For students, faculty, personnel from federal and state agencies, museums, environmental organizations and consulting firms
Beetles: Diversity, Identification, and Natural History in Maine and around the World July 17 - 23, 2016 Instructors: Gary Hevel and Warren Steiner Location: Eagle Hill Institute, Steuben, Me Participants will become acquainted with the various habitats of beetles in nature, including standing dead trees, logs, leaf litter, fungi, carcasses, aquatic areas, soil, dung, foliage of plants, flowers, and fruits. In addition to lectures and discussions, much time will be devoted to fieldwork, with special attention to finding and collecting specimens. We will use of Malaise traps, flight intercept, and yellow bowl traps to collect beetles, and participants will tend them daily. Nighttime investigations will occur to observe and collect specimens, using blacklight traps and sheets, “sugaring”, and searching tree trunks with headlamps. In the laboratory, participants will learn to prepare and identify specimens, utilizing professional methods. Examination of anatomical characters using taxonomic keys will be emphasized in identification procedures. The development of collections of properly mounted and labeled specimens will be demonstrated by course instructors. Lectures will include a variety of topics, including beetle life history and metamorphosis, biodiversity surveys, beetle research and researchers, habitat conservation, pest species, available literature, scientific illustrations, and the importance of collections. about the instructors Gary Hevel (hev...@si.edu) is Research Collaborator with the Department of Entomology, Smithsonian Institution, where he previously worked as Museum Technician, Collections Manager, and Public Information Officer for 42 years. Beetles have been his primary interest since the age of twelve, and this interest has taken him to all 50 U.S. states, sub-Antarctic New Zealand islands, Malaysia, and some two dozen other worldwide countries. He was the central news authority at the Smithsonian during the 2004 “Big Brood” of 17-year cicadas in the eastern United States. Since the year 2000, he has conducted a backyard insect survey of insects, during which he has collected over one thousand species of beetles. Recent achievements include a co-authored compilation on the species of ground beetles (Carabidae) in French Guyana. Warren Steiner (stein...@si.edu) is Research Collaborator with the Department of Entomology, Smithsonian Institution, where he previously worked as Museum Technician/Specialist for thirty years. His areas of interest and studies include biosystematics of Coleoptera, especially the “Darkling Beetles” (Tenebrionidae), insect collection and identification, biodiversity surveys, biogeography and dispersal, plant-insect interactions, spread of adventive species, habitat conservation and scientific illustration. He has travelled to many countries world wide for entomological surveys and is author of more than 85 publications, primarily on beetles. For general information, go to http://eaglehill.us/programs/nhs/natural-history-seminars.shtml For course calendar and course descriptions, go to http://www.eaglehill.us/programs/nhs/nhs-calendar.shtml For application information and cost breakdown, go to http://www.eaglehill.us/programs/general/application-info.shtml For more information, contact mari...@eaglehill.us, 207-546-2821 x 1
