Frank Wieland, Gavin Svenson, and Derek Svenson doing some vapor light collecting in Chautauqua County, western New York.

After attending the Evolution 2012 conference in Ottawa, Frank Wieland and Julia Goldberg (University of Goettingen, Germany) visited Lyman Entomological Museum in Montreal last week. Curator Stephanie Boucher kindly granted them access to the insect collection of approximately 3 million specimens, where Wieland and Goldberg studied the Mantodea and Phasmatodea collections to get an overview of the material and take pictures.

Wieland in the Mantodea collection of Lyman Entomologial Museum.

Wieland in front of the Mantodea collection of Lyman Entomological Museum in Montreal.

Frank Wieland and Julio Rivera present their praying mantis research at the Evolution 2012 meetings in Ottawa, Canada.

Wieland’s talk was titled- “Digging for the offspring: Multiple convergent evolution of digging structures in female praying mantises (Insecta: Mantodea)”

Rivera’s poster was titled- “The Mantodean egg case: evolutionary hypotheses on their functional diversity and its significance for praying mantis systematics and phylogenetics”

Julio and Frank next to Julio’s poster

On the last stop for the 2012 European museum tour, Julio Rivera images type specimens in Madrid. The system held up great after some serious transit and constant use.

Using the system in Madrid

The last day at the MNHN for Julio Rivera before he continues on to Madrid, Spain to examine more types. Fortunately, Julio overlapped at the MNHN with a visit by Henrique Rodrigues from Sao Paulo. Henrique is working on Stagmatopterinae and is on a museum tour to examine types and additional holdings from European collections.
Frank Wieland and Gavin Svenson returned home after their work at the museum in Paris concluded.
Henrique Rodrigues (left), Roger Roy (center), and Julio Rivera (right)

After a day of collections work we pose for a group picture in front of the Entomology building.
From left to right: Julio Rivera, Roger Roy, Gavin Svenson, and Frank Wieland

Work has begun at the Museum national d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. Frank Wieland has come in from Goettingen with Julio Rivera and Gavin Svenson arriving after 10 days at the British Museum. Monday we met Roger Roy and began working in the collection, imaging type specimens, and planning aspects of the revision of higher level relationships.

Frank, Roger, and Julio working on the collection

Frank and Roger discussing post-embryonic development of spines on the foreleg

Imaging work continues

Gavin and Roger looking at some specimens

Martin was in for another day of mantis work while we continue to image types.

Gavin inspecting Martin’s amber fossil of a Liturgusa (looks to be new!)

Martin looking over loans destined to travel with Gavin and Julio.

Julio imaging types sent from Oxford.

We continue to image types at the British Museum. We are nearly through all primary targeted taxa and will be able to move on to secondary targets for future work and collaborator requests. Working in the Darwin Center has had a few problems including some vibration issues causing blurring in our final composite images. We solved the problem by moving to another location, but we are suppose to wear lab coats in this particular spot. Oh well…

Julio working away on the Neotropical taxa-

Gavin working away on the Flower Mantis types-

A visit to Down House.