This site has moved to a new one (http://microgastrinae.myspecies.info/)

Finally I am ready to move the contents of this blog (and many other things, including tons of new information on parasitoid wasps that I did not have time to share) to a new site. It can be accessed here: http://microgastrinae.myspecies.info/ 

The new site is not a blog but has a more flexible arrangement where new data can be accessed, explored and shared easily, and has many more features that we are still exploring. I write "we" because I am doing that new site altogether with Dr. Darren Ward (from Landcare Research, New Zeland... yes, the same researcher that led the paper on "the Hobbit wasps"). And hopefully more researchers would be interested to join!

We are using the Scratchpads platform (details on what Scratchpads is and what it can do were posted on this blog a while ago, and can be read here). We are still learning, and have not had the time yet to add everything we have prepared. But is coming bit by bit, and I encourage the reader to visit the new site, browse it and send us any feedback to make it better.

This new endeavour will be exclusively devoted to Microgastrinae parasitoid wasps, and their caterpillar hosts. Most of the contents of this blog will migrate to the new site, others will be edited and expanded in scope. In the meantime I will keep this blog online. But eventually it will disappear from the cyberspace...

We are learning with a new "toy", and it may take a few more weeks before the new site is fully set up. But we are trying our best to move it all as smooth and fast as possible.

Thank you very much for visiting us here, and we really hope you will follow us to the new site: http://microgastrinae.myspecies.info/

The potential of the Biodiversity Data Journal

For the past few months a new and promising journal has been part of the family of journals under the umbrella of Pensoft Publishers. In the meantime other journals have been added to Pensoft portfolio and, beyond of this publisher, there are dozens of new journals being added every year. So what is news here?

Well, the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) is not exactly your regular biodiversity/taxonomic journal. For one, it does not have upper or lower limit on the size of papers to be published there (more on that below). Another novelty is the online review system, the consolidation of all reviews in one single document (online), and other technical tricks that allow for a faster process of publication. When I write fast I mean much FASTER than a regular journal. There are other interesting features and capabilities (some already functional, others to be added in the near future) that make this journal very attractive. The reader is strongly recommended to check the Editorial that introduced the journal four months ago.
 

Personally, there are three things that specially attract me. First, the fact that there is no lower limit on the data to be published allows for new distribution records, new biological information, and similar data (stored in many natural history collections) to be published now in a much expedite way. Usually taxonomist would wait for a big monograph or review to add that kind of information. But, as it is well known, such big papers may take years (if not decades) to be prepared. And, in the meantime, the data is seating in the collections, unused, loosing value, and even risking to be lost (if, heaven forbids, the taxonomist dies before finishing his/her review). The BDJ can now help to solve at least part of this bottleneck.

The second thing that I like is the possibility of post-publication review of the papers (although I still have not seen any paper being reviewed that way, but hopefully it will happen soon). This will allow for the community to weight into the published papers, which will certainly help to improve the accuracy and quality of what has been published. We are still in the infancy of this kind of approach, but I can see the merits of this, and I am a strong supporter of the idea.

About Scratchpads and related websites

Since I started this blog, my main motivation has been to share information about braconid wasps parasitizing caterpillars (mainly the subfamily Microgastrinae). At the time, it seemed to be the easiest and simplest way to post new photos, host data, and other comments on the group of wasps I work with.  

But I never anticipated to continue blogging for too long... To start with, I do not consider myself a blogger, much less an expert in social media. And there are clear limitations to what can be accomplished with a blog. Furthermore, I do not have a mental disposition to keep writing periodically, but instead I post things whenever I have time -and that is the same to say on an irregular basis...

Then, a few months ago a colleague and friend in Belgium, Yves Braet, contacted me to start a collaboration studying microgastrines from French Guiana. And he mentioned Scratchpads, a free tool to create, publish and contribute to biodiversity knowledge online. I strongly recommend anyone interested in sharing info on species (biodiversity, taxonomy, ecology, etc) to visit Scratchpads and see what it has to offer. It is a nice (and free!) resource to get one started on one's personal group. You will find really neat sites created on various groups -and it is amazing how much can be done.

The only problem is that you have to spend time learning how to create your own website devoted to a taxonomic group. There is a learning curve that requires some effort and time from the interested researcher... and time is the most precious commodity these days.

However, I keep thinking on that, and in the future I may just migrate all contents from this blog to a site within Scratchpads. The main motivation being that information would be presented in a much better and useful way than in this blog. So, the days of this blog may be counted...

Actually, I already went and started a site called New World Microgastrinae. I just uploaded a few photos and wrote three paragrpahs, kind of a test of what could be done. But, since doing that, I have not been able to work more on that site, and it may take awhile before something useful comes from that. Or not, one never knows how things may develop.

Either way, I still hope to find a solution that would allow me to share the information in the easiest and most practical way (Am I dreaming in colors?). Perhaps the reader knows of other possibilities like Scratchpads. If so, please let me know. I am still open to explore different avenues to present the data that I have. Thanks!

Internet resources about Microgastrinae. Part VI

This is the sixth part of a series of posts discussing available, free, Internet resources on microgastrine wasps (Braconidae). The interested reader can retrieve the complete series by searching for the Tag "Internet Resources" within this blog.

The site featured today, with the logo of the Hymenoptera Institute, is maintained by Dr. Michael Sharkey, University of Kentucky. It contains lots of information, mainly on Braconidae, although there are also many things beyond that family (and even beyond Hymenoptera) that will be of interest to the reader. 

Of particular interest to this blog are the pages devoted to "Research Projects". The different projects showcased there illustrate the breadth of the work being done by Mike and his students/colleagues. 

One can find, for example, information about inventories being done in mega-diverse countries such as Colombia and Thailand (for Thailand, it is possible to read the whole series of TIGER newsletters, a publication that covered a project sampling and studying the diversity of Hymenoptera in a series of Thai National Parks. Those newsletter make for a very interesting and instructive reading!). 

There are details about the Hymenoptera Tree of Life, a project that has been going on for many years. And one can also find brief presentations of present and former students/collaborators of Mike. I always find interesting this kind of information, because allows anyone to know more about people and their research interests.

For those interested in Braconidae in general, there are Delta keys (and data matrices) for the whole family, as well as for some of the "pet groups" of Mike -namely Agathidinae. Although the major emphasis is on agathidines, there is much more than that. Most of the information is free to access and download, which is one of the reasons why the website is featured and recommended here.

Internet resources about Microgastrinae. Part V

This is the fifth part of a series of posts discussing available, free, Internet resources on microgastrine wasps (Braconidae). The interested reader can retrieve the complete series by searching for the Tag "Internet Resources" within this blog.

The choice of today is a especial one, because it is a website widely used by thousands of users, but it is perhaps overlooked in many ways when speaking of taxonomy. I am referring today to The Barcode of Life Data Systems or BOLD, as it is commonly known and mentioned. 

The best way to summarize what BOLD is can be found in its "About Us" section, which states that: "The Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) is an informatics workbench aiding the acquisition, storage, analysis, and publication of DNA barcode records. By assembling molecular, morphological, and distributional data, it bridges a traditional bioinformatics chasm. BOLD is freely available to any researcher with interests in DNA barcoding..."

Yes, BOLD is one of the most powerful sources of molecular data -and analysis of that data- that exists at present. And yet, there is much more when thinking about microgastrine wasps. Because Microgastrinae happens to be the largest group of any parasitoid wasp represented in BOLD. There are almost 30,000 specimens, with 24,000+ of them having rendered sequences (20,000+ of them "barcode complaint"), and almost 2,600 species (with 1,700+ of those species represented by at least one barcode). I have not looked at all the groups  in BOLD, but I am pretty sure that very few subfamilies of living things are better represented there in the significant way that Microgastrinae is.

Stop for a moment to consider the magnitude of those numbers, and contrast them against the total of described species of Microgastrinae -which is around 2,200. What BOLD figures partially tell us is the story of the amazing diversity of this group of wasps. And most of that information (around 70%) is freely available to any interested researcher. That is because a recent paper released (i.e. made public) around 20,000 of those sequences and associated information -I commented about that in a previous post. That means any person with a sequence suspected to be a microgastrine wasp can now check it against that huge database and sees if it matches any of the ones already in BOLD. And if not, at least find out how "close" to other sequences it may be.

Internet resources about Microgastrinae. Part IV

This is the fourth part of a series of posts discussing available, free, Internet resources on microgastrine wasps (Braconidae). The interested reader can retrieve the complete series by searching for the Tag "Internet Resources" within this blog.

The post of today will deal with a journal website: Annales historico-naturales Musei nationalis hungarici. The reason why such a site is included here is because of the amount of papers it has on Braconidae, as free pdfs. If one does a search in the journal (using "Braconidae" as keyword and searching in "all fields") it is possible to retrieve 63 papers, 60 of them downloadable as pdf documents. And at least half of those papers are about Microgastrinae.

The main reason for so many papers on Braconidae (and indeed on microgastrines) is due to the prolific work of the Hungarian braconid expert, Dr. Jenő Papp, a former researcher with the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Jenő, now retired (but still working and actively publishing at the age of 80!), has described around 750 new species of Braconidae, including 130 or so Microgastrinae. Especially important is his series of 12 papers "A survey of the European species of Apanteles..." where he dealt with the Palearctic fauna of Apanteles -which at that time included most of Microgastrinae, with the exception of Microgastrinae, Microplitis and a couple of small genera. Altogether with the work of Nixon (a British researcher, to be featured in future posts here), the papers of Papp should be consulted by anyone studying specimens in the Holarctic region -i.e. North America, Europe and temperate Asia. Thanks to the open access provided to many of those papers by the "Annales historico-naturales Musei nationalis hungarici" it is now possible to download and study Papp's work.

What I find most amazing of Jenő, a great researcher and character, is that most of his career happened during the socialism times in Hungary. As a result, it was difficult for him to access other European collections (especially those from Western Europe). However, he managed to keep publishing. And, as far as I know, he was the first braconid expert from Europe to embrace the new generic concepts of Microgatrinae proposed by Mason in 1981. Papp produced a paper in 1988 (part XI of his series on Apanteles) where he transferred the older names of European species to the new genera described by Mason.  

Internet resources about Microgastrinae. Part III

This is the third part of a series of posts discussing available, free, Internet resources on microgastrine wasps (Braconidae). The interested reader can retrieve the complete series by searching for the Tag "Internet Resources" within this blog.

Today I will be discussing the Digital Collection of the Taiwan Agriculture Research Institute (TARI), a project that claims it is aimed to avoid the unnecessary damage to its insect collection by providing access to images of its specimens. The website has a clear Copyright Statement -which can be read here. It is quite fair, and allows the visitor to use the information as long as the source is acknowledged.

I first found this site when doing some searches for Microgastrinae photos. And I was impressed by the quality and scope of the pictures. Last time I checked, it contained images of 514 species of Braconidae, including 77 microgastrines. [Of course, the project also shows photos of other insect orders, but I only checked for the  braconid wasps featured there]. 

Most of the specimens have been photographed several times (lateral and dorsal views, head frontal, details of the meso and/or metasoma, labels of the specimen, etc). Sometimes a couple of specimens per species are shown, and although it might be argued that there is duplication of images, it is however good to see more than one specimen.

Internet resources about Microgastrinae. Part II

This is the second part of a series of posts discussing available, free, Internet resources on microgastrine wasps (Braconidae). The interested reader can retrieve the complete series by searching for the Tag "Internet Resources" within this blog.

One of the most important sites for any person working with braconids (and indeed also with Ichneumonidae wasps, but that is beyond this blog) is Taxapad: http://www.taxapad.com/. I would argue that perhaps this is THE main resource freely available when checking for names of species, its hosts, the plants related to those species (either as food for the host, or just as a food source for the wasp itself), and associated references. The starting point for all those searches is the page named Global Index, I guarantee to anyone who browses it to be amazed by the amount of information provided there. 

As extraordinary as the online, free version of Taxapad is, there is yet a much more complete electronic version, currently sold as a flash drive (Dicky Sick Ki Yu, Cornelis van Achterberg & Klaus Horstmann. 2012. Taxapad 2012, Ichneumonoidea 2011. Database on flash-drive. www.taxapad.com, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). That Taxapad version has many more options and resources. For example, it allows the user to generate a list of species for a particular region or country, search available references for a particular taxon, look at host families for a group of species, or the institution hosting a holotype, synonym history, and many more things. It is worth every cent of its price, and any institution/researcher that can afford it, should seriously consider buying it. [Disclaimer: I have no relationship whatsoever with the making and/or commercializing of Taxapad].

The genius behind Taxapad is Dicky Yu, an unsung hymenopterist hero. Through his hard work gathering references, and his mastery of databasing, we are all lucky to have the powerful tool that Taxapad is. Of course, we are also lucky to have Kees van Achterberg (a braconid specialist) and Klaus Horstmann (an ichneumonid specialist) that provide the expert review of the contents. [And for the Taxapad module of Chalcidoidea wasps, we are also lucky to have John Noyes doing that part].

Internet resources about Microgastrinae. Part I

When I started thinking about this blog (and how to do it, what to put here, etc), of course that I asked for advice. Several colleagues were encouraging. Others did not care much. One told me: "Why should you worry to write a blog that might be read by 4-5 people...?" 

As hard at is sounds, it might well be the truth: after 2 months and a dozen of posts, I had only received two comments (plus a few courteous email messages). It certainly did not look as if the masses out there were crazy to know more about braconids. If only a braconid wasp would be brave enough to marry a TV "celebrity"... you can only dream.

Seriously though, the main motivation to write this blog came from the realization of how few (and sometimes outdated) information about Braconidae is out there. With this post I am starting a series examining the available Internet resources on Microgastrinae. I am focusing on that subfamily because it is the group I work with, but the situation is pretty much the same for any braconid subfamily -and indeed for most of the parasitoid wasps overall... As part of my "review" of those sites, I will add my opinions on them. [Of course, you should take my comments with a grain of salt, feel free to judge those websites by yourself, and not necessarily agree with what I think!].  

At the beginning of my work with microgastrine wasps, in 2006, my initial stop would invariably be the site of Dr. James Whitfield, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There were three main reasons for that: 

1) You can find there lots of Jim's papers (plus some of his former students and/or colleagues) as free pdf files for downloading. My initial library on the group was made primarily from those resources, including some very useful keys. I particularly recommend his key to the New World genera of Microgastrinae, but also very handy are the keys on Pholetesor (2006) and Parapanteles (2009). Any person interested should browse with detail the resources there under "Publications".