2020 Annual Meeting

Program

4 December 2020

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12:00–12:10 PM EST – Welcome and introduction Andrew Smith
Canadian Museum of Nature; President of The Coleopterists Society

12:10–12:30 PM EST – Unraveling the diversity of Helopinina Latreille (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae): an illustrated catalogue of the subtribe and initial taxonomic revision
Marcin Kaminski and Ryan Lumen
Department of Entomology, Purdue University;
Winners of the 2020 Bell Research Award and 2020 Edwards Prize (Lumen)

12:30–12:45 PM EST – Higher-level phylogeny and reclassification of Lampyridae (Coleoptera)
Gavin Martin
School of Math and Sciences, Laramie County Community College;
Winner of the 2020 Lacordaire Prize

12:45–1:00 PM EST – How range overlap and environmental variation influence the gut microbiomes of Phanaeus vindex and P. difformis (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) dung beetles
Claire Winfrey
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder;
Winner of the 2019 Graduate Student Research Enhancement Award

1:00–1:15 PM EST – Comparative phylogeny of passion vine specialist flea beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae)
Colin Morrison
Department of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin;
Winner of the 2020 Graduate Student Research Enhancement Award

1:15–1:30 PM EST – Molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of Appalachian Anillinus (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Anillini)
Curt Harden
Department of Plant & Environmental Sciences, Clemson University;
Winner of the 2020 Graduate Student Research Enhancement Award

1:30–1:45 PM EST – Break

1:45–2:00 PM EST – The evolution and mechanisms of carabid beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) chemical defense
Adam Rork
Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University; Winner of the 2020 Graduate Student Research Program Award

2:00–2:15 PM EST – Phylogeny of the largely tropical cerambycid genus Anoplophora Hope (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) and the origins of life in the cold
Sang Il Kim
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University;
Winner of the 2020 Graduate Student Research Program Award

2:15–2:30 PM EST – Diversity and evolutionary history of Ateuchus, a clade of New World dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae)
Mario Cupello
Department of Zoology, Federal University of Paraná; Winner of the 2019 Edwards Prize

2:30–2:45 PM EST – The Coleoptera anatomy ontology: a big step towards the semantic integration of morphological data
Jennifer Girón
Department of Entomology, Purdue University; Student Councilor (2019–2020) for The Coleopterists Society

2:45–3:00 PM EST – Integration of morphology, genomics and biogeography resolves 257 years of unsettling taxonomy in the West Indian lycid genus Thonalmus (Coleoptera: Lycidae)
Vinicius Ferreira
Montana Entomology Collection, Montana State University; Student Councilor (2020–2021) for The Coleopterists Society

3:00–3:15 PM EST – The Museum of Comparative Zoology entomology collection, a journey through early U.S. coleopterology
Crystal Maier
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University; cmaier@fas.harvard.edu President Elect (2019–2020) for The Coleopterists Society

3:15–3:25 PM EST – USDA Mormon cricket non-target study Courtney Curtis
Arizona State University
Winner of the 2020 Undergraduate Travel Award

3:25–3:35 PM EST – Break

3:35–4:25 PM EST – Plenary speakers
The Erwin Equation of biodiversity: remembering the “Beetle Man”
Carlos Garcia-Robledo
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut
I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the National Museum of Natural History – Smithsonian Institution, under the advice of the legendary Coleopterist Terry L. Erwin. Together with Terry, we performed research and taught courses on tropical biology in the Peruvian Amazon and Costa Rica. In this talk, we will celebrate some of the milestones in Terry’s career. We will also discuss a project inspired in his classic paper “Tropical Forests: Their Richness in Coleoptera and Other Arthropod Species” (1982) published in The Coleopterist Bulletin. After many discussions with Terry Erwin, we present his verbal argument as an equation, the Erwin Equation of Biodiversity. In this presentation we illustrate how this original idea ignited an era of biodiversity discovery, and inspired subsequent diversity-ratio models aiming to estimate arthropod diversity.

Global insect richness and its decline
David Wagner
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut
Stork’s (2018) recent estimate of 5.5 million species of insects is significantly more conservative than Terry Erwin’s back-of-the-envelope suggestion that there may be as many as 30 million terrestrial arthropods. I will share new thoughts and data about global insect richness, and where much of that that diversity is hiding. Might Terry have been right, but for the wrong reasons? The earth’s biodiversity is under siege from global anthropogenic stressors: deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, exotic species, and many others. I will provide a synopsis of recent findings relevant to global insect declines, emphasizing where data from studies of Coleoptera have shaped our understanding.

4:30–4:40 PM EST – Break

4:40–5:25 PM EST – The Coleopterists Society 2020 business meeting
Andrew Smith
Canadian Museum of Nature
President of The Coleopterists Society

5:25–6:00 PM EST – Social mixer