News Flash

I will be starting a new, part-time job shortly at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. My title will be "Assistant Butterfly Curator" for the Butterfly Magic exhibit of live butterflies that runs from October through April. Elizabeth Willott, Curator of Butterflies, will be my supervisor there. I am very much looking forward to learning how to better train and manage volunteers, which will account for most of my duties.

I am still actively seeking full-time work online, in media, and museums, but am very grateful to TBG for extending me this offer. I will still have time to continue freelance work as well.

Next Job, Please

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming to bring you this important message: I need a new job. One that let’s me use my knowledge, one that let’s me use my skills, one that pays enough so that I can pay my bills….Oh, sorry, I got confused with that Huey Lewis & the News song, “I Want a New Drug.” Well, the basic premise is the same: I would like my next career position to be as rewarding as the last one at the University of Massachusetts.

Ideally, I would like to be at the interface between the scientific community and the general public. I am nothing if not creative and skilled in communications. Scientific journalism, natural history interpretation, and related fields do not seem to be valued here in the United States, however, and such positions are difficult to come by. There is great reliance on docents and other volunteers at museums and parks for example. Most of the professional naturalists I know are behind desks, pushing pencils, and training volunteers to do the actual public programs.

Still, I am cautiously optimistic that I can find a niche. I do need to develop additional professional networks, though. Currently, my professional network consists mostly of entomologists, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world. I need to start befriending more writers and media professionals, however, if I am to advance to a point where I can reach a much larger audience with my message of tolerance and appreciation of the natural world.

I already owe a debt of gratitude to Gwen Pearson for connecting me with a project that promises to take me in the general direction I want to go, and that will help supplement whatever regular income I eventually obtain. Thanks also to Troy Bartlett and Joe Clapp, who understand where I want to go and keep providing job leads. I welcome even more of those potential opportunities from the rest of you. Don’t hesitate to ask me for the same for yourself, either.

Thank you for your indulgence. We will return you shortly to your regularly-scheduled episodes of Bug Eric.

It's Raining Opportunities

The good news is that I am not at a loss for continued work, now and after the University of Massachusetts job ends its six-month run in two weeks. The bad news is that none of the new projects by themselves will keep me afloat financially. Still, I am very grateful because they are taking me in directions I have wanted to go for a long time.

Naturally, the project I am most excited about is the one I am basically sworn to secrecy about. Suffice that it involves technology. The caliber of the other individuals involved is first-rate, and I have been warmly received. I will say more when I am able, I assure you.

The other project I just learned about today. Suffice that this one involves commercial television, but is so embryonic that the producer himself cannot guarantee anything. I have been graciously welcomed there, also, and look forward to the possibilities.

Still, I am open to receiving invitations for complementary projects and/or steady work, ideally with healthcare benefits kicking in before allergy season does. Allegra is really expensive!

Best wishes to all of you for continued good health, employment, travel, laughter, and all the other things that make life truly worth living.

Work, Work, Work

I do not like to make excuses for why there are long gaps between blog entries, but right now I am up to my ears in work, and my six month stint here at the University of Massachusetts is winding down.

My current priorities are to finish my tasks in the lab, complete a private project identifying bee specimens, and start packing up to move back to Arizona. Blogging is going to have to be put on the back burner for now, so please bear with me while posts are more infrequent.

Once I return to Tucson, I also aim to drive more traffic to my Sense of Misplaced blog, where I can be more creative, philosophical, and opinionated.

Another day in Entomology Land

Once I finished sorting the pitfall trap samples by order (beetles separate from flies, wasps, spiders, etc), then I set about trying to identify the Hymenoptera (ants, wasps, bees) more specifically. Mind you, I am used to dealing with insects over five millimeters long. In the world of pitfall traps, anything that big is absolutely gigantic. Most of what I’m coming across are minute parasitic wasps and a few ants. The following is a typical sort from order to family level or below in terms of classification.

I start by dumping the vial into a watchglass. The specimens usually stick to the vial, so I have to wash them out with alcohol. Some are very stubborn indeed. Then I stick the watchglass under the microscope and start sorting. A sample may contain anywhere from one to twenty or so specimens, hopefully all of them belonging to the same order (Hymenoptera in this case).

I segregate them by the most specific classification I am able. This often requires the use of scientific documents called “dichotomous keys.” A key is a series of couplets, each couplet describing one or more characters of external anatomy of the insect before you. You find the character(s) that match your specimen, then proceed to the next couplet and so on, until you arrive at a family, genus, or species name. If I am keying out an insect from Massachusetts, and I arrive at a family of insects found only in Sumatra, well, guess who made a boo-boo? This can be no fault of your own, though. I once keyed out a wasp to a genus found only in Japan because my specimen was missing one tarsal (foot) spine that had broken off. Sure enough, the other leg had the full complement of spines. Yes, it is enough to drive you crazy.

The microscope I am using is a binocular stereo “zoom” model that, near as I can tell, takes me up to fifty power (fifty times the size of the insect you are viewing). Even this is not always enough. I had to laugh when I came across one couplet in a key that was illustrated with an SEM! Sure, I’ll jut bop on over to my neighborhood scanning electron microscope, no problem. The University of Massachusetts does have one, but you can’t just barge in with your bug. It is a major exercise to render images of anything under one of those machines, including coating the specimen in a thin layer of gold.

Fortunately, my friend Jeff Boettner was able to rustle-up another key that is much more user-friendly. Got to credit Agriculture Canada for producing such fine works, eh?

Now, if it were only still in print….

It is very gratifying to find that your specimen matches the illustrations in the key, like the sculpturing on the propodeum (hindmost part of the thorax) of this cynipid gall wasp (figure "aa" on the page of the book shown here). Yes, the specimen is standing on its head in this imge.

I am truly learning as much doing this work as I am producing for the university, but then, isn’t that what life should be about? Soon I will share more images of some of the spectacular little insects I’m finding in these samples.

The Lab

Welcome to Holdsworth Hall on the campus of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), my home for the next six months. The campus is largely deserted now, graduation having happened about a week ago, and my supervisor, Theresa Portante, herself a grad student, is leading her team in the field for the summer. I will be pretty much alone for the next three months.

There is not much to set my workspace apart from any other scientific technician, but I am grateful for a very nice microscope, illuminator, computer with internet, a small clock radio, and lots of ethyl alcohol. No, the alcohol is not for stress relief! It is the preservative used for the trap samples I will be sorting through.

Right now I am sorting through pitfall trap samples taken on each of last year’s study plots, all of them in wetland habitats that dry out during the heat of summer. Each sample comes in a labeled plastic cup with a locking lid. My job is to segregate the invertebrates contained therein into separate shell vials. Each “order” level of classification gets its own vial. It is not as easy as it sounds. Globular springtails and wingless barklice are easily confused, for example.

Lunch is my chance to get outdoors and breathe some fresh air after sniffing alcohol all morning. My favorite haunt thus far is the ”Campus Pond,” a surprisingly lush, well-landscaped water feature. Aside from being mobbed by ducks accustomed to being fed by everyone that lingers on the shore, I find it is a peaceful spot to enjoy a brown bag meal.

At some point I hope to include an entry in this blog that details what it is like to process a sample. Meanwhile, coming soon….let sleeping wasps lie, giant ichneumons, and other stories from the field.

I'm He-e-e-re!

I arrived in Massachusetts Tuesday night, May 26, via the Hartford, Connecticut airport. My friend Cynthia Boettner was kind enough to pick me up there and take me back to their place in Shelburne Falls. Her husband Jeff had to make an unexpected trip to British Columbia to collect some parasitic flies that are potential biocontrols for the winter moth, an invasive species here in Massachusetts.

Wednesday morning I met my new housemate, Crystalyn, and her companion Ruby (a delightful dog), as she was headed off to work training horses. Crystalyn went out of her way to accommodate me and my stuff, which considering the relatively small house, took some doing. The owner of this 1910 “railroad house” lives in New York, but she has been most gracious as well.

Cynthia was kind enough to take me shopping for groceries and other essentials Wednesday evening, but doing the shopping on my own is going to be problematic. South Deerfield is not exactly a bustling metropolis, and major grocery stores are few and far between anyway. I do not drive, either, and making bus connections looks like it is going to be a struggle on a “good” day. Schools are out for the summer, so buses come and go with even less frequency in many cases. The good news: several routes servicing the “Five Colleges” area are free!

The weather has thus far been cool (upper 50s, low 60s) and damp, but there is still no shortage of fauna out and about. I’ve seen many birds, lots of insects, spiders, and harvestmen just on the property of my residence alone. There is a state preserve (Sugarloaf Mountain) just a stone’s throw from my immediate neighborhood, and I look forward to exploring that park soon. The view of the Connecticut River Valley from that bluff is worth the hike all by itself.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I meet my immediate supervisor at the lab on the campus of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and will relate what I am in for as far as the job goes. Thank you for your patience while I get settled in here. Posts should become more regular as I establish a routine.

Moving (temporarily) to Massachusetts

Today I accepted a temporary position as a Laboratory Assistant at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I will be sorting and identifying invertebrates from samples taken in an ongoing survey of forested watersheds, for a total of twenty-eight weeks beginning in late May or early June.

The project is a joint effort of the Department of Natural Resources Conservation at UMass, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

I am quite excited by this opportunity, but a bit apprehensive, too. I still have to find a place to live, for example. Any help in that department is most welcome. I don’t have enough time to pack-up all my belongings (including my large insect collection), so will be maintaining my Tucson residence while I am away. The “new economy” seems to translate to the “nomadic economy.” Lots of short-term work available in my field, but little permanent employment. I am still extremely grateful, mind you.

This blog and Sense of Misplaced will be maintained as best as I am able in the coming weeks and months, but your patience is appreciated during the transition period. Oh, and feel free to recommend a good laptop, too, as it looks like I’m going to need to get one.