We passed this truck on our way to NC. It would have been better if the eagle was crying tears of FREEDOM and 'MURICA.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Friday, May 30, 2014
Day 3
Going to keep this short because I have a headache. Finished going through a bag. The Doc came in, and I showed her some flies that I thought were a different variety of Geron or in family bombyliinae. She thinks they are phthirine or usinine based on their antenna. Such confusion, looks like I'll have a project Monday. That's about it. Bleh.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Day 2
As I sit her on this extremely large mattress in an extremely small bedroom, enjoying a bowl of ramen, allow me to tell the tale of day two.
Day two was similar to day one, but more productive. I situated myself at my station, powered on the TV and microscope (the scope was a webcam attached to the TV so people can see what I am looking at), and went to fly town. I spent the majority of my working on one bag of flies. I was coming across a couple issues with most of the flies.
1) I keyed a majority out to be Exoprosopa. That should be the end of the story right? Wrong. Many of the flies were missing the distinct Exoprosopa antenna. This is what the antennae should look like:
Most of the antennae I was looking at were lacking that second flagellomere, which is a defining trait of the genus. Dr. Student looked at one, and said that it didn't look broken. The Doc looked at them and couldn't decide if it was "intentional" or not. Seriously, what are the odds that six flies all have broken flagellomeres? Actually, potentially really good, because The Doc might have found an antenna with the stub of a broken flagellomere.
2) One of the flies obviously lacked this antenna trait and I keyed them out to be Litorrhynchus which I think is still technically Exoprosopa but these mouth parts were projecting pretty far beyod the oral cavity. But the wings did not really resemble this one picture of Litorryhncus wings I had, but they weren't really Exoprosopa-y either.
Eventually The Doc came in and we came to the mutual decision that it would be better for me to stay away from the anthracine flies (ex. Exoprosopa, Villa, Anthrax, etc.) because there is a lot of them and they're annoying/difficult to identify because of their traits. My focus is going to be else where now. I found a bunch of Systropus which are pretty cool wasp mimics, a bunch of Gerons which I have literature on, and some Systeochus which are adorable. I also have two flies in bombyliinae, that are different from the Systeochus I sorted. I then need to go through everything else and pull out the non anthracine flies. My life is going to be somewhat easier, and some what harder because finding the literature of the known species so I can compare to what I have is going to be a pain.
Day 1 (late)
Today marks the first official day of my internship at the Museum of Natural Sciences (again). Let me give you a brief cast of characters of who I'm working with:
Me!
The Doc (Sort of working with me, it is complicated and it's not my place to go into it on this blog. So good to a lowly undergrad like me.)
Dr. Student or DS for short (The Doc's grad student who actually isn't on my project. Pretty cool guy though, super smart and nice.)
So for reasons I'm not getting into, my summer at the museum is going to be a lot of independent work for The Doc, and a few scheduled events. I will be attending Evolution 2014, sitting on The Doc's meeting with some Germans, possibly be doing some bee fly ID at NCSU, attending a class for the museum interns, probably giving a talk at the end of the summer, doing some research/writing for The Doc's website, and Peru! I'm probably forgetting a couple things, but you know I'll be writing about them. Onto my first day!
I got to the museum early (despite grabbing breakfast with my dad and showing him the fish tank), and even though The Doc said to wait in her office if I arrived early, I was kind of afraid to go into the lab, because I wasn't sure if I would be remembered or not. It didn't matter because no one noticed me walk in and The Doc re-introduced me. My morning started with a nice chat with The Doc about what I'm doing this summer, what her goals for me are, what she's been up to, etc. We ran to her car to get the Malagasy bombyliids.
The one bag of dried specimens I tried to ID were terrible. A lot of headless bodies, a lot of heads, missing legs, missing abdomens, missing claws, wings I couldn't manipulate. It was not a good day for ID-ing, and I have a feeling most of the others will be just as poor. That's why I switched to specimens in alcohol. Much easier to manipulate and in much better shape. My eagerness to start identifying overtook the fact I had to make labels. Label making is so tedious, because you can't waste the special paper, and therefore end up making labels for everything (which is inevitable).
Once labels were made, I began to go through the vials to start, identify (more like educated guessing, because the literature on Malagasy is old, difficult to find [and by this I mean does not exist on the internet], or written in another language when it can be found. Last summer I tried my darnedest to find any species of bee fly native to Madagascar, so I kind of have a vague idea of what I can see and what would be "normal" for the region. Then again, it is Madagascar and there are so many undiscovered and poorly documented organisms there. And that, pretty much was my first day back.
Me!
The Doc (Sort of working with me, it is complicated and it's not my place to go into it on this blog. So good to a lowly undergrad like me.)
Dr. Student or DS for short (The Doc's grad student who actually isn't on my project. Pretty cool guy though, super smart and nice.)
So for reasons I'm not getting into, my summer at the museum is going to be a lot of independent work for The Doc, and a few scheduled events. I will be attending Evolution 2014, sitting on The Doc's meeting with some Germans, possibly be doing some bee fly ID at NCSU, attending a class for the museum interns, probably giving a talk at the end of the summer, doing some research/writing for The Doc's website, and Peru! I'm probably forgetting a couple things, but you know I'll be writing about them. Onto my first day!
I got to the museum early (despite grabbing breakfast with my dad and showing him the fish tank), and even though The Doc said to wait in her office if I arrived early, I was kind of afraid to go into the lab, because I wasn't sure if I would be remembered or not. It didn't matter because no one noticed me walk in and The Doc re-introduced me. My morning started with a nice chat with The Doc about what I'm doing this summer, what her goals for me are, what she's been up to, etc. We ran to her car to get the Malagasy bombyliids.
The one bag of dried specimens I tried to ID were terrible. A lot of headless bodies, a lot of heads, missing legs, missing abdomens, missing claws, wings I couldn't manipulate. It was not a good day for ID-ing, and I have a feeling most of the others will be just as poor. That's why I switched to specimens in alcohol. Much easier to manipulate and in much better shape. My eagerness to start identifying overtook the fact I had to make labels. Label making is so tedious, because you can't waste the special paper, and therefore end up making labels for everything (which is inevitable).
Once labels were made, I began to go through the vials to start, identify (more like educated guessing, because the literature on Malagasy is old, difficult to find [and by this I mean does not exist on the internet], or written in another language when it can be found. Last summer I tried my darnedest to find any species of bee fly native to Madagascar, so I kind of have a vague idea of what I can see and what would be "normal" for the region. Then again, it is Madagascar and there are so many undiscovered and poorly documented organisms there. And that, pretty much was my first day back.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
A resurrection
The spring semester of my junior year has ended, which means writing on this blog can become a thing again. I should probably update whoever reads this about my life since April 4th. I can't right now, I'm at work. In other news, I will start writing about working at the museum again! But later I will, because as I said, at work (and trying to get the printer to work on my computer).
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