Tag Archives: natural history

Natural history known, unknown, and assumed: a fly tale

Posted on January 26, 2013 by

My previous post was part of an exchange with Chris Buddle on whether taxonomists should describe new species without knowing their natural history. When many of the specimens upon which we base species descriptions are already long dead by the … Continue reading →

Posted in Science Culture | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Taxonomy with or without natural history?

Posted on January 10, 2013 by

My colleague Chris Buddle has asked an interesting and important question about taxonomic descriptions and natural history data. Specifically: Should taxonomists wait to describe a species until there are some details known about its natural history? Chris and I both … Continue reading →

Posted in Science Culture | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Sense of wonder: a Christmas ramble

Posted on December 25, 2012 by

If you can hang on to your child-like sense of wonder about nature, every day is like Christmas. There are always great new things waiting to be unwrapped and discovered. I study flies, but I see little mysteries everywhere when … Continue reading →

Posted in Science Culture | Tagged , | Leave a comment

What is natural history anyway?

Posted on September 29, 2012 by

Scientists like clarity. We like to have our definitions nicely lined up. We like to label things. But that’s not always easy. I’m a taxonomist. I’m an ecologist. I’m a naturalist. I know what all those labels mean, to me, … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab and Field News | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Deep time at Carver’s Gap

Posted on June 27, 2012 by

I was in the mountains of North Carolina earlier this month for a short bout of fieldwork. It wasn’t my first time in those mountains – I’ve hiked there in the past, and collected insects on multiple trips, but it was … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab and Field News | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

My favorite collecting spots. Part 2

Posted on April 21, 2012 by

I’m continuing my Earth Day Weekend series on places that have made an impression on me while I’ve been out doing fieldwork. Aulavik National Park, Banks Island, Northwest Territories. This is a recent one, so it’s fresh in my mind, … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab and Field News | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

More than ten reasons flies are great. Part III

Posted on March 17, 2012 by

Flies are in the news this week because of a newly published paper demonstrating that male Drosophila flies who fail to find a mate are more likely to consume more alcohol. This finding is not only scientifically interesting, it probably … Continue reading →

Posted in Research News | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

The numbers of academia. The intangibles of nature.

Posted on March 13, 2012 by

My time and my mind have been occupied with many duties and responsibilities lately. It’s the curse of the overextended professor. I have, however, spent the past couple of days driving around the snowdrifted prairies of southern Manitoba thinking mostly … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 6 Comments

More than ten reasons flies are great. Part II

Posted on December 26, 2011 by

Diptera are fascinating insects – diverse, bizarre, economically and medically important – but underappreciated by most people other than dipterists. We launched this series in an earlier post with a selection of five randomly selected reasons flies are great. In … Continue reading →

Posted in In the Collection | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

More than ten reasons flies are great

Posted on November 30, 2011 by

Our insect collection has its roots in an amateur collection. Predictably, that means our holdings are very strong in two orders popular with collectors – butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) and beetles (Coleoptera). We had, at last count, about 130,000 pinned … Continue reading →

Posted in In the Collection | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments