meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, 7-11 August. The title of their presentation is: "Potential horizontal transfer of an insect trypsin-like serine protease to Neodiprion sertifer NPV and Neodiprion lecontei NPV." Jim is also starting his 2-year appointment as the Chair of the Virology Division for the Society.

Graduate students Jennifer M. Zaspel and Emily V. Saarinen presented a poster in early August at the Annual Meeting of the Lepidopterists' Society in Sierra Vista, Arizona titled, "The Virbia of Cuba including a list of the specimens in the Instituto de Ecología y Systemática and Fernando de Zayas Collections (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae)." This work was done in collaboration with two graduate students, Alejandro Barro and Rayner Nuñez Aguila in the Departmento de Biología Animal y Humana, at Universidad de La Habana, Cuba.

Emily Saarinen also gave a presentation on "The Miami blue butterfly: A year in review and look at current research," at the Lepidopterists' Society meeting.

Newsletter Minutia

Thomas Fasulo is the newsletter editor. Issues are published the middle of each month. Submit items for an issue by the 7th of that month.

Printed copies are distributed only within Building 970. UF-Bugnews-l listserv subscribers receive notices when HTML and PDF copies are posted on the newsletter Web site at http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/news/ , which has instructions for subscribing and unsubscribing. Andrew Puckett coded the HTML version. Pam Howell and Nancy Sanders review the newsletter for errors and prepare the print version for distribution.

During the last twelve months, the newsletter Web site recorded 35,739 distinct visitors and 64,772 page views.

August 2005.