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