Terrestrial invertebrates
Curtis EwingPete Oboyski
George RoderickRosemary Gillespie
Elin ClaridgeApril Yang
Andrew YoungSylvain CharlatMarjorie Saillan
origins in NSF BS&Iand NSF Wolbachia grants
• PIs:
• R Gillespie, N Evenhuis, J Liebherr, D Polhemus, G Roderick
• N Davies, S Charlat, G Hurst
• Targets:
• Terrestrial arthropods of high islands of French Polynesia
• Insects
• Benefits: Assembled team of 20+ systematists
Tohiea
(photo: Tohiea summit, Moorea, with NSF-funded terrestrial arthropod survey team, l-r, J
Liebherr, D Polhemus, G Roderick, C Ewing, J Petit)
Conference
BS & I workshop February 2009, Tahiti
classroom outreach
•George showed a video here of elementary school kids from Moorea collecting and identifying insects and spiders.
Essig Museum website:
checklists of previously published
references to French Polynesia
Arthropods
http://essigdb.berkeley.edu/checklists/
http://biocode.berkeley.edu/
Goals•Complete inventory
•Endemics
•Invasives
•Human commensals
•Prepare for demonstration studies
•food web studies: spiders, lizards
•mosquito feeding
Plans and Targets
•Range of habitats
•Seasonality
•Estimations of completeness--accumulation
Expeditions•2006 -2008 pilot studies
•November 2008 (Curtis + Pete)
•March 2009 (Pete)
•May - June 2009 (Curtis + undergrad)
•July 2009 (Curtis + undergrad)
•September 2009
•Curtis, Pete, Menelaos Stavrinides (mites)
•plus continued collecting at semi-permanent plots
Sampling Plan
•Habitat zonation
•elevation
•precipitation
•vegetation
•land use
•Complementary Trapping
•light traps, pitfalls, litter samples, hand collecting, etc.
•species accumulation curves for habitats & traps
Moorea habitats carved into sampling zones
Specimens•2000+++ specimens of insects & spiders to
process
• 2006 - 198 insect specimens added to BioCode Database
• 2008 - 424 insect specimens added to BioCode Database
• 2009 - 140 insect specimens added to BioCode Database (so far)
•number of morphospecies total ?
•100+ moth morphospecies tissues in pipeline
•100+ other arthropods in tissue pipeline
Challenges
•Getting eventual IDs for morphospecies - not many experts for this part of the world
•morphospecies tracking - managing thousands of specimens and their tissues, especially relating one person’s morphospecies to another’s (to avoid sequencing 100’s of the same)
•year book / mug shot album to track what has been collected / processed so far
•Storing specimens, tissues, extractions, etc.
•Integration of taxa-teams
•food webs
•connectivity of habitats
•baseline for future biocontrol efforts
•Comparisons across taxa
•tracking impacts of climate change
•diversity patterns & conservation
•invasive species
•population structure / insipient speciation
•phenology
Bigger Picture Interests
