Category Archives: Fieldwork

Ten years later: the Lionepha paper is out

Posted on 3 April 2020 by David Maddison

In September of 2009, I arrived in Oregon, excited to begin my new position at Oregon State University. I was also excited to live near Marys Peak, as the top of Marys Peak was the locality of capture of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Fieldwork, Revising Bembidiina, Taxonomic Process | Tagged Lionepha, revisions | Leave a comment

Discovering Insect Species: Overview in Rearview

Posted on 3 August 2015 by David Maddison

When last I blogged, the Discovering Insect Species course was in full swing; we were excitedly waiting for the DNA sequence results from our first big field trip, which was to Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. I’m sorry I didn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork, Public Engagement & Citizen Science, Revising Bembidiina, Z499 (Discovering Insect Species) | Tagged Bembidion, DNA, education, evolution, experiential learning, gene trees, phylogeny, Trepanedoris | 1 Comment

The Bembidion acutifrons story

Posted on 26 April 2015 by David Maddison

There are a number of subgroups within Bembidion subgenus Trepanedoris whose structure of gene flow and species boundaries are not understood. The morphological data indicates several forms within these subgroups, but whether this variation is indicative of separate species is not yet … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork, Revising Bembidiina, Taxonomic Process, Z499 (Discovering Insect Species) | Tagged Bembidion, Trepanedoris | 3 Comments

Discovering Insect Species: Klamath Marsh!

Posted on 17 April 2015 by David Maddison

We had a great trip last weekend to the Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge as part of our Discovering Insect Species course. One of our main goals was to see what species of Trepanedoris lived in the large marshland complexes of southern … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork, Public Engagement & Citizen Science, Revising Bembidiina, Z499 (Discovering Insect Species) | Tagged Bembidion, Klamath Marsh, Trepanedoris | 4 Comments

The oak tree grows pretty close to where the acorns dropped

Posted on 11 April 2015 by David Maddison

Here’s my mom, at age 82, collecting some of what will be the type series of a new species of Bembidion from Jasper National Park in Canada. This was in 2011, during a great trip she and I made around … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork, Revising Bembidiina | Leave a comment

Sharing the joy of discovery

Posted on 29 March 2015 by David Maddison

Nine undergraduate students, my graduate student John Sproul, and me. Over the next ten weeks we will go into the field, find beetles, look at them under the microscope, do dissections, photograph them, make predictions about species boundaries, extract their DNA, PCR … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Fieldwork, Public Engagement & Citizen Science, Revising Bembidiina, Taxonomic Process, Z499 (Discovering Insect Species) | Tagged Bembidion, Trepanedoris, Z499 | 13 Comments

Return of the Taxa

Posted on 23 March 2015 by David Maddison

Those who might follow my blog may have noticed a rather long lull in my posts. For this I apologize, but life happens, and my attentions were elsewhere. I hope to make up for that in the coming months. In the meantime, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork, Revising Bembidiina, Taxonomic Process | Tagged Bembidion, curtulatum, genitalia, Lindrochthus, Mount Tamalpais, Plataphus, wickhami | 4 Comments

A Love of Leptoferonia

Posted on 21 March 2015 by David Maddison

For many years I had wondered who Hilary A. Hacker was. In the carabidological literature she appeared on the scene in 1968 with the publication of one of the best revisions of a carabid group that had been done to date, and then … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork, Taxonomic Process | Tagged Carabidae, history, Leptoferonia, Pterostichini, revisions | 8 Comments

42 years between golden buprestids

Posted on 26 June 2014 by David Maddison

In the summer of 1972, I was doing what I did every summer around then, which was to spend a few glorious weeks at a cottage my family rented around Lake of Bays, in the Muskoka district of Ontario. At … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork | 2 Comments

The Group Photo

Posted on 27 November 2013 by David Maddison

One of the required products of a weekend field trip is a group photo. On our Big Loop Trip this summer, we joined up with the Essig Museum group for one weekend in the southern Sierras, and had a very … Continue reading →

Posted in Fieldwork, Musings | Leave a comment