Left: The parasitoid wasp, Meteorus zitaniae Jones; right: Dr. Nina Zitani in the cloud forest at Yanayacu Biological Station, Ecuador. See article below.

BIOLOGY IN THE NEWS:

A new insect species

A new insect species from Ecuador has been named in honor of Dr. Nina Zitani, Assistant Professor (Limited Duties) in Biology. The scientific name of the new species, a parasitoid wasp, is Meteorus zitaniae Jones and was discovered and described by Guinevere Z. Jones and Scott R. Shaw of the University of Wyoming, USA. The wasp lays its eggs inside of a caterpillar host, which eventually dies after the wasp larvae eat it from the inside out. The new wasp species is known only from the Yanayacu Biological Station & Center for Creative studies in the cloud forest of the eastern Andes of Ecuador. This is the fifth new insect species named in honor of Dr. Zitani and her research on the genus Meteorus and other tropical parasitoid wasps. The new species appears in the following article: Jones, G. Z. and S. R. Shaw. 2012. Ten new species of Meteorus (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) from Ecuador reared at the Yanayacu Biological Center for Creative Studies. Zootaxa 3547: 1-23.

Congratulations Katrina Laurent
The Great Lakes Futures Project
First prize ($1,000)

Western’s first postdoctoral 3 Minute Research Competition, held last week in the Great Hall, saw more than 30 scholars sharing their research with the campus community. The research communication exercise – modeled after the Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT), which features graduate students and was held at Western for the first time this spring – gives scholars the opportunity to share their work and its impact with a diverse, interdisciplinary audience, in three minutes or less...
By way of scenario analysis, Laurent’s project examines the possibilities in store for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin, over the next 50 years. [read more]


Cold cricket case could defrost mysteries of changing climate


Biologists from Western University have discovered that insects recover from chill-coma by getting water and salt back where it belongs. These findings, published online today by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), not only identify the very mechanisms that drive insect movement at low temperatures but will lead to a better understanding of agriculture management, biodiversity and climate change...
Many alpine spiders prey on insects that have inadvertently landed on snowfields and have gone into a chill-coma while biologists, like Western professor Brent Sinclair and his PhD student Heath MacMillan, use chill-coma recovery as a way to measure insect cold tolerance. A research team, led by MacMillan, studied recovery from chill-coma in fall field crickets and found that recovery depends on fixing the water and salt imbalances that materialize when the insect is cold. [read more]


Nature in the City 2013

Mark your calendars now for the next Nature in the City lecture series at London Public Library’s Central Library at 7:30 p.m. on six consecutive Tuesday evenings. This year features Biology's own Dr. Jane Bowles

January 15 th Urban beavers Tom Purdy
January 22 nd Ferns and their allies Jane Bowles
January 29 th Backyard birds Gail McNeil
February 5 th Turtle tales Will Lyons
February 12 th Green roofs Kees Govers
February 19 th Westminster Ponds Dave Wake
Series is co-sponsored by Nature London and London Public Library.
[Full details]

This page was last updated on December 17, 2012
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